The civilian death toll during the Second World War Battle of Okinawa was very high. This was the result of sheer brutality resulting from racism and hatred, but also from unethical strategic decisions. This article chronicles decisions made on both sides – and accompanying actions – that arguably amount to crimes against humanity. In addition to the strategic decisions that contributed to the high death toll, actions such as rape, killing of surrendering soldiers, looting and mutilating the dead, and failures (...) to protect one's own civilian population are recounted and discussed. (shrink)

Exceptionally preserved fossils are the product of complex interplays of biological and geological processes including burial, autolysis and microbial decay, authigenic mineralization, diagenesis, metamorphism, and finally weathering and exhumation. Determining which tissues are preserved and how biases affect their preservation pathways is important for interpreting fossils in phylogenetic, ecological, and evolutionary frameworks. Although laboratory decay experiments reveal important aspects of fossilization, applying the results directly to the interpretation of exceptionally preserved fossils may overlook the impact of other key processes that (...) remove or preserve morphological information. Investigations of fossils preserving non-biomineralized tissues suggest that certain structures that are decay resistant are rarely preserved, and decay-prone structures can fossilize, albeit rarely. As we review here, decay resistance is an imperfect indicator of fossilization potential, and a suite of biological and geological processes account for the features preserved in exceptional fossils. Organisms decayed experimentally in seawater have been used as direct analogs for soft-bodied fossil taxa, with fossils representing a snapshot of a particular stage of decay. We argue that numerous geological and biological processes account for fossilization and that all of these should be considered when reconstructing extinct organisms. (shrink)

Exceptionally preserved fossils are the product of complex interplays of biological and geological processes including burial, autolysis and microbial decay, authigenic mineralization, diagenesis, metamorphism, and finally weathering and exhumation. Determining which tissues are preserved and how biases affect their preservation pathways is important for interpreting fossils in phylogenetic, ecological, and evolutionary frameworks. Although laboratory decay experiments reveal important aspects of fossilization, applying the results directly to the interpretation of exceptionally preserved fossils may overlook the impact of other key processes that (...) remove or preserve morphological information. Investigations of fossils preserving non-biomineralized tissues suggest that certain structures that are decay resistant are rarely preserved, and decay-prone structures can fossilize, albeit rarely. As we review here, decay resistance is an imperfect indicator of fossilization potential, and a suite of biological and geological processes account for the features preserved in exceptional fossils. Organisms decayed experimentally in seawater have been used as direct analogs for soft-bodied fossil taxa, with fossils representing a snapshot of a particular stage of decay. We argue that numerous geological and biological processes account for fossilization and that all of these should be considered when reconstructing extinct organisms. (shrink)

This book defends a radical new theory of contingency as a physical phenomenon. Drawing on the many-worlds approach to quantum theory and cutting-edge metaphysics and philosophy of science, it argues that quantum theories are best understood as telling us about the space of genuine possibilities, rather than as telling us solely about actuality. When quantum physics is taken seriously in the way first proposed by Hugh Everett III, it provides the resources for a new systematic metaphysical framework encompassing possibility, necessity, (...) actuality, chance, counterfactuals, and a host of related modal notions. -/- Rationalist metaphysicians argue that the metaphysics of modality is strictly prior to any scientific investigation; metaphysics establishes which worlds are possible, and physics merely checks which of these worlds is actual. Naturalistic metaphysicians respond that science may discover new possibilities and new impossibilities. This book's quantum theory of contingency takes naturalistic metaphysics one step further, allowing that science may discover what it is to be possible. As electromagnetism revealed the nature of light, as acoustics revealed the nature of sound, as statistical mechanics revealed the nature of heat, so quantum physics reveals the nature of contingency. (shrink)

There is a systematic and suggestive analogy between grounding and causation. In my view, this analogy is no coincidence. Grounding and causation are alike because grounding is a type of causation: metaphysical causation. In this paper I defend the identification of grounding with metaphysical causation, drawing on the causation literature to explore systematic connections between grounding and metaphysical dependence counterfactuals, and I outline a non-reductive counterfactual theory of grounding along interventionist lines.

