From the time of Locke, discussions of personal identity have often ignored the question of our basic metaphysical nature: whether we human people are biological organisms, spatial or temporal parts of organisms, bundles of perceptions, or what have you. The result of this neglect has been centuries of wild proposals and clashing intuitions. What Are We? is the first general study of this important question. It beings by explaining what the question means and how it differs from others, such (...) as questions of personal identity and the mind-body problem. It then examines in some depth the main possible accounts of our metaphysical nature, detailing both their theoretical virtues and the often grave difficulties they face. The book does not endorse any particular account of what we are, but argues that the matter turns on more general issues in the ontology of material things. If composition is universal--if any material things whatever make up something bigger--then we are temporal parts of organisms. If things never compose anything bigger, so that there are only mereological simples, then we too are simples--perhaps the immaterial substances of Descartes--or else we do not exist at all (a view Olson takes very seriously). The intermediate view that some things compose bigger things and others do not leads almost inevitably to the conclusion that we are organisms. So we can discover what we are by working out when composition occurs. (shrink)

Accounts of personal identity over time are supposed to fall into two broad categories: 'complex views' saying that our persistence consists in something else, and 'simple views' saying that it doesn' t. But it is impossible to characterize this distinction in any satisfactory way. The debate has been systematically misdescribed. After arguing for this claim, the paper says something about how the debate might be better characterized.

Shaffer takes a tour of some perennial questions in this lucid and simply written primer. How do I know I am not dreaming? How does reality differ from a dream? How can we be certain of our knowledge? Varying viewpoints are briefly summarized. The fallibilist view that even a priori mathematical truths and first person reports of feelings and perceptions are subject to error is examined, as is the anti-fallibilist reply that the theoretical possibility of error, without actual evidence, (...) is not sufficient to disturb the certainty of certain kinds of knowledge. Our knowledge of the external world is questioned by Berkeleyan idealism, which treats matter as nothing but a perception of our minds, and by phenomenalism, which treats material objects as nothing but collections of sense data. Opposed to these views are causal theories, which view physical objects as existing independently of observers, and sense data as the result of the causal interaction of material objects and particular bodies. It should be noted that the book's format requires such drastic foreshortening of Descartes' and Berkeley's views that its characterization of the former's system as "one of the great achievements in man's intellectual history" is in no way confirmed by the textual references. Other questions discussed in lively fashion are the self ; identity theory ; epiphenomenalism ; and interactionism. Is the mind best defined as the collection of mental events one has during a lifetime? If these events are all connected with the same body, the mind seemingly cannot survive the death of the body. Finally, theistic and atheistic views about the meaning of life are compared, with the Aristotelian view of teleological causation as the common denominator. The book asks many questions, provides few answers, but serves as an enticement to further exploration.--A. T. (shrink)

Philosophically, the study of argumentation is important because it holds out the prospect of an interpretation of rationality. For this we need to identify a transcendent perspective on the argumentative interaction. We need a normative theory of argumentation that provides an answer to the question: should the hearer accept the argument of the speaker. In this article I argue that formal logic implies a notion of transcendence that is not suitable for the study of argumentation, because, from a logical point (...) of view, argumentation ’disappears from sight‘. We should therefore not expect formal logic to provide an interesting interpretation of the rationality intrinsic in argument and discussion. (shrink)

Philosophically, the study of argumentation is important because it holds out the prospect of an interpretation of rationality. For this we need to identify a transcendent perspective on the argumentative interaction. We need a normative theory of argumentation that provides an answer to the question: should the hearer accept the argument of the speaker. In this article I argue that formal logic implies a notion of transcendence that is not suitable for the study of argumentation, because, from a logical point (...) of view, argumentation ’disappears from sight‘. We should therefore not expect formal logic to provide an interesting interpretation of the rationality intrinsic in argument and discussion. (shrink)

Are we made entirely of matter, like sticks and stones? Or do we have a soul—a nonphysical entity—where our mental lives take place? -/- The authors Eric T. Olson and Aaron Segal begin this accessible and wide-ranging debate by looking at the often-overlooked question of whether we appear in ordinary experience to be material things. Olson then argues that the dependence of our mental lives on the condition of our brains—the fact that general anesthesia causes complete unconsciousness, for instance—is (...) best explained by saying that our mental lives are physical activities in our brains rather than nonphysical activities in the soul. Segal objects that this view is incompatible with two obvious and important facts about ourselves: that there is only one of you rather than trillions of almost identical beings now thinking your thoughts, and that we exist and remain conscious for more than an instant. These facts, he claims, are presupposed in our practical and moral judgments—but they require us to be immaterial things. Olson is forced to concede that there is no easy and uncontroversial answer to these objections but doubts whether taking us to be immaterial would be any help. The debate takes in large philosophical questions extending well beyond dualism and materialism. -/- The book features clear statements of each argument, responses to counter-arguments, in-text definitions, a glossary of key terms, and section summaries. Scholars and students alike will find it easy to follow the debate and learn the key concepts from metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and other areas necessary to understand each position. (shrink)

