I argue that José Luis Bermúdez has not shown that there is a paradox in our concept of self-consciousness. The deflationary theory is not a plausible theory of self-consciousness, so its paradoxicality is irrelevant. A more plausible theory, 'the simple theory', is not paradoxical. However, I do think there is a puzzle about the connection between self-consciousness and 'I'-thoughts.

In this discussion paper, I evaluate some arguments of Mark Johnston's which appear in his articles «Fission and the Facts» and «Reasons and Reductionism» . My primary concern is with his description of fission cases, and his assessment of the implications of such cases for value theory. In particular, Johnston advances the following three claims:Rejecting the intrinsicness of identity is an arbitrary response to the paradox of fission;Fission cases involve indeterminate identity;Contra Parfit, fission cases have no implications for value theory (...) in the actual world.I argue that and are false, and that , if true, is not true for any reason that Johnston gives. (shrink)

. Book Reviews. International Journal of Philosophical Studies: Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 403-421.

Where does philosophy, the oldest academic subject, stand at the beginning of the new millennium? This remarkable volume brings together leading figures from most major branches of the discipline to offer answers. What remains of the "linguistic turn" in twentieth-century philosophy? How should moral philosophy respond to and incorporate developments in empirical psychology? Where might Continental and Anglophone feminist theory profitably interact? How has our understanding of ancient philosophy been affected by the emergence of analytic philosophy? Where does the mind-body (...) problem stand today? What role must value judgments play in science? Do Marx, Nietzsche, or Freud matter in the 21st century? These and many other questions at the cutting edge of the discipline are addressed by distinguished philosophers from Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States. They aim not only to stimulate philosophical debate, but to introduce those in cognate disciplines--biology, classics, economics, history, law, linguistics, literary studies, mathematics, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, among others--to what is happening in contemporary philosophy. In a substantial introduction, the editor gives an overview of the state of philosophy today and helps orient non-philosophers. List of Contributors Julia Annas: Ancient Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century Don Garrett: Philosophy and History in the History of Modern Philosophy Brian Leiter: The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Recovering Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud Timothy Williamson: Past the Linguistic Turn? Jaegwon Kim: The Mind-Body Problem at Century's Turn David J. Chalmers: The Representational Character of Experience Alvin I. Goldman: The Need for Social Epistemology Philip Kitcher: The Ends of the Sciences Nancy Cartwright: From Causation to Explanation and Back Thomas Hurka: Normative Ethics: Back to the Future Peter Railton: Toward an Ethics that Inhabits the World Rae Langton: Projection and Objectification Philip Pettit: Existentialism, Quietism, and the Role of Philosophy. (shrink)

The notion that visual attention can operate over visual objects in addition to spatial locations has recently received much empirical support, but there has been relatively little empirical consideration of what can count as an `object' in the ®rst place. We have investi- gated this question in the context of the multiple object tracking paradigm, in which subjects must track a number of independently and unpredictably moving identical items in a ®eld of identical distractors. What types of feature clusters can (...) be tracked in this manner? In other words, what counts as an `object' in this task? We investigated this question with a technique we call target merging: we alter tracking displays so that distinct target and distractor loca- tions appear perceptually to be parts of the same object by merging pairs of items (one target with one distractor) in various ways ± for example, by connecting item locations with a simple line segment, by drawing the convex hull of the two items, and so forth. The data show that target merging makes the tracking task far more dif®cult to varying degrees depending on exactly how the items are merged. The effect is perceptually salient, involving in some conditions a total destruction of subjects' capacity to track multiple items. These studies provide strong evidence for the object-based nature of tracking, con®rming that in some contexts attention must be allocated to objects rather than arbitrary collections of features. In addition, the results begin to reveal the types of spatially organized scene components that can be independently attended as a function of properties such as connectedness, part struc- ture, and other types of perceptual grouping. q 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

This paper reports findings from a study into national associations of accountants from the perspective of the model code of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants. Using data collected from a survey document, the paper analyses the extent of the model code’s influence in an international process of harmonisation of ethical rules for accountants. Obstacles to the adoption of the model code are examined, as is the impact that government supervision of codes has had (...) on harmonisation efforts. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between professional independence and close family relationships and culture. Findings are also presented on other issues of code content, and the most appropriate body for interpreting national codes is identified. These items were included as matters of then current concern to the Ethics Committee of IFAC. (shrink)

