Stereology is a valuable tool for neuroscientists, allowing them to obtain 3-Dimensional information from 2-Dimensional measurements made on appropriately sampled sections. This 3-D information is invaluable in correlating structural/functional relationships in the pursuit of far greater understanding of the function of the central nervous system. However, in carrying out such measurements, often based on limited data sets, there is a risk of experimenter bias. An important feature of modern design based stereology is to be aware of potential sources of bias (...) and eliminate them during the data collection. With many of the major neuroscience journals now insisting that quantitative data be presented, there is a greater need than ever for neuroscientists to understand the theory and practice behind quantitative methods, such as those offered by stereology. Quantitative Methods in Neuroscience is a cookbook of stereological methods written especially for neuroscientists. It provides clear and accessible advice about when and when not to use stereology. Throughout the book, the emphasis is on practical guidance, rather than discussions and formulae. Written by leading scientists in the field of stereology, with a Foreword by D.C. Sterio, the book will be a valuable introduction to these methods for neuroscientists, and all those involved in development of new drug programmes.Readership: Neuroscientists doing quantitative studies; Scientists involved in drug development; Pathologists. (shrink)

Extensions of traditional syllogistics have been increasingly researched in philosophy, linguistics, and areas such as artificial intelligence and computer science in recent decades. This is mainly due to the fact that syllogistics is seen as a logic that comes very close to natural language abilities. Various forms of extended syllogistics have become established. This paper deals with the question to what extent a syllogistic representation in CL diagrams can be seen as a form of extended syllogistics. It will be shown (...) that the ontology of CL enables numerically exact assertions and inferences. (shrink)

In early modernity, one can find many spatial logic diagrams whose geometric forms share a family resemblance with religious art and symbols. The family resemblance these diagrams bear in form is often based on a vesica piscis or on a cross: Both logic diagrams and spiritual symbols focus on the intersection or conjunction of two or more entities, e.g. subject and predicate, on the one hand, or god and man, on the other. This paper deals with the development and function (...) of logic diagrams, their analogy to religious art and symbols, and their modern application in artificial intelligence. (shrink)

In this paper, we interpret a 19th century diagram, which is meant to visualise G.W.F. Hegel’s entire method of the `Science of Logic' on the basis of bitwise operations. For the interpretation of the diagram we use a binary numeral system, and discuss whether the anti-Hegelian argument associated with it is valid or not. The reinterpretation is intended to make more precise rules of construction, a stricter binary code and a review of strengths and weaknesses of the critique.

Contemporary conversations about religion and culture are framed by two reductive definitions of secularity. In one, multiple faiths and nonfaiths coexist free from a dominant belief in God. In the other, we deny the sacred altogether and exclude religion from rational thought and behavior. But is there a third way for those who wish to rediscover the sacred in a skeptical society? What kind of faith, if any, can be proclaimed after the ravages of the Holocaust and the many religion-based (...) terrors since? Richard Kearney explores these questions with a host of philosophers known for their inclusive, forward-thinking work on the intersection of secularism, politics, and religion. An interreligious dialogue that refuses to paper over religious difference, these conversations locate the sacred within secular society and affirm a positive role for religion in human reflection and action. Drawing on his own philosophical formulations, literary analysis, and personal interreligious experiences, Kearney develops through these engagements a basic gesture of hospitality for approaching the question of God. His work facilitates a fresh encounter with our best-known voices in continental philosophy and their views on issues of importance to all spiritually minded individuals and skeptics: how to reconcile God's goodness with human evil, how to believe in both God and natural science, how to talk about God without indulging in fundamentalist rhetoric, and how to balance God's sovereignty with God's love. (shrink)

In the year 1714, Johann Christian Lange published a baroque textbook about a logic machine, supposed to simulate human cognitive abilities such as perception, judgement, and reasoning. From today’s perspective, it can be argued that this blueprint is based on an inference engine applied to a strict ontology which serves as a knowledge base. In this paper, I will first introduce Lange’s approach in the period of baroque logic and then present a diagrammatic modernization of Lange’s principles, entitled Calculus CL. (...) Finally, I would like to discuss the possibilities of how to apply CL to modern cases of concern by using an example from epidemiology. (shrink)

