This paper traces the history of the Animal Research Station, Cambridge from its establishment in 1932 to its closure in 1986. The author worked there for forty years and was Director from 1979. Originally set up as a field station for Cambridge University’s School of Agriculture, the Station was expanded after World War II as the Agricultural Research Council’s Unit of Animal Reproduction. Beginning with semen and artificial insemination, research at the Station soon embraced superovulation and embryo transfer in farm (...) animals. Many other technologies were also developed here, including IVF in pigs, cloning by nuclear transplantation of early embryonic cells, and the first genetically modified farm animals in Britain. This account recalls the Directors of the Station and their research teams together with details of their pioneering contribution to reproductive biology. (shrink)

Open-minded people should endorse dogmatism because of its explanatory power. Dogmatism holds that, in the absence of defeaters, a seeming that P necessarily provides non-inferential justification for P. I show that dogmatism provides an intuitive explanation of four issues concerning non-inferential justification. It is particularly impressive that dogmatism can explain these issues because prominent epistemologists have argued that it can’t address at least two of them. Prominent epistemologists also object that dogmatism is absurdly permissive because it allows a seeming to (...) provide justification even if the seeming was caused in some apparently inappropriate way. I conclude by disarming this objection. (shrink)

This paper is an enquiry into the logical, metaphysical, and physical possibility of time travel understood in the sense of the existence of closed worldlines that can be traced out by physical objects. We argue that none of the purported paradoxes rule out time travel either on grounds of logic or metaphysics. More relevantly, modern spacetime theories such as general relativity seem to permit models that feature closed worldlines. We discuss, in the context of Gödel's infamous argument for the ideality (...) of time based on his eponymous spacetime, what this apparent physical possibility of time travel means. Furthermore, we review the recent literature on so-called time machines, i.e., of devices that produce closed worldlines where none would have existed otherwise. Finally, we investigate what the implications of the quantum behaviour of matter for the possibility of time travel might be and explicate in what sense time travel might be possible according to leading contenders for full quantum theories of gravity such as string theory and loop quantum gravity. (shrink)

The Neo-Moorean Deduction (I have a hand, so I am not a brain-in-a-vat) and the Zebra Deduction (the creature is a zebra, so isn’t a cleverly disguised mule) are notorious. Crispin Wright, Martin Davies, Fred Dretske, and Brian McLaughlin, among others, argue that these deductions are instances of transmission failure. That is, they argue that these deductions cannot transmit justification to their conclusions. I contend, however, that the notoriety of these deductions is undeserved. My strategy is to clarify, attack, defend, (...) and apply. I clarify what transmission and transmission failure really are, thereby exposing two questionable but quotidian assumptions. I attack existing views of transmission failure, especially those of Crispin Wright. I defend a permissive view of transmission failure, one which holds that deductions of a certain kind fail to transmit only because of premise circularity. Finally, I apply this account to the Neo-Moorean and Zebra Deductions and show that, given my permissive view, these deductions transmit in an intuitively acceptable way—at least if either a certain type of circularity is benign or a certain view of perceptual justification is false. (shrink)

The chapter introduces and characterizes the notion of fittingness. It charts the history of the relation and its relevance to contemporary debates in normative and metanormative philosophy and proceeds to survey issues to do with fittingness covered in the volume’s chapters, including the nature and epistemology of fittingness, the relations between fittingness and reasons, the normativity of fittingness, fittingness and value theory, and the role of fittingness in theorizing about responsibility. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of issues to (...) do with fittingness that aren’t covered extensively by the volume’s chapters in order to indicate avenues for further research. (shrink)

