© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

The book's significance is two-fold: it argues for a new stage in the development of contemporary Confucian philosophy, and it demonstrates the value to Western ...

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

I address an apparent conflict between Spinoza’s concepts of immanent causation and acting/doing [agere]. Spinoza apparently holds that an immanent cause undergoes [patitur] whatever it does. Yet according to his stated definition of acting and undergoing in the Ethics, this is impossible; to act is to be an adequate cause, while to undergo is to be merely a partial cause. Spinoza also seems committed to God’s being the adequate cause of all things, and, in a well-known passage, appears to deny (...) categorically that God is capable of undergoing. How then can God also be the immanent cause of all things, as Spinoza claims? On the basis of a close reading of the passage in question, I argue that Spinoza actually distinguishes between two senses of undergoing. An immanent cause undergoes not by being a partial cause but rather by being the metaphysical subject of its effect. While this sense of undergoing has its roots in scholasticism, Spinoza’s willingness to attribute such a capacity to undergo to God is idiosyncratic and reveals important ways in which his understanding of essence, perfection, and causation differs from the scholastic model. (shrink)

It is usually maintained by biologists and philosophers alike that essentialism is incompatible with evolutionary biology, and that abandoning essentialism was a precondition of progress being made in the biological sciences. These claims pose a problem for anyone familiar with both evolutionary biology and current metaphysics. Very few current scientific theories enjoy the prestige of evolutionary biology. But essentialism – long in the bad books amongst both biologists and philosophers – has been enjoying a strong resurgence of late amongst analytical (...) philosophers with a taste for metaphysics. Indeed, to impartial observers it is likely to appear that both evolutionary biology and essentialism are as well supported in their respective domains as could reasonably be expected. There is thus at least a prima facie tension here between evolutionary biology, metaphysics and, as we shall see, pre-theoretical common sense. (shrink)

Why should we avoid doing moral wrong? After showing how attempts to vindicate morality have tended to fall back on non-moral values or first-person considerations, Stephen Darwall elaborates the interpersonal nature of moral obligations: their inherent link to our responsibilities to one another as members of the moral community.

These papers are based on a Symposium at the COGSCI Conference in 2010. 1. Naturalizing the Mammalian Mind 2. Modularity in Cognitive Psychology and Affective Neuroscience 3. Affective Neuroscience and the Philosophy of Self 4. Affective Neuroscience and Law.

One widely held view of prenatal screening is that its foremost aim is, or should be, to enable reproductive choice; this is the Pure Choice view. The article critiques this position by comparing it with an alternative: Public Health Pluralism. It is argued that there are good reasons to prefer the latter, including the following. Public Health Pluralism does not, as is often supposed, render PNS more vulnerable to eugenics-objections. The Pure Choice view, if followed through to its logical conclusions, (...) may have unpalatable implications, such as extending choice well beyond health screening. Any sensible version of Public Health Pluralism will be capable of taking on board the moral seriousness of abortion and will advocate, where practicable, alternative means of reducing the prevalence of disease and disability. Public Health Pluralism is at least as well-equipped as the Pure Choice model to deal with autonomy and consent issues. (shrink)

Pessimists about trust in the normative domain believe that forming normative beliefs on the basis of trusting others is problematic, forming normative beliefs in other ways is not so problematic and forming non-normative beliefs on the basis of trust is not so problematic. Whilst there is substantial disagreement over the best way of accounting for pessimist ideas about trust, it is widely accepted that the intuitively problematic character of forming normative beliefs on the basis of trust cannot be explained in (...) terms of the idea that trust cannot be a source of normative knowledge. This paper argues that the dismissal of scepticism about trust as a source of normative knowledge is unwarranted. It does so by developing a sceptical explanation of pessimist ideas, arguing that the obvious arguments against the sceptical explanation fail and arguing that the sceptical explanation has the resources to resolve the considerations that present problems for existing explanations. (shrink)

Logical inferentialism claims that the meaning of the logical constants should be given, not model-theoretically, but by the rules of inference of a suitable calculus. It has been claimed that certain proof-theoretical systems, most particularly, labelled deductive systems for modal logic, are unsuitable, on the grounds that they are semantically polluted and suffer from an untoward intrusion of semantics into syntax. The charge is shown to be mistaken. It is argued on inferentialist grounds that labelled deductive systems are as syntactically (...) pure as any formal system in which the rules define the meanings of the logical constants. (shrink)

