The demonstration that slow transport of clocks can be used to define simultaneity in inertial frames of reference leads to the question of whether clock transport can similarly be used in noninertial frames. It is shown that there are certain types of reference frames in which the clock-transport method cannot be used in a self-consistent manner. It is also shown that there are other types of noninertial frames in which the clock-transport method will succeed. The discussion includes noninertial frames in (...) flat space-time as well as the case of curved space-times. (shrink)

The inaugural volume of the Pitt-Konstanz series, devoted to the work of philosopher Adolf Grünbaum, encompasses the philosophical problems of space, time, and cosmology, the nature of scientific methodology, and the foundations of psychoanalysis.

Dirac's classical electrodynamics countenances "preaccelerations" of charged particles at a time t as mathematical functions of external forces applied after the time t. These preaccelerations have been interpreted as evidence for physical retrocausation upon assuming that, in electrodynamics no less than in Newton's second law, external forces sustain an asymmetric causal relation to accelerations. And this retrocausal interpretation has just been defended against the critiques in (Grunbaum 1976), (Grunbaum and Janis, 1977 and 1978) by appeal to the formal assimilation (...) of the electrodynamic laws of motion to Newton's second law. It is argued below that this latest defense of the retrocausal interpretation is even more ill-founded than the prior ones in the literature. (shrink)

It is argued that Grøn's criticism of our treatment of the rotating disk in special relativity is incorrect: Our results pertain to an acceleration program different from his but physically no less legitimate.

Using robots that operate in the real world as opposed to computer simulations of animal behavior is a form of modeling that may provide some biological insights. However, since engineering principles and materials differ significantly from those used in biology, one should be extremely cautious in interpreting robot biomimicry as providing an explanation of biological mechanisms.

No political, economic, or cultural segment of society has escaped the universal impact of recent cataclysmic change. Physicians were no exception. During the 20th century, all members of society, including physicians, have experienced change of enormous speed and magnitude. Futurist Alvin Toffler noted that global societal transformation has created a of personal malaise that poses difficulty for both individual and group adaptation. Toffler further described current change as a fundamental shift and conflict in all aspects of civilization (how we live, (...) work, and relate to each other). Toffler also noted major alterations in the basis for distribution of societal power (who controls what, why, and how). One manifestation of recent change directly affecting all members of society, includingphysicians, has been the social transformation of medicine that has been a power shift from the individual physicians to control by organizations and management. (shrink)

In his first paper on the special theory of relativity, Einstein indicated that the question of whether or not two spatially separated events were simultaneous did not necessarily have a definite answer, but instead depended on the adoption of a convention for its resolution. Some later writers have argued that Einstein's choice of a convention is, in fact, the only possible choice within the framework of special relativistic physics, while others have maintained that alternative choices, although perhaps less convenient, are (...) indeed possible. (shrink)

Philosophy of Communication Ethics is a unique and timely volume that creatively examines communication ethics, philosophy of communication, and "the other.".

We critically analyze Alexander Rosenberg’s argument based on the multiple realizability of biological properties that there are no biological laws. The argument is intuitive and suggestive. Nevertheless, a closer analysis reveals that the argument rests on dubious assumptions about the nature of natural selection, laws of nature, and multiple realizability. We also argue that the argument is limited in scope, since it applies to an outmoded account of laws and the applicability of the argument to other more promising accounts of (...) laws is questionable. Another concern of ours is that the relation between multiple realizability and natural selection is more complex than Rosenberg acknowledges. Finally, we claim that an explanation for why Rosenberg’s argument appears persuasive and appealing is that the argument is based on an inflated concept of multiple realizability that rests on unreliable intuitions concerning what counts as a different realization of the same property. Consequently, we argue that the argument is at best inconclusive and at worst false insofar as its implications for the existence of biological laws are concerned. (shrink)

Philosophers and scientists discuss how failure has influenced the development of science, and how current failures might influence its course in the future. Among the modern examples are nonequilibrium statistical physics, and neoclassical consumer theory; early examples include Aristotelian psychology and molecular biology. Some of the eight articles were presented at an April 1988 workshop at the University of Pittsburgh. No index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This comprehensive Gandhi reader provides an essential new reference for scholars and students of his life and thought. It is the only text available that presents Gandhi's own writings, including excerpts from three of his books—An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Satyagraha in South Africa, Hind Swaraj —a major pamphlet, Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place, and many journal articles and letters, along with a biographical sketch of his life in historical context and recent essays by highly (...) regarded scholars. (shrink)

According to second‐personal approaches to moral obligation, the distinctive normative features of moral obligation can only be explained in terms of second‐personal relations, i.e. the distinctive way persons relate to each other as persons. But there are important disagreements between different groups of second‐personal approaches. Most notably, they disagree about the nature of second‐personal relations, which has consequences for the nature of the obligations that they purport to explain. This article aims to distinguish these groups from each other, highlight their (...) respective advantages and disadvantages, and thereby indicate avenues for future research. (shrink)

