Some standards, such as moral and prudential standards, provide genuinely or authoritatively normative reasons for action. Other standards, such as the norms of masculinity and the mafia’s code of omerta, provide reasons but do not provide genuinely normative reasons for action. This paper first explains that there is a similar distinction amongst attitudinal standards: some attitudes (belief, desire) have standards that seem to give rise to genuine normativity; others (boredom, envy) do not. This paper gives a value-based account of which (...) attitudinal standards give rise to genuine normativity. It argues that this account has interesting implications before extending it to provide an account of which action-guiding standards are genuinely normative. It argues that this value-based account of which standards are genuinely normative is more plausible than alternatives suggested in the literature and has interesting implications for genuine normativity in law and aesthetics. (shrink)

It is tempting to think that all of normativity, such as our reasons for action, what we ought to do, and the attitudes that it is fitting for us to have, derives from what is valuable. But value-first approaches to normativity have fallen out of favour as the virtues of reasons- and fittingness-first approaches to normativity have become clear. On these views, value is not explanatorily prior to reasons and fit; rather the value of things is understood in terms of (...) the pro-attitudes it is fitting to have, or that we have reasons to have, towards these things. The value-first accounts of reasons and fit that have been proposed have been direct accounts of reasons and fit. On these views, the fittingness of an attitude is explained in terms of the value of having it or the value of the object of that attitude. This chapter details and surveys these problems, explaining which are yet to be overcome, and explaining which problems direct value-first accounts can overcome. This chapter then explores the prospects of an indirect value-first account of reasons and fit. It argues that it avoids the problems that direct value-first accounts face and may be as explanatorily powerful as fittingness- and reasons-first accounts of value and normativity more generally. (shrink)

A popular argument is that peer disagreement about controversial moral topics undermines justified moral belief in a way that peer disagreement about non-moral topics does not undermine justified non-moral belief. Call this argument the argument for moral skepticism from peer disagreement. Jason Decker and Daniel Groll have recently made a companions in guilt response to this argument. Decker and Groll argue that if peer disagreement undermines justified moral belief, then peer disagreement undermines much non-moral justified belief; if the argument for (...) moral skepticism from peer disagreement succeeds, then a kind of non-moral skepticism holds too. And we should not hold that the status of such non-moral beliefs are undermined by peer disagreement. In this paper, I shows that Decker and Groll’s companions in guilt argument fails. I then draw out the implications of my argument for the epistemology of disagreement and the epistemology of moral disagreement more generally. For instance, I then argue that peer disagreement about morality does not undermine all justified moral belief but that peer disagreement about morality does preclude most moral beliefs from being justified and constituting knowledge in a way that peer disagreement about non-moral topics does not preclude most non-moral beliefs from being justified and constituting knowledge. (shrink)

According to the ICD-11 and DSM-5, transgender people’s experienced gender is incongruent with their natal sex or gender and the purpose of gender affirming-healthcare (GAH) interventions is to reduce this incongruence. Vincent and Jane argue that this view is conceptually incoherent—the incoherence thesis—and propose that the ICD and DSM should be revised to understand transgender people as experiencing a merely felt incongruence between their gender and their natal sex or gender—the feelings revision. I argue that (i) Vincent and Jane in (...) fact give us no reason to believe the incoherence thesis and that (ii) we may want to resist the combination of the incoherence thesis and the feelings revision because this combination implies that all transgender people have feelings that are misplaced and are, in an importance sense, incorrect or mistaken. I then give a fit-based account of how trans people’s experienced gender can be incongruent with their natal sex or gender and how GAH can reduce this incongruence. (shrink)

In this paper we conduct an analysis of the critical narratives of Stardew Valley and compare them to other relevant videogames in order to develop new possibilities for an ecological critique of capitalist extractive econo­mies. Critical narratives of this game are aimed primarily at the alienating conditions of labour and deeply devastating modes of production under capitalism that impact and severely damage the environment. Analysing these narratives, we superimpose the immediate messages of the game with the procedural rhetoric and material (...) conditions of their existence. Over the course of our analysis, we highlight a material-narrative disso­nance which, in the case of Stardew Valley, fails to function as a commu­nicative strategy of the game and remains its mere external contradiction. Although the game’s critical narrative may seem overly utopian and its political imaginary a bit underdeveloped, the game elaborates on concrete ways to tackle the alienation of labour and resolve the ecological crisis. In addition to this, the paper covers the history of the interplay between the video game industry and the field of global ecological crisis research. We compare the attempts to raise awareness of the videogames’ own material­ity that preceded Stardew Valley. We conclude that Stardew Valley utilises the language of sustainable co-existence and wasteless local production, expanding this logic both to the sphere of labour and the spectrum of en­vironmental problems. In the case of ecological critique, some gameplay decisions in Stardew Valley enable us to come up with new strategies aimed at creating critical narratives about the environment in videogames. Thus supplementing Stardew Valley’s findings with critical tropes derived from other games (mainly, Rain World), we were able to gather a set of theoretical instruments that could facilitate the creation of games about ecosystems. Following Donna Haraway’s emphasis on the crucial role of narrative fram­ing (“it matters which stories tell stories”), we highlight new opportunities for the entire medium of videogames. (shrink)

A variant of the Rosen bimetric general relativity with the Lobachevski background space metric is considered. An exact static external solution for the gravitational field of a concentrated electrically charged mass is found when the space is spherically symmetric. When the Lobachevski constant k → ∞, the solution turns into the Nordström-Reissner solution in general relativity, expressed via the harmonic coordinates. The results are also valid for the Chernikov theory with two connections and one metric.