Thirty years on from the publication of Chaosmosis, Guattari’s words invite an evaluation: ‘The aesthetic power of feeling seems on the verge of occupying a privileged position within the collective Assemblages of enunciation of our era.’ While this privilege can be seen today in the realms of social networks, mass media and populist politics, its place in contemporary artistic practices is more ambiguous. Guattari is careful to separate ‘aesthetic power‘ from ‘institutional art’, but the ontology of Chaosmosis nevertheless seems to (...) find its model in the artistic avant-garde, and artistic affects and percepts are its privileged and recurring examples. Tracing the path of Guattari’s prophecy through the last thirty years of contemporary art involves two distinct approaches: first, to analyse Guattari’s reading of Duchamp, and to follow its trajectory through a generation of thinkers who utilised Guattari’s approach to art, most notably Nicolas Bourriaud, Franco Berardi (Bifo), Maurizio Lazzarato and Eric Alliez; second, to confront Guattari’s prophecy with the post-conceptual modes of art that now appear hegemonic, and that would seem to deny its efficacy. This we might say, is to approach our problem twice – once philosophically, and again from the point of view of contemporary art. As we shall see, these approaches lead in quite different directions. (shrink)

N.T. Wright remains an influential biblical interpreter among evangelical and conservative-mainline Christians. Critiques of his readings of Paul by scholars from the wider academy are not common in these spaces. This article illustrates the historical inaccuracies, Judeophobia, and erasures of exploitation that animate Wright’s discussions of Paul and philosophy, ancient Judaism, and the question of whether Paul was counter-cultural in Paul and the Faithfulness of God. Ultimately the apostle becomes a ventriloquist for the narratives, fixations, and voices that are comfortable (...) to Wright’s readers, especially since they elide the people who do not benefit from the Christianity of Wright’s Paul. (shrink)

Though modern non-cognitivists in ethics characteristically believe that values are irreducible to facts, they nevertheless believe that values are determined by facts, viz., those specified in functionalist, explanatory theories of the evolutionary origin of morality. The present paper probes the consistency of this position. The conventionalist theories of Hume and Harman are examined, and are seen not to establish a tight determinative reduction of values to facts. This result is illustrated by reference to recent theories of the sociobiological mechanisms involved (...) in moral evolution. Though explanatory theories have linguistic implications,exaggerated in Harman's linguistic form of social relativism, there is also failure to establish the semantic reductionism which non-cognitivists reject under the rubric of ethical naturalism. It is concluded that explanatory forms of naturalism, the best of which is a functionalist-utilitarian account, are compatible with the fact/value distinction. (shrink)

In liberal democracies that were British colonies, law constructs the linkages and distinctions between individual and political bodies. Legality re-iterates the form of an ancient construct called the King’s Two Bodies. The legal construction of these bodies ensures that their borders are continuously and perpetually contested and transgressed, and different modalities of power have arisen to take advantage of them. Additionally, in times of mass insecurity or crisis, we might believe that we need to fix our (personal or political) borders (...) and construct them in more solid ways. However, because other modalities of power take advantage of these borders, even if legal reconstruction can momentarily assuage concerns, it is argued here that legal processes construct borders around individual and political bodies to ensure the (re)production of those contests and crises. (shrink)

In their paper "Why Gibbs Phase Averages Work--The Role of Ergodic Theory" (1980), David Malament and Sandy Zabell attempt to explain why phase averaging over the microcanonical ensemble gives correct predictions for the values of thermodynamic observables, for an ergodic system at equilibrium. Their idea is to bypass the traditional use of limit theorems, by relying on a uniqueness result about the microcanonical measure--namely, that it is uniquely stationary translation-continuous. I argue that their explanation begs questions about the relationship between (...) thermodynamic equilibrium and statistical equilibrium; I argue in addition that any account which supports their view of the relationship between these two notions of equilibrium will likely use the limit theorems in traditional ways, and thereby bypass the explanation they offer. (shrink)

the concept of telepathy, describe some of its outstanding features,, and indicate its connection with other parapsychological concepts. In the second part I consider data..