The dominant approach to the study of dynamic preference is to generate preference change by manipulating aspects of decision-problem presentation (problem description, task procedure, contextual options). The predisposing approach instead manipulates the decision maker’s mental state while holding problem presentation constant. Three illustrative studies are outlined here. The first modified preferences for ambitious consumption by manipulating subjects’ consumption energy. The second modified preferences for immediate consumption by manipulating subjects’ hedonic resources. The third modified preferences for consumption itself by manipulating subjects’ (...) desire proneness. Whereas framing is thought to affect perception, predisposing apparently can affect tastes and so involves a special kind of preference dynamism. (shrink)

Winner of the Schumpeter Prize, 2000 and Winner of the Smith Prize in Austrian Economics, 2000, this book explores how the limitations of human knowledge create both opportunities and problems in the modern economy. The growing field of evolutionary economics has developed as a result of the traditional failure of the discipline to explain certain phenomena that impact greatly on the economy. These are: *_Evolution_ - the impact on the economy of natural change over time *_Institutions_ - the impact on (...) the economy of government and/or company policy, rules and regulations *_Knowledge_ - the impact on the economy that is felt when new information becomes available _Knowledge, Institutions and Evolution in Economics _is a punchy overview of these topics and one that has become regarded as something of a modern classic that no serious social sciences academic or student should be without. (shrink)

What makes an object the same persisting individual over time? Philosophers and psychologists have both grappled with this question, but from different perspectives—philosophers conceptually analyzing the criteria for object persistence, and psychologists exploring the mental mechanisms that lead us to experience the world in terms of persisting objects. It is striking that the same themes populate explorations of persistence in these two very different fields—e.g. the roles of spatiotemporal continuity, persistence through property change, and cohesion violations. Such similarities may reflect (...) an underlying connection, in that psychological mechanisms of object persistence (especially relevant parts of mid-level visual object processing) may serve to underlie the intuitions about persistence that fuel metaphysical theories. This would be a way for cognitive science to join these two disparate fields, helping to explain the possible origins and reliability of some metaphysical intuitions, and perhaps leading to philosophical progress. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Thomas Aquinas’s “Summa Theologiae”: A Guide and Commentary by Brian DaviesBrian J. Shanley, O.P.Thomas Aquinas’s “Summa Theologiae”: A Guide and Commentary. By Brian Davies, O.P. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xv + 454. $105.00 (cloth), $31.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-19-938062-6 (cloth), 978-0-19-938063-3 (paper).The purpose of this book is to provide guidance to a nonspecialist reader of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. It is not meant as a substitute (...) for the text itself, but rather as a companion for a reader in order to offer explication for the most important arguments, a sense of the context of the whole, a quick survey of the terrain of a treatise, some historical context when necessary, and a prod to critical thinking. Davies’s ambition is daunting. As the subtitle indicates, he intends the book to be both a guide and a commentary. If it were only a guide, it would focus on the truly critical themes in some depth in order to aid the reader through the various parts without commenting on everything. If it were only a commentary, its purpose would be largely expository and exegetical. It is hard to do both functions well on a work as large and complex as the Summa theologiae.After a brief overview of Aquinas’s life and a short commentary on the meaning of sacra doctrina, Davies turns to the topic of God. Given his previous work on Aquinas, it is not surprising that the strongest and longest section of his book concerns the Prima pars. Davies does a nice job of parsing the existence of God and mapping out the Five Ways in a manner suitable to his audience. He then turns to the question of how God does not exist, and makes it plain that the main thrust of Aquinas’s treatment is apophatic, or negative. It is surprising that Davies never mentions the influence of Pseudo-Dionysius on Aquinas and generally downplays the Neoplatonic strains in Aquinas’s theology. I would have thought that divine simplicity and goodness deserve more consideration, and I would have liked to see Davies give more insight for the reader on how to parse some of Aquinas’s metaphysical terms (especially the real distinction in created beings and how this is the main marker of the ontological gap between God and creation). When Davies turns to how we name or use language about God, he signals to his readers that he is entering into an area that has been much debated. Not surprisingly, while he does a reasonable job of trying to explain how analogical predication works to a nonspecialist reader, specialists will have much to quibble about. At the heart of his explanation of analogy is the claim that analogy is primarily “a linguistic phenomenon in which one and the same word is used to speak of different things with connections of meaning that can be traced in each use of the word” (69). Analogy in Aquinas is more than a theory about language; it is embedded in a metaphysics of participation and creation that needs to be adumbrated to understand how analogy works. The subsequent treatment of God’s knowing and willing is reliable, though more attention might have been paid to the practical model of divine knowing. When it comes to the Trinity, [End Page 306] Davies does a solid job of trying to explain that most complicated doctrine of Aquinas to a nonspecialist.Davies misses the opportunity to explore the fundamental contrast that Aquinas draws between God’s causal immanence in all things as Creator and his special, interpersonal, Trinitarian indwelling through grace, as the treatise on the Trinity segues into the treatise on creation. When turning to creation, Davies notes that the fundamental metaphysical principle behind Aquinas’s account is that “the existence of something that does not exist by nature has to be caused” (110), although he seems diffident about its validity (“like it or not”) and never mentions participation. Sometimes he speaks about God’s causality in creation as “causally accounting for their esse” (ibid.) even as he notes that God... (shrink)