Derek Parfit’s thesis that identity doesn’t matter in survival has been extensively discussed except for its metaphysical robustness. How can we justify the abandonment of identity in the way Parfit suggests? My argument is the following. Those who want to endorse the thesis that identity doesn’t matter (and, therefore, abandon identity across time) should adopt exdurantism, i.e. a metaphysics according to which the world is composed by temporal parts each existing at a (...) time and according to which there is nothing as a numerically same entity which exists at different times. I show that the metaphysics behind Parfit’s theory is neither compatible with endurantism, according to which object persists by being wholly present at different times, nor with perdurantism, according to which entities are aggregates of temporal and spatial parts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Myth and Investigation in Oedipus RexPeter T. Koper (bio)René Girard's rich interpretations of Attic drama include his discussion in Violence and the Sacred of the sacrificial and reciprocal nature of the mythic violence that underlies Oedipus Rex. "In the myth, the fearful transgression of a single individual is substituted for the universal onslaught of reciprocal violence. Oedipus is responsible for the ills that have befallen his people" (Girard 1977, (...) 77). Girard sees that "the tragedian's version of the Oedipus story differs radically from the myth" (72). The paradigmatic "exchanges of mutual incriminations" (72) between Oedipus and Teiresias raise the question of "whether the accusation [by Teiresias] is simply an act of reprisal arising from the hostile exchange of a tragic debate" (71) rather than a prophetic truth. The play is an investigation of killing. In the myth, the killer is Oedipus, "unequivocally" (72). How Sophocles's play departs from the myth, whether the play is an investigation that confirms the claims of the myth or whether it dramatizes the persecution of an innocent pharmakos is a question Girard leaves suspended, noting that Oedipus cannot be "both incestuous son and parricide and at the same time pharmakos" (122), since a scapegoat is by definition an innocent, chosen arbitrarily. Sandor Goodhart pursued the possibility that Oedipus "may not have killed Laius" (56) in a 1978 article, and Girard returned to the matter in The Scapegoat in 1986. Goodhart's case is based on the report of the surviving servant that Laius was killed by robbers.The servant's account, if accurate, exonerates Oedipus, who was alone when, as he himself reports, he killed every member of a group that included at least three travelers (Sophocles 1960a, 801–834; see Jebb 1893, 150; and Kammerbeck 1967, 164–65) at a "place where three roads meet" (Sophocles 1960a, 716). Oedipus, seeking the murderer of Laius, is worried by Jocasta's account of Laius's death because it reminds him of a fight he himself has had at that place. But Jocasta assures Oedipus that the servant who returned to Thebes and reported the killings said that they were done by robbers. If this is true, then Oedipus is indeed innocent of the charge levied against him by [End Page 87] Teiresias. As the next step in his effort to learn the truth, Oedipus immediately sends for the servant whose testimony appears, at this stage of Oedipus's thinking, to be decisive, for "one man cannot be the same as many" (1960a, 845). When the servant finally arrives, he is never asked the crucial question about the number of murderers. Instead, he is asked to confirm that he did give an infant child to a servant of the king of Corinth instead of abandoning him on the hillside of Mt. Cithaeron as he had been ordered to do. In the usual interpretation of the play, this omission is not decisive. Events have overtaken the investigation, and Oedipus is now not concerned with the identity of the murderer of Laius, or even with whether Oedipus is the murderer (Kammerbeck 1967, 22). He is, rather, concerned with who he is, and, explicitly, with the confirmation of his parricide and incest.Goodhart holds that the discrepancy between the servant's account and that of Oedipus is a decisive indication of Sophocles's intention in the play. In this view, the play uses a traditional myth in which Oedipus kills his father, marries his mother, and then rules Thebes, but the play is not a development of that myth into a heroic intellectual quest in which a man who is the paradigm of the Greek enlightenment pursues and learns the truth. It is rather a play about ambiguity and the impossibility of knowledge. "Rather than an illustration of the myth, the play is a critique of mythogenesis, an examination of the process by which an arbitrary fiction comes to assume the value of truth" (Goodhart 1996, 35). The arbitrary fiction in this case is the opinion that Oedipus killed Laius. A community and an individual, in the midst of the plague, hear a prophecy. They believe it. One individual is the source of the city... (shrink)

A sign of Sartre’s belated "coming of age" in professional, English-speaking philosophical circles is the recent shift from exposition to dialogue as analytic authors regard his contribution to current Anglo-American philosophical discussion. One of the interests, not to say obsessions, of analysis has been the philosophy of mind. The literature is vast, and alternative positions have been charted in detail. It is a virtue of Professor Morris’ book that she has mastered a respectable portion of the analytic terrain. Her treatment (...) of Sartre is limited to the writings up to and including Being and Nothingness. The statement of the question is analytic, the response Sartrean. Her assessment of the exchange is that "the concept of a person to be found in Sartre’s early work is not only intelligible but significant. He has led us away from some of the idle considerations in much contemporary analytic discussion of persons qua perceivers and has offered important and probably correct solutions to some of the most pressing and central problems connected with persons considered as moral agents". Thus the standard criteria for reidentification of persons, viz., memory, character, and bodily continuity, are viewed in terms of accountability, thereby underscoring Sartre’s "new criterion of personal identity," fundamental project or ideal self. Crucial to her general thesis is the ambiguity of the "I" for Sartre. The term denotes the body-subject of conscious relations and possessor of physical properties, on the one hand, and a free unification of acts and experiences over time, on the other, like a melody synthesizing individual notes—a standard simile in nonsubstantial theories of the self. She argues that both aspects of the "I" are required to resolve the matter of accountability as we understand it. The question of other minds is raised in the context of Sartre’s claim that "there is nothing behind the body. The body is wholly ‘psychic'." This problematic assertion not only makes his concept of shame-consciousness appear less ad hoc but helps warrant, as well, her claim that he is leaning toward a physicalism "broad enough to include the intentional properties of consciousness". An indication that analysis may be heading in the same direction is taken as an added sign of Sartre’s relevance. (shrink)

A familiar objection to mental state theories of well-being proceeds as follows: Describe a good life. Contrast it with one identical in mental respects, but lacking a connection to reality. Then observe that mental state theories of well-being implausibly hold both lives in equal esteem. Conclude that such views are false. Here we argue this objection fails. There are two ways reality may be thought to matter for well-being. We want to contribute to reality, and we want our experience (...) of the world to be veridical. Yet, if one accepts that reality matters in either of these ways, one must posit differences in well-being where no such differences exist. (shrink)

In his work on personal identity, Derek Parfit makes two revolutionary claims: firstly, that personal identity is not what matters in survival; and secondly, that what does matter is relation R. In this article I demonstrate his position here to be inconsistent, with the former claim being defensible only in case the latter is false. Parfit intends his famous fission argument to establish the unimportance of identity – a conclusion disputed by, among others, Mark Johnston. My (...) approach is to critically assess their debate, focusing on Johnston's reductio of Parfit's position. I contend that although Parfit's own response fails, there are other ways to save the fission argument. The unimportance of identity then comes at a cost, however, because the reductio can only be avoided by accepting either that nothing matters in survival, or else that facts about particles and forces do. Either way, relation R cannot be what matters. (shrink)

I examine Derek Parfit’s claim that it doesn’t matter whether he survives in the future, if someone survives who is psychologically connected to him by “Relation R.” Thus, were his body to perish and be replaced by an exact duplicate, both physically and psychologically identical to him, this would be just as good as “ordinary” survival. Parfit takes the corollary view that replacement of loved ones by exact duplicates is no loss. In contrast, Peter Unger argues that (...) we place nontransferable value in the lives of individualpersons. I argue that the question of the preferability of Relation R over identity is unanswerable at present, as such hypothetical situations are too far removed from our experience to allow any reliable responses. I contrast cases involving artifacts, where we can make informed judgments concerning whether a given object’s value would be transferred to a duplicate. (shrink)

