Following a suggestion of Feys, we use “rigorous implication” as a translation of Ackermann's strenge Implikation ([1]). Interest in Ackermann's system stems in part from the fact that it formalizes the properties of a strong, natural sort of implication which provably avoids standard implicational paradoxes, and which is consequently a good candidate for a formalization of entailment (considered as a narrower relation than that of strict implication). Our present purpose will not be to defend this suggestion, but rather to present (...) some information about rigorous implication. In particular, we show first that the structure of modalities (in the sense of Parry [4]) in Ackermann's system is identical with the structure of modalities in Lewis's S4, and secondly that (Ackermann's apparent conjecture to the contrary notwithstanding) it is possible to define modalities with the help of rigorous implication. (shrink)

The search for the Northwest Passage in the years following the Napoleonic Wars provided both a market and testing ground for marine chronometers. Long voyages and extreme temperatures challenged the best chronometers. Among the firms seeking to meet those challenges was that of William Parkinson & William James Frodsham. Their chronometers performed particularly well in the Arctic, as John and James Clark Ross, William Edward Parry, and Edward Sabine gladly recognized. The way in which chronometers were made and (...) sold, however, meant that there were sometimes controversies over who was entitled to claim credit for a particular instrument. A letter from Parkinson & Frodsham in 1821 illustrates the problem, and its causes in the nature of the trade; the text of that letter is published here in its entirety. Also problematic, and discussed here, was the craft aspect of the industry, in which the ‘mechanical construction’ of a chronometer might not reveal the process of manufacture that gave it its steady rate and accuracy. (shrink)

Original essays by leading philosophers of science explore the question of whether metaphysics can and should be naturalized--conducted as part of natural science.

Digital and social media have transformed how much and how fast we communicate, but they have also altered the palette of expressive strategies: the cultural forms that shape how citizens, activists, and artists speak and interact. In A Theory of Assembly, Kyle Parry argues that one of the most powerful and pervasive cultural forms in the digital era is assembly.

Almost a decade in the making, the radical research, meditations and experiences of Rev. David William Parry have culminated in a work that interweaves Mount Athos, the Arts, Religion, Philosophy, Theatre, Literature and Poetry in a delightfully fresh style of penmanship.

"Expanding the Palace of Torah" offers a broad philosophical overview of the challenges the women's revolution poses to Orthodox Judaism, and Orthodox Judaism's response to those challenges.

This book adds to the theoretical development of the emerging fields of experiential learning and outdoor education by examining the central concept, 'experience', and interrogating a central claim of experiential learning: whether, and if so how, a short-term singular experience can transform a participant's life as a whole and in a permanent way. While such a possibility has been corroborated by the personal testimonies of participants, and the activities of instructors over many years, the book argues that we must go (...) beyond this kind of 'evidence'. In comparing Anglophone and continental approaches and drawing on the work of Dewey, Dilthey and Merleau-Ponty in the philosophy of experience, Experiential Learning and Outdoor Education presents the first detailed review of the concept of 'experience' in European philosophy, as applied to outdoor experiential learning. A vital insight into the field, this is important reading for students and researchers working in the philosophy of sport, and pedagogical theory, especially in areas relating to the outdoors, but also to experiential education more generally."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Later Platonists and their Heirs among Christians, Jews and Muslims offers a thought-provoking exploration of the reception of Platonism among communities of faith from early Christianity to the sixteenth century, from the Byzantine East to the Latin West. Rare emphasis is placed on the importance of Platonic thought and its diffusion in late antique and medieval Syria, Armenia, and Georgia but also among Arab and Jewish intellectuals from the seventh century onwards. As such, the volume makes a statement against the (...) separation of Neoplatonic philosophy from Christianity and the other Abrahamic faiths, since all four traditions promoted a life of virtue and goodness despite operating under different divine auspices. The volume seeks to establish paths of transmission and modes of adaptation across times and places. (shrink)

