Prioritarianism is a moral view that ranks outcomes according to the sum of a strictly increasing and strictly concave transformation of individual well-being. Prioritarianism is ‘welfarist’ (namel...

This paper addresses the nature of sensed-presence experiences that are commonplace among the bereaved and occur cross-culturally. Although these experiences are often labelled ‘‘bereavement hallucinations’’, it is unclear what they consist of. Some seem to involve sensory experiences in one or more modalities, while others involve a non-specificfeelingorsenseof presence. I focus on a puzzle concerning the latter: it is unclear how an experience of someone’s presence could arise without a more specific sensory content. I suggest that at least some of (...) these experiences consist in a dynamic and non-localized experience of significant and salientpossibilities. This can amount to the sense of currentlyrelating toa particular individual and, by implication, a sense of that person’s presence. Where an experience of this kind also includes sensory qualities, they are inessential to the sense of relatedness and perhaps symptomatic of it. (shrink)

Ideal theory has been extensively contested on the grounds that it is ideology: namely, that it performs the distorting social role of reifying and enforcing unjust features of the status quo. Indeed, a growing number of philosophers adopt a nonideal methodology—which dispenses with ideal theory—because of this ideology critique. I argue, however, that such philosophers are confused about the ultimate dialectical upshot of this critique even if it succeeds. I do so by constructing a parallel—equally plausible—ideology critique of nonideal methodology; (...) specifically, I argue that capitalist and managerial social attitudes have commodified people’s conception of justice and induced suspicion of ideal theory, which is not construed as having direct practical value. Consequently, nonideal methodology performs the distorting role of reifying and enforcing the hegemonies of capitalism and managerialism. Ideal theory and nonideal methodology are, therefore, in symmetrically bad positions. (shrink)

This paper attempts to show how Adorno’s thought can illuminate our reflections on the future of work. It does so by situating Adorno’s conception of genuine activity in relation to his negativist critical epistemology and his subtle account of the distinction between true and false needs. What emerges is an understanding of work that can guide our aspirations for the future of work, and one we illustrate via discussions of creative work and care work. These are types of work which (...) cater to persistent human needs, albeit ones that are distorted under present social conditions. Adorno’s thought helps us to understand why this is the case. (shrink)

Author note: Matthew Lipman, Professor of Philosophy at Montclair State College and Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, is ...

Local food is often defended on environmental grounds. However, environmental defenses of local food are flawed, and all environmental defenses are limited as they at most establish that local food is instrumentally valuable. These deficiencies motivate a different approach. By drawing on the aesthetics of engagement, a theory of environmental aesthetics, I argue that local food has an overlooked intrinsic value; it can allow people to become engaged with—and thereby aesthetically appreciate—the environment. My argument charts a comparatively neglected area of (...) aesthetics: the aesthetics of taste and smell and, more specifically, the role that these senses play in the aesthetic appreciation of the environment. (shrink)

This Article provides a comprehensive, critical overview of proposals to use happiness surveys for steering public policy. Happiness or “subjective well-being” surveys ask individuals to rate their present happiness, life-satisfaction, affective state, etc. A massive literature now engages in such surveys or correlates survey responses with individual attributes. And, increasingly, scholars argue for the policy relevance of happiness data: in particular, as a basis for calculating aggregates such as “gross national happiness,” or for calculating monetary equivalents for non-market goods based (...) on coefficients in a happiness equation. But is individual well-being equivalent to happiness? The happiness literature tends to blur or conflate important concepts: well-being, subjective well-being, happiness, utility, satisfaction. A preference-realization account of well-being denies the equivalence of happiness and welfare, since someone can have preferences for non-mental attributes, such as health, autonomy, goal-fulfillment, knowledge or the quality of her relationships. It is critical, therefore, to differentiate two potential policy roles for happiness surveys. First, the survey response may provide prima facie evidence of the respondent’s preference-utility: the extent to which her preferences are realized. Second, it may indicate her experience-utility: the quality of her mental states. The Article clarifies these two, very different, ideas. It then criticizes, in turn, the preference-utility and the experience-utility defenses of the policy relevance of happiness surveys. Enthusiasm about happiness is premature. (shrink)