This paper discusses the role of levels and level-bound theoretical terms in neurobiological explanations under the presupposition of a regularity theory of constitution. After presenting the definitions for the constitution relation and the notion of a mechanistic level in the sense of the regularity theory, the paper develops a set of inference rules that allow to determine whether two mechanisms referred to by one or more accepted explanations belong to the same level, or to different levels. The rules are characterized (...) as underlying level distinctions in neuroscience research. (shrink)

A recent approach to the problem of logical omniscience holds that belief is question-sensitive: what an agent believes depends on what question they try to answer (Pérez Carballo, 2016; Yalcin, 2018; Hoek, 2022). While the question-sensitive approach can avoid some logical omniscience problems, we argue that it suffers from nearby problems. First, these accounts all validate closure principles that are just as implausible as the ones it was designed to avoid. Second, question-sensitivity by itself isn’t suitable for explaining many kinds (...) of failures of logical omniscience. Recognizing the flaws of this approach, however, naturally leads to a more promising solution. Our account generalizes the question-sensitive approach by appealing to (1) the defeasible nature of dispositions toward action associated with belief and (2) the algorithms an agent uses to make decisions. On our view, then, believing that φ means being disposed to employ an algorithm which outputs acting on the information that φ in normal circumstances associated with φ. We argue that this account naturally generalizes the question-sensitive accounts while avoiding their faults. (shrink)

In a recent article, I criticized Anthony L. Brueckner and John Martin Fischer’s influential argument—appealing to the rationality of our asymmetric attitudes towards past and future pleasures—against the Lucretian claim that death and prenatal non-existence are relevantly similar. Brueckner and Fischer have replied, however, that my critique involves an unjustified shift in temporal perspectives. In this paper, I respond to this charge and also argue that even if it were correct, it would fail to defend Brueckner and Fischer’s proposal against (...) my critique. (shrink)

+++Englisch Translation in "Proceedings of Schopenhauer Congresses 2018-2020 (JSPS)"+++ Der Beitrag geht der Frage nach, warum es in Arthur Schopenhauers System keine Abhandlung über japanische Gärten gibt. Zunächst wird erläutert, dass die Systemphilosophie des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts auf Vollständigkeit in der begrifflichen Darstellung abzielte. Schopenhauer behandelt daher neben vielen anderen Künsten auch die nationalen Besonderheiten der Gartenkunst in Europa und Asien und bestimmt begrifflich deren Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede. Aufgrund der Isolation Japans hatte Schopenhauer jedoch keine Kenntnis von japanischen Gärten. (...) Im letzten Teil des Aufsatzes wird argumentiert, dass japanische Gärten gut in Schopenhauers System gepasst hätten, da der Steingarten, der Teichgarten, der Moosgarten usw. gut mit den Ideen korrespondieren, die Schopenhauers Ästhetik begründen. (shrink)

In a recent Utilitas article, Neil Feit argues that every person occupies a well-being level of zero at all times and possible worlds at which she fails to exist. Views like his face the problem of the subject': how can someone have a well-being level in a scenario where she lacks intrinsic properties? Feit argues that this problem can be solved by noting, among other things, that a proposition about a person can be true at a possible world in which (...) neither she nor the proposition exists. In this response, we argue that Feit has not solved the problem of the subject, and also raise various related problems for his approach. (shrink)

In this paper, we present and defend an analysis of harm that we call the Negative Influence on Well-Being Account (NIWA). We argue that NIWA has a number of significant advantages compared to its two main rivals, the Counterfactual Comparative Account (CCA) and the Causal Account (CA), and that it also helps explain why those views go wrong. In addition, we defend NIWA against a class of likely objections, and consider its implications for several questions about harm and its role (...) in normative theorizing. (shrink)

Several attractive principles about prudential concern and moral responsibility seem to speak against animalism. I criticize some animalist responses to this kind of problem, and suggest another answer, which has similarites with the most important argument in favor of animalism: the “thinking animal” argument.