_The Good Life of Teaching_ extends the recent revival of virtue ethics to professional ethics and the philosophy of teaching. It connects long-standing philosophical questions about work and human growth to questions about teacher motivation, identity, and development. Makes a significant contribution to the philosophy of teaching and also offers new insights into virtue theory and professional ethics Offers fresh and detailed readings of major figures in ethics, including Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Bernard Williams and the practical philosophies of (...) Hannah Arendt, John Dewey and Hans-Georg Gadamer Provides illustrations to assist the reader in visualizing major points, and integrates sources such as film, literature, and teaching memoirs to exemplify arguments in an engaging and accessible way Presents a compelling vision of teaching as a reflective practice showing how this requires us to prepare teachers differently. (shrink)

Using a vague predicate can make commitments about the appropriate use of that predicate in the remaining part of the discourse. For instance, if I assert that some particular pig is fat, I am committed to judging any fatter pig to be fat as well. We can model this update effect by recognizing that truth depends both on the state of the world and on the state of the discourse: the truth conditions of ‘This pig is fat’ rule out evaluation (...) points for which the pig in question in world w is thinner than the cutoff for fatness in the discourse d. Then disagreements about taste are disagreements about the discourse. Unlike disagreements about the world, disagreements about the discourse can be faultless, given that none of the discourse participants has privileged authority to make pronouncements about conventions for appropriate use of a predicate. Thus on the dynamic view developed here, whether or not a dispute about taste turns out to be faultless depends in part on predictable features of the previous discourse. On this account, faultless disagreement involving predicates of personal taste does not force relativizing truth to a judge or assessor. (shrink)

Patients with delusions of control are abnormally aware of the sensory consequences of their actions and have difficulty with on-line corrections of movement. As a result they do not feel in control of their movements. At the same time they are strongly aware of the action being intentional. This leads them to believe that their actions are being controlled by an external agent. In contrast, the normal mark of the self in action is that we have very little experience of (...) it. Most of the time we are not aware of the sensory consequences of our actions or of the various subtle corrections that we make during the course of goal-directed actions. We know that we are agents and that we are successfully causing the world to change. But as actors we move through the world like shadows glimpsed only occasional from the corner of an eye. (shrink)

Many recent attacks on consequentialism and several defenses of pluralism have relied on arguments for the incommensurability of value. Such arguments have, generally, turned on empirical appeals to aspects of our everyday experience of value conflict. My intention, largely, is to bypass these arguments and turn instead to a discussion of the conceptual apparatus needed to make the claim that values are incommensurable. After delineating what it would mean for values to be incommensurable, I give an a priori argument that (...) such is impossible. It is widely accepted that value is conceptually tied to desire. I argue that, more specifically, it is proportional to merited desire strength. This connection gives one a metric of all value if there is any such thing. This metric entails that value is a complete ordering over all states of affairs, or, in other words, that value is commensurable. (shrink)

This paper aims to explain why the laws of nature are held fixed in counterfactual reasoning. I begin by highlighting three salient features of counterfactual reasoning: it is conservative, nomically guided, and it uses hindsight. I then present a rationale for our engagement in counterfactual reasoning that aims to make sense of these features. In particular, I argue that counterfactual reasoning helps us evaluate the evidential relations between unanticipated pieces of evidence and various hypotheses of interest about the history of (...) the actual world. Given this goal, it makes a great deal of sense that counterfactual reasoning would have the aforementioned features. Additionally, it turns out that this account of counterfactual reasoning is nicely congruent with Humean views of laws. Specifically, it can explain, in a Humean-friendly way, both why the laws are counterfactually resilient, and why we may be inclined to have anti-Humean intuitions in the first place, even if some form of Humeanism is correct. (shrink)

Phenomenal conservatism holds, roughly, that if it seems to S that P, then S has evidence for P. I argue for two main conclusions. The first is that phenomenal conservatism is better suited than is proper functionalism to explain how a particular type of religious belief formation can lead to non-inferentially justified religious beliefs. The second is that phenomenal conservatism makes evidence so easy to obtain that the truth of evidentialism would not be a significant obstacle to justified religious belief. (...) A natural objection to phenomenal conservatism is that it makes evidence too easy to obtain, but I argue this objection is mistaken. (shrink)

