Objective: Losing the only child is considered as the most severe kind of bereavement. It can trigger intense grief symptoms along with loss of psychosocial resources, but meanwhile, it can also lead to posttraumatic growth (PTG). The current study aimed to examine (a) whether a curvilinear relationship exists between grief and PTG, and (b) the moderating role of resources-loss among Chinese bereaved parents who lost their only child (shidu parents). Methods: 199 shidu parents from five provinces completed the (...) assessment packet covering prolonged grief symptoms and PTG, as well as resource loss. Hierarchical regression analyses were computed to examine the curvilinear relationship and the moderating effect of interpersonal loss and socio-economic loss. Results: There was no significant curvilinear relationship between grief and PTG in shidu parents. Under the high levels of interpersonal loss, shidu parents’ PTG scores decreased as the severity of grief increased. However, the socio-economic loss did not show a significant moderating effect. Conclusion: The results of the current study did not show a significant curvilinear relationship between grief and PTG in shidu parents. High levels of grief coupled with high levels of interpersonal loss may interfere with their ability to achieve PTG. Therefore, evaluating degrees of interpersonal loss seems to be an important part of the treatment process when working with shidu parents. To facilitate their adaptation from a positive perspective, helping them maintain existing or develop new interpersonal relationships may be helpful. (shrink)

The number of family members caring and caregiving for a loved one undergoing physical and mental changes continues to increase dramatically. For many, this ongoing experience not only involves the “burden of caregiving” but also the “burden of grief” as their loved-one’s newfound medical condition can result in the loss of the person they previously knew. Dramatic cognitive, behavioral, and personality changes, often leave caregivers bereft of the significant relationship they shared with the affected person prior to the illness (...) or injury. This results in what we term conditions of acquired “non-death interpersonal loss”. Current approaches to these losses use an amalgam of models drawn from both death and non-death loss. Despite their utility, these frameworks have not adequately addressed the unique processes occurring in the interpersonal sphere where the grieving caregiver needs to reach some modus vivendi regarding the triad of “who the person was,” “who they are now,” and “who they will yet become.” In this paper we propose a process-based model which addresses cognitive-emotional-behavioral challenges caregivers meet in the face of their new reality. These require a revision of the interpersonal schemas and the relationships that takes into account the ongoing interactions with the affected family member. The model and its utility to identify adaptive and maladaptive responses to NoDIL is elaborated upon with clinical material obtained from caregivers of people diagnosed with major neuro-cognitive disorder and pediatric traumatic brain injury. The article concludes with implications for theory, research and clinical intervention. (shrink)

People often make less risky decisions for themselves than others. We examined how people allocated risks (i.e., determining the ratio of uncertain outcomes to certain outcomes) between themselves and others. We also investigated gain (vs. loss) domain and social value orientation as predictors of risk allocations. The results of three experiments demonstrated that participants were more likely to share their risks equally between themselves and others than distribute risk unequally. In the gain (vs. loss) domain, participants allocated fewer (...) risks to themselves and more risks to the other person for unequal risk allocations. Compared to proselfs, prosocials were more likely to allocate risks equally. We also found stronger domain effects on unequal risk allocations for proselfs than for prosocials. Therefore, our findings clarify the effects of risk distribution, domain, and social value orientation on interpersonal allocation decisions and highlight equal risk distribution between oneself and others. (shrink)

To evaluate the overall good/welfare of any action, policy or institutional choice we need some way of comparing the benefits and losses to those affected: we need to make interpersonal comparisons of the good/welfare. Yet sceptics have worried either: that such comparisons are impossible as they involve an impossible introspection across individuals, getting ‘into their minds’; that they are indeterminate as individual-level information is compatible with a range of welfare numbers; or that they are metaphysically mysterious as they assume (...) the existence either of a social mind or of absolute levels of welfare when no such things exist. This article argues that such scepticism can potentially be addressed if we view the problem of interpersonal comparisons as fundamentally an epistemic problem – that is, as a problem of forming justified beliefs about the overall good based on evidence of the individual good. (shrink)

