I summarize, in this informal interview, the main approaches to the ‘Past Hypothesis’, the postulation of a low-entropy initial state of the universe. I’ve chosen this as an open problem in the philosophical foundations of physics. I hope that this brief overview helps readers in gaining perspective and in appreciating the diverse range of approaches in this fascinating unresolved debate.

Introduction , Sophie Gibb 1. Mental Causation , John Heil 2. Physical Realization without Preemption , Sydney Shoemaker 3. Mental Causation in the Physical World , Peter Menzies 4. Mental Causation: Ontology and Patterns of Variation , Paul Noordhof 5. Causation is Macroscopic but not Irreducible , David Papineau 6. Substance Causation, Powers, and Human Agency , E. J. Lowe 7. Agent Causation in a Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics , Jonathan D. Jacobs and Timothy O’Connor 8. Mental Causation and Double Prevention , (...) Sophie Gibb 9. The Identity Theory as a Solution to the Exclusion Problem , David Robb 10. Continuant Causation, Fundamentality, and Freedom , Peter Simons 11. There is no Exclusion Problem , Steinvor Tholl Arnadottir and Tim Crane. (shrink)

This paper challenges David Chalmers' proposed division of the problems of consciousness into the `easy' ones and the `hard' one, the former allegedly being susceptible to explanation in terms of computational or neural mechanisms and the latter supposedly turning on the fact that experiential `qualia' resist any sort of functional definition. Such a division, it is argued, rests upon a misrepresention of the nature of human cognition and experience and their intimate interrelationship, thereby neglecting a vitally important insight of Kant. (...) From a Kantian perspective, our capacity for conceptual thought is so inextricably bound up with our capacity for phenomenal consciousness that it is an illusion to imagine that there are any `easy' problems of consciousness, resolvable within the computational or neural paradigms. (shrink)

E. J. Lowe; The problem of the many and the vagueness of constitution, Analysis, Volume 55, Issue 3, 1 July 1995, Pages 179–182, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Varieties of ‘Is’ Individuals, Kinds, and Realism Semantics, Metaphysics, and Necessity New Developments.

E. J. Lowe; The problems of intrinsic change: rejoinder to Lewis, Analysis, Volume 48, Issue 2, 1 March 1988, Pages 72–77, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/48.2.7.

This paper falls into three parts. In the first I retrace the steps which, have led many to consider that there is a ‘problem of induction’ which may have only a sceptical solution. In the second I explain why I think we cannot rest content with such a solution. In the third I try to show how a new approach to certain key concepts in the philosophy of science—in particular the concept of natural law —may help towards a non-sceptical (...) resolution of the problem. (shrink)

Non-Cartesian substance dualism maintains that persons or selves are distinct from their organic physical bodies and any parts of those bodies. It regards persons as ‘substances’ in their own right, but does not maintain that persons are necessarily separable from their bodies, in the sense of being capable of disembodied existence. In this paper, it is urged that NCSD is better equipped than either Cartesian dualism or standard forms of physicalism to explain the possibility of mental causation. A model of (...) mental causation adopting the NCSD perspective is proposed which, it is argued, is consistent with all that is currently known about the operations of the human central nervous system, including the brain. Physicalism, by contrast, seems ill-equipped to explain the distinctively intentional or teleological character of mental causation, because it effectively reduces all such causation to ‘blind’ physical causation at a neurological level. (shrink)