States claim the right to choose who can come to their country. They put up barriers and expose migrants to deadly journeys. Those who survive are labelled ‘illegal’ and find themselves vulnerable and unrepresented. The international state system advantages the lucky few born in rich countries and locks others into poor and often repressive ones. In this book, Christopher Bertram skilfully weaves a lucid exposition of the debates in political philosophy with original insights to argue that migration controls must be (...) justifiable to everyone, including would-be and actual immigrants. Until justice prevails, states have no credible right to exclude and no-one is obliged to obey their immigration rules. Bertram’s analysis powerfully cuts through the fog of political rhetoric that obscures this controversial topic. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the politics and ethics of migration. (shrink)

The paper develops a eudaimonistic reading of the Zhuāngzǐ 莊子 on which the characteristic feature of a well-lived life is the exercise of dé 德 in a general mode of activity labeled yóu 遊 . I argue that the Zhuāngzǐ presents a second-order conception of agents’ flourishing in which the life of dé is not devoted to predetermined substantive ends or activities with a specific substantive content. Rather, it is marked by a distinctive manner of activity and certain characteristic attitudes. (...) Zhuangist eudaimonism differs from virtue ethics, I suggest, since dé is not moral virtue nor is it normatively basic. The paper discusses textual evidence that the Zhuāngzǐ presents eudaimonistic ideals, develops the Zhuangist conception of “wandering” in detail, and explores connections between wandering and the Zhuangist interest in skill. It surveys the justification for Zhuangist eudaimonism and sketches how the wandering ideal affects the substantive content of a good life. (shrink)

Narrativism, as represented by Hayden White and Frank Ankersmit, can fruitfully be analyzed as an inversion of two brands of positivism. First, narrativist epistemology can be regarded as an inversion of empiricism. Its thesis that narratives function as metaphors which do not possess a cognitive content is built on an empiricist, "picture view" of knowledge. Moreover, all the non-cognitive aspects attributed to narrative as such are dependent on this picture theory of knowledge and a picture theory of representation. Most of (...) the epistemological characteristics that White and Ankersmit attribute to historical narratives therefore share the problems of this picture theory.The article's second thesis is that the theories of narrative explanation can also fruitfully be analyzed as inversions of positivist covering-law theory. Ankersmit's brand of narrativism is the most radical in this respect because it posits an opposition between narrative and causal modes of comprehension while simultaneously eliminating causality from narrativist historical understanding. White's brand of narrativism is more of a hybrid than is Ankersmit's as far as its theory of explanation is concerned; nevertheless, it can also be fruitfully interpreted as an inversion of covering-law theory, replacing it by an indefinite multitude of explanatory strategies.Most of the striking characteristics of both White's and Ankersmit's narrativism presuppose positivism in these two senses, especially their claim that historical narratives have a metaphorical structure and therefore no truth-value. These claims are hard to reconcile with the factual characteristics of debates by historians; this problem can be tracked down to the absence in "metaphorical" narrativism of a conceptual connection between historical narratives and historical research. (shrink)

Does inferential justification require the subject to be aware that her premises support her conclusion? Externalists tend to answer “no” and internalists tend to answer “yes”. In fact, internalists often hold the strong higher-level requirement that an argument justifies its conclusion only if the subject justifiably believes that her premises support her conclusion. I argue for a middle ground. Against most externalists, I argue that inferential justification requires that one be aware that her premises support her conclusion. Against many internalists, (...) I argue that this higher-level awareness needn’t be doxastic or justified. I also argue that the required higher-level awareness needn’t be caused in some appropriate way, e.g. by a reliable or properly functioning faculty. I suspect that this weaker higher-level requirement is overlooked because, at first glance, it seems absurd to allow nondoxastic, unjustified, and unreliably-caused higher-level awareness to contribute to inferential justification. One of the central goals of this paper is to explain how such weak awareness can make an essential contribution to inferential justification. (shrink)