According to the person-affecting view, the ethics of welfare should be cashed out in terms of how the individuals are affected. While the narrow version fails to solve the non-identity problem, the wide version is subject to the repugnant conclusion. A middle view promises to do better – the Interpersonal Comparative View of Welfare (ICV). It modifies the narrow view by abstracting away from individuals’ identities to account for interpersonal gains and losses. The paper assesses ICV’s merits and (...) flaws. ICV solves the non-identity problem, avoids the repugnant conclusion, and seems to accommodate the person-affecting intuition. But it cuts too many things along the way: ICV obstructs the advantage of the wide view to account for all future individuals’ welfare, abandons the intuitions that underlie the narrow view, and even violates its own presuppositions by turning out to be merely pseudo person-affecting. (shrink)

Suppose it is possible to make approximate interpersonal comparisons of welfare gains and losses. Thus, if w\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$w$$\end{document}, x\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$x$$\end{document}, y\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$y$$\end{document} and z\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$z$$\end{document} are personal states, then it is sometimes possible to say “The welfare gain of the state change w⇝x\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} (...) \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$w\leadsto x$$\end{document} is greater than the welfare gain of the state change y⇝z\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$y\leadsto z$$\end{document}”. We can represent this by the formula “⪰\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\succeq $$\end{document}”, where \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$$$\end{document} is a difference preorder: an incomplete preorder on the space of all possible personal state changes. A social state change is a bundle of personal state changes. A social difference preorder is an incomplete preorder on the space of social state changes, which satisfies Pareto and Anonymity axioms. We characterize a family of SDPs which are roughly utilitarian in nature. We also apply the model to redistributive taxation. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultants (CECs) often face some of the most difficult communication and interpersonal challenges that occur in hospitals, involving stressed stakeholders who express, with strong emotions, their preferences and concerns in situations of personal crisis and loss. In this article we will give examples of how much of the important work that ethics consultants perform in addressing clinical ethics conflicts is incompletely conceived and explained in the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities Core Competencies for Healthcare Ethics (...) Consultation and the clinical ethics literature. The work to which we refer is best conceptualized as a specialized type of interviewing, in which the emotional barriers of patients and their families or surrogates can be identified and addressed in light of relevant ethical obligations and values within the context of ethics facilitation. (shrink)

This article argues against a leading cognitivist and moral interpretation of shame that is present in the philosophical literature. That standard view holds that shame is the felt-response to a loss of self-esteem, which is the result of negative self-assessment. I hold that shame is a heteronomous and primitive bodily affect that is perceptual rather than judgmental in nature. Shame results from the breakdown and thwarting of our desire for anonymous, unexceptional, and disattentive co-existence with others. I use the (...) sociological theory of Erving Goffman and the theory of shame found in philosophical anthropology to support this view. I also use the cases of shame and chronic shame that often accompany disability to show that shame is separable from negative self-assessment and, instead, emerges as an affective response to a world (of equipment, things, and people) that disallows unburdened and unreflective interpersonal equilibrium. (shrink)

In recent years, interest in family-to-work interference and its consequences has increased dramatically. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we propose and test a dual spillover spiraling model which examines the indirect effects of family incivility on workplace interpersonal deviance through increasing family-to-work conflict (resource loss spiral) and decreasing family-to-work enrichment (resource gain spiral). We also examine the moderating effects of family-supportive supervisor behaviors on these indirect effects. The findings from a three-wave survey, with 455 employees and their (...) coworkers in 60 teams, reveal that experienced family incivility (Time 1) induces more interpersonal deviance at work (Time 3) through facilitating family-to-work conflict (Time 2) and inhibiting family-to-work enrichment (Time 2). Such indirect deviation amplifying effects are mitigated by higher supervisor-level family-supportive supervisor behaviors (Time 1). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

The passing of Nelson Mandela and other figures of contemporary importance may prompt the interesting question of how we might or should understand the psychological, social and moral function of lamentation in human life. This paper aims to show that such responses are not just of emotional and interpersonal significance, but also of serious moral import. To this end, the paper proceeds via exploration of conceptually and morally suggestive correspondences or resonances between the logical grammar of lamentation—which, to be (...) sure, has received almost no latter day analytical attention—and that of gratitude or thankfulness in which there has been an enormous explosion of academic interest in recent years. The paper argues that there is no less case for a moral virtue of lamentation, than for a virtue of gratitude. (shrink)