There is a widespread assumption that the classical work in philosophical semantics of Saul Kripke (1980) and Hilary Putnam (1975) has taught us that the essences of natural kinds of substances, such as water and gold, are discoverable only a posteriori by scientific investigation. It is such investigation, thus, that has supposedly revealed to us that it is an essential property of water that it is composed of H2O molecules. This is the way in which Scott Soames, in a recent (...) paper, makes the point in the case of water and H2O: [Here is] how a Kripkean explanation of the necessary a posteriority of [‘Water = H2O’] would go – or at any rate my version of it. The account holds that ‘water’ is a non-descriptive, directly-referential term designating a substance – where substances are taken to be physically constitutive kinds (instances of which share the same basic physical constitution). It is further assumed that a kind of this sort may have different instances in different world-states, and that if a and b are kinds with the same instances in all possible world-states, then a is b. These are clearly metaphysical assumptions, to which we add the natural corollary that for any substance, s, if, in some possible world-state, instances of s have a certain molecular structure, then instances of s have that structure in every world-state. In other words, we assume that it is an essential property of a substance that instances of it have the molecular structure they do. From this it follows that [‘Water = H2O’] is necessary if true, and that ‘H2O’– which I take to be equivalent to ‘the substance instances of which have a molecular structure with two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom’– is a rigid designator. Being true, [‘Water = H2O’] is, therefore, necessary. Since knowing the proposition it expresses requires knowing of a certain substance that its instances have a particular chemical structure, [‘Water = H2O’] is knowable only a posteriori. (Soames 2007: 36). (shrink)

In this book Jonathan Lowe offers a lucid and wide-ranging introduction to the philosophy of mind. Using a problem-centred approach designed to stimulate as well as instruct, he begins with a general examination of the mind-body problem and moves on to detailed examination of more specific philosophical issues concerning sensation, perception, thought and language, rationality, artificial intelligence, action, personal identity and self-knowledge. His discussion is notably broad in scope, and distinctive in giving equal attention to deep metaphysical questions (...) concerning the mind and to the discoveries and theories of modern scientific psychology. It will be of interest to any reader with a basic grounding in modern philosophy. (shrink)

Argues that there can be interaction without breaking physical laws: e.g. by basic psychic forces, or by varying physical constants, or especially by arranging fractal trees of physical causation leading to behavior.

Why does the problem of free will seem so intractable? I surmise that in large measure it does so because the free will debate, at least in its modern form, is conducted in terms of a mistaken approach to causality in general. At the heart of this approach is the assumption that all causation is fundamentally event causation. Of course, it is well-known that some philosophers of action want to invoke in addition an irreducible notion of agent causation, applicable (...) only in the sphere of intelligent agency. But such a view is generally dismissed as incompatible with the naturalism that has now become orthodoxy amongst mainstream analytical philosophers of mind. What I want to argue is that substances, not events, are the primary relata of causal relations and that agent causation should properly be conceived of as a species of substance causation. I shall try to show that by thus reconceiving the nature of causation and of agency, the problem of free will can be made more tractable. I shall also argue for a contention that may seem even less plausible at first sight, namely, that such a view of agency is perfectly compatible with a volitionist theory of action. (shrink)

Hume's famous discussion of miracles in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is curious both on account of the arguments he does deploy and on account of the arguments he does not deploy, but might have been expected to. The first and second parts of this paper will be devoted to examining, respectively, these two objects of curiosity. The second part I regard as the more important, because I shall there try to show that the fact that Hume does not deploy (...) an argument that he might have been expected to deploy in fact reflects a weakness in the view of natural laws that has come to be associated with Hume's name. I shall argue, in fact, that it is a symptom of the defectiveness of the ‘Humean’ view of natural laws that on that view it is only too easy to rule out the possibility of a miracle ever occurring. In the third part of the paper, I shall show how another view of laws can overcome this problem. (shrink)

This paper challenges David Chalmers' proposed division of the problems of consciousness into the `easy' ones and the `hard' one, the former allegedly being susceptible to explanation in terms of computational or neural mechanisms and the latter supposedly turning on the fact that experiential `qualia' resist any sort of functional definition. Such a division, it is argued, rests upon a misrepresention of the nature of human cognition and experience and their intimate interrelationship, thereby neglecting a vitally important insight of Kant. (...) From a Kantian perspective, our capacity for conceptual thought is so inextricably bound up with our capacity for phenomenal consciousness that it is an illusion to imagine that there are any `easy' problems of consciousness, resolvable within the computational or neural paradigms. (shrink)