The Higgs mechanism is an essential but elusive component of the Standard Model of particle physics. Without it Yang‐Mills gauge theories would have been little more than a warm‐up exercise in the attempt to quantize gravity rather than serving as the basis for the Standard Model. This article focuses on two problems related to the Higgs mechanism clearly posed in Earman’s recent papers (Earman 2003, 2004a, 2004b): what is the gauge‐invariant content of the Higgs mechanism, and what does it mean (...) to break a local gauge symmetry? (shrink)

Exploratory inquiry has difficulty attracting research funding because funding agencies have little sense of how to detect good science in exploratory contexts. After documenting and explaining the focus on hypothesis testing among a variety of institutions responsible for distinguishing between good and bad science, I analyze the NIH grant review process. I argue that a good explanation for the focus on hypothesis testing—at least at the level of science funding agencies—is the fact that hypothesis-driven research is relatively easy to appraise. (...) I then explore one method by which we might gauge the epistemic merits of different styles of inquiry. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Habermasian ideal of deliberation has long been seen as an extension of, and complement to, political action. But Diana Mutz's empirical studies of face-to-face interactions reveal a conflict between political participation and political deliberation: The more likely people are to be exposed to diverse political opinions, the less likely they are to participate, and those who participate most tend to have the least exposure to diverse political opinions. She hypothesizes, however, that the infrastructure of the Internet might allow (...) for the creation of a forum for online political debate that is sufficiently generalizable to result in deliberation. Champions of the Internet's democratic potential similarly praise its diversifying influence on political discussion and the ways in which it lowers barriers to access. Yet there is little evidence to suggest that new technologies have truly transformed political action or produced meaningful deliberation at significant levels. It appears that many of the trends and behaviors Mutz identifies in face-to-face interaction apply to digital interaction as well. (shrink)

An argument that science is indeed 'socially constructed' but in a way that exposes it to a Darwinian version of variability and selection which ensures its success.

In this paper we present Drama, a distributed model of analogical mapping that integrates semantic and structural constraints on constructing analogies. Specifically, Drama uses holographic reduced representations (Plate, 1994), a distributed representation scheme, to model the effects of structure and meaning on human performance of analogical mapping. Drama is compared to three symbolic models of analogy (SME, Copycat, and ACME) and one partially distributed model (LISA). We describe Drama's performance on a number of example analogies and assess the model in (...) terms of neurological and psychological plausibility. We argue that Drama's successes are due largely to integrating structural and semantic constraints throughout the mapping process. We also claim that Drama is an existence proof of using distributed representations to model high‐level cognitive phenomena. (shrink)

This paper uses the language of formal dialectics to explore how argumentation schemes and their critical questions can be characterized as an extension to traditional dialectical systems. The aim is to construct a dialectical system in which the set of locutions is extended to include scheme-based moves the set of structural rules describes the roles that critical questioning can play; and the set of commitment rules distinguishes between exceptions and assumptions.

The concept of care can be explained in various ways, and it can present a different meaning to each person. Nurses are increasingly aware that good nursing care consists of ‘more’ than the competent performance of a number of caring activities. For many nurses it is less clear what this ‘more’ means and what importance it has in nursing. This article will develop a view concerning care considered as a moral attitude. It is argued that care can be considered as (...) a foundational normative concept in the ethics of the nursing profession. The aim is to clarify that nurses do not derive their specific caring identity just from the set of tasks that they perform but also from the way in which they commit themselves to the caring process. (shrink)