This paper builds upon, but substantially revises, John Harsanyi's concept of ‘extended preferences’. An individual ‘history’ is a possible life that some person (a subject) might lead. Harsanyi supposes that a given spectator, formulating her ethical preferences, can rank histories by empathetic projection: putting herself ‘in the shoes’ of various subjects. Harsanyi then suggests that interpersonal comparisons be derived from the utility function representing spectators’ (supposedly common) ranking of history lotteries. Unfortunately, Harsanyi's proposal has various flaws, including some that have (...) hitherto escaped scholarly attention. In particular, it ignores the limits of personal identity. If the subject has welfare-relevant attributes that the spectator cannot acquire without changing who she is, full empathetic identification of the latter with the former becomes impossible. This paper proposes instead to usesympathyas the attitude on a spectator's part that allows us to make sense of her extended preferences. Sympathy – an attitude of care and concern – is a psychological state quite different from empathy. We should also allow for hetereogeneity in spectators’ extended preferences. Interpersonal comparisons emerge from a plurality of sympathetic spectators, not (as per Harsanyi) from a common empathetic ranking. (shrink)

:Preference-aggregation problems arise in various contexts. One such context, little explored by social choice theorists, is metaethical. ‘Ideal-advisor’ accounts, which have played a major role in metaethics, propose that moral facts are constituted by the idealized preferences of a community of advisors. Such accounts give rise to a preference-aggregation problem: namely, aggregating the advisors’ moral preferences. Do we have reason to believe that the advisors, albeit idealized, can still diverge in their rankings of a given set of alternatives? If so, (...) what are the moral facts when the advisors do diverge? These questions are investigated here using the tools of Arrovian social choice theory. (shrink)

John N. Williams (1994) and Matthew Weiner (2005) invoke predictions in order to undermine the normative relevance of knowledge for assertions; in particular, Weiner argues, predictions are important counterexamples to the Knowledge Account of Assertion (KAA). I argue here that they are not true counterexamples at all, a point that can be agreed upon even by those who reject KAA.

Support vector machines are being used increasingly in affective science as a data-driven classification method and feature reduction technique. Whereas traditional statistical methods typically compare group averages on selected variables, SVMs use a predictive algorithm to learn multivariate patterns that optimally discriminate between groups. In this review, we provide a framework for understanding the methods of SVM-based analyses and summarize the findings of seminal studies that use SVMs for classification or data reduction in the behavioral and neural study of emotion (...) and affective disorders. We conclude by discussing promising directions and potential applications of SVMs in future research in affective science. (shrink)

What do mathematicians mean when they use terms such as ‘deep’, ‘elegant’, and ‘beautiful’? By applying empirical methods developed by social psychologists, we demonstrate that mathematicians' appraisals of proofs vary on four dimensions: aesthetics, intricacy, utility, and precision. We pay particular attention to mathematical beauty and show that, contrary to the classical view, beauty and simplicity are almost entirely unrelated in mathematics.

Students are expected to develop the intellectual capacity needed to accurately portray other world societies. Few research studies in social studies education, however, draw on a systematic textbook analysis to investigate global perspectives on non-Western societies such as those found in African nations. Situated in framing theory, this study employs a qualitative content analysis approach to examine textual and visual curricular representations of non-Western societies framed in the content of four U.S. world history/cultures and geography textbooks by considering specifically how (...) Nigeria, a very large, relatively wealthy and complex African nation, is represented. The results provide insights into curricular perspectives in U.S. classrooms about non-Western societies, particularly regarding national narratives. Deficit perspectives are the dominant frame so students are primed to construct social reality from the partial textual and visual information to which they are exposed in their classrooms. The findings indicate a lack of research by both textbook authors and publishers into the contents of the texts, which has the potential to negatively affect students’ construction of narratives and civic competence. This study contextualizes its results in visual literacy, cross-cultural behaviors, global perspectives, and attributes of global citizenship. (shrink)

I wish to examine a rather different way of thinking about permissibility, one according to which, roughly speaking, an agent acts impermissibly if and only if he acts for reasons insufficient to justify him in doing what he does. For reasons that will emerge in Section II, I call this the inferential account of permissibility. I shall not here try to prove that this account is superior to its rivals. My aims are more modest. I shall develop the inferential account, (...) exhibiting some of its attractions along the way, and then show that it is invulnerable to a number of influential objections to the very idea that an agent's reasons for acting could be directly relevant to whether he acts permissibly. If these objections have seemed decisive, it is because we have not considered the full range of possible accounts. The inferential account of permissibility is both plausible and attractive---it deserves to be taken seriously. (shrink)

Reason's Traces is a collection of essays by one of the foremost authorities on Indian and Tibetan Buddhism.