'Object' and 'criterion of identity' are philosophical terms of art whose application lies at a considerable theoretical remove from the surface phenomena of everyday linguistic usage. This partly explains their highly controversial status, for their point of application lies precisely where the concerns of linguists and philosophers of language merge with those of metaphysicians. This chapter explains the possession of determinate identity‐conditions. It argues that the distinction between 'abstract' and 'concrete' objects is itself a highly controversial one, and although it (...) has indeed been argued that this distinction turns ultimately upon differences between the criteria of identity governing objects of these two broad categories. It examines the role which criteria of identity play in our talk about objects of the least controversial varieties. The chapter concerns the problem of identity over time and the paradoxes to which identity criteria often appear to give rise when time is brought into the picture. (shrink)

Taylor's book Sources of the Self faces the tasks of showing how persons are situated in moral traditions and how these can be used in moral arguments. ?Moral traditions? cover answers to questions of the meaning of life, of the good life and of justice. The first part of this paper deals with the relationship of persons with moral traditions. Do people have to make sense of their lives, do they have to distinguish between worthy and unworthy ways of living? (...) It is argued that people have a strong need to answer these questions; life would be unbearable without biographical narratives; living without orientation towards the good is an existential impossibility. Taylor's theory is evaluative in the sense that his transcendental conditions of personhood are necessary because they fulfil a practical need. The second part of the paper examines the use of articulating moral traditions. It is claimed that they can be useful in practical discourse but that they presuppose the moral point of view. Moral traditions answer the question why people are worthy of respect, but not why we should ask that question. It is argued that a minimal version of the principle of equal respect is built into the structure of communication, so that we have no choice but to ask for the normative justification of relationships. (shrink)

Why does the problem of free will seem so intractable? I surmise that in large measure it does so because the free will debate, at least in its modern form, is conducted in terms of a mistaken approach to causality in general. At the heart of this approach is the assumption that all causation is fundamentally event causation. Of course, it is well-known that some philosophers of action want to invoke in addition an irreducible notion of agent causation, applicable (...) only in the sphere of intelligent agency. But such a view is generally dismissed as incompatible with the naturalism that has now become orthodoxy amongst mainstream analytical philosophers of mind. What I want to argue is that substances, not events, are the primary relata of causal relations and that agent causation should properly be conceived of as a species of substance causation. I shall try to show that by thus reconceiving the nature of causation and of agency, the problem of free will can be made more tractable. I shall also argue for a contention that may seem even less plausible at first sight, namely, that such a view of agency is perfectly compatible with a volitionist theory of action. (shrink)

Mental causation has been a hotly disputed topic in recent years, with reductive and non-reductive physicalists vying with each other and with dualists over how to accommodate, or else to challenge, two widely accepted metaphysical principles—the principle of the causal closure of the physical domain and the principle of causal non-overdetermination—which together appear to support reductive physicalism, despite the latter’s lack of intuitive appeal. Current debate about these matters appears to have reached something of an impasse, prompting the question of (...) why this should be so. One possibility well worth exploring is that, while this debate makes extensive use of ontological vocabulary—by talking, for instance, of substances, events, states, properties, powers, and relations—relatively little attempt has been made within the debate itself to achieve either clarity or agreement about what, precisely, such terms should be taken to mean. Hence, the debate has become somewhat detached from broader developments in metaphysics and ontology, which have lately been proceeding apace, providing us with an increasingly rich and refined set of ontological categories upon which to draw, as well as a much deeper understanding of how they are related to one another. In preparing this volume, the editors invited leading metaphysicians and philosophers of mind to reflect afresh upon the problem of mental causation in the light of some of these recent developments, with a view to making new headway with one of the most challenging and seemingly intractable issues in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify the consequences of new scientific and philosophical approaches for the practical-theoretical framework of modern developmental biology. I highlight normal development, and the instructive-permissive distinction, as key parts of this framework which shape how variation is conceptualised and managed. Furthermore, I establish the different dimensions of biological variation: the units, temporality and mode of variation. Using the analytical frame established by this, I interpret a selection of examples as challenges to the instructive-permissive distinction. These examples include (...) the phenomena of developmental plasticity and transdifferentiation, the role of the microbiome in development, and new methodological approaches to standardisation and the assessment of causes. Furthermore, I argue that investigations into organismal development should investigate the effects of a wider range of kinds of variation including variation in the units, modes and temporalities of development. I close by examining various possible opportunities for producing and using normal development free of the assumptions of the instructive-permissive distinction. These opportunities are afforded by recent developments, which include new ways of producing standards incorporating more natural variation and being based on function rather than structure, and the ability to produce, store, and process large quantities of data. (shrink)