The longitudinal, qualitative study aimed to explore the lived experiences of Chinese university emerging adults by analyzing their personal life stories, reflective journals, and semi-structured interview data collected over a 2-year period. A qualitative content analysis was used to identify five themes: maturity, academic performance, interpersonal communication skills, social support network, and sense of loss. The study found that the growth in emerging adulthood was dynamic, positive, and multifaceted. The study demonstrated that writing personal life stories, as a (...) practice of meaningful literacy instruction in EFL contexts, helped students to record a memorable past, reconcile with the past, and strive for personal growth. These findings suggest that emerging adults’ personal growth be stressed in foreign language teaching to promote Chinese university emerging adults’ growth and development. It is also suggested that personal life stories be used in foreign language teaching under the guidance of meaningful literacy instruction. (shrink)

Professional caregivers who work with the trauma and suffering of others, such as doctors, nurses and psychologists, may face significant challenges along with the risk of adverse, long-term mental and physical health problems. Caregivers with responsibility for dependants outside their professional work reported more stress. This finding is of particular relevance in respect of caregivers in under-developed countries such as Zimbabwe, where many households have taken in additional children who have been orphaned, whose parents are ill, or whose parents have (...) temporarily gone elsewhere in search of work. For the purposes of the study, a qualitative phenomenological research design was selected as appropriate to the focus on human experience. An interpretative approach was adopted to explore and explicate the lived experiences of the participants and the meaning they attached to them. The major sources of stress for professional caregivers emerged as being resource constraints, interpersonal issues, and personal issues. Factors found to promote coping include the caregiver’s meaning making perspective, making a difference, and constructing a sense of personal control. (shrink)

I present an argument proving that there are no fundamental facts, which is similar to an argument recently presented by Mark Jago for truthmaker maximalism. I suggest that this argument gives us at least some prima facie, defeasible reason to believe that there are no fundamental facts.

In this paper I will present three arguments (based on the notions of constitution, metaphysical reality, and truth, respectively) with the aim of shedding some new light on the structure of Fine’s (2005, 2006) ‘McTaggartian’ arguments against the reality of tense. Along the way, I will also (i) draw a novel map of the main realist positions about tense, (ii) unearth a previously unnoticed but potentially interesting form of external relativism (which I will label ‘hyper-presentism’) and (iii) sketch a novel (...) interpretation of Fine’s fragmentalism (which I contrast with Lipman’s 2015, 2016b, forthcoming). (shrink)

Grounding contingentism is the doctrine according to which grounds are not guaranteed to necessitate what they ground. In this paper I will argue that the most plausible version of contingentism is incompatible with the idea that the grounding relation is transitive, unless either ‘priority monism’ or ‘contrastivism’ are assumed.

According to Composition is Identity, a whole is literally identical to the plurality of its parts. According to Mereological Nihilism, nothing has proper parts. In this note, it is argued that Composition is Identity can be shown to entail Mereological Nihilism in a much more simple and direct way than the one recently proposed by Claudio Calosi.

What is the relation between parts taken together and the whole that they compose? The recent literature appears to be dominated by two different answers to this question, which are normally thought of as being incompatible. According to the first, parts taken together are identical to the whole that they compose. According to the second, the whole is grounded in its parts. The aim of this paper is to make some theoretical room for the view according to which parts ground (...) the whole they compose while being, at the same time, identical to it. (shrink)

There are two main ways in which the notion of mereological fusion is usually defined in the current literature in mereology which have been labelled ‘Leśniewski fusion’ and ‘Goodman fusion’. It is well-known that, with Minimal Mereology as the background theory, every Leśniewski fusion also qualifies as a Goodman fusion. However, the converse does not hold unless stronger mereological principles are assumed. In this paper I will discuss how the gap between the two notions can be filled, focussing in particular (...) on two specific sets of principles that appear to be of particular philosophical interest. The first way to make the two notions equivalent can be used to shed some interesting light on the kind of intuition both notions seem to articulate. The second shows the importance of a little-known mereological principle which I will call ‘Mild Supplementation’. As I will show, the mereology obtained by adding Mild Supplementation to Minimal Mereology occupies an interesting position in the landscape of theories that are stronger than Minimal Mereology but weaker than what Achille Varzi and Roberto Casati have labelled ‘Extensional Mereology’. (shrink)