Niels Bohr was born on October 7, 1885. He was one of the great innovators in physical science in the twentieth century. It so happens that 1985 also marks fifty years since the long discussions, which had begun in the 1920s between Albert Einstein and Bohr on the philosophical problems of quantum physics, attained their apogee. An article co-authored by Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen, "Can Quantum Mechanics Be Considered a Complete Description of Physical Reality?," was published in 1935 (...) in the journal Physical Review. According to Bohr, "by virtue of its clarity and, it would seem, flawless argumentation, the work of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen has created excitement among physicists and played a great role in the discussion of general philosophical questions of physics." Precisely as a result of the publication of this article, the critical position of Einstein concerning quantum mechanics became known to a broader circle of physicists. In the same year, Bohr responded to Einstein and his co-authors with an article under the same title. (shrink)

The problem of the relationship between mathematics and objective reality, which arose in early antiquity, is still a subject of heated discussion. The discussions are mainly about the question that probably was posed most clearly by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason: "How do subjective conditions of thought have objective validity, that is, how do they become conditions of the possibility of all knowledge of objects?" Is it because they are themselves elements of objective reality, or because they (...) are contained in thought a priori, before and independently of experience, or, finally, because they are subjective images of corresponding facets and aspects of objective reality? (shrink)

Both Kant and Dilthey distinguish between cognition and knowledge, but they do so differently in accordance with their respective theoretical interests. Kant's primary cognitive interest is in the natural sciences, and from this perspective the status of psychology is questioned because its phenomena are not mathematically measurable. Dilthey, by contrast, reconceives psychology as a human science.For Kant, knowledge is conceptual cognition that has attained certainty by being part of a rational system. Dilthey also links knowledge with certainty; however, he derives (...) the latter from life-experience rather than from reason. Dilthey's psychology begins with the self-certainty of lived experience and life-knowledge, but this turns out to fall short of cognitive understanding. In the final analysis, both Kant and Dilthey move beyond psychology to arrive at self-understanding. Because of his doubts about introspection, Kant replaces psychology with a pragmatic anthropology to provide a communal framework for self-understanding. Dilthey supplements psychology with other human sciences as part of a project of anthropological reflection. (shrink)

The complex hexaploid wheat genome offers many challenges for genomics research. Expressed sequence tags facilitate the analysis of gene-coding regions and provide a rich source of molecular markers for mapping and comparison with model organisms. The objectives of this study were to construct a high-density EST chromosome bin map of wheat homoeologous group 2 chromosomes to determine the distribution of ESTs, construct a consensus map of group 2 ESTs, investigate synteny, examine patterns of duplication, and assess the colinearity with rice (...) of ESTs assigned to the group 2 consensus bin map. A total of 2600 loci generated from 1110 ESTs were mapped to group 2 chromosomes by Southern hybridization onto wheat aneuploid chromosome and deletion stocks. A consensus map was constructed of 552 ESTs mapping to more than one group 2 chromosome. Regions of high gene density in distal bins and low gene density in proximal bins were found. Two interstitial gene-rich islands flanked by relatively gene-poor regions on both the short and long arms and having good synteny with rice were discovered. The map locations of two ESTs indicated the possible presence of a small pericentric inversion on chromosome 2B. Wheat chromosome group 2 was shown to share syntenous blocks with rice chromosomes 4 and 7. (shrink)

An interesting and careful study of Kant's philosophy of science: its dependence on, and polemic against, Leibniz; its relation to contemporary theories; and its neglected ontological implications. The theme of Part I is the concept of unity, and its dependence on the unifying activity of thought. Part II is more metaphysical in character, containing not only an analysis of Kantian ontology, but also an argument for the harmony of the first and second Critiques.--A. R.