We review recent anticipatory looking and violation-of-expectancy studies suggesting that infants and young preschoolers have spontaneous (implicit) understanding of mind despite their known problems until later in life on elicited (explicit) tests of false-belief reasoning. Straightforwardly differentiating spontaneous and elicited expressions of complex mental state understanding in relation to an implicit-explicit knowledge framework may be challenging; early action predictions may be based on behavior rules that are complementary to the mentalistic attributions under consideration. We discuss that the way forward for (...) diagnosing early mentalism is to analyze whether young candidate mind-readers’ visual orienting cohere across different belief-formation by belief-use combinations. Adopting this formal cognitive analysis, we conclude that whilst some studies come tantalizingly close to sign-posting mentalism in infants and young children’s spontaneous responses, the bulk of evidence for early mentalism grades into behaviorism. (shrink)

We describe the solution of the Limit Rule Problem of Revision Theory and discuss the philosophical consequences of the fact that the truth set of Revision Theory is a complete 1/2 set.

It is a matter of dispute whether we should acknowledge the existence of two distinct species of causation – event causation and agent causation – and, if we should, whether either species of causation is reducible to the other. In this paper, the prospects for such a reduction either way are considered, the conclusion being that a reduction of event causation to agent causation is the more promising option. Agent causation, in the sense understood here, is taken to include but (...) not to be restricted to the intentional causation of an event by a rational agent. But, it is argued, there are certain special features of intentional causation, understood as a sub-species of agent causation, which make the agent-causation approach to human agency a particularly promising one with which to tackle the problem of free will. (shrink)

We provide a list of open problems in the research area of generalised Baire spaces, compiled with the help of the participants of two workshops held in Amsterdam (2014) and Hamburg (2015).

It is widely held that the Experience Machine is the basis of a serious objection to Hedonistic theories of welfare. It is also widely held that Desire Satisfactionist theories of welfare can readily avoid problems stemming from the Experience Machine. But in this paper, we argue that if the Experience Machine poses a serious problem for Hedonism, it also poses a serious problem for Desire Satisfactionism. We raise two objections to Desire Satisfactionism, each of which relies on the (...) Experience Machine. The first is very much like the well-known Experience Machine objection to Hedonism. The second asks whether someone who accepts Desire Satisfactionism should want to form a desire to plug into the Experience Machine. (shrink)

As developed and developing countries move towards greater technological development in the 21st century, the need for engineers has increased substantially. Japan is facing the dilemma of insufficient engineers; therefore, the country has to rely on foreign workers. This problem may be resolved if there is a continuous effort to increase the number of women engineers, who currently represent only 1%–2% of engineers in Japan. In this study, the satisfaction level of the learning experience of Japanese female engineering students (...) was measured to determine its relationship with the students’ intention to choose engineering as their profession. Socio-cultural influences on the respondents’ intentions to pursue careers in the field were also studied. The findings revealed that learning experience was directly related to female students’ intention to pursue their career in engineering whereas socio-cultural values of a society have strong influences on students’ motivation to pursue careers in engineering in general. Additionally, some strategies are proposed to attract young girls to pursue engineering courses, as well as for current female engineering students to continue their studies and choose professions in the field as their career. (shrink)