In cases in which many causes together bring about an effect, it is common to select some as particularly important. Philosophers since Mill have been pessimistic about analyzing this reasoning because of its variability and the multifarious causal and pragmatic details of how it works. I argue Mill was right to think these details matter but wrong that they preclude philosophical analysis of causal selection. I show that analyzing the pragmatic details of scientific debates about the important causes of the (...) Bhopal Gas Tragedy can illuminate causal reasoning about disasters and shed new light on causality and causal selection. (shrink)

In three experiments, subjects attempted to track multiple items as they moved independently and unpredictably about a display. Performance was not impaired when the items were briefly (but completely) occluded at various times during their motion, suggesting that occlusion is taken into account when computing enduring perceptual objecthood. Unimpaired performance required the presence of accretion and deletion cues along fixed contours at the occluding boundaries. Performance was impaired when items were present on the visual field at the same times and (...) to the same degrees as in the occlusion conditions, but disappeared and reappeared in ways which did not implicate the presence of occluding surfaces (e.g. by imploding and exploding into and out of existence, instead of accreting and deleting along a fixed contour). Unimpaired performance did not require visible occluders (i.e. Michotte’s tunnel effect) or globally consistent occluder positions. We discuss implications of these results for theories of objecthood in visual attention. (shrink)

Such a moral theology not only provides us with a convincing certainty of God's being, but it also has the great advantage that it leads us to religion, since it joins the thought of God firmly to our morality, and in this way it even makes better men of us. Kant, Lectures on Philosophical TheologyThis philosophy too, which takes up the thought of confederation in the concept of communicative, historically situated reason, will be able to provide no assurance (keine Zuversicht); (...) it stands in the sign of a transcendence from within and must content itself with the justified encouragement of a skeptical but non-defeatist “resistance to the gods and demons of a world contemptuous of man.” Habermas, “Israel oder Athen: Wem gehoert die anamnetische Vernunft?”. (shrink)

Lukacs's post-1930 literary criticism reveals a problematic continuity with the theory of totality articulated in History and Class Consciousness (1923). No longer the self-knowledge of a militant proletariat, totality emerges as the contemplative vision of great bourgeois novelists. Shorn of its earlier messianic overtones, the later criticism promises a more labile political theory whose possibilities have already been explored by theorists such as liberation theologians and socialist feminists. This same change, however, coupled with Lukacs's failure to confront its metatheoretical consequences, (...) severs theory and practice and threatens to reduce revolutionary activity to a subjective and strident moralizing. (shrink)

How have figures of speech configured new concepts of time, space, and mind throughout history? Brian J. McVeigh answers this question in A Psychohistory of Metaphors: Envisioning Time, Space, and Self through the Centuries by exploring “meta-framing:” our ever-increasing capability to “step back” from the environment, search out its familiar features to explain the unfamiliar, and generate “as if” forms of knowledge and metaphors of location and vision. This book demonstrates how analogizing and abstracting have altered spatio-visual perceptions, expanding (...) our introspective capabilities and allowing us to adapt to changing social circumstances. (shrink)

We critically evaluate arguments in a recent Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics article by Svoboda, Adler, and Van Howe disputing the 2012 affirmative infant male circumcision policy recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics. We provide detailed evidence in explaining why the extensive claims by these opponents are not supported by the current strong scientific evidence. We furthermore show why their legal and ethical arguments are contradicted by a reasonable interpretation of current U.S. and international law and ethics. After (...) all considerations are taken into account it would be logical to conclude that failure to recommend male circumcision early in infancy may be viewed as akin to failure to recommend childhood vaccination to parents. In each case, parental consent is required and the intervention is not compulsory. Our evaluation leads us to dismiss the arguments by Svoboda et al. Instead, based on the evidence, infant male circumcision is both ethical and lawful. (shrink)