Section Philosophique, No. 39. Bruges: Desclée De Brouwer, 1955. 227 pp. 245 fr. B.--A Thomistic defense of Plato against Gilson's criticism of "essentialism." The first of the book's two sections, that dealing with "ascending" dialectic, argues that 1) Being or intelligible Form is not merely essence, but is considered as existent, 2) Plato proves the existence of a transcendent and supreme Being, and 3) the supreme Being whose existence is proven in the Republic is identical with the primary object of (...) the intellect defined in the Symposium. The second section, on "descending" dialectic, treats the problems of participation, and attempts to derive the world of becoming from the world of Forms, without, however, accepting a neo-Platonic account of emanations. An interesting, but highly controversial interpretation of Plato. --A. R. (shrink)

Addis contributes the slightly longer essay, "Ryle's Ontology of Mind," while Lewis's contribution is titled "Moore's Realism," in this, the second volume of the Iowa Publications in Philosophy. After overcoming an initial wave of incredulity that it would ever occur to anyone to include mention of Ryle, Moore, and ontology in the same breath, the reader—with an apprehensive eye on the place of publication—might resign himself to wading through the carnage created by the wild wielding of a metaphysical ax whetted (...) on a Bergmannian stone. Happily, this is not the case. Both authors are convinced that Moore and Ryle need an ontology to solve the problems they have set their analyses to work upon ; and neither author has any compunction about attributing an implicit substance ontology to both Moore and Ryle. It need hardly be added that Lewis and Addis do Moore and Ryle the courtesy of explicitating this ontology and subsequently showing its inadequacies from a basically Bergmannian point of view. But all of this is carried out in a deft and scholarly fashion, as with a scalpel and not an ax. The net results are a penetrating critique of two important philosophers and a challenging display of the virtues of a method of analysis that does not stop at a linguistic or phenomenological level.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Thomas Chubb seems to have been an 18th century English artisan class version of Eric Hoffer. Only the subject for Chubb was Deism rather than democracy. This is not, of course, to deny the link between these two, a link which is accented to some extent in Chubb's own work. Bushell has given us a short biographical account of Chubb together with six chapters that dutifully comb Chubb's moral, political, and, especially, his theological writings for a synthetic view of Chubb's (...) opinion on such subjects as the historical Jesus, theodicy, providence, toleration, and natural law. Chubb seems to have attracted the curiosity of the intelligensia [[sic]] of his own and later times. But, on balance, he does not appear to be even a major minor figure.--E. A. R. (shrink)

This volume can be considered a supplement to A. Plantinga's similar book on the Ontological argument, and includes classic texts and contemporary commentary on both the Cosmological and the Teleological arguments, though there is no extended consideration of the problem of evil as it bears particularly on the Teleological argument. Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hume and Kant give the classic arguments for and against the Cosmological argument. Geach, Edwards, Plantinga, and Penelhum provide the contemporary commentary. Paley, Hume, Mill, and Kant state (...) and criticize the classical Teleological argument, while A. E. Taylor, Ducasse, and Broad provide the contemporary rejoinder. A concluding postscript includes articles by Smart and Taylor, with a brief selection from Tillich. It is helpful to have as much of the material as is possible on the theistic arguments under one cover. It is unfortunate, however, that editorial limitations and imagination were not stretched or reapportioned to provide some contemporary commentary from outside the orbit of Anglo-American philosophy. In addition, the editor's introduction contains some serious misstatements about the classical Cosmological arguments. The classical argument did not maintain in any sense that God is a "self-causing cause" or that the "Prime Mover is not only the initial member in a temporal series..." ; God is not "the initial member in a temporal series" at all. Nor does the editor distinguish between natural theology and the philosophy of religion; something close to obfuscation is the consequence of this failure in his remark that linguistic analysis has "demonstrated that a definition of God is the starting point for the philosophy of religion."—E. A. R. (shrink)

The Neuzeit is that of "modern Scholasticism", a period rich in the investigation of logical questions, but relatively neglected by historians and philosophers interested in these matters. Hickman here offers a general outline and interpretation of the major tendencies of Neuzeit theories of second intentions through the examination of several characteristic examples. The opening chapter is devoted primarily to an interpretation of modern scholastic predication theory in terms of class membership and class inclusion, following which he proceeds to a discussion (...) of the sense in which "intention" was used by various authors and schools, distinguishing several basic trends, the more detailed analysis of which occupies the greater part of the book. 1) "Psychologistic Conceptualism and Nominalism", is a series of variations on a single theme, represented here chiefly by William of Ockham for the former and John Major for the latter. Hickman notes that albeit one distinguished first and second intentions, the theory did not formally recognise higher level predicates as such, since intentions were understood as psychological entities and though a second intention was thus considered the concept of a concept or sign or a sign, it nonetheless signifies a first level existent, viz., another sign, really existing in the thinker. The tendency was carried even further, Hickman says, by John Major and his disciples, who tended to neglect in practice the distinction between intentions and words. (shrink)

Richard Sugarman's Rancor Against Time examines the problem of time as it relates to the finitude of human existence. Its subject-matter and its methodology mark it as a work in phenomenological ontology; yet it also draws heavily upon the classical texts of German existentialism. Its central thrust consists of both a penetrating analysis and a critique of Nietzsche's theory of time. While the lucidity of this analysis makes it a valuable commentary, the primary importance of Rancor Against Time is as (...) an original work of philosophy. (shrink)