ABSTRACT An influential argument against the possibility of obligations to oneself states that the very notion of such obligations is incoherent: If there were such obligations, we could release ourselves from them; yet releasing oneself from an obligation is impossible. I challenge this argument by arguing against the premise that it is impossible to release oneself from an obligation. I point out that this premise assumes that if it were possible to release oneself from an obligation, it would be impossible (...) to violate that obligation. I note that there are two interpretations of this assumption, one conceptual and one psychological. I argue that, on both interpretations, the assumption is false—at least according to independently plausible accounts of obligations to oneself and of what it means to waive an obligation. My arguments paint a picture of obligations to oneself that not only challenges the argument against their coherence, but also illuminates these obligations’ relationship to other parts of the moral domain. (shrink)

Kant takes the idea of autonomy of the will to be his distinctive contribution to moral philosophy. However, this idea is more nuanced and complicated than one might think. In this chapter, I sketch the rough outlines of Kant’s idea of autonomy of the will while also highlighting contentious exegetical issues that give rise to various possible interpretations. I tentatively defend four basic claims. First, autonomy primarily features in Kant’s account of moral agency, as the condition of the possibility of (...) moral obligation. Second, autonomy amounts to a metaphysical property as well as a normative principle and a psychological capacity. Third, although there is legitimate scholarly disagreement about whether or not autonomy involves self-legislation of the moral law, there is good reason to believe it underwrites an ‘inside-out’ (as opposed to ‘outside-in’) conception of the relationship between the will and moral requirements. Fourth, persons have dignity because their autonomy makes them members in the set of beings over whom the categorical imperative requires us to universalise our maxims, not because autonomy is an independently important property. (shrink)

While it is uncontroversial that Kantian constructivism has implications for normative ethics, its status as a metaethical view has been contested. In this article, I provide a characterisation of metaethical Kantian constructivism that withstands these criticisms. I start by offering a partial defence of Sharon Street’s practical standpoint characterisation. However, I argue that this characterisation, as presented by Street, is ultimately incomplete because it fails to demonstrate that the claims of Kantian constructivism constitute a distinctive contribution to metaethics. I then (...) try to complete the practical standpoint characterisation by elaborating on Christine Korsgaard’s suggestion that metaethical Kantian constructivism takes up a position on the source of morality’s normativity. (shrink)

On Chang's voluntarist account of commitments, when we commit to φ, we employ the 'normative powers' of our will to give ourselves a reason to φ that we would otherwise not have had. I argue that Chang's account, by itself, does not have sufficient conceptual resources to reconcile the normative significance of commitments with their alleged fundamentally volitional character. I suggest an alternative, second-personal account of commitment, which avoids this problem. On this account, the volitional act involved in committing is (...) one of holding ourselves accountable, thus putting us under to a pro tanto obligation to ourselves. The second-personal account implies that there is an interesting link between commitment and morality. (shrink)

According to Darwall’s Second-Personal Account, moral obligations constitutively involve relations of authority and accountability between persons. Darwall takes this account to lend support to Kant’s moral theory. Critics object that the Second-Personal Account abandons central tenets of Kant’s system. I respond to these critics’ three main challenges by showing that they rest on misunderstandings of the Second-Personal Account. Properly understood, this account is not only congenial to Kant’s moral theory, but also illuminates aspects of that theory which have hitherto received (...) scant attention. In particular, it motivates a fresh perspective on the relationship between respect, persons, and the law. (shrink)

This paper develops a new kind of approach to conspiracy theories – a procedural approach. This approach promises to establish that belief in conspiracy theories is rationally criticisable in general. Unlike most philosophical approaches, a procedural approach does not purport to condemn conspiracy theorists directly on the basis of features of their theories. Instead, it focuses on the patterns of thought involved in forming and sustaining belief in such theories. Yet, unlike psychological approaches, a procedural approach provides a rational critique (...) of conspiracist thought patterns. In particular, it criticises these thought patterns for failing to conform to procedures prescribed by reason. The specific procedural approach that I develop takes its cue from the Kantian notion that reason must be used self-critically. I tentatively suggest that conspiracy theorists fail to engage in the relevant sort of self-critique in at least three ways: they do not critically examine their own motivations, they avoid looking at matters from the point of view of others, and they fail to reflect on the limits of human knowledge. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to develop ideas about robustness analyses. I introduce a form of robustness analysis that I call sufficient parameter robustness, which has been neglected in the literature. I claim that sufficient parameter robustness is different from derivational robustness, the focus of previous research. My purpose is not only to suggest a new taxonomy of robustness, but also to argue that previous authors have concentrated on a narrow sense of robustness analysis, which they have inadequately distinguished (...) from other investigations of models such as sensitivity analysis. (shrink)