I examine Derek Parfit's claim that it doesn't matter whether he survives in the future, if someone survives who is psychologically connected to him by “Relation R.” Thus, were his body to perish and be replaced by an exact duplicate, both physically and psychologically identical to him, this would be just as good as “ordinary” survival. Parfit takes the corollary view that replacement of loved ones by exact duplicates is no loss. In contrast, Peter Unger argues that we (...) place nontransferable value in the lives of individual persons. I argue that the question of the preferability of Relation R over identity is unanswerable at present, as such hypothetical situations are too far removed from our experience to allow any reliable responses. I contrast cases involving artifacts, where we can make informed judgments concerning whether a given object's value would be transferred to a duplicate. (shrink)

Introduction: our environment is out of control -- The foundation: your environment shapes you -- Every hero is the product of a situation : understanding the proximity effect -- How your environment shapes you : the myth of willpower -- Use positive-stress environments to promote change -- Create enriched environments : the key of "forcing functions" to promote change -- More than good intentions : how to adapt to new and difficult environments -- Grow into your goals : outsource your (...) motivation to high pressure environments -- Optimal environments for rapid learning : shortcuts to success -- Rotate your environments : change it up based on the work you're doing -- Find unique collaborations : design your world through transformational relationships -- Never forget where you came from : remember the environment where you began -- Pse rejuvinating environments to promote recovery and growth -- Establish your value system : the clearer you get, the more successful you'll be -- Remove everything that conflicts with your values : how to make tough choices -- Change your defaults : outsource your behavior to your environment -- Create triggers to prevent self-sabotage : putting failure-planning to work -- Shock your routine : the power of regular sabbaticals -- Reset your body and brain every week: the power of a fast -- Designate a sacred space : create an environment to stay on course -- Conclusion: no matter where you are, you can change -- Acknowledgments -- Index -- About the author. (shrink)

Nearly all psychological research on basic cognitive processes of category formation and reasoning uses sample populations associated with large research institutions in technologically-advanced societies. Lopsided attention to a select participant pool risks biasing interpretation, no matter how large the sample or how statistically reliable the results. The experiments in this article address this limitation. Earlier research with urban-USA children suggests that biological concepts are thoroughly enmeshed with their notions of naive psychology, and strikingly human-centered. Thus, if children are to (...) develop a causally appropriate model of biology, in which humans are seen as simply one animal among many, they must undergo fundamental conceptual change. Such change supposedly occurs between 7 and 10 years of age, when the human-centered view is discarded. The experiments reported here with Yukatek Maya speakers challenge the empirical generality and theoretical importance of these claims. Part 1 shows that young Maya children do not anthropocentrically interpret the biological world. The anthropocentric bias of American children appears to owe to a lack of cultural familiarity with non-human biological kinds, not to initial causal understanding of folkbiology as such. Part 2 shows that by age of 4-5 Yukatek Maya children employ a concept of innate species potential or underlying essence much as urban American children seem to, namely, as an inferential framework for understanding the affiliation of an organism to a biological species, and for projecting known and unknown biological properties to organisms in the face of uncertainty. Together, these experiments indicate that folkpsychology cannot be the initial source of folkbiology. They also underscore the possibility of a species-wide and domain-specific basis for acquiring knowledge about the living world that is constrained and modified but not caused or created by prior non-biological thinking and subsequent cultural experience. (shrink)

Animalists accuse the advocates of psychological approaches of identity of having to suffer a Problem of Too Many Thinkers. Eric Olson, for instance, is an animalist who maintains that if the person is spatially coincident but numerically distinct from the animal, then provided that the person can use its brain to think, so too can the physically indistinguishable animal. However, not all defenders of psychological views of identity assume the spatial coincidence of the person and the animal. Jeff (...) McMahan and lately Derek Parfit claim we are roughly brain-size, composed of just those parts of the human animal that directly produce thought. They claim to avoid the Problem of Too Many Thinkers because it is the brain-sized person who truly thinks, while the animal thinks only in a derivative sense in virtue of having a thinking proper part. Waiting in the wings are some dualists who claim that all materialist accounts fail to avoid the Problem of Too Many Thinkers. One such dualist, Dean Zimmerman, insists that wherever there is an ordinary material thing like a brain, there is also a mass with distinct persistence conditions and thus the threat of two material thinkers. Zimmerman contends that only positing an immaterial thinker can avoid the problem. (shrink)

Some have suggested that there is no fact to the matter as to whether or not a particular physical system relaizes a particular computational description. This suggestion has been taken to imply that computational states are not real, and cannot, for example, provide a foundation for the cognitive sciences. In particular, Putnam has argued that every ordinary open physical system realizes every abstract finite automaton, implying that the fact that a particular computational characterization applies to a physical system does (...) not tell oneanything about the nature of that system. Putnam''s argument is scrutinized, and found inadequate because, among other things, it employs a notion of causation that is too weak. I argue that if one''s view of computation involves embeddedness (inputs and outputs) and full causality, one can avoid the universal realizability results. Therefore, the fact that a particular system realizes a particular automaton is not a vacuous one, and is often explanatory. Furthermore, I claim that computation would not necessarily be an explanatorily vacuous notion even if it were universally realizable. (shrink)

Some have suggested that there is no fact to the matter as to whether or not a particular physical system relaizes a particular computational description. This suggestion has been taken to imply that computational states are not real, and cannot, for example, provide a foundation for the cognitive sciences. In particular, Putnam has argued that every ordinary open physical system realizes every abstract finite automaton, implying that the fact that a particular computational characterization applies to a physical system does (...) not tell oneanything about the nature of that system. Putnam''s argument is scrutinized, and found inadequate because, among other things, it employs a notion of causation that is too weak. I argue that if one''s view of computation involves embeddedness (inputs and outputs) and full causality, one can avoid the universal realizability results. Therefore, the fact that a particular system realizes a particular automaton is not a vacuous one, and is often explanatory. Furthermore, I claim that computation would not necessarily be an explanatorily vacuous notion even if it were universally realizable. (shrink)