We examine moving spotlight theories of time: theories according to which there are past and future events and an objective present moment. In Section 1, we briefly discuss the origins of the view. In Section 2, we describe the traditional moving spotlight view, which we understand as an ‘enriched’ B-theory of time, and raise some problems for that view. In the next two sections, we describe versions of the moving spotlight view that we think are better and which solve those (...) problems. In Section 3, we describe a version of the view that combines permanentism – the thesis that all things always exist – with propositional temporalism, the thesis that some propositions are sometimes true and sometimes false. In Section 4, we discuss a version of the view that is like an ‘enriched’ presentism. We conclude with some brief thoughts on issues that remain outstanding. (shrink)

Ross, Alf Loar, Brian, Editor.Directives and Norms. New York: Humanities Press, [1967]. ix, 188 pp. Reprint available April 2009 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN-13: 978-1-58477-961-2. ISBN-10: 1-58477-961-6. Cloth with dust jacket. $65.00 * Reprint of the first American edition. One of the most interesting jurists of the post-World War II era, Ross [1899-1979] was a legal and moral philosopher, scholar of international law and the leading representative of Scandinavian Legal Realism. This book and On Law and Justice (...) (1958) are his principal works. In Directives and Norms Ross asks whether imperatives (or, to use his term, 'directives') are subject to logic in the same way as indicatives. He shows the difference between indicative and directive discourse and explains the concepts 'directive' and 'norm' as they function in the social sciences, especially in the study of law. A contemporary essay in the Modern Law Review (32:544), though critical of this work, was still impressed by its "clear and convincing account" of these processes. (shrink)

The divine attributes of immensity and omnipresence have been integral to classical Christian confession regarding the nature of the triune God. Divine immensity and omnipresence are affirmed in doctrinal standards such as the Athanasian Creed (c. 500), the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the Council of Basel (1431–49), the Second Helvetic Confession (1566), the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), the Second London Baptist Confession (1689), and the First Vatican Council (1869–70). In the first section of this chapter, I offer a brief (...) historical overview of divine immensity and divine omnipresence in the Christian tradition. I then offer a brief taxonomy of contemporary models of divine omnipresence in the philosophical and theological landscape. In the second, more constructive section, I aim to gesture toward the retrieval of several classical insights regarding immensity and omnipresence that remain unexplored in contemporary analytic work. (shrink)

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

This paper compares two alternative explanations of pragmatic encroachment on knowledge (i.e., the claim that whether an agent knows that p can depend on pragmatic factors). After reviewing the evidence for such pragmatic encroachment, we ask how it is best explained, assuming it obtains. Several authors have recently argued that the best explanation is provided by a particular account of belief, which we call pragmatic credal reductivism. On this view, what it is for an agent to believe a proposition is (...) for her credence in this proposition to be above a certain threshold, a threshold that varies depending on pragmatic factors. We show that while this account of belief can provide an elegant explanation of pragmatic encroachment on knowledge, it is not alone in doing so, for an alternative account of belief, which we call the reasoning disposition account, can do so as well. And the latter account, we argue, is far more plausible than pragmatic credal reductivism, since it accords far better with a number of claims about belief that are very hard to deny. (shrink)

Redesigning humans -- Engaging with transhumanism -- Living "forever" : transhumanism and mortality -- "Unlimited" intelligence and well-being -- The role of the philosopher in transhumanism -- Transhumanism and Buddhist philosophy : two approaches to suffering -- Conclusion : Contesting and considering.

This book provides an inter-disciplinary examination of the relationship between sport, spirituality and religion.

The study of social norms sprawls across all of the social sciences but the the concept lacks a unified conception and formal theory. We synthesize an account that can be applied generally, at the social scale of analysis, and can be applied to empirical evidence generated in field and lab experiments. More specifically, we provide new analysis on representing norms for application in empirical political science, and in parts of economics that do not follow the recent trend among some behavioral (...) economists to build models of the cognitive and motivational states of individuals taken “one at a time”. Foundational sources for our project are Bicchieri (2006, 2017), Kuran (1995), and Stirling (2012, 2016). From Bicchieri take that a norm exists in a social structure when a significant networked subset of individuals share descriptive and injunctive expectations that it regulates their interactions. From Kuran we take the insight that prevailing norms may come to be widely disliked by participants in networks but survive because norm suppress public displays of disenchantment. From Stirling we apply conditional game theory (CGT) to provide the technical resources for building our model of a norm-regulated social interaction. The example we use is a multi-player Investment/Trust Game. (shrink)