Around 1800, Johann Gottlieb Fichte's primary circle of recipients consisted not only of philosophers, but above all of theologians, religiously engaged laymen, educators, writers and caricaturists, medical practitioner, civil servants and lawyers. The entire reception in post-Kantian philosophy is limited to the years between 1792 and 1810. This period can be divided into two phases: namely the phase up to 1799, in which Fichte acquired students and followers, and the phase from 1799 onwards, in which Fichte's reception was related to (...) the atheism controversy. The discussion about Fichte began to wane in 1810, so that Beneke even claimed in 1833 that Fichte's philosophy "must be regarded as completely lost". Among others, the paper reports on Fichte's disciples such as August Ludwig Hülsen, Johann Gottfried Immanuel Berger, Johann Baptist Schad and sympathisers of Fichte such as Johann Christian Gottlieb Schaumann, Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer, Gottlieb Ernst Mehmel, and Johann Neeb. (shrink)

Moral criticism sometimes takes the form of asking: What if everyone acted the way you do? Such criticism seems to be grounded in some form of moral reasoning, which has in the past been the aim of various efforts of clarification, refutation and defense, in the guise of interpretations of Kant's Categorical Imperative as well as in Analytic Ethics. The book forms the first monographic attempt since decades to establish systematic order among contributions to the field. It examines a wide (...) spectrum of generalization procedures with respect to the plausibility of their outputs, analyses their shortcomings and arrives at novel results. (shrink)

According to the standard version of the counterfactual comparative account of harm, an event is overall harmful for an individual if and only if she would have been on balance better off if it had not occurred. This view faces the “preemption problem.” In the recent literature, there are various ingenious attempts to deal with this problem, some of which involve slight additions to, or modifications of, the counterfactual comparative account. We argue, however, that none of these attempts work, and (...) that the preemption problem continues to haunt the counterfactual comparative account. (shrink)

This paper discusses the constitution relation within the framework of the mechanistic approach to neurobiological explanation. It develops a regularity theory of constitution as an alternative to the manipulationist theory of constitution advocated by some of the proponents of the mechanistic approach. After the main problems of the manipulationist account of constitution have been reviewed, the regularity account is developed based on the notion of a minimal type relevance theory. A minimal type relevance theory expresses a minimally necessary condition of (...) a given type that consists of a disjunction of minimally sufficient conditions of that type. Afterwards, the attained definition is successfully applied in an analysis of the logical structure of the explanation of spatial learning and memory in rats as a paradigm neurobiological explanation. The overall result is a more robust and more precise version of the mechanistic approach to neurobiological explanations. (shrink)

The mechanistic view of computation contends that computational explanations are mechanistic explanations. Mechanists, however, disagree about the precise role that the environment – or the so-called “contextual level” – plays for computational explanations. We advance here two claims: Contextual factors essentially determine the computational identity of a computing system ; this means that specifying the “intrinsic” mechanism is not sufficient to fix the computational identity of the system. It is not necessary to specify the causal-mechanistic interaction between the system and (...) its context in order to offer a complete and adequate computational explanation. While the first claim has been discussed before, the second has been practically ignored. After supporting these claims, we discuss the implications of our contextualist view for the mechanistic view of computational explanation. Our aim is to show that some versions of the mechanistic view are consistent with the contextualist view, whilst others are not. (shrink)

The mechanistic view of computation contends that computational explanations are mechanistic explanations. Mechanists, however, disagree about the precise role that the environment – or the so-called “contextual level” – plays for computational explanations. We advance here two claims: Contextual factors essentially determine the computational identity of a computing system ; this means that specifying the “intrinsic” mechanism is not sufficient to fix the computational identity of the system. It is not necessary to specify the causal-mechanistic interaction between the system and (...) its context in order to offer a complete and adequate computational explanation. While the first claim has been discussed before, the second has been practically ignored. After supporting these claims, we discuss the implications of our contextualist view for the mechanistic view of computational explanation. Our aim is to show that some versions of the mechanistic view are consistent with the contextualist view, whilst others are not. (shrink)

Logic diagrams have been increasingly studied and applied for a few decades, not only in logic, but also in many other fields of science. The history of logic diagrams is an important subject, as many current systems and applications of logic diagrams are based on historical predecessors. While traditional histories of logic diagrams cite pioneers such as Leibniz, Euler, Venn, and Peirce, it is not widely known that Kant and the early Kantians in Germany and England played a crucial role (...) in popularising Euler(-type) diagrams. In this paper, the role of the Kantians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries will be analysed in more detail. It shows that diagrams (or intuition in general) were a highly contentious topic that depend on the philosophical attitude and went beyond logic to touch on issues of physics, metaphysics, linguistics and, above all, mathematics. (shrink)