One of the most basic functions of human language is to convey who did what to whom. In the world's languages, the order of these three constituents (subject [S], verb [V], and object [O]) is uneven, with SOV and SVO being most common. Recent experiments using experimentally elicited pantomime provide a possible explanation of the prevalence of SOV, but extant explanations for the prevalence of SVO could benefit from further empirical support. Here, we test whether SVO might emerge because (a) (...) SOV is not well suited for describing reversible events (a woman pushing a boy) and (b) pressures to be efficient and mention subjects before objects conspire to rule out many other alternatives. We tested this by asking participants to describe reversible and non‐reversible events in pantomime, and we instructed some participants to be consistent in the form of their gestures and to teach them to the experimenter. These manipulations led to the emergence of SVO in speakers of both English (SVO) and Turkish (SOV). (shrink)

Several philosophers (e.g., Ehring (Nous (Detroit, Mich.) 30:461–480, 1996 ); Funkhouser (Nous (Detroit, Mich.) 40:548–569, 2006 ); Walter (Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37:217–244, 2007 ) have argued that there are metaphysical differences between the determinable-determinate relation and the realization relation between mental and physical properties. Others have challenged this claim (e.g., Wilson (Philosophical Studies, 2009 ). In this paper, I argue that there are indeed such differences and propose a “mechanistic” account of realization that elucidates why these differences hold. This (...) account of realization incorporates two distinct roles that mechanisms play in the realization of mental (and other special science) properties which are implicit, but undeveloped, in the literature—what I call “constitutive” and “integrative” mechanisms. I then use these two notions of mechanism to clarify some debates about the relations between realization, multiple realizability, and irreducibility. (shrink)

Research that involves the creation of animals with human-derived parts opens the door to potentially valuable scientific and therapeutic advances, yet invokes unsettling moral questions. Critics and champions alike stand to gain from clear identification and careful consideration of the strongest ethical objections to this research. A prevailing objection argues that crossing the human/nonhuman species boundary introduces inexorable moral confusion (IMC) that warrants a restriction to this research on precautionary grounds. Though this objection may capture the intuitions of many who (...) find this research unsettling, it relies on mistaken views of both biology and moral standing, ultimately distorting the morally relevant facts. We critically examine IMC, identify mistaken essentialist assumptions, and reframe ethical concerns. The upshot is a stronger line of objection that encourages a more inclusive and productive ethical discourse. (shrink)

What is philosophy of education? This question has been answered in as many ways as there are those who self-identify as philosophers of education. However, the questions our field asks and the research conducted to answer them often produce papers, essays, and manuscripts that we can read, evaluate, and ponder. This paper turns to those tangible products of our scholarly activities. The titles, abstracts, and keywords from every article published from 2000 to 2010 in four journals of educational philosophy were (...) analyzed to find out what kind of research is being published in the field of philosophy of education. Over 143 different concepts were identified and analyzed from 1,572 articles. The data suggests that philosophy and education, while primarily concerned with theory, teaching, and learning, tackles a diversity of subjects in a slightly narrowing band of thematic topics. (shrink)

In fragments from the Protrepticus, Aristotle offers three linked arguments for the view that philosophy is easy. According to an obvious normative worry, however, Aristotle also seems to think that the easiness of many activities has little to do with their choiceworthiness. Hence, if the Protrepticus seeks to exhort its audience to philosophize on the basis of philosophy’s easiness, then perhaps the Protrepticus provides the wrong sort of hortatory appeal. In response, I briefly situate Aristotle’s arguments in their dialectical context. (...) On this basis, I elucidate what sort of easiness Aristotle attributes to philosophy, and what difference Aristotle thinks philosophy’s easiness makes to its choiceworthiness. (shrink)

At the conclusion of their 1968 report, the Harvard Ad Hoc Committee argued that “responsible medical opinion” was ready to accept severe and permanent neurologic injury as a new criterion for deat...