We live in the era of Facebook, Fitbit, and Skype. As such, it would be unreasonable to expect that the healthcare industry would not see the same kind of globalization as do our social spheres and consumer activities. Indeed, the explosion of information technology, the ease of transcontinental travel, and the emergence of a more globally aware citizenry allows for scientific collaboration that has had many positive effects on global health. However, the economic and structural disparities between systems of healthcare (...) delivery in the industrialized world and parts of the developing world have created a monster in the form of an international medical tourism industry that endangers the health and safety of citizens of the host country as well as visiting patients. Not only does the practice of medical tourism pose a practical danger to those in direct contact with the industry, but it brings up troubling philosophical problems centering on national responsibility and the commodification of healthcare, among other important issues. In the United States, the driving force behind international medical tourism is the exorbitant cost of healthcare, particularly for the uninsured but also for the underinsured and those who experience catastrophic medical expenses from chronic illness or sudden health crises. Not only have individuals begun to look outside the U.S. for surgical procedures and other expensive therapies, but employers have begun to toy with the idea of outsourcing the medical care of the employees they insure in order to cut costs. In other industrialized nations, the issues that underpin international medical tourism are related to healthcare rationing and reflect different shortcomings in the delivery of healthcare in those nations, such as the United Kingdom and Canada, that have single-payer systems. Yet the regulatory and philosophical implications for both patients and hosts of international healthcare are largely the same. The challenge of regulating international trade in medical care is obvious and becomes particularly acute when there are insurers and employers involved. Complicating matters further, medical care that takes place outside the country of origin of the patient is often brokered by “medical concierge services,” which, though quick to claim indemnity from any harm arising from substandard or inappropriate medical care, cannot be divorced from responsibility for the health outcomes of their clients. Agreements hashed out between concierge services and patients specify that any remedy for harm stemming from their medical care must be pursued within the confines of the law of the host country, but the practical implications of this are troublesome. How can a foreign patient—often without either linguistic or cultural competency in the host country—be expected to navigate the complexity of a foreign legal system, particularly one that may be far less developed than his home country? Furthermore, if insurance companies and employers are involved with such care, who pays for an adverse result or determines responsibility for harm that may befall the patient? Under which countries’ laws? If a patient travels to Singapore for sexual reassignment surgery or a cardiac valve repair, returns to the States and suffers complications, who pays for the restoration of her health? Beyond legal standards and judicial remedies for harm to patients seeking care on the international market, there is the question of what ethical standards and norms apply to such patients. What effect does it have on American patients, for example, to receive care within a system that does not emphasize autonomy and informed consent the way they are used to? Why should foreign physicians care about the cultural mores of their patients’ country of origin? Can they be expected to grasp cultural differences between American, Canadian, and British patients? The medical concierge might respond, “Well, buyer beware!” This is unreasonable: It is nearly impossible for any patient to accurately assess the various options, risks and benefits that go with a particular medical treatment, much less the patient who is attempting to do so on the international market. And the crass invocation of the doctrine of caveat emptor betrays a view of healthcare as a commodity that is naive and inappropriate. Paramount in my mind, however, are the practical implications for the care of the citizens of developing nations that host international patients and the broader philosophical issue of what the goals of the medical profession as a whole and each country’s individual healthcare system should be. While I understand the argument that international medical tourism creates great economic gains for developing nations, which can then be channeled toward the care of their citizenry as a whole, there is much reason to doubt that this “trickle-down” model of economics provides real benefits for underserved, whether in healthcare or other arenas. What is more likely is that, while lucrative international “medi-cities” may keep bright doctors in their home countries, it is also likely to lure them away from the institutions that serve the lion’s share of their countrymen. With the concentration of talented native doctors in private hospitals that serve citizens of the developed world, the population at large is left to obtain care at institutions that suffer “brain drain” from the flight of talented local staff to more prestigious, often “brand name,” institutions that give them more Western-like salaries while allowing them to practice in their countries of origin. The very fact that citizens of the wealthiest nations in the world are forced to go abroad for life-saving care speaks to an abdication of national responsibility on the part of their home countries. The provision of health care is one of the principal responsibilities of any nation and it is unacceptable that a nation with the strength and wealth of the United States would take advantage of the weaker political and economic situations of developing nations in order to shirk its responsibility to its fellow citizens. If we take care of our countrymen and take pride in an equitable system of healthcare delivery, there will be no need to shrug our shoulders and say “Buyer beware” to the patient who heads to the Philippines for heart surgery. (shrink)

The Mind Doesn’t Work That Way is an expose of certain theoretical problems in cognitive science, and in particular, problems that concern the Classical Computational Theory of Mind (CTM). The problems that Fodor worries plague CTM divide into two kinds, and both purport to show that the success of cognitive science will likely be limited to the modules. The first sort of problem concerns what Fodor has called “global properties”; features that a mental sentence has which depend on how (...) the sentence interacts with a larger plan (i.e., set of sentences), rather than the type identity of the sentence alone. The second problem concerns what many have called, “The Relevance Problem”: the problem of whether and how humans determine what is relevant in a computational manner. However, I argue that the problem that Fodor believes global properties pose for CTM is a non-problem, and that further, while the relevance problem is a serious research issue, it does not justify the grim view that cognitive science, and CTM in particular, will likely fail to explain cognition. (shrink)

The world appears to conscious creatures in terms of experienced sensory qualities, but science doesn't find sensory experience in that world, only physical objects and properties. I argue that the failure to locate consciousness in the world is a function of our necessarily representational relation to reality as knowers: we won't discover the terms in which reality is represented by us in the world as it appears in those terms. Qualia -- arguably a type of representational content -- will therefore (...) not be found in the physical world as characterized in experience or science. Instead, consciousness constitutes a subjective, representational reality for cognitive systems such as ourselves, and the physical world is a represented objective reality. I suggest that naturalistic approaches to explaining consciousness should acknowledge the non-objectivity of experience, and be constrained by evidence that consciousness accompanies certain sorts of behaviour-controlling representational functions carried out by complex, physically instantiated mind-systems. I evaluate a variety of current hypotheses about consciousness, and suggest that a mature science of representation may help explain why, perhaps as matter of representational necessity, experience arises as a natural but not objectively discoverable phenomenon. (shrink)