One of the first envatted brains, the most cyborgian element of J. D. Bernal’s 1929 futuristic manifesto, The world, the flesh and the the devil, proposed a technological solution to the dreary certainty of mortality. In Bernal’s scenario the brain is maintained in an ‘out of body’ but ‘like-body’ environment—in a bath of cerebral–spinal fluid held at constant body temperature. In reality, acquiring prospective immortality requires access to very different technologies—those that allow human organs and tissues to be preserved in (...) a quite ‘inhuman’ life-world—the cryogenic storage chamber. Like Bernal, today’s cryonicists consider that immortality can be secured through preservation of the brain alone. In this article I trace attempts to preserve or suspend life, and especially brain function, through the application of new ‘technologies of immortality’. Drawing together historical information on the development of refrigeration, cryopreservation, transplantation, and nanotechnologies, I explore the uneasy relationship between cryonics and the technology on which it depends for its success—cryogenics. In so doing, I argue that the ability to successfully realize the science fiction fantasy of human immortality will rest on a moral and scientific parasitism: the capacity to use the biotechnological artifacts or proxies—cryogenically preserved brains, archived brains, tissues, and immortalized cell lines—derived from the dead, in order to prolong life. (shrink)

In this paper I analyse the implications of “flattening” the curve for long-term care residents in the Province of Ontario, Canada during the first wave of the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic. I then question what the role of healthcare systems are in the response to public health emergencies and problematize their status as entities in need of protection. The ethical implications of this are discussed in light of potential challenges raised by climate change.

The understanding of the primary-secondary quality distinction has shifted focus from the mechanical philosophers’ proposal of primary qualities as explanatorily fundamental to current theorists’ proposal of secondary qualities as metaphysically perceiver dependent. The chapter critically examines this shift and current arguments to uphold the primary-secondary quality distinction on the basis of the perceiver dependence of color; one focus of the discussion is the role of qualia in these arguments. It then describes and criticizes reasons for characterizing color, smell, taste, sound, (...) and warmth and color as secondary qualities on the basis of our commonsense divisions among sensory modalities; Grice’s proposal for distinguishing among the sensory modalities is focal here. The general conclusion is that reasons for drawing the primary-secondary quality distinction are unconvincing. (shrink)

We will investigate the relation between the notion of the craft of ruling in the "Euthydemus" and in the "Republic". In the "Euthydemus", Socrates' search for an account of wisdom leads to his identifying it as the craft of ruling in the city. In the "Republic", the craft of ruling in the city is the virtue of wisdom in the city and the analogue of wisdom in the soul. Still, the craft of ruling leads to aporia in the former dialogue (...) while in the latter it is a central feature of Socrates' account of justice -- both in the city and in the soul. Some commentators hold that the aporia at the end of the second protreptic interlude of the "Euthydemus" shows that Socrates' account of wisdom is fatally flawed and must be rejected. However, the difficulty for this position is that the craft of ruling from the "Euthydemus" is a hardy notion that plays an extremely important role in the "Republic". Indeed, reflecting this fact, other commentators hold that the aporia is solved in the "Republic". Still, what is so far missing is an analysis that clearly shows the way to this solution in the "Republic". In what follows, we will analyze the two protreptic inter-ludes in the "Euthydemus" in order to see how the aporia arises. As we shall see, Socrates presents the aporia as a labyrinth. Indeed, it is a labyrinth with a little noticed step that -- once it is noticed -- shows the way out. The result will be that the aporia of the "Euthydemus" points to a solution in which ruling in the soul implies a command of one's appetites and emotions. (shrink)