In this article, focusing on the building blocks of art with its concomitant role and meaning, we commence with a brief evolutionary overview of the origin of land vertebrates, which culminated in the rise of our species as we view it. We then review three iconic phases of human evolution, colloquially designated as the Neanderthals, the San and the Cro-Magnons, as manifested by their artistic endeavours. We are well aware that the Cro-Magnons are currently regarded as not sufficiently distinct from (...) modern Homo sapiens to be separately designated. Therefore, the terms ‘anatomically modern humans’ or ‘early modern humans’ are suggested for these inhabitants of the Upper Palaeolithic as they shared an anatomical resemblance with us but still lacked the full complement of behavioural attributes that typify ourselves. This particular selection was chosen because these groups have partially overlapped historically, yet each represents a distinctive approach to the artistic impulse. Subsequently, we consider more contemporary developments regarding human art intertwined with our interpretation of art’s role and meaning. Then, we briefly discuss a broader account of the evolution of art in which these three phases are firmly based and through which our understanding of and engagement with the evolutionary development of these stages are elucidated and complemented. In conclusion, particular views about language and the role and meaning of art are confirmed. Particular views about language and the role and meaning of art are endorsed and supplemented by an extensive body of relevant literature.Contribution: This article explores the evolution of art and its accompanying role and meaning in an intersectional and interdisciplinary manner that fits well with the intention of this unique collection on the building blocks of our past, present and future and with the nature of this journal and our ongoing engagement with HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies. (shrink)

Recent neo-Humean theories of laws of nature have placed substantial emphasis on the characteristic epistemic roles played by laws in scientific practice. In particular, these theories seek to understand laws in terms of their optimal predictive utility to creatures in our epistemic situation. In contrast to other approaches, this view has the distinct advantage that it is able to account for a number of pervasive features possessed by putative actual laws of nature. However, it also faces some unique challenges. First, (...) since the view tries to characterize the laws in terms of their predictive utility, any respects in which putative actual laws are sub-optimally predictively useful are inherently problematic. Such "predictive infelicities" can easily be found among our best physical theories. Second, in tying the laws to our epistemic situation, neo-Humeanism raises the possibility that by changing our epistemic situation, we can change the laws themselves, though it is hard to believe that we have such influence over the laws. This paper aims to address both of these challenges, first by presenting a variety of strategies for explaining away predictive infelicities, and then by developing a version of Lewis's "rigidification" strategy to preclude the possibility of our changing the laws. (shrink)

The Toulmin diagram layout is very familiar and widely used, particularly in the teaching of critical thinking skills. The conventional box-and-arrow diagram is equally familiar and widespread. Translation between the two throws up a number of interesting challenges. Some of these challenges (such as the relationship between Toulmin warrants and their counterparts in traditional diagrams) represent slightly different ways of looking at old and deep theoretical questions. Others (such as how to allow Toulmin diagrams to be recursive) are diagrammatic versions (...) of questions that have already been addressed in artificial intelligence models of argument. But there are further questions (such as the relationships between refutations, rebuttals and undercutters, and the roles of multiple warrants) that are posed as a specific result of examining the diagram inter-translation problem. These three classes of problems are discussed. To the first class are addressed solutions based on engineering pragmatism; to the second class, are addressed solutions drawn from the appropriate literature; and to the third class, fuller exploration is offered justifying the approaches taken in developing solutions that offer both pragmatic utility and theoretical interest. Finally, these solutions are explored briefly in the context of the Araucaria system, showing the ways in which analysts can tackle arguments either using one diagrammatic style or another, or even a combination of the two. (shrink)

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant grounds his postulate for the immortality of the soul on the presupposed practical necessity of the will’s endless progress toward complete conformity with the moral law. Given the important role that this postulate plays in Kant’s ethical and political philosophy, it is hard to understand why it has received relatively little attention. It is even more surprising considering the attention given to his other postulates of practical reason: the existence of God and freedom. (...) The project of this paper is to examine Kant’s postulate of the immortality of the soul, examine critiques of this argument, and show why the argument succeeds in showing that belief in the moral law also obligates one to believe in the soul’s immortality. (shrink)