When patients are not able to speak for themselves, surrogate decision makers are asked to guide treatment decisions and formulate a plan of care in accordance with what the patients would have wanted. This necessitates an exploration into the patients’ views about life and how it should be lived, how the patients constructed their identity or life story, and their attitudes towards sickness and suffering. When an individual appoints a surrogate, such as a healthcare power of attorney, a common (...) presumption is that this designation evinces merit. This obscures the possibility of multiple other considerations that influence individual choice. This article presents a clinical case in which the claim to know someone best created a controversy that brought treatment decisions to a standstill. Further, it illuminates how the question, “Given the current medical condition, what would this person want?” risks presuming that a singular, unambiguous preference exists and that one person can provide the answer. Clinical ethicists can play a vital role in situations when there is a dispute among a designated surrogate and family members over a patient’s preference. By embracing the complexity of the desire to synthesize seemingly irreconcilable perspectives about identity, uncovering the reasons that underlie disagreement, and guiding inquiry in such a way that allows stakeholders to move beyond the conflict, clinical ethicists can facilitate decision making that honors the patient and may mitigate moral distress. (shrink)

Recently, Cohen and Timmerman, 1–18, 2016) argue that actualism has control issues. The view should be rejected, they claim, as it recognizes a morally irrelevant distinction between counterfactuals over which agents exercise the same kind of control. Here we reply on behalf of actualism.

In contemporary discussion of the philosophy of religion, or for that matter of any branch of philosophy, the names of Whitehead and Wittgenstein are not often linked. Whitehead's later work is, for the most part, treated as a rather specialized interest, an attractively under-cultivated field for the enterprising thesis-writer perhaps, but well away from the main centres of current philosophical activity. And what he has to say about specifically religious or theological issues 1 becomes simply one ramification of an (...) ingenious but somewhat eccentric system. Nonetheless, there is at least this much justification for considering it in relation to the much more influential and widely discussed views of Wittgenstein. Whitehead has some original things to say about God, Wittgenstein some original reasons for thinking that Whitehead's brand of originality is here radically misplaced. And the possibility or otherwise of such theological originality is an issue of very considerable importance for the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

In formulating procreative principles, it makes sense to begin by thinking about whose interests ought to matter to us. Obviously, we care about those who exist. Less obviously, but still uncontroversially, we care about those who will exist. Ought we to care about those who might possibly, but will not actually, exist? Recently, unusual positions have been taken regarding merely possible people and the non-identity problem. David Velleman argues that what might have happened to you – an existent (...) person – often doesn't merit moral consideration since the alternative person one would have been had what might have happened actually happened is a merely possible person about whom one has no reason to care. He argues that his way of thinking can eliminate the non-identity problem. Caspar Hare argues that merely possible people have interests and are morally relevant. He argues that we can solve the non-identity problem by rejecting the view that merely possible people are morally irrelevant. Both Hare and Velleman argue that focusing on one's de dicto rather than on one's de re children can help us avoid the non-identity problem. I analyze the role that merely possible, nonexistent hypothetical entities ought to play in our moral reasoning, especially with regard to procreation. I refute both Velleman's and Hare's views and demonstrate the difficulties we encounter when we try to apply their views to common non-identity cases. I conclude with the common-sense view regarding who matters, morally: only those who do, did, or will exist. (shrink)

A very clear and powerfully argued defence of a most important and surprisingly neglected view."--Derek Parfit, All Souls College, Oxford. "If Dr. Olson is right, we are living animals and what goes on in our minds is wholly irrelevant to questions about our persistence through time....[Should] transform philosophical thinking about personal identity."--Peter van Inwagen, University of Notre Dame.

I read Stefan Collini’s What are Universities For? last week with very mixed feelings. In the past, I’ve much admired his polemical essays on the REF, “impact”, the Browne Report, etc. in the London Review of Books and elsewhere: they speak to my heart. If you don’t know those essays, you can get some of their flavour from his latest article in the Guardian yesterday. But I found the book a disappointment. Perhaps the trouble is that Collini is too decent, (...) too high-minded, has too unrealistically exalted a view about what actually happens in universities which is too coloured by attitudes appropriate to the traditional humanities. And he is optimistic to the point of fantasy if he thinks that people are so susceptible to “the romance of ideas and the power of beauty” that they will want, or can be brought to want, lots and lots of universities in order to promote the ideas (as if they would suppose that the task of “conserving, understanding, extending and handing on to subsequent generations the intellectual, scientific, and artistic heritage of mankind” was clearly ill-served when there were only forty universities in England, as opposed to a hundred and whatever). (shrink)

It is not intended as some sort of revelation on my part that Greenberg's cultural theory was originally Marxist in its stresses and, indeed in its attitude to what constituted explanation in such matters. I point out the Marxist and historical mode of proceeding as emphatically as I do partly because it may make my own procedure later in this paper seem a little less arbitrary. For I shall fall to arguing in the end with these essay's Marxism and their (...) history, and I want it understood that I think that to do so is to take issue with their strengths and their main drift.But I have to admit there are difficulties here. The essays in question ["Avant-Garde and Kitsch" and "Towards a Newer Lacoön"] are quite brief. They are, I think, extremely well written: it was not for nothing the Partisan Review described Clement Greenberg, when he first contributed to the journal early in 1939, as "a young writer who works in the New York customs house"—fine, redolent avant-garde pedigree, that! The language of these articles is forceful and easy, always straightforward, blessedly free from Marxist conundrums. Yet the price paid for such lucidity, here as so often, is a degree of inexplicitness—certain amount of elegant skirting round the difficult issues, where one might otherwise be obliged to call out the ponderous armory of Marx's concepts and somewhat spoil the low of the prose from one firm statement to another. The Marxism, in other words, is quite largely implicit; it is stated on occasion, with brittle and pugnacious finality, as the essay's frame of reference, but it remains to the reader to determine just how it works in the history and theory presented—what that history and theory depend on, in the way of Marxist assumptions about class and capital or even abase and superstructure. That is what I intend to do in this paper: to interpret and extrapolate from the texts, even at the risk of making their Marxism declare itself more stridently than the "young writer" seems to have wished. And I should admit straight away that there are several point in what follows where I am genuinely uncertain as to whether I am diverging from Greenberg's argument or explaining it more fully. This does not worry me overmuch, as long as we are alerted to the special danger in this case, dealing with such transparent yet guarded prose, and as long as we can agree that the project in general—pressing home a Marxist reading of texts which situate themselves within the Marxist tradition—is a reasonable one.22. This carelessness distinguishes the present paper from two recent studies of Greenberg's early writings, Serge Guilbaut's "The New Adventures of the Avant-Garde in America," October 15 , and Fred Orton and Griselda Pollock's "Avant-Gardes and Partisans Reviewed," Art History 3 I am indebted to both these essays and am sure that their strictures on the superficiality—not to say the opportunism–of Greenberg's Marxism are largely right. But I am nonetheless interested in the challenge offered to most Marxist, and non-Marxist, accounts of modern history by what I take to be a justified though extreme, pessimism as t the nature of established culture since 1870. That pessimism is characteristic, I suppose, of what Marxists call an ultraleftist point of view. I believe, as I say, that a version of some such view is correct and would therefore with to treat Greenberg's theory as if it were a decently elaborated Marxism of an ultraleftist kind, on which issues in certain mistaken views but which need not so issue and which might still provide, cleansed of those errors, a good vantage for a history of our culture.T. J. Clark, professor of fine arts at Harvard University, is the author of The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France, 1848-1851 and Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution. His book on impressionist painting and Paris is forthcoming. (shrink)