Non-reductive physicalists have long held that the special sciences offer explanations of some phenomena that are objectively superior to physical explanations. This explanatory “autonomy” has largely been based on the multiple realizability argument. Recently, in the face of the local reduction and disjunctive property responses to multiple realizability, some defenders of non-reductive physicalism have suggested that autonomy can be grounded merely in human cognitive limitations. In this paper, I argue that this is mistaken. By distinguishing between two kinds of abstraction (...) I show that the greater explanatory relevance of some special science predicates (to certain explananda) is both non-anthropocentric and not solely based on considerations of multiple realizability. This shows that the explanatory autonomy of the special sciences is safe from the local reduction and disjunctive property strategies, even if they are successful responses to the multiple realizability argument. (shrink)

The present research extends previous functional accounts of counterfactual thinking by incorporating the notion of reflective and evaluative processing. Participants generated counterfactuals about their anagram performance, after which their persistence and performance on a second set of anagrams was measured. Evaluative processing of upward counterfactuals elicited a larger increase in persistence and better performance than did reflective processing of upward counterfactuals, whereas reflective processing of downward counterfactuals elicited a larger increase in persistence and better performance than did evaluative processing of (...) downward counterfactuals. Moreover, path analyses indicated that whereas the relationship between counterfactual thinking and persistence was accounted for by emotional responses following upward and downward counterfactual generation, the relationship between counterfactual thinking and performance was accounted for by enhanced persistence following reflective processing of downward counterfactuals, but was accounted for by both enhanced persistence and strategic thinking following evaluative processing of upward counterfactuals. (shrink)

Technical results about the time dependence of eigenvectors of reduced density operators are considered, and the relevance of these results is discussed for modal interpretations of quantum mechanics which take the corresponding eigenprojections to represent definite properties. Continuous eigenvectors can be found if degeneracies are avoided. We show that, in finite dimensions, the space of degenerate operators has co-dimension 3 in the space of all reduced operators, suggesting that continuous eigenvectors almost surely exist. In any dimension, even when degeneracies are (...) hit, we find conditions under which a theorem due to Rellich can provide continuous eigenvectors. We use this result to formulate an extended version of the modal interpretation. We also discuss eigenvector instability which we argue poses a serious problem for the modal interpretation, even in our extended version. Many examples are given to illustrate the mathematics. (shrink)

Classifying different meditation techniques is essential for the progress of meditation research, as this will enable discerning which effects are associated with which techniques, in addition to supporting the development of increasingly effective and efficient meditation-based training programs and clinical interventions. However, both the task of defining meditation itself, as well as defining specific techniques, faces many fundamental challenges. Here we describe problems involved in this endeavor and suggest an integrated model for defining meditation. For classifying different meditation techniques, we (...) draw on classical, contemporary, and holistic systems of classification. We analyze different techniques and propose that all meditation techniques are based on a specific set of activities, that is: focusing, releasing, imagining, and moving in relation to an object of meditation, including fields of experience. Meditative activities can be combined and unified in the activities of observing, producing, and being aware. All meditative activities are unified in awareness of awareness. Defining specific meditation techniques may be done by specifying which activities and objects are involved. The advantage of our approach is that it can potentially account for the inner workings of all current systems of classification and hence it lays the foundation for formulating an overarching system of meditation that can guide future research and practice. (shrink)

I argue that the completeness of physics is composed of two distinct claims. The first is the commonly made claim that, roughly, every physical event is completely causally determined by physical events. The second has rarely, if ever, been explicitly stated in the literature and is the claim that microphysics provides a complete inventory of the fundamental categories that constitute both the causal features and intrinsic nature of all the events that causally affect the physical universe. After showing that these (...) claims are distinct, I argue that they can be used to solve a difficulty with existing responses to the exclusion problem—namely, that these existing responses also undermine the powerful causal argument for physicalism. Recognizing that there are two kinds of completeness opens up room for the nonreductive physicalist to solve the exclusion problem while also endorsing a modified, cogent causal argument for a kind of physicalism compatible with her position. (shrink)