The mechanistic view of computation contends that computational explanations are mechanistic explanations. Mechanists, however, disagree about the precise role that the environment – or the so-called “contextual level” – plays for computational explanations. We advance here two claims: Contextual factors essentially determine the computational identity of a computing system ; this means that specifying the “intrinsic” mechanism is not sufficient to fix the computational identity of the system. It is not necessary to specify the causal-mechanistic interaction between the system and (...) its context in order to offer a complete and adequate computational explanation. While the first claim has been discussed before, the second has been practically ignored. After supporting these claims, we discuss the implications of our contextualist view for the mechanistic view of computational explanation. Our aim is to show that some versions of the mechanistic view are consistent with the contextualist view, whilst others are not. (shrink)

The paper argues against the widely accepted assumption that the causal laws of (completed) physics, in contrast to those of the special sciences, are essentially strict. This claim played an important role already in debates about the anomalousness of the mental, and it currently experiences a renaissance in various discussions about mental causation, projectability of special science laws, and the nature of physical laws. By illustrating the distinction with some paradigmatic physical laws, the paper demonstrates that only law schemata are (...) strict whereas causal laws are generally non-strict. Several potential replies to this argument are discussed and rejected as unsound. (shrink)

Logic diagrams have seen a resurgence in their application in a range of fields, including logic, biology, media science, computer science and philosophy. Consequently, understanding the history and philosophy of these diagrams has become crucial. As many current diagrammatic systems in logic are based on ideas that originated in the 18th and 19th centuries, it is important to consider what motivated the use of logic diagrams in the past and whether these reasons are still valid today. This paper proposes that (...) transcendental philosophy was a key inspiration for the development of logic diagrams and that such diagrams can be employed in transcendental arguments, even after the linguistic turn. (shrink)

This work is a systematic investigation of a range of solutions offered today for the philosophical problem of mental causation. The premises constituting the problem are analyzed before a survey is developed of the most popular theories on mental causation. It is demonstrated in detail why most of these canonical solutions must be considered deficient. In a third part, the 'new compatibilist's' approach to mental causation is explored, which is characterized by assertion of a non-identity-but-non-distinctness principle. The last part aims (...) to offer an alternative solution to the problem. On the basis of a certain set of counterfactual conditionals, which are jointly taken to provide a definition of 'causal proportionality' that improves the existing definitions, it is shown that a specific, and hitherto widely neglected, version of causal overdeterminationism must be considered the most successful solution to the problem of mental causation. (shrink)

English summary: The book "Gnomica Democritea" takes a panoramic view of the fate of Democritus' ethics by establishing a connection between the lost body of works on ethics and the "gnomological" tradition which is at the core of Diels' collection of fragments attributed to Democritus. The focus of the study is on the early and middle period of the Byzantine gnomological tradition which had not yet been analysed so far, and it leads to some modifications of the canon of texts (...) established by Diels. Starting from a central "universal collection", the author traces the erratic ways of tradition of the Democritea with unprecedented precision, and this results in new insight about the Byzantine florilegia. German description: Das Buch "Gnomica Democritea" wirft einen Panoramablick auf das Schicksal der demokritischen Ethik, indem es Bezuge zwischen dem verlorenen ethischen Oeuvre und der "gnomologischen" Tradition herstellt, welche den Kern der von Diels gesammelten Demokritfragmente bildet. Der Untersuchungsschwerpunkt liegt auf der fur Demokrit bislang nicht ausgewerteten fruh- und mittelbyzantinischen Gnomentradition und erlaubt Modifikationen des Dielsschen Textkanons. Ausgehend von einer zentralen "Universalsammlung" werden die verschlungenen Uberlieferungswege der "Democritea" in bislang nicht gekannter Prazision ermittelt und neuartige Erkenntnisse uber die byzantinischen Florilegien gewonnen. (shrink)

In ethics, deductivism strives for self-evident premises as a foundation for normative claims, whereas coherentism seeks moral justification in relations between abstract normative claims and moral judgments. While Immanuel Kant is still widely believed to have pursued a deductivist project, the article contends that he endeavored to justify his moral philosophy in general as well as the Categorical Imperative in particular in the coherentist manner that has later on been advocated by John Rawls. First, the characteristics of Rawls’ method of (...) reflective equilibrium are summarized and traced within Kant’s writings. The resulting coherentist interpretation is then defended against the opposing view that Kant’s appeal to the ‘fact of reason’ proves his adherence to ethical intuitionism. (shrink)