Many professional philosophers are hesitant about “public philosophy”—unsure about what it is and how it’s done, and downright pessimistic about whether it is an important and valuable philosophical practice. In response to this hesitancy and in support of public philosophy, I argue that most of these philosophers already find at least one form of public philosophy important and valuable for the discipline and profession: teaching. I offer and defend a broad conception of public philosophy in order support this controversial claim. (...) I continue by briefly offering some reasons to think that public philosophy is of value for society generally (i.e., “the public”), and argue that we, as a profession, need to fully recognize our standing commitment to public-facing philosophical work; and to engage in serious discussion and debate to better examine the various types of public philosophy, clarify the broad range of public-facing activities, and encourage/reward further public work of value. (shrink)

The foundational principles of representative democracy are under attack globally. What we desperately need are enlightened and persuasive public intellectuals who can help us see through the fog of our fear, anger, and disillusionment, to find our rational political commitments again. One of these public intellectuals is undoubtedly Yuval Noah Harari, the bestselling author of three recent books – Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Harari is also a frequent contributor in the popular press, and a (...) guest on shows, podcasts, panels, and as a keynote speaker. Add to all this that Harari is acting on his lofty academic ideals through ‘Sapienship’, a multidisciplinary organization he cofounded that advocates for global responsibility, clarifies the global conversation, and focuses attention on the most important global challenges. I single out Harari because I presume many readers will be familiar with his work. He is certainly one of the fastest rising stars of public intellectualism. Unfortunately, his work is undercut by the philosophical positions he put forth in his first bestselling book, Sapiens. In this review/critique I wish to show that in order for Harari advance a coherent political or ideological argument, he must first shore up his philosophical commitments. (shrink)

This handbook provides an overview of the research on the changing nature of work and workers by marshalling interdisciplinary research to summarize the empirical evidence and provide documentation of what has actually changed. Connections are explored between the changing nature of work and macro-level trends in technological change, income inequality, global labor markets, labor unions, organizational forms, and skill polarization, among others. This edited volume also reviews evidence for changes in workers, including generational change, that has accumulated across domains. Based (...) on documented changes in work and worker behavior, the handbook derives implications for a range of management functions, such as selection, performance management, leadership, workplace ethics, and employee well-being. This evaluation of the extent of changes and their impact gives guidance on what best practices should be put in place to harness these developments to achieve success. (shrink)

Circumcision of males represents a surgical “vaccine“ against a wide variety of infections, adverse medical conditions and potentially fatal diseases over their lifetime, and also protects their sexual partners. In experienced hands, this common, inexpensive procedure is very safe, can be pain‐free and can be performed at any age. The benefits vastly outweigh risks. The enormous public health benefits include protection from urinary tract infections, sexually transmitted HIV, HPV, syphilis and chancroid, penile and prostate cancer, phimosis, thrush, and inflammatory dermatoses. (...) In women circumcision of the male partner provides substantial protection from cervical cancer and chlamydia. Circumcision has socio‐sexual benefits and reduces sexual problems with age. It has no adverse effect on penile sensitivity, function, or sensation during sexual arousal. Most women prefer the circumcised penis for appearance, hygiene and sex. Given the convincing epidemiological evidence and biological support, routine circumcision should be highly recommended by all health professionals. BioEssays 29:1147–1158, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Trading on non-public material information is fertile ground for a discussion of ethical behavior. The long-running legal tug-of-war over what constitutes illegal insider trading delivers challenges to regulatory authorities charged with detecting and enforcing the law, and is likely one of the reasons that prosecution of insider trading events remains rather uncommon. One can observe both increased volume in the equity and option markets and run-ups in the stock price prior to the announcement of the acquisitions; however, the detection of (...) illegal or unethical insider trading can be difficult. Given the legal uncertainty around insider trading and the circumstantial evidence from the trading activity, it is almost impossible to identify unethical insider trades unless there is a whistleblower or trades are large in size and impeccable in timing. Using call option trading around two merger announcements with similar firms that resulted in different ultimate treatment from the SEC, we illustrate the struggle regulators and prosecutors have with identifying and enforcing unethical insider trades. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on the role that cyberspace should play in social or political protest, and, in particular, in acts of civil disobedience. I have two main purposes in doing so. First, I want to address the question, “When is hacktivism civil disobedience?” I answer the question by including a more complete and explicit analysis of civil disobedience, as it is affected by information technology, than is currently done in the literature on hacktivism. This allows a clearer answer (...) to the question posed here than currently provided in the relevant literature. Second, I analyze James Moor’s claim that information technology transforms old processes, as this claim applies to the context of civil disobedience. As we will see, while information technology may exacerbate certain issues, little transformation seems required in this case. (shrink)