Fine (2005, 2006) has presented a ‘trilemma’ concerning the tense-realist idea that reality is constituted by tensed facts. According to Fine, there are only three ways out of the trilemma, consisting in what he takes to be the three main families of tense-realism: ‘presentism’, ‘(external) relativism’, and ‘fragmentalism’. Importantly, although Fine characterises tense-realism as the thesis that reality is constituted (at least in part) by tensed facts, he explicitly claims that tense realists are not committed to their fundamental existence. Recently, (...) Correia and Rosenkranz (2011, 2012) have claimed that Fine’s tripartite map of tense realism is incomplete as it misses a fourth position they call ‘dynamic absolutism’. In this paper, I will argue that dynamic absolutists are committed to the irreducible existence of tensed facts and that, for this reason, they face a similar trilemma concerning the notion of fact-content. I will thus conclude that a generalised version of Fine’s trilemma, concerning both fact-constitution and fact-content, is indeed inescapable. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe ability of providing an adequate supervenience base for tensed truths may seem to be one of the main theoretical advantages of both the growing-block and the moving-spotlight theory of time over presentism. However, in this paper I will argue that some propositions appear to be as problematic for growing-block theorists as past-directed propositions are for presentists, namely propositions stating that nothing will be the case in the future. Furthermore, I will show that the moving-spotlight theory can adequately address all (...) the main supervenience challenges that can be levelled against A-theories of time. I will, thus, conclude that, at least as far as the supervenience principle is concerned, the moving-spotlight theory should be preferred over both presentism and the growing-block theory. (shrink)

The possibility of changing the past by means of time-travel appears to depend on the possibility of distinguishing the past as it is ‘before’ and ‘after’ the time-travel. So far, all the metaphysical models that have been proposed to account for the possibility of past-changing time-travels operate this distinction by conceiving of time as multi-dimensional, and thus by significantly inflating our metaphysics of time. The aim of this article is to argue that there is an intuitive sense in which past-changing (...) time-travels are metaphysically possible also in one-dimensional time. (shrink)

In this paper I address two important objections to the theory called ‘ Composition as Identity’ : the ‘wall-bricks-and-atoms problem’, and the claim that CAI entails mereological nihilism. I aim to argue that the best version of CAI capable of addressing both problems is the theory I will call ‘Atomic Composition as Identity’ which consists in taking the plural quantifier to range only over proper pluralities of mereological atoms and every non-atomic entity to be identical to the plurality of atoms (...) it fuses. I will proceed in three main steps. First, I will defend Sider’s Composition as identity. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 211–221, 2014) idea of weakening the comprehension principle for pluralities and I will show that :219–235, 2016a) it can ward off both the WaBrA problem and the threat of mereological nihilism. Second, I will argue that CAI-theorists should uphold an ‘atomic comprehension principle’ which, jointly with CAI, entails that there are only proper pluralities of mereological atoms. Finally, I will present a novel reading of the ‘one of’ relation that not only avoids the problems presented by Yi Composition as identity. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 169–191, 2014) and Calosi :429–443, 2016b, Am Philos Q 55:281–292, 2018) but can also help ACAI-theorists to make sense of the idea that a composite entity is both one and many. (shrink)

I present a ‘stage-theoretical’ interpretation of the supervaluationist semantics for the growing-block theory of time according to which the ‘nodes’ on the branching tree of historical possibilities are taken to be possible stages of the growth of the growing-block. As I will argue, the resulting interpretation (i) is very intuitive, (ii) can easily ward off an objection to supervaluationist treatments of the growing-block theory presented by Fabrice Correia and Sven Rosenkranz, and (iii) is also not saddled by the problems affecting (...) the supervaluationist version of the growing-block theory defended by R. A. Briggs and Graeme A. Forbes. (shrink)

Joseph Keim Campbell has recently criticized Peter van Inwagen's Third Argument against compatibilism for its reliance on the existence of a remote past. In response, Anthony Brueckner has offered a new version of the Third Argument showing that determinism and free will are incompatible for all times t relative to which there is a past . In this paper I argue that although Brueckner's retooled argument fails to prove anything in favour of incompatibilism, its conclusion can be exploited to provide (...) another version of van Inwagen's original argument that doesn't rely on the existence of past times, thus withstanding Campbell's criticism. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to address the “Grounding Grounding Problem,” that is, the question as to what, if anything, grounds facts about grounding. I aim to show that, if a seemingly plausible principle of modal recombination between fundamental facts and the principle customarily called “Entailment” are assumed, it is possible to prove not only that grounding facts featuring fundamental, contingent grounds are derivative but also that either they are partially grounded in the grounds they feature or they are (...) “abysses”. (shrink)