This paper falls into three parts. In the first I retrace the steps which, have led many to consider that there is a ‘problem of induction’ which may have only a sceptical solution. In the second I explain why I think we cannot rest content with such a solution. In the third I try to show how a new approach to certain key concepts in the philosophy of science—in particular the concept of natural law—may help towards a non-sceptical resolution (...) of the problem. (shrink)

So far as we can judge from his one completely preserved play and extensive fragments of others, Menander carefully worked out the movements of his characters on and off stage, so as to give an appearance of realism, within certain conventions, and avoid inconsistencies that might distract the audience. Menander's observed practice confirms the famous anecdote, according to which he regarded the construction of a plot as of primary importance, adding the lines as secondary. Thus a character who returns to (...) the stage after an earlier exit always re-enters through the same stage door or wing by which he made his exit; if, for example, he makes his exit in the direction of the market-place, he will be seen by the audience to return from there. Although the ancient evidence is confused, it seems clear, at least, that convention allowed the Athenian audience to regard one wing as leading to the market-place, the other to the country. Similarly, dramatic time is carefully articulated by means of the conventional choral interludes which divide a play into five acts. Some acceleration of dramatic time is possible within an act, but major lapses of dramatic time take place between acts; if a character makes an off-stage trip of some length, for example to the market-place, his exit and re-entry are separated by a choral interlude. Within the act a strict unity of time is maintained and dramatic time does not greatly exceed performance time. (shrink)

Objects which philosophers have traditionally categorized as abstract are standardly referred to by complex noun phrases of certain canonical forms, such as ‘the set of Fs’, ‘the number of Fs’, ‘the proposition that P’, and ‘the property of being F’. It is no accident that such noun phrases are well-suited to appear in ‘Fregean’ identity-criteria, or ‘abstraction’ principles, for which Frege’s criterion of identity for cardinal numbers provides the paradigm. Notoriously, such principlesare apt to create paradoxes, and the most intuitively (...) plausible ‘Fregean’ identity-criterion for properties is afflicted by this problem. In this case, it may be possible to overcome the difficulty by modifying the criterion in a way which requires an independent account of the existence-conditions of properties, but it appears that such a strategy demands acceptance of the doctrine of immanent realism—the view that a property exists only if it is exemplified by some object. (shrink)

Previous research (Kielbasa, Pomerantz, Krohn, & Sullivan, 2004; Pomerantz & Segrist, 2006) indicates that when psychologists consider a client with symptoms of depression or anxiety, payment method significantly influences diagnostic decisions. This study extends the scope of the previous research to consider clients with symptoms of social phobia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Psychologists in independent practice responded to vignettes of clients whose descriptions deliberately included subclinical impairment. Half of the participants were told that the clients would pay via (...) managed care; the other half were told that the clients would pay out-of-pocket. Confirming previous studies, payment method had a highly significant impact on diagnosis such that compared to out-of-pocket clients, managed care clients were much more likely to be assigned Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [DSM-IV]; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) diagnoses. Ethical implications relate to informed consent, accuracy and truthfulness in diagnosis, and psychologists' integrity. (shrink)

We look at bimodal logics interpreted by cartesian products of topological spaces and discuss the validity of certain bimodal formulae in products of so-called cardinal spaces. This solves an open problem of van Benthem et al.

Are persons substances or modes? Two currently dominant views may be characterized as giving the following rival answers to this question. According to the first view, persons are just biological substances. According to the second, persons are psychological modes of substances which, as far as human beings are concerned, happen to be biological substances, but which could in principle be non-biological. There is, however, also a third possible answer, and this is that persons are psychological substances. Such a view is (...) inevitably associated with the name of Descartes, and this helps to explain its current unpopularity, since substantial dualism of his sort is now widely rejected as ‘unscientific’. But one may, as I hope to show, espouse the view that persons are psychological substances without endorsing Cartesianism. This is because one may reject certain features of Descartes's conception of substance. Consequently, one may also espouse a version of substantial dualism which is distinctly non-Cartesian. One may hold that a person, being a psychological substance, is an entity distinct from the biological substance that is his or her body, and yet still be prepared to ascribe corporeal characteristics to this psychological substance. By this account, a human person is to be thought of neither as a non-corporeal mental substance, nor as the product of a mysterious ‘union’ between such a substance and a physical, biological substance. This is not to deny that the mind—body problem is a serious and difficult one, but it is to imply that there is a version of substantial dualism which does not involve regarding the ‘mind’ as a distinct substance in its own right. (shrink)