A large literature documents the correlates and causes of subjective well-being, or happiness. But few studies have investigated whether people choose happiness. Is happiness all that people want from life, or are they willing to sacrifice it for other attributes, such as income and health? Tackling this question has largely been the preserve of philosophers. In this article, we find out just how much happiness matters to ordinary citizens. Our sample consists of nearly 13,000 members of the UK and US (...) general populations. We ask them to choose between, and make judgments over, lives that are high in different types of happiness and low in income, physical health, family, career success, or education. We find that people by and large choose the life that is highest in happiness but health is by far the most important other concern, with considerable numbers of people choosing to be healthy rather than happy. We discuss some possible reasons for this preference. (shrink)

On Sense and Direct Reference: Readings in the Philosophy of Language focuses on the debate between neo-Fregeans and neo-Russellians in philosophy of language. With a foreword by Nathan Salmon, the volume collects more than 40 of the most important papers in philosophy of language in the last 40 years; including David Kaplan's "Demonstratives" and "Afterthoughts", and a paper written by Scott Soames especially for the volume. It is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses.

The ‘Major Transitions in Evolution’ framework has emerged as the dominant paradigm for understanding the origins of life's hierarchical organization, but it has been criticized on the grounds that it lacks theoretical unity, that is, that the events included in the framework do not constitute a coherent category. I agree with this criticism, and I argue that the best response is to modify the framework so that the events it includes do comprise a coherent category, one whose members share fundamental (...) similarities. Specifically, I recommend defining major transitions as all those, and only those, events and processes that result in the emergence of a new population of evolutionary individuals. Two sorts of change will be required to achieve this. First, events and processes that do not meet this criterion, such as the origins of the genetic code and of human language, should be excluded. Second, events and processes that do meet the criterion, but which have generally been neglected, should be included. These changes would have the dual benefits of making MTEs a philosophically coherent category and of increasing the sample size on which we may infer trends and general principles that may apply to all MTEs. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate how different views about the vertical and horizontal structure of reality affect the debate between reductive and nonreductive physicalism. This debate is commonly assumed to hinge on whether there are high-level, special-science properties that are distinct from low-level physical properties and whether the alleged multiple realizability of high-level properties establishes this. I defend a metaphysical interpretation of nonreductive physicalismin the absence of both of these assumptions. Adopting an independently motivated, discipline-relative account of natural properties and (...) appealing to a phenomenon I call “multiple determinativity,” in which a single physical property simultaneously realizes different kinds of special-science properties, is sufficient to show that some special-science properties are irreducible to physical properties and that nonreductive physicalism is not merely a terminological variant of reductive physicalism. (shrink)

Global short-term medical volunteerism is growing, and properly conducted, is a tool in the fight for greater global health equity. It is intrinsically ethical (i.e., it involves ethics at every step) and depends upon ethical conduct for its success. At present, ethical guidelines remain in their infancy, which presents a unique opportunity. This paper presents a set of basic ethical principles, building on prior work in this area and previously developed guidelines for international clinical research. The content of these principles, (...) and the benchmarks used to evaluate them, remain intentionally vague and can only be filled by collaboration with those on-the-ground in local communities where this work occurs. Ethical review must additionally take into consideration the different obligations arising from the type of institution, type of intervention, and type of relationship involved. This paper argues that frequent and formalized ethical review, conducted from the beginning with the local community (where this community helps define the terms of debate), remains the most important ethical safeguard for this work. (shrink)

Kropotkin's anarchism looked to a future defined by communalism. However, his understanding of this potential communal future has rarely been subject to analysis. Particularly important was his distinction between communalism and the tradition of communal experimentation in the US, which drew heavily on the ideas of Charles Fourier. Kropotkin was influenced by Fourier, but thought that attempts to found phalanstèries had been disastrous, vitiating the power of communalist propaganda. To defend the idea of a communal future, Kropotkin therefore advanced a (...) tripartite critique of the US model of utopian experimentation. The image of American utopianism he created consequently served as a useful rhetorical device, allowing him to advance a counter-image of the anarchist communal theory that lay at the heart of his political theory. (shrink)