We can perceive not only low-level features of events such as color and motion, but also seemingly higher-level properties such as causality. A prototypical example of causal perception is the ”launching effect’: one object moves toward a stationary second object until they are adjacent, at which point A stops and B starts moving in the same direction. Beyond these motions themselves --- and regardless of any higher-level beliefs --- this display induces a vivid visual impression of causality, wherein A is (...) seen to cause B’s motion. Do such percepts reflect a unitary category of visual processing, or might there be multiple distinct forms of causal perception? While launching is often simply equated with causal perception, researchers have sometimes described other phenomena such as ”triggering’ and ”entraining’. We used psychophysical methods to determine whether these labels really carve visual processing at its joints, and how putatively different forms of causal perception relate to each other. Previous research demonstrated retinotopically specific adaptation to causality: exposure to causal launching makes subsequent ambiguous events in that same location more likely to be seen as non-causal ”passing’. Here, after replicating this effect, we show that exposure to triggering also yields retinotopically specific adaptation for subsequent ambiguous launching displays, but that exposure to entraining does not. Collectively, these results reveal that visual processing distinguishes some types of causal interactions. (shrink)

A debate over whether God predestines some to reprobation broke out in the ninth century. No one actually taught this view, but both John Scotus Eriugena and Hincmar of Rheims, among other churchmen at the time, presumed it to be the view of those who referred to themselves as “double predestinarians.” In part, this was because the double predestinarians had made much of Augustine’s phrase “predestined to punishment,” a phrase that can in fact be found in several of his writings. (...) This article, which is the second of two parts, argues that Eriugena and Hincmar had difficulty avoiding the appearance of disagreeing entirely with Augustine’s use of that phrase. Eriugena said the phrase is to be understood a contrario to the divine nature; Hincmar said it is to be understood in a generic sense about God’s judgment on sin. Of the two, Hincmar came the closest to acknowledging that Augustine might have erred in using the phrase as he did. (shrink)

Circumcision of males represents a surgical “vaccine“ against a wide variety of infections, adverse medical conditions and potentially fatal diseases over their lifetime, and also protects their sexual partners. In experienced hands, this common, inexpensive procedure is very safe, can be pain‐free and can be performed at any age. The benefits vastly outweigh risks. The enormous public health benefits include protection from urinary tract infections, sexually transmitted HIV, HPV, syphilis and chancroid, penile and prostate cancer, phimosis, thrush, and inflammatory dermatoses. (...) In women circumcision of the male partner provides substantial protection from cervical cancer and chlamydia. Circumcision has socio‐sexual benefits and reduces sexual problems with age. It has no adverse effect on penile sensitivity, function, or sensation during sexual arousal. Most women prefer the circumcised penis for appearance, hygiene and sex. Given the convincing epidemiological evidence and biological support, routine circumcision should be highly recommended by all health professionals. BioEssays 29:1147–1158, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

A debate over whether God predestines to make some people reprobate broke out in the ninth century. No one taught this view, but it was presumed by several churchmen at the time to be the position of those who called themselves double predestinarians. In part, this article explains why two double predestinarians, Gottschalk of Orbais and Ratramnus of Corbie, were mistaken for proponents of this view. They had been trying to explain Augustine’s phrase, “those predestined to punishment”, which they found (...) in no fewer than ten of Augustine’s texts. Gottschalk points out Augustine used the phrase interchangeably with the term reprobate. Thus, to Gottschalk, it is not a statement about what God predestines; rather, it is a statement about the effect of predestination on certain people. Likewise, to Ratramnus, the phrase referred to the effect of God’s ordering of both the good and evil acts of persons. That Gottschalk and Ratramnus identified Augustine’s use of the phrase with a belief in double predestination was due to their reading Augustine through the lens of Isidore of Seville’s Sententiae II.6. (shrink)