Since it is hard to see how subjective rationality could be normative, a humbler, purely evaluative account of rationality’s importance has been suggested: rationality is a non-moral virtue, and rational action is good so far as it reveals that an agent ‘functions well’. This paper argues, however, that even this fallback position is threatened by ‘eccentric billionaire’ scenarios: sometimes, flouting purported coherence standards of rationality is maximally virtuous. In defense of the virtue account, I argue that a novel view of (...) rational constraints is called for: rationality requires a certain form of higher-order coherence – as considerations about instrumental coherence can show. (shrink)

Positivism, the predominant philosophy of Latin America’s elites at the end of the nineteenth century, found its exemplary expression in Brazil’s castilhismo and Mexico’s porfiriato. Argentina, in contrast, seemed to have deviated from the norm of ‘enlightened dictatorships’. After the end of the Rosas tyranny in 1852, authoritarianism had been discredited. Early positivism, as embodied by Teacher-President Sarmiento, could barely be distinguished from liberalism and no single political philosophy was able to exert hegemony. However, the significance of ‘scientific politics’ should (...) not be downplayed. As this article argues, the merger, in the 1880s, of Comtean positivism and teacher training revolutionised education policies that aimed at erasing frontier backwardness and inserting future generations into an export-led economy, oligarchic polity, and homogenous national organism. Normal schools, especially Sarmiento’s Escuela de Parana´, acted as laboratories for the assimilation, merger, and contestation of European, North American, and autochthonous scientific, philosophical, and pedagogical traditions. (shrink)

The author argues that polity and policies of Getúlio Vargas’s Estado Novo cannot be fully understood without exploring the legacy of Rio Grande do Sul. The southern state’s first republican governor, Júlio de Castilhos, had taken inspiration in Auguste Comte’s multifaceted political philosophy and inculcated its authoritarian traits into political institutions. Yet, he and his followers substantially adapted Comte’s positivism to the specific economic and political circumstances in their republiqueta sui generis. In contrast to Comte, the State merged temporal and (...) spiritual powers to pursue evolutionary political changes, a balanced socioeconomic modernisation, and the incorporation of the populus qua paternalistic public policies, and all this with a strong focus on education. Changing contexts resulted in further adjustments, when Vargas became governor in 1928: an ‘orderly’ inclusion of the opposition into the polity, a stronger state interventionism in the economy and labor market, and an experimentation with state corporatism. These experiences paved the way for this comtismo-turned-castilhismo-turning-varguismo to enter the national stage two years later. Despite all the compromises with other contenders for power that Vargas had to make thereafter, he and his gaúcho and other co-opted protégés remained united in the strong belief in technical solutions to social problems and a quest for rational institutions to carry out transformative policies. For them, the State was to be agent of development, tutor of corporate interest groups, and now also guarantor of national security. While highlighting the significant, and still underestimated, impact of French positivism on Vargas’s first 15 years in government, the article places emphasis on the pragmatic dimensions of its appropriation, propagation, and reinterpretation by two generations of state-builders. (shrink)

The essay examines Stanisław Brzozowski’s ideas on mutual interactions between the sphere of culture and the realm of the political. It shows how Brzozowski made use of literary texts in order to elucidate social and political processes. In doing so, he insisted on a specific form of knowledge accessible through texts of literature and literary criticism, which are not limited by the mere “logic of notions.” Following Vico and Sorel Brzozowski detected an “irrational core” at the bases of human collectivities (...) such as above all modern nations, and it is through literature that this core can be revealed. Brzozowski’s understanding of political ideas and concepts is informed—to a decisive degree—by the literary imagination. This can be shown by a semantic and rhetorical analysis of some of his later writings. (shrink)