According to ‘Strong Composition as Identity’, if an entity is composed of a plurality of entities, it is identical to them. As it has been argued in the literature, SCAI appears to give rise to some serious problems which seem to suggest that SCAI-theorists should take their plural quantifier to be governed by some ‘weak’ plural comprehension principle and, thus, ‘exclude’ some kinds of pluralities from their plural ontology. The aim of this paper is to argue that, contrary to what (...) may appear at first sight, the assumption of a weak plural comprehension principle is perfectly compatible with plural logic and the common uses of plural quantification. As I aim to show, SCAI-theorists can simply claim that their theory must be understood as formulated by means of the most ‘joint-carving’ plural quantifier, thus leaving open the possibility of other, less joint-carving, ‘unrestricted’ plural quantifiers. In the final part of the paper I will also suggest that SCAI-theorists should not only allow for singular quantification over pluralities of entities, but also for plural quantification over ‘super-pluralities’ of entities. (shrink)

In its simplest form, a Spritz is an aperitif made with (sparkling) water and (white) wine. A ‘gunky Spritz’, as I will call it, is a Spritz in which the water and the wine are mixed through and through, so that every proper part of the Spritz has a proper part containing both water and wine. In the literature on the notion of location the possibility of mixtures like a gunky Spritz has been thought of as either threatening seemingly intuitive (...) locative principles, or as requiring the position of multiple primitive locative relations. In this paper I present a new theory of location which assumes as primitive only the notion of pervasive location and show that it can account for the possibility of gunky Spritz in an intuitive and adequate way. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Giovanni Merlo has argued that a currently popular way to interpret Kit Fine's fragmentalism about tensed facts (which he calls ‘unstructured fragmentalism’) is threatened by the problem of ‘tensed belief explosion’. I argue that such an explosion of belief poses no problem to unstructured fragmentalists.

In the literature on mereology it is often accepted that mereological universalism entails extensionalism. More precisely, many accept that, if parthood is assumed to be a partial order, the thesis that every plurality of entities has a mereological fusion entails the thesis that different composite entities have different proper parts. Central to this idea is the principle known as ‘Weak Supplementation’ which many take to impose an important constraint on the relation of proper parthood. In this paper I argue that (...) this claim is false as the principle that I will call ‘Minimal Supplementation’ appears to be capable of doing all the work done by Weak Supplementation but without entailing extensionalism if conjoined with universalism and core mereology. (shrink)

Most of the theories of location on the market appear to be ideologically parsimonious at least in the sense that they take as primitive just one locative notion and define all the other locative notions in terms of it. Recently, however, the possibility of some exotic metaphysical scenarios involving gunky mixtures and extended simple regions of space has been argued to pose a significant threat to parsimonious theories of locations. The aim of this paper is to show that a theory (...) taking as primitive a notion of plural pervasive location and allowing for irreducibly plural locative facts can account for all the putatively problematic scenarios for parsimonious theories of location. Furthermore, I will also argue that the notion of plural pervasive location is compatible with the possibility of multilocation. (shrink)

Most of the theories of location on the market appear to be ideologically parsimonious at least in the sense that they take as primitive just one locative notion and define all the other locative notions in terms of it. Recently, however, the possibility of some exotic metaphysical scenarios involving gunky mixtures and extended simple regions of space has been argued to pose a significant threat to parsimonious theories of locations. The aim of this paper is to show that a theory (...) taking as primitive a notion of plural pervasive location and allowing for irreducibly plural locative facts can account for all the putatively problematic scenarios for parsimonious theories of location. Furthermore, I will also argue that the notion of plural pervasive location is compatible with the possibility of multilocation. (shrink)

The supervaluationist approach to branching time (‘SBT-theory’) appears to be threatened by the puzzle of retrospective determinacy: if yesterday I uttered the sentence ‘It will be sunny tomorrow’ and only in some worlds overlapping at the context of utterance it is sunny the next day, my utterance is to be assessed as neither true nor false even if today is indeed a sunny day. John MacFarlane (“Truth in the Garden of Forking Paths” 81) has recently criticized a promising solution to (...) this puzzle for falling short of an adequate account of ‘actually’. In this paper, I aim to rebut MacFarlane's criticism. To this effect, I argue that: (i) ‘actually’ can be construed either as an indexical or as a nonindexical operator; (ii) if ‘actually’ is nonindexical, MacFarlane's criticism is invalid; (iii) there appear to be independent reasons for SBT-theorists to claim that ‘actually’ is a nonindexical expression. (shrink)