This paper begins with a problem stemming from Hume regarding credences about credences. Suppose one has a credence of .95 in p, and suppose one assesses the credence to be such. But suppose one’s second-order credence in this assessment is less than 1. Then, by a standard conditionalization rule, one’s credence in p becomes less than .95. Moreover, such “erosion” can iterate by considering one’s, third-, fourth-, fifth-order credences, etc. (In light of this, some have rejected higher-order credences; however, it (...) is argued that Lewis’ “Principal Principle” forbids this.) The paper then offers a partial solution by describing circumstances under which a person has reason to assign credence 1 to a first-order credence. The solution takes the form of a “transparency” view of self-knowledge from Parent (2017, chapter 8). Briefly, it is argued that when one “reflex-like” utters a sentence “The probability of p is n”, then as a matter of psychological law, the utterance is an expression of one’s own judgment. The Principal Principle then necessitates that one’s credence in p is n, assuming one is being rational. Thus, upon perceiving such an utterance, one can thereby have a reason to assign a second-order credence of 1. (shrink)

[T. M. Scanlon] It is clearly impermissible to kill one person because his organs can be used to save five others who are in need of transplants. It has seemed to many that the explanation for this lies in the fact that in such cases we would be intending the death of the person whom we killed, or failed to save. What makes these actions impermissible, however, is not the agent's intention but rather the fact that the benefit envisaged does (...) not justify an exception to the prohibition against killing or the requirement to give aid. The difference between this explanation and one appealing to intention is easily overlooked if one fails to distinguish between the prospective use of a moral principle to guide action and its retrospective use to appraise the way an agent governed him or herself. Even if this explanation is accepted, however, it remains an open question whether and how an agent's intention may be relevant to the permissibility of actions in other cases. \\\ [Jonathan Dancy] My first four sections concentrate on the second section of Professor Scanlon's contribution, where he lays out his conception of moral principles and of the role they play in theory and practice. I will raise questions on the following issues: 1. Scanlon's initial introduction of the notion of a principle. 2. His rejection of the standard view that principles are concerned with the forbidding, permitting and requiring of actions. 3. His rejection of pro tanto conceptions of principles in favour of a conception of them as conclusive. 4. The resulting account of what it is for a principle to face and survive exceptions. Scanlon's discussion of these matters here both appeals to and is in some respects more detailed than the relevant section of his recent What We Owe to Each Other. The topic is interesting both for the role played by principles in Scanlon's present discussion of intention and permissibility, and more generally because of his account of wrongness: an act is wrong iff it is ruled out by principles that nobody could reasonably reject. The remainder of my contribution is concerned with the ostensible focus of IP, namely the relevance of agent-intentions to the permissibility of what is done. (shrink)

How to conceptualize loving relationships so as to accommodate that just love is geared toward preserving and fostering individual autonomy? To develop an answer, this paper draws on the recent debate on the rational role of experience to motivate a view dubbed Murdochian presentationalism. Murdochian presentationalism takes seriously two presentationalist ideas: 1) individuals harboring different world views who respond to identical situations differently can be equally rational; 2) our views and concepts develop under the constant pressure of experience. It (...) combines these ideas with Murdoch’s tenet that coming to know others (and thus being able to do well by them) requires unselfish love, construed as just attention that involves a continuous refinement of our evaluative concepts and makes us better attuned to what is real. Complemented with a broadly Kantian notion of autonomy, the resulting view fits the bill. The paper ends on a sketch of what is dubbed the ideal lovers’ pledge and a comment on what metaphor the view arrived at suggests for thinking about loving relationships. (shrink)

Recent debates about the biological and evolutionary conditions for sentience have generated a renewed interest in fine-grained functionalism. According to one such account advanced by Peter Godfrey-Smith, sentience depends on the fine-grained activities characteristic of living organisms. Specifically, the scale, context and stochasticity of these fine-grained activities. One implication of this view is that contemporary artificial intelligence is a poor candidate for sentience. Insofar as current AI lacks the ability to engage in such living activities it will lack sentience, (...) no matter what its coarse-grained functions. In this paper, we review the case for fine-grained functionalism and show that there are contemporary machines that fulfil the fine-grained functional criteria identified by Godfrey-Smith, and thus are candidates for sentience. Molecular machines such as Brownian computers are analogous to metabolic activity in their scale, context and stochasticity, and can serve as the basis of AI. Molecular computation is a promising candidate for artificial sentience according to contemporary philosophical accounts of sentience. (shrink)