Apparently, relationships between God (if He exists) and His creatures would be very valuable. Appreciating this value raises the question of whether it can motivate a certain premise in John Schellenberg’s argument from divine hiddenness, a premise which claims, roughly, that if some capable, non-resistant subject fails to believe in God, then God does not exist. In this paper, I argue that the value of divine–creature relationships can justify this premise only if we have reason to believe that the counterfactuals (...) of freedom work out in certain ways. Unfortunately, we can’t acquire such a reason, at least not without relying on other successful arguments (if there are any) for the relevant premise of Schellenberg’s hiddenness argument. (shrink)

'This is a very good and important book that is must reading for anyone interested in evolutionary economics and/or the relationship between history and economics. In addition, you get a very well documented and argued interpretation of long run capitalist development from the industrial revolution to the present that will be a standard reference... a first rate contribution to the discussion of how evolutionary economics should develop.' -Journal of Evolutionary Economics 'The book offers numerous insights into particular aspects of technological (...) change... Social theorists and policy advisors today need to be able to understand technological change in relation to cultural, political and economic life, and to situate contemporary developments in a longer term perspective. The authors provide a framework to do exactly that. Their book is a welcome demonstration of the usefulness of historical context for contemporary debates regarding science and technology policy.' -Business History 'A thought-provoking work that is valuable for more than its detailed account of the technological revolutions that shape our economy today. By directing our attention to a perspective outside the current wave, it shapes our thinking about events inside the current wave.' -Academy of Management Review 'This major contribution to economic history is the most impressive and convincing attempt I know to apply the concept of the 'long waves', a basic rhythm of historical development in the era of capitalism, to the entire stretch from eighteenth-century Lancashire to twenty-first-century Silicon Valley. It is also a call for economic history to escape from the handcuffs of narrow retrospective econometrics to the freedom of its vocation: understanding and explaining secular historical transformations.' -Eric Hobsbawm FBA, American Academy of Arts andamp; Sciences, Emeritus Professor of Social and Economic History, Birkbeck College; Author of The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991The Internet and mobile telephones have made everyone more aware than ever of the computer revolution and its effects on the economy and society. 'As Time Goes By' puts this revolution in the perspective of previous waves of technical change: steam-powered mechanization, electrification, and motorization. It argues for a theory of reasoned economic history which assigns a central place to these successive technological revolutions. (shrink)

The Mohist Canons are a set of brief statements on a variety of philosophical and other topics by anonymous members of the Mohist school , an influential philosophical, social, and religious movement of China's Warring States period (479-221 B.C.). [1] Written and compiled most likely between the late 4th and mid 3rd century B.C., the Canons are often referred to as the “later Mohist” or “Neo-Mohist” canons, since they seem chronologically later than the bulk of the Mohist writings, most of (...) which are probably from the mid-5th to the late 4th century. The.. (shrink)

The Internet and mobile telephones have made everyone more aware than ever of the computer revolution and its effects on the economy and society. As Time Goes By puts this revolution in the perspective of previous waves of technical change: steam-powered mechanization, electrification, and motorization. It argues for a theory of reasoned economic history which assigns a central place to these successive technological revolutions.

It has historically been assumed that comparative and superlative quantifiers can be semantically analysed in accordance with their core logical–mathematical properties. However, recent theoretical and experimental work has cast doubt on the validity of this assumption. Geurts & Nouwen have claimed that superlative quantifiers possess an additional modal component in their semantics that is absent from comparative quantifiers and that this accounts for the previously neglected differences in usage and interpretation between the two types of quantifier that they identify. Their (...) semantically modal hypothesis has received additional support from empirical investigations. In this article, we further corroborate that superlative quantifiers have additional modal interpretations. However, we propose an alternative analysis, whereby these quantifiers possess the semantics postulated by the classical model and the additional aspects of meaning arise as a consequence of psychological complexity and pragmatic implicature. We explain how this model is consistent with the existing empirical findings. Additionally, we present the findings of four novel experiments that support our model above the semantically modal account. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.