In order to introduce protists to philosophers, we outline the diversity, classification, and evolutionary importance of these eukaryotic microorganisms. We argue that an evolutionary understanding of protists is crucial for understanding eukaryotes in general. More specifically, evolutionary protistology shows how the emphasis on understanding evolutionary phenomena through a phylogeny-based comparative approach constrains and underpins any more abstract account of why certain organismal features evolved in the early history of eukaryotes. We focus on three crucial episodes of this history: the origins (...) of multicellularity, the origin of sex, and the origin of the eukaryote cell. Despite ongoing uncertainty about where the root of the eukaryote tree lies, and residual questions about the precise endosymbioses that have produced a diversity of photosynthesizing eukaryotes, evolutionary protistology has illuminated with considerable clarity many aspects of protist evolution. Our main message in light of evolutionary protistology is that these ‘other eukaryotes’ are in fact the organisms through which the rest of the eukaryotes should be understood. (shrink)

This paper outlines a non-reductive counterfactual account of grounding along interventionist lines, and uses the account to argue that taking grounding seriously requires ascribing non-trivial truth-conditions to a range of counterpossible counterfactuals. This result allows for a diagnosis of a route to scepticism about grounding, as deriving at least in part from scepticism about non-trivial counterpossible truth and falsity.

Distinctions in fundamentality between different levels of description are central to the viability of contemporary decoherence-based Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM). This approach to quantum theory characteristically combines a determinate fundamental reality (one universal wave function) with an indeterminate emergent reality (multiple decoherent worlds). In this chapter I explore how the Everettian appeal to fundamentality and emergence can be understood within existing metaphysical frameworks, identify grounding and concept fundamentality as promising theoretical tools, and use them to characterize a system of explanatory (...) levels (with associated laws of nature) for EQM. This Everettian level structure encompasses and extends the ‘classical’ levels structure. The ‘classical’ levels of physics, chemistry, biology, etc. are recovered, but they are emergent in character and potentially variable across Everett worlds. EQM invokes an additional fundamental level, not present in the classical levels picture, and a novel potential role for self-location in interlevel metaphysics. When given a modal realist interpretation, EQM also makes trouble for supervenience-based approaches to levels. (shrink)

If the most familiar overlapping interpretation of Everettian quantum mechanics is correct, then each of us is constantly splitting into multiple people. This consequence gives rise to the quantum doomsday argument, which threatens to draw crippling epistemic consequences from EQM. However, a diverging interpretation of EQM undermines the quantum doomsday argument completely. This appears to tell in favour of the diverging interpretation. But it is surprising that a metaphysical question that is apparently underdetermined by the physics should be settled by (...) purely epistemological considerations; and I argue that the positive case for divergence based on the quantum doomsday effect is ultimately unsuccessful. I discuss how some influential treatments of Everettian confirmation handle the quantum doomsday puzzle, and suggest that it can most satisfyingly be resolved via a naturalistic approach to the metaphysics of modality. (shrink)

In On the Plurality of Worlds (Lewis 1986), David Lewis imposes a condition on realist theories of modality which he calls ‘plenitude’. Lewis apparently assigns this condition considerable importance, and uses it to motivate his Humean principle of recombination, but he never says exactly what plenitude amounts to. This chapter first sets aside some obvious ways of reconstructing the plenitude criterion which do not fit with the textual evidence. An objection to modal realism due to John Divers and Joseph Melia (...) (Divers and Melia 2002) is diagnosed as equivocating between an overly-demanding plenitude constraint and a weaker constraint which fails to establish their conclusion. An alternative deflationary interpretation of the plenitude condition has it following from an application of standard theoretical virtues to a modal realist’s total theory; Lewis’ correspondence provides new evidence in support of this interpretation. The deflationary plenitude criterion also has broader application, beyond Lewisian modal realism. (shrink)

On the basis of relative strengths that have been attributed to the autistic cognitive profile, it has been suggested by a number of theorists that people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) excel at spatial navigational tasks. However, many of these claims have been made in the absence of a close inspection of extant data in the scientific literature, let alone anecdotal reports of daily navigational experiences. The present review gathers together published studies that have attempted to explicitly address functional components (...) of navigation in ASD populations, including assays of wayfinding, large-scale search, and path integration. This inspection reveals a pattern of apparent strengths and weaknesses in navigational abilities, thus illustrating the necessity for a more measured and comprehensive approach to the understanding of spatial behavior in ASD. (shrink)