Alessandro Torza argues that Ted Sider’s Lewisian argument against vague existence is insufficient to rule out the possibility of what he calls ‘super-vague existence’, that is the idea that existence is higher-order vague, for all orders. In this chapter it is argued that the possibility of super-vague existence is ineffective against the conclusion of Sider’s argument since super-vague existence cannot be consistently claimed to be a kind of linguistic vagueness. Torza’s idea of super-vague existence seems to be better suited to (...) model vague existence under the assumption that vague existence is instead a form of ontic indeterminacy, contra what Ted Sider and David Lewis assume. (shrink)

and in Sect. 5 should be reformulated as follows.

Correia and Rosenkranz have recently argued in Analysis (2020, 2022) that tense realism (understood as the view that there is a real difference between past, present and future) entails realism about temporal passage (and thus the idea that there is some change in which time is the present time). I argue that their argument is either unsound or question-begging.

Alessandro Torza argues that Ted Sider’s Lewisian argument against vague existence is insufficient to rule out the possibility of what he calls ‘super-vague existence’, that is the idea that existence is higher-order vague, for all orders. In this chapter it is argued that the possibility of super-vague existence is ineffective against the conclusion of Sider’s argument since super-vague existence cannot be consistently claimed to be a kind of linguistic vagueness. Torza’s idea of super-vague existence seems to be better suited to (...) model vague existence under the assumption that vague existence is instead a form of ontic indeterminacy, contra what Ted Sider and David Lewis assume. (shrink)

I argue that the growing-block theory of time and truthmaker maximalism jointly entail that some truthmakers undergo mereological change as time passes. Central to my argument is a grounding-based account of what I call the “purely incremental” nature of the growing-block theory of time. As I will show, the argument presented in this paper suggests that growing-block theorists endorsing truthmaker maximalism have reasons to take composition to be restricted and the “block” of reality to literally grow as time goes by.

The aim of this article is to propose a novel supervaluationist theory of ‘actually’ in the open future. First, I will argue that any adequate theory of actuality in a branching setting must comply with three main desiderata. Second, I will prove that none of the actuality operators that have been proposed in the literature is up to the task. Finally, I will propose a novel theory of actuality in the open future combining one of the existing definitions of the (...) actuality operator with a new definition of the historical possibility operator, and argue for its adequacy. The central feature of the theory I will advance is the introduction of an actuality parameter capable of being shifted by the historical possibility operator. I will argue that this account appears to not only be consistent with the idea that the future is genuinely open, but also with the general idea that ‘actually’ is, in a relevant sense, a ‘rigid’ operator. (shrink)

According to the thesis known as ‘Composition as Identity’ (‘CAI’), every entity is identical to the parts it fuses. Many authors in the literature acknowledge that, in spite of its controversial character, one attractive virtue of CAI is its apparent ability to give a straightforward account of the innocence of mereology. In this paper I will present a simple argument according to which CAI entails that no composite entity can be said to be ontologically innocent in the relevant sense. After (...) having shown that said argument is independent from the problems surrounding the infamous ‘Collapse Principle’, I will conclude that CAI-theorists should endorse a suitably ‘restricted’ version of CAI. In the final part of the paper I will then argue that the best restricted version of CAI is the theory according to which every composite entity is identical to the plurality of its atomic parts. (shrink)

It is argued that there are sentences and pairs of sentences, belonging to the family of ‘truth-tellers’ and ‘no–no sentences’, such that it is possible to prove (and, hence come to know) their truth-value. It is, therefore, concluded that the kind of pathological feature affecting some truth-tellers and no–no sentences is not due to the specific kind of circularity characterizing their truth-conditions and must, thus, depend on some other reason.