[T. M. Scanlon] It is clearly impermissible to kill one person because his organs can be used to save five others who are in need of transplants. It has seemed to many that the explanation for this lies in the fact that in such cases we would be intending the death of the person whom we killed, or failed to save. What makes these actions impermissible, however, is not the agent's intention but rather the fact that the benefit envisaged does (...) not justify an exception to the prohibition against killing or the requirement to give aid. The difference between this explanation and one appealing to intention is easily overlooked if one fails to distinguish between the prospective use of a moral principle to guide action and its retrospective use to appraise the way an agent governed him or herself. Even if this explanation is accepted, however, it remains an open question whether and how an agent's intention may be relevant to the permissibility of actions in other cases. \\\ [Jonathan Dancy] My first four sections concentrate on the second section of Professor Scanlon's contribution, where he lays out his conception of moral principles and of the role they play in theory and practice. I will raise questions on the following issues: 1. Scanlon's initial introduction of the notion of a principle. 2. His rejection of the standard view that principles are concerned with the forbidding, permitting and requiring of actions. 3. His rejection of pro tanto conceptions of principles in favour of a conception of them as conclusive. 4. The resulting account of what it is for a principle to face and survive exceptions. Scanlon's discussion of these matters here both appeals to and is in some respects more detailed than the relevant section of his recent What We Owe to Each Other. The topic is interesting both for the role played by principles in Scanlon's present discussion of intention and permissibility, and more generally because of his account of wrongness: an act is wrong iff it is ruled out by principles that nobody could reasonably reject. The remainder of my contribution is concerned with the ostensible focus of IP, namely the relevance of agent-intentions to the permissibility of what is done. (shrink)

This accessible and easy-to-follow book offers a new approach to consciousness. The author’s eclectic style combines new physics-based insights with those of analytical philosophy, phenomenology, cognitive science and neuroscience. He proposes a view in which the mechanistic framework of classical physics and neuroscience is complemented by a more holistic underlying framework in which conscious experience finds its place more naturally.

The relativistic Schrödinger theory (RST) for N-fermion systems is further elaborated with respect to three fundamental problems which must emerge in any relativistic theory of quantum matter: (i) emergence/suppression of exchange forces between identical/non-identical particles, (ii) self-interactions, (iii) non-relativistic approximation. These questions are studied in detail for two- and three-particle systems but the results do apply to a general N-particle system. As a concrete demonstration, the singlet and triplet configurations of the positronium groundstate are considered within the RST framework, (...) including a discussion of the corresponding hyperfine splitting. (shrink)

It is clearly impermissible to kill one person because his organs can be used to save five others who are in need of transplants. It has seemed to many that the explanation for this lies in the fact that in such cases we would be intending the death of the person whom we killed, or failed to save. What makes these actions impermissible, however, is not the agent's intention but rather the fact that the benefit envisaged does not justify an (...) exception to the prohibition against killing or the requirement to give aid. The difference between this explanation and one appealing to intention is easily overlooked if one fails to distinguish between the prospective use of a moral principle to guide action and its retrospective use to appraise the way an agent governed him or herself. Even if this explanation is accepted, however, it remains an open question whether and how an agent's intention may be relevant to the permissibility of actions in other cases. \\\ [Jonathan Dancy] My first four sections concentrate on the second section of Professor Scanlon's contribution, where he lays out his conception of moral principles and of the role they play in theory and practice. I will raise questions on the following issues: 1. Scanlon's initial introduction of the notion of a principle. 2. His rejection of the standard view that principles are concerned with the forbidding, permitting and requiring of actions. 3. His rejection of pro tanto conceptions of principles in favour of a conception of them as conclusive. 4. The resulting account of what it is for a principle to face and survive exceptions. Scanlon's discussion of these matters here both appeals to and is in some respects more detailed than the relevant section of his recent What We Owe to Each Other. The topic is interesting both for the role played by principles in Scanlon's present discussion of intention and permissibility, and more generally because of his account of wrongness: an act is wrong iff it is ruled out by principles that nobody could reasonably reject. The remainder of my contribution is concerned with the ostensible focus of IP, namely the relevance of agent-intentions to the permissibility of what is done. (shrink)

Orthodoxy says that the thesis that composition is identity (CAI) entails universalism: the claim that any collection of entities has a sum. If this is true it counts in favour of CAI, since a thesis about the nature of composition that settles the otherwise intractable special composition question (SCQ) is desirable. But I argue that it is false: CAI is compatible with the many forms of restricted composition, and SCQ is no easier to answer given CAI than otherwise. Furthermore, (...) in seeing why this is the case we reveal an objection to CAI: that it allows for the facts concerning what there is to be settled whilst leaving open the question about what is identical to what. (shrink)

This study shows that professional identity should not be viewed as a composed variable with a uniform structure. Based on the literature and previous research, we view teachers? job satisfaction, self?efficacy, occupational commitment and change in the level of motivation as indicators of teachers? professional identity. Using two?step cluster analysis, three distinct professional identity profiles have empirically been identified, based on data of 1214 teachers working in secondary education in the Netherlands. These profiles differed significantly regarding (...) the indicators of teachers? professional identity. Teachers belonging to the found profiles did not significantly differ in their amount of experience. (shrink)

According to rationalism regarding the psychology of moral judgment, people’s moral judgments are generally the result of a process of reasoning that relies on moral principles or rules. By contrast, intuitionist models of moral judgment hold that people generally come to have moral judgments about particular cases on the basis of gut-level, emotion-driven intuition, and do so without reliance on reasoning and hence without reliance on moral principles. In recent years the intuitionist model has been forcefully defended by Jonathan Haidt. (...) One important implication of Haidt’s model is that in giving reasons for their moral judgments people tend to confabulate – the reasons they give in attempting to explain their moral judgments are not really operative in producing those judgments. Moral reason-giving on Haidt’s view is generally a matter of post hoc confabulation. Against Haidt, we argue for a version of rationalism that we call ‘morphological rationalism.’ We label our version ‘morphological’ because according to it, the information contained in moral principles is embodied in the standing structure of a typical individual’s cognitive system, and this morphologically embodied information plays a causal role in the generation of particular moral judgments. The manner in which the principles play this role is via ‘proceduralization’ – such principles operate automatically. In contrast to Haidt’s intuitionism, then, our view does not imply that people’s moral reason-giving practices are matters of confabulation. In defense of our view, we appeal to what we call the ‘nonjarring’ character of the phenomenology of making moral judgments and of giving reasons for those judgments. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;I deal with two themes: the idea that an account of thought should be given by giving an account of the ascription of thoughts by a radical interpreter--which I call interpretationism; and the idea that psychological concepts like action and perception are essentially causal. It has often been thought that these two themes conflict; or at least, that if they can co-exist, then they must be kept separate, and (...) associated with different perspectives on behaviour. But is that right? I discuss the character of interpretationism and the nature of causal theories, and examine the extent to which the two themes are compatible. ;Chapter I explains and argues for an interpretationist approach, distinguishing between different interpretationist views, and defending interpretationism against various common objections. ;Chapter II examines the links between interpretationism and the anomalousness of the mental. I discuss a number of different arguments and distinguish a range of theses about anomalousness and indeterminacy which they may support. ;Chapter III discusses the motivation for causal theories. I explain why it matters that we should give causal theories within an interpretationist perspective rather than treating the two themes as insights of different perspectives; and I examine the difficulties of doing so. ;Chapter IV considers the causal theory of vision. I argue against the view that the interpretationist's conception of experience undermines the causal theory. ;Chapter V considers the case of action. I develop a substantive causal theory of action which responds to the following argument: that if we accept the interpretationist's claim that the mental is anomalous, then we must concede that mental properties cannot be causally relevant. ;From the particular cases, and on general grounds, I conclude that it is possible to adopt an interpretationist perspective which simultaneously sees the mental in causal terms; and that such a perspective is essential for an adequate understanding of the mind. (shrink)