This highly speculative paper seeks to discern where the discipline of Bioethics may be heading in the next decade or two. It is clear that the rapid pace of scientific discovery and technological innovation will not slacken, and, as a result, fresh moral issues, for which there are no precedents in currently accepted moral wisdom, will rapidly emerge. This mushrooming of ethical problems will be taking place at a time of increasing moral pluralism, when common moral values become harder to (...) establish, and powerful subgroups embrace moral dogmatism, whether religious or secular in character.Faced with such complexity and confusion, governments and industrial groups will increasingly seek guidance from bioethics "experts", through paid consultancies, advisory panels and commissioned reports on specific topics. But Bioethics itself is currently in a stage of flux: 1. Certain research areas in Bioethics have 'bolted' (in the horticultural sense), because of a rich injection of funds - notably genetics and stem cell research - while other areas are relatively under-researched. 2. Inter-disciplinarity has become de rigueur, largely under funder pressure, and, allied to this, an insistence on empirical work has created conceptual confusions. 3. There is a continuing ferment in bioethical theory, with little sign of productive co-operation between rival camps. Indeed theoretical enrichment seems to lag far behind the constant demand for relevance and 'applied ethics'.So what of the future? I detect certain trends, some to be deplored and discouraged, others to be applauded and nurtured. On my 'black list' are: the commercialisation of Bioethics; and the dumbing down of several critical disciplines in the name of relevance. On my 'white list' are: further adventures in theory; inter-disciplinarity come of age; and the future envisioned in today's young minds. (shrink)

There is much to admire in this book. As a rigorous and systematic physics-oriented presentation of an austere empiricist fundamental metaphysics, it has no real rivals. The clarity with which the overall vision is presented will provide a valuable stalking-horse for those who would defend less austere approaches in the future. Esfeld and Deckert never shy away from the radical consequences of their approach, or try to disguise its revisionary nature. I also found several points of agreement with Esfeld and (...) Deckert’s metaphysical outlook. In particular, I thought their form of structural realism sophisticated and plausible and their application of it to contemporary physics salutary. Fundamental metaphysics would be a more respectable discipline if all of its exponents felt the need to show how their preferred ontology plays out in the context of real physics. These points of agreement noted, I will concentrate in these comments on points where I disagree with Esfeld and Deckert. From my perspective, the metaphysical project of the book is subject to two serious objections: firstly, it remains insufficiently naturalistic and overly a prioristic, and secondly, it drains much of the explanatory power out of fundamental physics. (shrink)

Quantum physics is believed to be the fundamental theory underlying our understanding of the physical universe. However, it is based on concepts and principles that have always been difficult to understand and controversial in their interpretation. This book aims to explain these issues using a minimum of technical language and mathematics. After a brief introduction to the ideas of quantum physics, the problems of interpretation are identified and explained. The rest of the book surveys, describes and criticises a range of (...) suggestions that have been made with the aim of resolving these problems; these include the traditional, or 'Copenhagen' interpretation, the possible role of the conscious mind in measurement, and the postulate of parallel universes. This new edition has been revised throughout to take into account developments in this field over the past fifteen years, including the idea of 'consistent histories' to which a completely new chapter is devoted. (shrink)

Family involvement in healthcare decision-making for competent patients occurs to varying degrees in many communities around the world. There are different attitudes about who should make treatment decisions, how and why. Legal and professional ethics codes in most jurisdictions reflect and support the idea that competent patients should be enabled to make their own treatment decisions, even if others, including their healthcare professionals, disagree with them. This way of thinking contrasts with some cultural norms that put more emphasis on the (...) family as a decision-making entity, in some circumstances to the exclusion of a competent patient. Possible tensions may arise between various combinations of patient, family members and healthcare professionals, and healthcare professionals must tread a careful path in navigating family involvement in the decision-making process. These tensions may be about differences of opinion about which treatment option is best and/or on who should have a say or influence in the decision-making process. While some relevant cultural, legal and policy considerations vary from community to community, there are ethical issues that healthcare professionals need to grapple with in balancing the laws and professional codes on decision-making and the ethical principle of respecting patients and their autonomy. This paper will highlight and propose that a partial resolution to these issues may lie in relational understandings of autonomy, which in principle justify interventions by healthcare professionals and family that support patients in decision-making. (shrink)

This volume presents twelve original essays on the metaphysics of science, with particular focus on the physics of chance and time. Experts in the field subject familiar approaches to searching critiques, and make bold new proposals in a number of key areas. Together, they set the agenda for future work on the subject.