This paper assesses the effect of DNA barcoding—the use of informative genetic markers to identify and discriminate between species—on taxonomy. Throughout, we interpret this in terms of _varipraxis_, a concept we introduce to make sense of the treatment of biological variation by scientists and other practitioners. From its inception, DNA barcoding was criticised for being reductive, in attempting to replace multiple forms of taxonomic evidence with just one: DNA sequence variation in one or a few indicative genes. We show, though, (...) how DNA barcoding has not narrowed or reduced taxonomy in the way it was projected to. We examine the development and implementation of DNA barcoding across three kingdoms of life: animals, plants, and protists. Through this, we demonstrate that for DNA barcoding to work, the range of acceptable intra-specific variation needs to be demarcated from variation deemed to be characteristic of inter-specific differences. Consequently, biological processes responsible for particular patterns of variation need to be investigated and understood. This encourages an integrative disposition towards understanding and explaining the evolutionary processes affecting the rate and nature of change at the nucleotide level. We detail how the impact of DNA barcoding has manifested differently across the three kingdoms we examine, assessing this in terms of the ontological commitments that are held and instantiated in practice. Based on this evaluation, we consider the problem of studying multi-kingdom communities, and assess the consequences of our analysis for understanding classification and taxonomy. (shrink)

This article examines environmental communication from within an enquiry perspective. It is argued that dissent is a vital part of any enquiry into environmental issues. Aspects of Charles S. Peirce's semiotic logic are introduced and discussed with reference to environmental communication and dissent. Environmental problems are shown to be at root disconnections between the sign use of humans and the sign use of an environment. Such disconnections arise when dissenting voices from an environment are ignored, misinterpreted, or suppressed. It is (...) concluded that a semiotic approach to environmental communication offers a valuable insight into how dissent functions to resolve environmental disconnections. (shrink)

A common exhortation by conservationists suggests that we can solve ecological problems by returning to the attitudes of traditional societies: reverence for resources, and willingness to assume short-term individual costs for long-term, group-beneficial sustainable management. This paper uses the 186-society Standard Cross-Cultural Sample to examine resource attitudes and practices. Two main findings emerge: (1) resource practices are ecologically driven and do not appear to correlate with attitude (including sacred prohibition) and (2) the low ecological impact of many traditional societies results (...) not from conscious conservation efforts, but from various combinations of low population density, inefficient extraction technology, and lack of profitable markets for extracted resources. (shrink)

The wedge problem, that is, the propagation of radiation or particles in the presence of a wedge, is examined in different contexts. Generally, the paper follows the historical order from Sommerfeld's early work to recent stochastic results—hindsights and new results being woven in as appropriate. In each context, identifying the relevant mathematical problem has been the key to the solution. Thus each section can be given both a physics and a mathematics title: Section 2: diffraction by reflecting wedge; (...) boundary value problem of differential equations; solutions defined on mutiply connected spaces. Section 3: geometrical theory of diffraction; identificiation of function spaces. Section 4: path integral solutions; path integration on multiply connected spaces; asymptotics on the boundaries of function spaces. Section 5: probing the shape of the wedge and the roughness of its surface; stochastic calculus. Several propagators and Green functions are given explicitly, some old ones and some new ones. They include the knife-edge propagator for Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions, the absorbing knife edge propagator, the wedge propagators, the propagator for a free particle on a μ-sheeted Riemann surface, the Dirichlet and the Neumann wedge Green function. (shrink)