Originally published in 1988, this landmark study develops its own positive account of the nature and foundations of moral judgement, while at the same time serving as a guide to the range of views on the matter which have been given in modern western philosophy. The book addresses itself to two main questions: Can moral judgements be true or false in that fundamental sense in which a true proposition is one which describes things as they really are? Are rational (...) methods available in ethics which can be expected to produce convergence on shared moral views on the part of those who use them intelligently? (shrink)

American poet Ezra Pound wrote a letter on February 6, 1940, inviting American philosopher George Santayana to join poet T. S. Eliot and himself in writing “a volume . . . on the Ideal University, or The Proper Curriculum, or how it would be possible to educate and/or (mostly or) civilize the university student.” Santayana declined the invitation and claimed to have no ideas on the subject of education. Participation would have been morally impossible, he wrote, because unlike Pound and (...) Eliot, whom he regarded as “reformers, full of prophetic zeal and faith in the Advent of the Lord.” Santayana was “cynically content to let people educate or neglect themselves as they may prefer.”. (shrink)

Derek Parfit has offered numerous arguments in an attempt to establish that identity is not what matters. Jens Johannson has recently argued that Parfit's various arguments for the claim that identity is not what matters fail to establish what Parfit takes such arguments to establish. Johannson contends that this is due in part to the invalidity of one of Parfit's key arguments, and the fact that Parfit ignores a position that is compatible with the conclusions of his successful (...) arguments and the claim that identity is in fact what matters, namely, that I survive fission as either one of the fission products or the other, but it is indeterminate which one I survive as. I aim to establish here that both of Johannson's assertions are problematic. As a corollary of this task, I hope to shed some light on the relationship between indeterminacy and fission-based arguments for the claim that identity is not what matters. (shrink)

Philosophers of biology, along with everyone else, generally perceive life to fall into two broad categories, the microbes and macrobes, and then pay most of their attention to the latter. ‘Macrobe’ is the word we propose for larger life forms, and we use it as part of an argument for microbial equality. We suggest that taking more notice of microbes – the dominant life form on the planet, both now and throughout evolutionary history – will transform some of the philosophy (...) of biology’s standard ideas on ontology, evolution, taxonomy and biodiversity. We set out a number of recent developments in microbiology – including biofilm formation, chemotaxis, quorum sensing and gene transfer – that highlight microbial capacities for cooperation and communication and break down conventional thinking that microbes are solely or primarily single-celled organisms. These insights also bring new perspectives to the levels of selection debate, as well as to discussions of the evolution and nature of multicellularity, and to neo-Darwinian understandings of evolutionary mechanisms. We show how these revisions lead to further complications for microbial classification and the philosophies of systematics and biodiversity. Incorporating microbial insights into the philosophy of biology will challenge many of its assumptions, but also give greater scope and depth to its investigations. (shrink)

The inference that things do not matter because they will end is a source of despair for reflective people that features in literature, popular culture, and philosophy. Are there sound arguments in support of the inference? I first review three arguments that have been put forward in the existing philosophical literature and consider the objections that can be made against them. While the objections appear persuasive, these arguments do not exhaust the plausible justifications for the inference. Drawing on examples (...) from philosophy and literature, I introduce two previously undiscussed time-bias arguments in support of the inference that seem to be psychologically powerful. I conclude, however, that the time-bias arguments are also unsound. They involve an inconsistent shift between a temporally neutral and a temporally biased perspective on how the passage of time affects what matters. However the inconsistency is resolved, the conclusion does not follow. (shrink)

In this paper, we reflect on the connection between the notions of organism and organisation, with a specific interest in how this bears upon the issue of the reality of the organism. We do this by presenting the case of Buffon, who developed complex views about the relation between the notions of “organised” and “organic” matter. We argue that, contrary to what some interpreters have suggested, these notions are not orthogonal in his thought. Also, we argue that Buffon has (...) a view in which organisation is not just ubiquitous, but basic and fundamental in nature, and hence also fully natural. We suggest that he can hold this view because of his anti-mathematicism. Buffon’s case is interesting, in our view, because he can regard organisation, and organisms, as perfectly natural, and can admit their reality without invoking problematic supernaturalist views, and because he allows organisation and the organismal to come in kinds and degrees. Thus, his view tries to do justice to two cautionary notes for the debate on the reality of the organism: the need for a commitment to a broadly naturalist perspective, and the need to acknowledge the interesting features of organisms through which we make sense of them. (shrink)

Among the available metaethical views, it would seem that moral realism—in particular moral naturalism—must explain the possibility of moral progress. We see this in the oft-used argument from disagreement against various moral realist views. My suggestion in this paper is that, surprisingly, metaethical constructivism has at least as pressing a need to explain moral progress. I take moral progress to be, minimally, the opportunity to access and to act in light of moral facts of the matter, whether they are (...) mind-independent or -dependent. For the metaethical constructivist, however, I add that moral progress ought also mean that agents come to be or could come to be motivated to act in light of the right kind of moral judgments. Together I take this to mean that, for all forms of constructivism, moral progress must be explained as a form of moral improvement, or agents aspiring to be better sorts of moral agents. In what moral improvement consists differs for various forms of constructivism. Here I distinguish between three different versions of metaethical constructivism: Humean constructivists as represented by Street, Kantian constitutivist constructivists as represented by Korsgaard, and constructivists about practical reason as represented by Carla Bagnoli. I conclude by showing that only constructivism as a view about practical reason can fully account for moral progress qua the opportunity for moral improvement. (shrink)