In his book Objective Becoming (Skow 2015), Bradford Skow has offered a rich and systematic treatment of the passage of time. We learn much about what objective passage could and could not amount to from engaging with his careful work. Skow’s overall conclusion is that the ‘block universe’ deflationary theory of passage is stronger than any currently available version of the recently-popular moving spotlight theory of temporal passage. To help establish this conclusion, Skow provides a taxonomy of theories of temporal (...) passage, including some new and unfamiliar theories that he classifies as versions of the moving spotlight view. These new theories are worthy of further study; however, in this commentary I will argue that they suffer from some problems that render them uncongenial to committed believers in temporal passage (Sections 2–5). I’ll also make a few brief remarks about some other arguments in the book, concerning branching time (Section 6), relativistic presentness (Section 7), and temporal experience (Section 8). (shrink)

Abstract:In this paper, I offer a philosophical critique of the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF). This framework was launched in the UK in January 2018 as a non-pathologizing way of understanding mental distress. It argues that those experiences diagnosed as mental illnesses are better understood as meaning-based threat responses to the negative operation of power. My critique consists of three parts. First, the PTMF argues that it is opposed to a concept of mental distress as illness. However, the PTMF unfolds (...) an account of mental distress that is very similar to other accounts of mental illness in the philosophical literature. The PTMF does not reflect upon, recognize or give an account of its own grounds for judging mental distress as distress. If it were to do so, I argue that it would produce an account of mental distress that is very similar to many other accounts of psychiatric illness or disorder. Second, I criticize the account given of meaning in the PTMF. I argue that this account is ultimately a reductive, behavioral account of adaptation that downplays important existential aspects of experience. Furthermore, the account of interpretive sense-making in the PTMF is conceptually confused. Finally, I outline a critique of the way that the concept of power, the great strength of the PTMF approach, is reduced to a concept of threat. I argue that this tends toward a linear view of causality that is reductive in its search for the meaning of mental distress. (shrink)

In ‘Quiddistic Knowledge’ (Schaffer in Philos Stud 123:1–32, 2005), Jonathan Schaffer argued influentially against the view that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary. In this reply I aim to show how a coherent and well-motivated form of necessitarianism can withstand his critique. Modal necessitarianism—the view that the actual laws are the laws of all possible worlds—can do justice to some intuitive motivations for necessitarianism, and it has the resources to respond to all of Schaffer’s objections. It also has certain (...) advantages over contingentism in the domain of modal epistemology. I conclude that necessitarianism about laws remains a live option. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the recent emphasis on compassion in healthcare practice lacks conceptual richness and clarity. In particular, I argue that it would be helpful to focus on a larger concept of empathy rather than compassion alone and that compassion should be thought of as a component of this larger concept of empathy. The first part of the article outlines a critique of the current discourse of compassion on three grounds. This discourse naturalizes, individualizes, and reifies compassion (...) leading to a decontextualized and simplified understanding of failures in healthcare practice. The second part uses resources from phenomenology and contemporary moral philosophy to construct a “hybrid” concept of empathy that includes both pre‐reflective/intuitive and cognitive/imaginative components. This “hybrid” concept of empathy leads to a more complex understanding of the multiple responses to others' distress. I conclude that there are no straightforward normative naturalistic responses to others' distress. Rather than conceptualizing compassion as a naturalistic impulse or a character‐based trait, we need to consider the complexity of our empathic recognition of vulnerable others. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of cutting-edge research papers in scientifically informed metaphysics, tackling a range of philosophical puzzles which have emerged from recent work on chance and temporal asymmetry. How do the probabilities found in fundamental physics and the probabilities of the special sciences relate to one another? How can we account for the normative significance of chance? Can constraints on the initial conditions of the universe underwrite the second law of thermodynamics, and potentially also all other lawlike regularities? (...) How does contemporary quantum theory bear on debates over the nature of chance and the arrow of time? What grounds do we have for believing in a fundamental temporal direction, or flow? And how do all these questions connect up with one another? The aim of the volume is both to survey and summarize recent debates about chance and temporal asymmetry and to push them forward. The authors bring perspectives from metaphysics, from philosophy of physics and from philosophy of probability. Mainstream approaches are subjected to searching new critiques, and bold new proposals are made concerning (inter alia) the semantics of chance-attributions, the justification of the Principal Principle connecting chance and degree of belief, the limits on inter-theoretic reduction and the source of the temporal asymmetry of human experience. (shrink)