This article discusses the problem of global democracy, and why democratic legitimacy seems so difficult to attain at the global level. I start by arguing that the difficulties we experience when we try to widen the scope of democratic governance beyond the boundaries of individual states have nothing to do with the characteristics of global society, but result from the underlying assumption that a political community has to be bounded and based on consent in order for democratic legitimacy to be (...) possible. I then explore how this view came into being, arguing that the perennial paradoxes of democratic legitimacy are little but results of earlier and successful attempts to make the concept of political community coextensive with that of the nation. Finally, I argue that once we let go of the idea that political communities have to be bounded and based on consent in order to qualify as democratic ones, the paradox of democratic legitimacy will look like a category mistake rather than an inescapable obstacle to global democracy. Keywords : cosmopolitanism, democratic paradox, legitimacy, global governance (Published online: 7 November 2008) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics. Vol. 1, No. 4, 2008, pp. 159-174. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v1i4.1858. (shrink)

Im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung steht die Analytik des Schonen in Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft. Es wird gezeigt, was Kant zu einer Geschmackskritik in transzendentaler Absicht motiviert und wie er in Form einer entdeckenden Analyse die Erklarung dafur zu finden sucht, warum reine asthetische Urteile mit einem Allgemeingultigkeitsanspruch auftreten konnen, auch wenn sie ihn nicht einlosen konnen. Kritische Betrachtungen der Einleitungen zur Kritik der Urteilskraft und Analysen von Kants Theorie der schonen Form und seiner Theorie der anhangenden Schonheit runden die Untersuchung (...) ab. Der zweiten Auflage der Abhandlung sind ein Register und ein langeres Nachwort beigegeben, das auf einige Titel der neueren Forschungsliteratur eingeht (Ginsborg, Fricke, Henrich, Otto). (shrink)

Spinozas und Humes Staatstheorien werden zuerst unter dem Aspekt der Staatsvertragstheorie verglichen, die von Hume kritisiert worden ist, während Spinoza sie zunächst vertreten hat. Es wird gezeigt, daß Spinoza, indem er diese Theorie später fallen ließ, ein Selbstkorrektur vorgenommen hat, weil die Staatsvertragstheorie unter Spinozas metaphysischen Prämissen haltlos ist. Spinoza und Hume werden dann unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Legitimität staatlicher Machtausübung verglichen. Hier liegen beide insofern nahe beieinander, als sie die Legitimität von Herrschaft auf die Erfüllung gewisser allgemeiner Staatszwecke gründen; (...) andererseits besteht die Differenz, daß Spinoza den bürgerlichen Gehorsam allein durch die überlegene Macht des Staates gewährleistet sieht, während Hume die These vertreten hat, daß die Autorität der Regierung niemals allein auf Macht, sondern vor allem auf der Überzeugung der Bürger von ihrem generellen Nutzen beruht. (shrink)

The ‘non-identity problem’ raises a well-known challenge to the person-affecting view, according to which an action can be wrong only if it affects someone for the worse. In a recent article, however, Thomas D. Bontly proposes a novel way to solve the non-identity problem in person-affecting terms. Bontly's argument is based on a contrastive causal account of harm. In this response, we argue that Bontly's argument fails even assuming that the contrastive causal account is correct.

IntroductionIf we were to identify the beginning of the study of visual argumentation, we would have to choose 1996 as the starting point. This was the year that Leo Groarke published “Logic, art and argument” in Informal logic, and it was the year that he and David Birdsell co-edited a special double issue of Argumentation and Advocacy on visual argumentation . Among other papers, the issue included Anthony Blair’s “The possibility and actuality of visual arguments”. It was also the year (...) that Gail J. Chryslee, Sonja K. Foss and Arthur L. Ranney published their short text on “The construction of claims in visual argumentation” , stating that even though theorists may know a great deal about the process of argumentation, “virtually none of this knowledge is applicable to visual argumentation […] because of the properties that distinguish visual imagery from discursive symbols” .Texts on visual rhetoric have been written as far back as the early 1980s, .. (shrink)

A prominent objection to the counterfactual comparative account of harm is that it classifies as harmful some events that are, intuitively, mere failures to benefit. In an attempt to solve this problem, Duncan Purves has recently proposed a novel version of the counterfactual comparative account, which relies on a distinction between making upshots happen and allowing upshots to happen. In this response, we argue that Purves’s account is unsuccessful. It fails in cases where an action makes the subject occupy a (...) high well-being level though one of the available alternatives would have made it even higher. In fact, it fails even in some cases where each of the available alternatives to the action that was actually performed would have made the subject’s well-being level lower. (shrink)