A prima facie plausible and widely held view in epistemology is that the epistemic standards governing the acquisition of testimonial knowledge are stronger than the epistemic standards governing the acquisition of perceptual knowledge. Conservatives about testimony hold that we need prior justification to take speakers to be reliable but recognise that the corresponding claim about perception is practically a non-starter. The problem for conservatives is how to establish theoretically significant differences between testimony and perception that would support asymmetrical epistemic standards. (...) In this paper I defend theoretical symmetry of testimony and perception on the grounds that there are no good reasons for taking these two belief forming methods to have significant theoretical differences. I identify the four central arguments in defence of asymmetry and show that in each case either they fail to establish the difference that they purport to establish or they establish a difference that is not theoretically significant. (shrink)

A physical and mathematical framework for the analysis of probabilities in quantum theory is proposed and developed. One purpose is to surmount the problem, crucial to any reconciliation between quantum theory and space-time physics, of requiring instantaneous “wave-packet collapse” across the entire universe. The physical starting point is the idea of an observer as an entity, localized in space-time, for whom any physical system can be described at any moment, by a set of (not necessarily pure) quantum states compatible with (...) his observations of the system at that moment. The mathematical starting point is the theory of local algebras from axiomatic relativistic quantum field theory. A function defining thea priori probability of mistaking one local state for another is analysed. This function is shown to possess a broad range of appropriate properties and to be uniquely defined by a selection of them. Through a general model for observations, it is argued that the probabilities defined here are as compatible with experiment as the probabilities of conventional interpretations of quantum mechanics but are more likely to be compatible, not only with modern developments in mathematical physics, but also with a complete and consistent theory of measurement. (shrink)

In this paper, I answer a fundamental question facing any view according to which natural selection is a population‐level causal process—namely, how is the causal process of natural selection related to, yet not preempted by, causal processes that occur at the level of individual organisms? Without an answer to this grounding question, the population‐level causal view appears unstable—collapsing into either an individual‐level causal interpretation or the claim that selection is a purely formal, statistical phenomenon. I argue that a causal account (...) of realization provides an answer to the grounding question. By applying this account of realization to the natural selection of melanism in rock pocket mice, I show how an alternative, formal account of realization, favored by proponents of the statistical interpretation, misses biologically important features. More generally, this paper shows how metaphysical issues about realization normally discussed in the philosophy of mind apply to debates in philosophy of biology. Thus, it is a first step toward fleshing out the oft‐noted similarities between debates in these areas. (shrink)

_The assessment of institutional quality and its influence on economic performance is highly relevant in Nigeria due to the country's constantly changing governmental institutions, dynamic market circumstances, and diversified socioeconomic atmosphere. Thus, the study aims to investigate the impact of institutional quality on the economic performance of Nigeria. This study employed ex post facto research, while time series data was used, which spans from 1996 to 2021, sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI). (...) The study employed unit root tests, Johansen cointegration, and the Error Correction Model as estimation techniques. However, post estimation tests such as normality, serial correlation, heteroskedasticity and stability tests were carried to ascertain the level of statistical accuracy outcome of the variables used. The findings suggest that there is a sustained nexus between the quality of institutions and characteristics related to economic growth. Also, it was equally found out that political stability has a significant impact in the short run. This suggests that a unit increase in political instability would definitely amount to a decrease in economic performance in Nigeria during the period under investigation. The study suggests enhancing accountability, transparency, administrative efficiency, and law adherence to improve Nigerian institutions. This can be achieved through reform implementation, capacity building, and good governance mechanisms, while reducing political unrest and fostering stability._. (shrink)

Recently, Jonardan Ganeri reviewed the collaborative translation of the first chapter of Gaṅgeśa's Tattvacintāmaṇi by Stephen H. Phillips and N. S. Ramanuja Tatacharya (Ganeri 2007). The review is quite favorable, and we have no desire to dispute his kind words. Ganeri does, however, put forth an argument in opposition to a fundamental line of interpretation given by Phillips and Ramanuja Tatacharya about the nature of pramāṇa, knowledge sources, as understood by Gaṅgeśa and, for that matter, Nyāya tradition. This response is (...) meant to answer the argument and reassert an understanding of pramāṇa as factive, that is, as knowledge sources that are inerrant. We argue that this is the best reading of Gaṅgeśa himself .. (shrink)