Alastair Norcross argues that the basic judgments of morality are essentially comparative: alternatives are judged to be better or worse than each other. Notions such as right and wrong are not part of the fundamental subject matter of moral theory, but are constructed in a context-relative fashion out of the basic comparative judgments.

David Wallace has given a decision-theoretic argument for the Born Rule in the context of Everettian quantum mechanics. This approach promises to resolve some long-standing problems with probability in EQM, but it has faced plenty of resistance. One kind of objection charges that the requisite notion of decision-theoretic uncertainty is unavailable in the Everettian picture, so that the argument cannot gain any traction; another kind of objection grants the proof’s applicability and targets the premises. In this article I propose some (...) novel principles connecting the physics of EQM with the metaphysics of modality, and argue that in the resulting framework the incoherence problem does not arise. These principles also help to justify one of the most controversial premises of Wallace’s argument, ‘branching indifference’. Absent any a priori reason to align the metaphysics with the physics in some other way, the proposed principles can be adopted on grounds of theoretical utility. The upshot is that Everettians can, after all, make clear sense of objective probability. 1 Introduction2 Setup3 Individualism versus Collectivism4 The Ingredients of Indexicalism5 Indexicalism and Incoherence5.1 The trivialization problem5.2 The uncertainty problem6 Indexicalism and Branching Indifference6.1 Introducing branching indifference6.2 The pragmatic defence of branching indifference6.3 The non-existence defence of branching indifference6.4 The indexicalist defence of branching indifference7 Conclusion. (shrink)

The author criticizes mr bogan's article entitled "was wittgenstein a psychologist?" by arguing that mr bogan's non-Psychologistic account of certain of wittgenstein's writings does not require the interpretations which he gave to them. (staff).

Media outlets, industry researchers, and policy-makers are today busily extolling new robotic advances that promise to transform agriculture, bringing us ever closer to self-farming farms. Yet such techno-optimist discourse ignores the cautionary lessons of past attempts to mechanize farms. Adapting the Social Construction of Technology framework, we trace the history of efforts to replace human labor with machine labor on fruit, nut, and vegetable farms in California between 1945 and 1980—a place and time during which a post-WWII culture of faith (...) in the beneficence of technoscience applications to agriculture reached an apex. The degree to which and forms whereby mechanization gains momentum hinges on whether, how, and among whom a technological frame for mimicking human capabilities and supplanting workers coalesces. These frames, we find, vary considerably across crops, reflecting complex interactions of biology, farmer and farm worker behavior, industry supply chains, agricultural research and development, financial flows, and beliefs about labor, race, gender, and immigration. To tease out these complex dynamics, we draw directly from archival evidence to follow the development of cultivation and harvest machines through four cases spanning a spectrum of outcomes—tomatoes, nuts, peaches, and lettuce. In comparing across these cases, we find that although agricultural engineers, scientists, and their boosters framed mechanization as a triumphal narrative of progress in ‘human vs. nature’ conflicts, this techno-optimist rhetoric camouflaged deeper ‘human vs. human’ conflicts, particularly among agribusiness, farmers, and farm workers. We conclude with several insights that this historical study brings to the study of agricultural automation today. (shrink)

Where social occasions, in the context of nightclubs and music venues, are bounded, the space of the entrance is accomplished via regulation of attendees by workers. This regulation ensures: the venue stays within capacity; people have been invited or pay the fee; entry to ‘undesirables,’ such as drunks, is prohibited. This paper draws from experience of attending social occasions and being a doorperson to categorise and examine methods of entering where access is restricted. Often methods require attendees to engage in (...) visible dialogue with the doorperson; where methods are invisible, attendees can circumvent access restrictions whilst a semblance of order is maintained. (shrink)

