ABSTRACT The literature regarding the Dark Triad of personality (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) has expanded rapidly during recent years with researchers evaluating the connections that these personality traits have with a variety of phenomena including philosophical beliefs and moral decision-making. The goal of the present study was to replicate and extend recent research concerning the associations that the Dark Triad had with anti-natalist beliefs (i.e., that it is morally wrong to procreate) by using multidimensional conceptualizations of these dark personality (...) traits and examining whether primal world beliefs mediate the associations that these dark personality traits have with anti-natalist beliefs. The results indicate that, as expected, specific dark personality traits (i.e., antagonistic narcissism, psychopathic meanness, psychopathic disinhibition, and antagonistic Machiavellianism) were positively associated with certain anti-natalist beliefs. In addition, the associations that these dark personality traits had with anti-natalist beliefs were sometimes mediated by the safe primal world belief (i.e., perceiving the world to be non-threatening and cooperative) and the enticing primal world belief (i.e., perceiving the world to be irresistibly fascinating). Discussion focuses on the implications of these results for the role that primal world beliefs play in the connections between dark personality traits and anti-natalist beliefs. (shrink)

Currently, the widely used notion of activity is increasingly present in computer science. However, because this notion is used in specific contexts, it becomes vague. Here, the notion of activity is scrutinized in various contexts and, accordingly, put in perspective. It is discussed through four scientific disciplines: computer science, biology, economics, and epistemology. The definition of activity usually used in simulation is extended to new qualitative and quantitative definitions. In computer science, biology and economics disciplines, the new simulation activity definition (...) is first applied critically. Then, activity is discussed generally. In epistemology, activity is discussed, in a prospective way, as a possible framework in models of human beliefs and knowledge. (shrink)

SIMPLE SEEING I met Virgil Aldrich for the first time in the fall of 1969 when I arrived in Chapel Hill to attend a philosophy conference. My book, Seeing and Knowing,1 had just appeared a few months earlier.

Medieval literature inherited from the Latin pastoral tradition exemplified by Virgil and others the motif of an ideal landscape, a paradise of shepherds. The Arcadia of classical tradition, inhabited by nymphs, satyrs and the heathen gods, became for the medieval mind a garden of love, where Amor held council (as developed by the French allegorists, for example), or a philosophical paradise, where man was recreated and restored. At the same time, medieval historians and theologians found themselves confronted by a (...) different kind of pagan paradise, namely the famous fairy hill of Romano-Celtic origin, which was inhabited not by fictional, but by real creatures such as elves and fairies. The Church Fathers condemned the fairy hill as a demonic illusion and the fairies as diabolical phantasms. This article will demonstrate that the literary description of the fairy hill in Latin tradition was strongly influenced by the idea of bucolic landscape, although it changed its character significantly: what once had been a literary model, now became a metaphysical reality and a concrete alternative to the contemporary world. (shrink)

The algorithm, a building block of computer science, is defined from an intuitive and pragmatic point of view, through a methodological lens of philosophy rather than that of formal computation. The treatment extracts properties of abstraction, control, structure, finiteness, effective mechanism, and imperativity, and intentional aspects of goal and preconditions. The focus on the algorithm as a robust conceptual object obviates issues of correctness and minimality. Neither the articulation of an algorithm nor the dynamic process constitute the algorithm itself. Analysis (...) for implications in computer science and philosophy reveals unexpected results, new questions, and new perspectives on current questions, including the relationship between our informally construed algorithms and Turing machines. Exploration in terms of current computational and philosophical thinking invites further developments. (shrink)

There is an important family of semantic notions that we apply to thoughts and to the conceptual constituents of thoughts - as when we say that the thought that the Universe is expanding is true. Thought and World presents a theory of the content of such notions. The theory is largely deflationary in spirit, in the sense that it represents a broad range of semantic notions - including the concept of truth - as being entirely free from substantive metaphysical and (...) empirical presuppositions. At the same time, however, it takes seriously and seeks to explain the intuition that there is a metaphysically or empirically 'deep' relation linking thoughts to reality. Thus, the theory represents a kind of compromise between deflationism and versions of the correspondence theory of truth. This book will appeal to students and professionals interested in the philosophy of logic and language. (shrink)

With Hegel’s observations in his Lectures on Aesthetics, on the difference between the epic poetry of the ancients and the novel as the dominant literary form of the present, we are at the center of these meditations. The great epic poems of antiquity, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, for instance, or Virgil’s Aeneid, reflect not only the minds of certain poets; they are, at the same time, as are all great literary works, recognizable as the product of an age; and (...) the age of Homer, the age of epic poetry, Hegel characterizes as a “fundamentally poetic state of the world,” that is a world in which poetry is not merely written, but, as it were, lived. The active intervention and participation of gods in the lives of mortals; groves and springs and hills as the habitats of nymphs and fauns; the poetic comprehension of what is, was at that time not a matter of the poetic imagination at work in the minds of a few chosen individuals, of artists whose successors, much later in history, more often than not lamented their separation from their contemporary surroundings, but was “natural,” a matter of fact, of ways of thinking and feeling shared by the whole community. It is not absurd to say that in such a world our distinctions between imagination and fact were of little importance, if not unknown. It is this that led the young Nietzsche to accuse the first great analytical rationalist of Greece, Socrates, the indefatigable questioner, of having destroyed mythology, of having helped to bring about the end of tragedy, indeed, of Greek art. (shrink)