Life, and therefore evolution, is a creative process; creativity is not an attribute of a few gifted people. The way we think obscures this truth. Three ways of dealing with a problem are creativity, calculation, and choice. Creativity can occur when a single idea is held in two contradictory frames of reference. Thus to be creative we have to put aside our usual ways of thinking, which are based on either/or. When we put aside this way of thinking we (...) will see that things do not change: they are change. (shrink)

_History of Education: Major Themes_ brings together some of the most significant and influential writing on the history of education during the past thirty years. It illustrates the key themes on which historians of education have worked during this period and shows their relevance for our understanding of the development of schooling and education systems worldwide. The four volumes are structured so that readers will see clearly what is distinctive about the study of the history of education in different parts (...) of the English-speaking world. They will also gain an insight into the ways in which historians have increasingly identified common themes and problems which are of significance well beyond the boundaries of individual nations. This collection will be of interest to all who wish to enhance their understanding of the development and impact of education systems and schooling in the modern world. (shrink)

Background: Increasing use of genetic technologies in clinical and research settings increases the potential for misattributed paternity to be identified. Yet existing guidance from the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Biomedical and Behavioral Research and the Institute of Medicine (among others) offers contradictory advice. Genetic health professionals are thus likely to vary in their practice when misattributed paternity is identified, and empirical investigation into the disclosure of misattributed paternity is scarce. Given the relevance of this ethical (...) dilemma and its significance to users of genetic services, this study aimed to investigate the attitudes of lay people with regard to the disclosure of misattributed paternity. Methods: An online questionnaire was hosted and advertised through Amazon's Mechanical Turk to 200 United States residents aged 18 years or older. Respondents were asked to rate (via a Likert scale) the ethical permissibility of possible actions a clinician may carry out when misattributed paternity is identified. Data analysis consisted of preliminary descriptive analysis, chi-squared analysis, and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. Results: There was no clear majority support for many of the options surveyed across different contexts, with only six out of ten scenarios displaying some general consensus. Men were more likely to support scenarios where the father is informed of paternity. Importantly, participants' views varied according to whether the desires of the father were previously expressed, suggesting that perceptions of the permissibility of a clinician's action will depend on the interests of all parties affected. Conclusions: This sample of the general public showed attitudes that were, at least to some degree, at variance with some professional guidelines. We give arguments for why at least some of these attitudes might be justified. We argue that case-specific judgments should be made and outline some of the relevant ethical considerations. While general guidelines ought to be considered, context-specific moral judgments cannot be avoided. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s late lecture course on Heidegger is primarily concerned with probing the possibility of a phenomenological ontology. Merleau-Ponty’s lectures provide a rather straightforward presentation of Heidegger’s later thought, without elaborate commentary or criticism. However, Merleau-Ponty does favor Heidegger’s later move toward an indirect expression of Being but does not think that he consistently maintains this view. By the time that we reach the end of Merleau-Ponty’s lecture course, we begin to see a number of differences between the two philosophers come (...) into play, with Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy solving more problems than that of his German counterpart. (shrink)

With the advent of new technology and imaging techniques that measure brain activity and with the development of the computer as a model for human thinking, it is not surprising to find many authors currently addressing issues regarding brain function and themind/body problem. What is perhaps surprising, given the absence of these techniques at the time, is that Merleau-Ponty addresses these same issues with a rigor and insight that equals, and perhaps even exceeds, most current philosophical studies. Merleau-Ponty’s frequently (...) ignored early work, The Structure of Behavior, contains a wealth of analysis still relevant to current biological and neurophysiological studies and to the philosophical consequences frequently drawn from them. Merleau-Ponty critically addresses not only theories that attempt to understand human behavior as the linear calculation of discrete physiological events but also theories that would explain human behavior simply by appealing to abstract conceptual analysis. His theory of emergent materialism focuses on the human body as a concrete organic whole that can be reduced neither to linear physical events nor to abstract conceptual relations. Understanding the human being requires a theory that recognizes the human body as an original whole, that is, that recognizes a body that intimately integrates mind and matter. It is this theory that Merleau-Ponty first articulates in The Structure of Behavior. It is the main themes of this theory that I will attempt to reveal here. (shrink)