How are scientific explanations possible in ecology, given that there do not appear to be many—if any—ecological laws? To answer this question, I present and defend an account of scientific causal explanation in which ecological generalizations are explanatory if they are invariant rather than lawlike. An invariant generalization continues to hold or be valid under a special change—called an intervention—that changes the value of its variables. According to this account, causes are difference-makers that can be intervened upon to manipulate or (...) control their effects. I apply the account to ecological generalizations to show that invariance under interventions as a criterion of explanatory relevance provides interesting interpretations for the explanatory status of many ecological generalizations. Thus, I argue that there could be causal explanations in ecology by generalizations that are not, in a strict sense, laws. I also address the issue of mechanistic explanations in ecology by arguing that invariance and modularity constitute such explanations. (shrink)

There appear to be no biological regularities that have the properties traditionally associated with laws, such as an unlimited scope or holding in all or many possible background conditions. Mitchell, Lange, and others have therefore suggested redefining laws to redeem the lawlike status of biological regularities. These authors suggest that biological regularities are lawlike because they are pragmatically or paradigmatically similar to laws or stable regularities. I will review these re-definitions by arguing both that there are difficulties in applying their (...) accounts to biology and difficulties in the accounts themselves, which suggests that the accounts are not adequate to redeem the lawlike status of biological regularities. Finally, I will suggest a new account of laws that also shows how non-laws might function in some of the roles of laws. (shrink)

This book is the most comprehensive treatment available of one of the most urgent - and yet in some respects most neglected - problems in bioethics: decision-making for incompetents. Part I develops a general theory for making treatment and care decisions for patients who are not competent to decide for themselves. It provides an in-depth analysis of competence, articulates and defends a coherent set of principles to specify suitable surrogate decisionmakers and to guide their choices, examines the value of advance (...) directives, and investigates the role that considerations of cost ought to play in decisions concerning incompetents. Part II applies this theoretical framework to the distinctive problems of three important classes of individuals, many of whom are incompetent: minors, the elderly and psychiatric patients. The authors' approach combines a probing analysis of fundamental issues in ethical theory with a sensitive awareness of the concrete realities of health care institutions and the highly personal and individual character of difficult practical problems. Its broad scope will appeal to health professionals, moral philosophers and lawyers alike. (shrink)

The contingency of biological regularities—and its implications for the existence of biological laws—has long puzzled biologists and philosophers. The best argument for the contingency of biological regularities is John Beatty’s evolutionary contingency thesis, which will be re-analyzed here. First, I argue that in Beatty’s thesis there are two versions of strong contingency used as arguments against biological laws that have gone unnoticed by his commentators. Second, Beatty’s two different versions of strong contingency are analyzed in terms of two different stabilities (...) of regularities. Third, I argue that Beatty and his commentators have focused on the more ineffective trajectory stability version of the argument, whereas the constancy stability version provides a more substantial and applicable argument against the existence of biological laws. Fourth, I develop a counterexample to Beatty’s thesis. Finally, I discuss the possibility of evolution producing repeatable and general non-lawlike regularities and patterns by utilizing the notion of generative entrenchment and by criticizing the thesis of multiple realizability of biological properties. (shrink)

The Problem of Obligation is the problem of how to explain the features of moral obligations that distinguish them from other normative phenomena. Two recent accounts, the Second-Personal Account and the Relational Account, propose superficially similar solutions to this problem. Both regard obligations as based on the claims or legitimate demands that persons as such have on one another. However, unlike the Second-Personal Account, the Relational Account does not regard these claims as based in persons’ authority to address them. Advocates (...) of the Relational Account accuse the Second-Personal Account of falling prey to the Problem of Antecedence. According to this objection, the Second-Personal Account is committed to the implausible claim that we have an obligation to φ only if, and because, others demand that we φ. Since the Relational Account’s proposed solution to the Problem of Obligation does not face the Problem of Antecedence, its advocates argue that it is dialectically superior to the Second-Personal Account. In this paper, I defend the Second-Personal Account by arguing that, first, the Relational Account does not actually solve the Problem of Obligation and, second, the Second-Personal Account does not fall prey to the Problem of Antecedence. (shrink)

It is often argued that biological generalizations have a distinctive and special status by comparison with the generalizations of other natural sciences, such as that biological generalizations are riddled with exceptions defying systematic and simple treatment. This special status of biology is used as a premise in arguments that posit a deprived explanatory, nomological, or methodological status in the biological sciences. I will discuss the traditional and still almost universally held idea that the biological sciences cannot deal with exceptions and (...) application conditions of their generalizations with their own distinctive and proprietary explanantia, but need the help of lower-level sciences to carry out this task. The idea of lower-level explanations of exceptions is connected to the idea that the biological sciences need lower-level sciences to better themselves and to the idea that biological sciences cannot provide reliable and extrapolatable results or explanations by themselves. I present counterexamples to the idea of lower-level explanations of exceptions in biology. I also discuss and refute more general arguments why the idea of lower-level explanations of exceptions has been held to hold in the special sciences, such as the screening-off and openness arguments. This suggest that there might be nothing special about the biological sciences vis-à-vis the more fundamental natural sciences, such as physics insofar as explanations of exceptions are concerned, and that the biological sciences can provide reliable and extrapolatable results or explanations by themselves. (shrink)