One might think that if the majority of virtue signallers judge that a proposition is true, then there is significant evidence for the truth of that proposition. Given the Condorcet Jury Theorem, individual virtue signallers need not be very reliable for the majority judgment to be very likely to be correct. Thus, even people who are skeptical of the judgments of individual virtue signallers should think that if a majority of them judge that a proposition is true, then that provides (...) significant evidence that the proposition is true. We argue that this is mistaken. Various empirical studies converge on the following point: humans are very conformist in the contexts in which virtue signalling occurs. And stereotypical virtue signallers are even more conformist in such contexts. So we should be skeptical of the claim that virtue signallers are sufficiently independent for the Condorcet Jury Theorem to apply. We do not seek to decisively rule out the relevant application of the Condorcet Jury Theorem. But we do show that careful consideration of the available evidence should make us very skeptical of that application. Consequently, a defense of virtue signalling would need to engage with these findings and show that despite our strong tendencies for conformism, our judgements are sufficiently independent for the Condorcet Jury Theorem to apply. This suggests new directions for the debate about the epistemology of virtue signalling. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the question whether God intends that sin occur. We clarify the question, consider some of the answers given in the Christian tradition, and give a careful commentary on a few especially telling passages from the Christian Scriptures. We consider two philosophically informed interpretative strategies, one derived from the work of Frances Kamm, the other from Reformed scholasticism, against our interpretation of these passages. While we concede that in other passages such interpretations may allow a way (...) of escaping our argument, we conclude that in the case of the telling passages we have selected there is simply no comparably plausible alternative interpretation. (shrink)

Why does God allow evil? One hypothesis is that God desires the existence and activity of free creatures but He was unable to create a world with such creatures and such activity without also allowing evil. If Molinism is true, what probability should be assigned to this hypothesis? Some philosophers claim that a low probability should be assigned because there are an infinite number of possible people and because we have no reason to suppose that such creatures will choose one (...) way rather than another. Arguments like this depend on the principle of indifference. But that principle is rejected by most philosophers of probability. Some philosophers claim that a low probability should be assigned because doing otherwise violates intuitions about freewill. But such arguments can be addressed through strategies commonly employed to defend theories with counterintuitive results across ethics and metaphysics. (shrink)

It is a matter of contention whether or not a general explanatory framework for the biological sciences would be of scientific value, or whether it is even achievable. In this paper we suggest that both are the case, and we outline proposals for a framework capable of generating new scientific questions. Starting with one clear characteristic of biological systems – that they all have the potential to make mistakes - we aim to describe the nature of this potential and the (...) common processes that lie behind it. Given that under most circumstances biological systems function effectively, an examination of different kinds of mistake-making provides pointers to mechanisms that must exist to make failure uncommon. This in turn informs a framework for systematic enquiry, which in this paper we apply to the haemostatic system, but which we believe could be applied to any system across biology. (shrink)

Bezugnehmend auf Kants Moralphilosophie entwickelt dieser Beitrag eine These dazu, was mit der Forderung gemeint sein soll, Personen unter Beachtung ihrer Würde bzw. als "Zweck an sich selbst" zu behandeln. Es wird vorgeschlagen, die Implikationen von Kants "Menschheitsformel" als ein Bündel von mit einander verwandten Vorschriften zu interpretieren, die das moralische Nachdenken darüber, wie die Prinzipien unserer tagtäglichen Entscheidungen spezifiziert und interpretiert werden sollten, leiten und begrenzen können. Der Beitrag bearbeitet sodann die folgenden drei Fragestellungen: Was folgt aus dem Vorangehenden (...) im Hinblick auf die Behandlung von Straftätern bei der Verbüßung ihrer Strafe? Was empfiehlt die "Menschheitsformel" - einmal abgesehen von Kants "offizieller" Straftheorie - im Hinblick darauf, wer, wie stark, in welcher Weise und warum bestraft werden sollte? Gibt es Konflikte zwischen diesen Empfehlungen und Kants "offizieller" Straftheorie, die eine Revision seiner Gründe für diese Theorie erforderlich machen? Drawing from Kant's moral theory, this essay develops an account of what is required to treat persons with dignity, or as "ends in themselves". It proposes to regard the implications of Kant's humanity formula as a cluster of related precepts that can guide and constrain moral deliberation about how to specify and interpret the principles that should guide day to day decisions. The essay then addresses three questions: What is implied regarding how offenders should be treated while undergoing punishment? Apart from Kant's official theory of punishment, what would the humanity formula recommend regarding who should be punished, how much, in what way, and why? Are there conflicts between these recommendations and Kant's official theory of punishment that invite reexamination of his grounds for his official theory? (shrink)