By the 1880s it had become clear that the intellectual tide in Britain was turning against the idea of a minimal state. Under the influence of the New Idealists, the Liberal Party, once the champion of individual liberty, had changed into an organ for interventionist legislation. Challenging this movement was an assortment of anti-collectivists including Old Liberals, Tories, and radical individualists. Spearheading the defence of individualism was the 10th Earl of Wemyss, Francis Wemyss-Charteris-Douglas. Most famous for his role in the (...) formation of the Liberty and Property Defence League, Wemyss worked tirelessly in parliament to obstruct legislation deemed inimical to liberty, as well as to organise a mass educational effort to instruct the public about the errors of collectivist philosophy and policy. This paper examines the role Wemyss played within late Victorian individualism and considers how the melding of traditionalism and individualism provided an intellectual home for libertarianism on the Right. (shrink)

Dispositions can combine as vector sums. Recent authors on dispositions, such as George Molnar and Stephen Mumford, have responded to this feature of dispositions by introducing a distinction between effects and contributions to effects, and by identifying disposition-manifestations with the latter. But some have been sceptical of the reality or knowability of component vectors; Jennifer McKitrick (forthcoming) presses these concerns against the conception of manifestations as contributions to effects. In this paper, I aim to respond to McKitrick's arguments and to (...) defend the metaphysical and epistemological propriety of component vectors. My strategy appeals to varying kinematic frames of reference. By transforming to the appropriate non-inertial frame, component acceleration vectors can be transformed into resultant acceleration vectors, and in such frames they become directly observable. Being a component acceleration vector and being a resultant acceleration vector are both frame-dependent properties of properties; they are not to be thought of as intrinsic or fundamental properties of an acceleration vector, but as artefacts of our frame-dependent notation for representing vector quantities. To conclude the paper, I defend the view proposed against two styles of objection. The first objection resurrects scepticism about component vectors as scepticism about fundamental component vectors. The second objection questions the need for reference frames in the explanation by invoking a 'counterfactual' theory of contributions. (shrink)

Simon Saunders and David Wallace have proposed an attractive semantics for interpreting linguistic communities embedded in an Everettian multiverse. It provides a charitable interpretation of our ordinary talk about the future, and allows us to retain a principle of bivalence for propositions and to retain the law of excluded middle in the logic of propositions about the future. But difficulties arise when it comes to providing an appropriate account of the metaphysics of macroscopic objects and events. I evaluate various metaphysical (...) frameworks which might be combined with the Saunders–Wallace semantics. I conclude that the most appropriate metaphysics to underwrite the semantics renders Everettian quantum mechanics a theory of non-overlapping worlds. (shrink)

In this paper I shall be arguing against the claim made by Erin and Harris and others, that creating a “regulated market” in organs for transplantation taken from living vendors is both viable practically and a moral imperative. No-one can doubt that there is currently a crisis in the provision of organs for transplantation, with a massive gap between supply and demand. There are a number of reasons for this crisis. Since its development as a life-saving measure in the second (...) half of the last century, organ transplantation has expanded exponentially, both in terms of survival rates, the number of people on the waiting list for the procedure, and the range of transplantable organs. Advances in immuno-suppression and in prevention of infection have led to improvement in both the survival of the recipients and of the transplanted organs. At the same time, there has been an increase in repeat transplantations and in multiple organ transplants. The range of conditions for which transplantation is offered has widened, and transplantable organs now include: kidney, liver, pancreas, heart and lung. Brain-dead donors can provide all of these organs, while the kidney and sections of the liver and pancreas can also be obtained from living donors. Survival outcomes are better from living donors than from cadaveric donors, and, in the case of kidney failure, better from transplantation than from dialysis. [End Page 164] The relevant question, however, is whether permitting a market in human organs is morally justifiable, and, even if it were, whether it would provide a solution to the current crisis. I argue in this paper that organ trading is wrong in principle, since it commodifies the human body and inevitably exploits the poor and the socially vulnerable, and that, far from alleviating the crisis, it is likely to make it worse. First we should note that there is an uncompromising opposition to all forms of organ trading from two major international healthcare organisations. (shrink)