Social networking sites (SNS) are of increasing importance for adolescents’ social life. As adolescents are prone to display risky health behavior in the offline world, it is likely that they use their online profiles and communications to report on unhealthy behaviors, too. This may in turn enhance the perceived attractiveness of risky behavior within the adolescent cohort. Drawing on the insights of impression management theory, we argue in this article that adolescents use a variety of impression management tactics in their (...) SNS profiles and communications. Following this assumption, our empirical analysis of 5851 Facebook posts (profile texts, comments, photographs, etc.) shows that the users tend to associate risky health behaviors with positive attributes, such as accomplishment or sociability, to present themselves in an attractive way to their online peer audience. We argue that this raises two ethical issues relevant to health promotion: Adolescents’ health may be challenged by interaction on SNS, as their engagement in online impression management blanks out any health problems or critical assessments of risky health behavior. At the same time, the semi-public nature of the communication arena re-enforces the tendency to value unhealthy behavior as more attractive than in offline social interactions. (shrink)

This book elucidates the theoretical structure and scope of interpersonal and intra-personal aggregation--a trade-off between benefits to a group of individuals and losses to another group of individuals--and defends a form of aggregation -- formal aggregation -- that resolves a variety of outstanding problems arising from the conventional understanding of aggregation, including the Number Problem concerning the moral relevance of the number of individuals.

This paper seeks to illuminate the nature of empathy by reflecting upon the phenomenology of depression. I propose that depression involves alteration of an aspect of experience that is seldom reflected upon or discussed, thus making it hard to understand. This alteration involves impairment or loss of a capacity for interpersonal relatedness that mutual empathy depends upon. The sufferer thus feels cut off from other people, and may remark on their indifference, hostility or inability to understand. Drawing upon (...) the example of depression, I argue that empathy is not principally a matter of ‘simulating’ another person’s experience. It is better conceived of as a perception-like exploration of others’ experiences that develops progressively through certain styles of interpersonal interaction. (shrink)

Interpersonal aggregation involves the combining and weighing of benefits and losses to multiple individuals in the course of determining what ought to be done. Most consequentialists embrace thoroughgoing interpersonal aggregation, the view that any large benefit to each of a few people can be morally outweighed by allocating any smaller benefit to each of many others, so long as this second group is sufficiently large. This would permit letting one person die in order to cure some number of (...) mild headaches instead. Most non-consequentialists reject thoroughgoing interpersonal aggregation despite also believing it is permissible to let one person die in order to prevent many cases of paraplegia instead. Non-consequentialists defend this asymmetry largely on the basis of intuition, and some rely on the notion of relevance to formalize the grounding intuitions. This article seeks to clarify and strengthen the non-consequentialist notion of relevance by engaging with three objections to it. (shrink)

IntroductionHearing loss has a great impact on the people affected, their close partner and the interaction between both, as oral communication is restricted. Nonverbal communication, which expresses emotions and includes implicit information on interpersonal relationship, has rarely been studied in people with hearing impairment. In psychological settings, non-verbal synchrony of body movements in dyads is a reliable method to study interpersonal relationship.Material and methodsA 10-min social interaction was videorecorded in 39 PHI and their significant others. Nonverbal synchrony, (...) which means the nonverbal behaviors of two interacting persons and verbal interaction were analyzed by computer algorithms and observer ratings. Hearing-related quality of life, coping mechanisms, general psychopathology, quality of relationship, and burden of hearing loss experienced by SOs were assessed using questionnaires.ResultsIn the 39 dyads, true nonverbal synchrony differed from pseudosynchrony [t = 2.41; p = 0.02] with a medium effect size. Gender of PHI had a significant effect on general synchrony and on leading by SOs. Age gap correlated with synchronic movements. Very short duration of hearing impairment was associated with lower nonverbal synchrony in the role of leading by SOs. Feeling of closeness by PHI correlated negatively with the role of leading by SOs and feeling of closeness by SOs was positively associated with leading by PHI. No correlation was detected between nonverbal synchrony and other questionnaires. Burden experienced by the SOs was higher in SOs who reported less closeness.DiscussionA longer hearing impairment leads to more nonverbal leading by SOs compared to PHI with very short duration of hearing loss, possibly because of the long-lasting imbalance in communication. If PHI felt more closeness, SOs led less and vice versa. Burden experienced by SOs negatively correlated with closeness reported by SOs. Use of nonverbal signals and communication might help to improve benefits of auditory rehabilitation for PHI and decrease burden experienced by SOs. (shrink)