Through a collection of new, previously unpublished essays, _The_ _Blackwell Guide to Kant’s Ethics_ addresses diverse topics crucial to our understanding of Kant's moral philosophy and its implications for the modern age. Provides a fresh perspective on themes in Kant’s moral philosophy Addresses systematically Kant’s foundational work, _Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals_ and his more specific treatment of justice and virtue in _The Metaphysics of Morals_ Includes essays by both established scholars and rising stars Identifies common misperceptions of Kant's (...) thought and challenges some prevailing interpretations Shows how Kant developed and supplemented his earlier ethical thought with specific discussions of practical issues in law, international relations, personal relations, and self-regarding virtues and vices. (shrink)

By drawing attention to these facts and to the relationship between Cantor’s and Husserl's ideas, I have tried to contribute to putting Frege's attack on Husserl "in the proper light" by providing some insight into some of the issues underling criticisms which Frege himself suggested were not purely aimed at Husserl's book. I have tried to undermine the popular idea that Frege's review of the Philosophy of Arithmetic is a straightforward, objective assessment of Husserl’s book, and to give some specific (...) reasons for thinking that the uncritical reading of Frege's review has unfairly distorted philosophers' perception of a work they do not know very well. (shrink)

The specific nuances of what Gramsci names ‘the new dialectic’ are explored in this paper. The dialectic was Marx's specific ‘mode of thought’ or ‘method of logic’ as it has been variously called, by which he analyzed the world and man's relationship to that world. As well as constituting a theory of knowledge (epistemology), what arises out of the dialectic is also an ontology or portrait of humankind that is based on the complete historicization of humanity; its ‘absolute “historicism”’ or (...) ‘the absolute secularisation and earthliness of thought’, as Gramsci worded it (, p. 465). Embracing a fully secular and historical view of humanity, it provides a vantage point that allows the multiple and complex effects of our own conceptual heritage to be interrogated in relation to our developing ‘nature’ or ‘being’. The argument presented in this paper is that the legacy of both Hegel and Marx is manifest in the depth of Gramsci's comprehension of what he termed the ‘educative‐formative’ problem of hegemony. It is precisely the legacy of this Hegelian‐Marxist radical philosophical critique that is signified in his continuing commitment to the ‘philosophy of praxis’ and the historical‐dialectical principles that underpin this worldview. (shrink)

The Hellenistic Schools of Epicureanism, Cynicism and Stoicism are considered to constitute the first, albeit modest, wave of feminism. But the question: ‘Were the Stoics Feminists?’ has attracted little attention due to a paucity of available evidence. What this paper attempts is a comprehensive treatment of the subject. In particular it addresses two distinct claims that have been made about the Stoic attitude to women. The first claim challenges the view that the Stoics were thoroughgoing feminists. The second is that, (...) given the Stoic fixation on social duty, women's relegation to the domestic sphere is a consistent Stoic position. It is argued that Stoicism was fundamentally committed to the emancipation of women even though many of its proponents were inconsistent feminists. This inconsistency put them at odds with Stoicism's avowed mission to provide a critique of social convention and to promote the ideals of the cosmopolis. (shrink)

Some recent psychological studies suggest that the belief that humans matter more than other animals can be strengthened by cognitive dissonance. Jaquet (forthcom- ing) argues that some of these studies also show that the relevant belief is primar- ily caused by cognitive dissonance and is therefore subject to a debunking argument. We offer an alternative hypothesis according to which we are already speciesist but cognitive dissonance merely enhances our speciesism. We argue that our hypothesis explains the results of the studies (...) at least as well as Jaquet’s. We then respond to a series of objections. Along the way, we highlight various respects in which further stud- ies are needed to decide between Jaquet’s hypothesis and ours. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a theological account of intrinsic value drawn from some passages in Robert Merrihew Adams’ book Finite and Infinite Goods. First I explain why Adams’ work on this topic is interesting, situate his theory within the broader literature on intrinsic value, and draw attention to some of its revisionist features. Next I state the theory, raise some problems for it, and refine it in light of those problems. Then I illustrate how the refined theory works by (...) showing that it has the resources to deal with some seemingly formidable objections. (shrink)

Popular songs are ubiquitous in the lives of school-age children, but the construction of traditional school music curricula does not always provide an adequate framework for studying them. In particular, the salience of words qua lyrics is an inescapable feature of popular songs, and recognizing the musical properties of those lyrics opens for study an important dimension of the real-world music that students of all ages engage so readily. Rather than treating song lyrics as separate from the music, I here (...) attempt to establish that lyrics can be treated as musical entities, as demonstrated in scholarship from popular music theorists and musicologists that highlights the musical properties of song lyrics and the musicianship of those who write them. Then, I argue that existing school curricula could do more to give lyrics their musical due, which would not only enhance the teaching and learning of popular songwriting itself, but also may expand notions of what counts as music more broadly, with benefits for school music curricula overall, perhaps especially in the domains of choral and general music. (shrink)