Kierkegaard and Philosophy makes many of the most important papers on Kierkegaard available in one place for the first time. These seventeen essays, written over a period of over twenty years, have all been substantially revised or specially prepared for this collection, with a new introduction by the author. In the first part, Alastair Hannay concentrates on Kierkegaard's central philosophical writings, offering closely text-based accounts of the slient concepts Kierkegaard uses. The second part shows the relevance of other thinkers' (...) treatments of shared themes, pointing our where they differ from Kierkegaard. The concluding chapter provides a reason Kierkegaard himself would give for disagreeing with those who claim his texts are infinitely interpretable. Written by the world's foremost Kierkegaard scholar and translator, Kierkegaard and Philosophy is an indispensible resource for all students of Kierkegaard's work. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

How, if at all, can scientific progress improve our view of the modal facts? According to rationalist approaches to modal epistemology, science has no substantive role: a priori reflection reveals the structure of modal space, and a posteriori science merely locates us within that modal space, by identifying the actual properties and structures instantiated at our world. According to modal naturalist approaches, science provides evidence about the structure of the underlying modal space. In this paper I distinguish four versions of (...) modal naturalism, with science playing an increasingly robust evidential role, and discuss their plausibility. (shrink)

How should we respond to cases of disagreement where two epistemic agents have the same evidence but come to different conclusions? Adam Elga has provided a Bayesian framework for addressing this question. In this paper, I shall highlight two unfortunate consequences of this framework, which Elga does not anticipate. Both problems derive from a failure of commutativity between application of the equal weight view and updating in the light of other evidence.

In this paper I assess the prospects for combining contemporary Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM) with branching-time semantics in the tradition of Kripke, Prior, Thomason and Belnap. I begin by outlining the salient features of ‘decoherence-based’ EQM, and of the ‘consistent histories’ formalism that is particularly apt for conceptual discussions in EQM. This formalism permits of both ‘branching worlds’ and ‘parallel worlds’ interpretations; the metaphysics of EQM is in this sense underdetermined by the physics. A prominent argument due to Lewis (On (...) the Plurality of Worlds, 1986 ) supports the non-branching interpretation. Belnap et al. (Facing the Future: Agents and Choices in Our Indeterministic World, 2001 ) refer to Lewis’ argument as the ‘Assertion problem’, and propose a pragmatic response to it. I argue that their response is unattractively ad hoc and complex, and that it prevents an Everettian who adopts branching-time semantics from making clear sense of objective probability. The upshot is that Everettians are better off without branching-time semantics. I conclude by discussing and rejecting an alternative possible motivation for branching time. (shrink)

One of the greatest thinkers of the nineteenth century, Søren Kierkegaard often expressed himself through pseudonyms and disguises. Taken from his personal writings, these private reflections reveal the development of his own thought and personality, from his time as a young student to the deep later internal conflict that formed the basis for his masterpiece of duality Either/Or and beyond. Expressing his beliefs with a freedom not seen in works he published during his lifetime, Kierkegaard here rejects for the first (...) time his father's conventional Christianity and forges the revolutionary idea of the "leap of faith" required for true religious belief. A combination of theoretical argument, vivid natural description and sharply honed wit, the Papers and Journals reveal to the full the passionate integrity of his lifelong efforts "to find a truth which is truth for me." For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. (shrink)

This book is intended as a practical introduction to the ethical problems which doctors and other health professionals can expect to encounter in their practice. It is divided into three parts: ethical foundations, clinical ethics, and medicine and society. The authors incorporate new chapters on topics such as theories of medical ethics, cultural aspects of medicine, genetic dilemmas, aging, dementia and mortality, research ethics, justice and health care (including an examination of resource allocation), and medicine, ethics and medical law. Medical (...) Ethics also covers issues having to do with the beginning and end of life, as well as ethical questions surrounding the human body and the use of human tissue, confidentiality and AIDS, care of the mentally ill, and the implications of genetic technology. Each chapter presents a range of ethical views, drawing both from traditional philosophy and the most recent contemporary trends. The theoretical discussion is extended and illustrated by case studies and examples. This book is a non-technical guide to ethics written with the needs of medical students and medical practitioners in mind. It will also appeal to students and practitioners of allied health professions, and for all users of health care services. (shrink)