This chapter examines the spectrum inversion hypothesis as an argument against certain kinds of account of what it’s like to be conscious of color. The hypothesis aims to provide a counterexample to accounts of what it’s like to be conscious of color in non-qualitative terms, as well as to accounts of what it’s like to be conscious of color in terms of the representational content of conscious visual states (which, according to some philosophers, is in turn given an account in (...) non-qualitative terms). I explain the hypothesis’s reasoning in sections 1 and 2. I then take up background issues: since the counterexample provided by the hypothesis is typically given as a possibility rather than an actuality, I briefly discuss the kind of possibility involved in section 3, and the methodologies used to evaluate the plausibility of possibilities in section 4. In section 5, I describe some general considerations that are commonly used against the spectrum inversion hypothesis. I take up attempts to support the hypothesis with findings from color science in section 6. I end with comments skeptical of both the motivation for the spectrum inversion hypothesis and the methodology used to support it. (shrink)

The concept of simultaneity, and the associated problems of synchronization of moving clocks and establishment of a universal time scale, were given little or no attention prior to the twentieth century. In 1905, however, Einstein analyzed the concept of simultaneity on the basis of two principal postulates: Absolute velocity is meaningless,The velocity of light in a vacuum is the same for all unaccelerated observers.

Mental fictionalism is not the benign view that we may better understand the mind if we think of mental states as something like useful fictions, but the more radical view that mental states just are useful fictions. This paper argues that, if one were to treat mental states as a kind of fiction, the genre of fiction best suited to this purpose would be fantasy make-believe, in which magic is a central feature. After defending a promising fictionalist account of mental (...) discourse as a kind of prop-oriented make believe against recent criticism, the paper ultimately concludes that mental fictionalism faces further, potentially insurmountable, challenges. Most significantly, there is a problematic disanalogy between folk psychology and fiction: our mental state attributions aim to track truth, and this crucial aspect of our mental discourse cannot be captured if we interpret it as a kind of fictional discourse. For this and other reasons, the cost of adopting mental fictionalism likely outweighs its benefits. Whether or not these problems can be resolved, there is still much to be gained from taking mental fictionalism seriously: in doing so we may illuminate several important features of our own folk psychology that often go unnoticed. (shrink)

c.4,000 word critical discussion of Fabre's book. Provides an overview of the book plus comments on the themes of (i) loyalty and treason and (ii) the ethics of spying and sex.

Paul Churchland does not open his latest book,The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul, modestly. He begins by announcing, “This book is about you. And me … More broadly still, it is about every creature that ever swam, or walked, or flew over the face of the Earth” (p. 3). A few sentences later, he says, “Fortunately, recent research into neural networks … has produced the beginnings of a real understanding of how the biological brain works—a real understanding, (...) that is, of howyouwork, and everyone else like you” (p. 3). The implicit identification here of “me and you and everyone” with “the biological brain” might lead an uncharitable reader to view Churchland's book as “Eliminativism for the non-specialist,” that is, as an attempt to popularize the view of the mindbody problem with which, among his professional peers, Churchland has long been identified. However, I think that such a readingwouldbe uncharitable. He is, of course, frequently sceptical about the utility of folk psychology, but in this book he is much less concerned to disparage folk psychology as a failedtheory(by contrast with, for example, the arguments in Churchland 1979) than to urge the more modest view that the more we understand the brain, the better we shall be at helping those whose brains are damaged in ways that interfere seriously with the fulfilment of their lives. Hence, I am inclined to take him at his word when he says in the Preface that “The book is motivated first of all by sheer excitement over the new picture that is now emerging … [and] … also by the idea that this is information that the public needs to know” (p. xi). What excites Churchland so, at least overtly, is not the negative thesis he has defended elsewhere that folk-psychological terms fail to refer; his enthusiasm is mainly reserved for the positive thesis that minds are, essentially, interacting assemblies of recurrent neural networks. It is therefore this positive thesis, and Churchland's defence of it, that I will assess in the following discussion. (shrink)

Consider two of my properties: my mass and my weight. There seems to be an interesting distinction between the reasons for my having these two properties. I have my mass solely in virtue of how I am, whereas I have my weight in virtue of both how I am and how my surroundings are. I have my weight as a result of the gravitational pull exerted by the Earth on a thing having my mass, whereas I have my mass independently (...) of other things around me. If you change my surroundings, if you put me on the moon say, my weight will change, but my mass will stay the same. (shrink)