This book presents a collection of contemporary discourses that reconsider the relationship of democracy as a political ideology and American ideal and education as the foundation of preparing democratic citizens in America.

This volume of Eurasian Studies in Business and Economics includes selected papers from the 24th Eurasia Business and Economics Society (EBES) Conference, held in Bangkok. The theoretical and empirical papers gathered here cover diverse areas of business and management from different geographic regions; yet the main focus is on the latest findings on evolving marketing methods, analytics, communication standards, and their effects on customer value and engagement. The volume also includes related studies that analyze sustainable consumer behavior, and business strategy-related (...) topics such as cross-border restructuring, quality management standards, and the internationalization of SMEs. (shrink)

Reading Certainty offers incisive historical analysis of the foundational questions of the Christian tradition: how are we to read scripture, and how can we know we are saved? This collection of essays honors the work and thought Susan E. Schreiner by exploring the import of these questions across a wide range of time periods. With contributions from renowned scholars and from Schreiner's students from her more than three decades of teaching, each of the contributions highlights the nexus of certainty, (...) perception, authority, and exegesis that has defined her scholarly work. Intellectual historians, early modernists, and scholars of Christianity will all appreciate this testament to Schreiner's influence. Contributors include: Vincent Evener, Bruce Gordon, Ralph Keen, Mark Lambert, Kevin J. Madigan, Richard A. Muller, Willemien Otten, Daniel Owings, Elizabeth Palmer, Karen Park, Barbara Pitkin, Ronald K. Rittgers, William Schweiker, Jonathan Strom, and Matthew Vanderpoel. (shrink)

Part I: The Life of Cognitive Science:. William Bechtel, Adele Abrahamsen, and George Graham. Part II: Areas of Study in Cognitive Science:. 1. Analogy: Dedre Gentner. 2. Animal Cognition: Herbert L. Roitblat. 3. Attention: A.H.C. Van Der Heijden. 4. Brain Mapping: Jennifer Mundale. 5. Cognitive Anthropology: Charles W. Nuckolls. 6. Cognitive and Linguistic Development: Adele Abrahamsen. 7. Conceptual Change: Nancy J. Nersessian. 8. Conceptual Organization: Douglas Medin and Sandra R. Waxman. 9. Consciousness: Owen Flanagan. 10. Decision Making: J. Frank Yates (...) and Paul A. Estin. 11. Emotions: Paul E. Griffiths. 12. Imagery and Spatial Representation: Rita E. Anderson. 13. Language Evolution and Neuromechanisms: Terrence W. Deacon. 14. Language Processing: Kathryn Bock and Susan M. Garnsey. 15. Linguistics Theory: D. Terence Langendoen. 16. Machine Learning: Paul Thagard. 17. Memory: Henry L. Roediger III and Lyn M. Goff. 18. Perception: Cees Van Leeuwen. 19. Perception: Color: Austen Clark. 20. Problem Solving: Kevin Dunbar. 21. Reasoning: Lance J. Rips. 22. Social Cognition: Alan J. Lambert and Alison L. Chasteen. 23. Unconscious Intelligence: Rhianon Allen and Arthur S. Reber. 24. Understanding Texts: Art Graesser and Pam Tipping. 25. Word Meaning: Barbara C. Malt. Part III: Methodologies of Cognitive Science:. 26. Artificial Intelligence: Ron Sun. 27. Behavioral Experimentation: Alexander Pollatsek and Keith Rayner. 28. Cognitive Ethology: Marc Bekoff. 29. Deficits and Pathologies: Christopher D. Frith. 30. Ethnomethodology: Barry Saferstein. 31. Functional Analysis: Brian Macwhinney. 32. Neuroimaging: Randy L. Buckner and Steven E. Petersen. 33. Protocal Analysis: K. Anders Ericsson. 34. Single Neuron Electrophysiology: B. E. Stein, M.T. Wallace, and T.R. Stanford. 35. Structural Analysis: Robert Frank. Part IV: Stances in Cognitive Science:. 36. Case-based Reasoning: David B. Leake. 37. Cognitive Linguistics: Michael Tomasello. 38. Connectionism, Artificial Life, and Dynamical Systems: Jeffrey L. Elman. 39. Embodied, Situated, and Distributed Cognition: Andy Clark. 40. Mediated Action: James V. Wertsch. 41. Neurobiological Modeling: P. Read Montague and Peter Dayan. 42. Production Systems: Christian D. Schunn and David Klahr. Part V: Controversies in Cognitive Science:. 43. The Binding Problem: Valerie Gray Hardcastle. 44. Heuristics and Satisficing: Robert C. Richardson. 45. Innate Knowledge: Barbara Landau. 46. Innateness and Emergentism: Elizabeth Bates, Jeffrey L. Elman, Mark H. Johnson, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett. 47. Intentionality: Gilbert Harman. 48. Levels of Explanation and Cognition Architectures: Robert N. McCauley. 49. Modularity: Irene Appelbaum. 50. Representation and Computation: Robert S. Stufflebeam. 51. Representations: Dorrit Billman. 52. Rules: Terence Horgan and John Tienson. 53. Stage Theories Refuted: Donald G. Mackay. Part VI: Cognitive Science in the Real World:. 54. Education: John T. Bruer. 55. Ethics: Mark L. Johnson. 56. Everyday Life Environments: Alex Kirlik. 57. Institutions and Economics: Douglass C. North. 58. Legal Reasoning: Edwina L. Rissland. 59. Mental Retardation: Norman W. Bray, Kevin D. Reilly, Lisa F. Huffman, Lisa A. Grupe, Mark F. Villa, Kathryn L. Fletcher, and Vivek Anumolu. 60. Science: William F. Brewer and Punyashloke Mishra. Selective Biographies of Major Contributors to Cognitive Science: William Bechtel and Tadeusz Zawidzki. (shrink)

____The Rejected Body__ argues that feminist theorizing has been skewed toward non-disabled experience, and that the knowledge of people with disabilities must be integrated into feminist ethics, discussions of bodily life, and criticism of the cognitive and social authority of medicine. Among the topics it addresses are who should be identified as disabled; whether disability is biomedical, social or both; what causes disability and what could 'cure' it; and whether scientific efforts to eliminate disabling physical conditions are morally justified. Wendell (...) provides a remarkable look at how cultural attitudes towards the body contribute to the stigma of disability and to widespread unwillingness to accept and provide for the body's inevitable weakness. (shrink)

The concept of "fitness" is a notion of central importance to evolutionary theory. Yet the interpretation of this concept and its role in explanations of evolutionary phenomena have remained obscure. We provide a propensity interpretation of fitness, which we argue captures the intended reference of this term as it is used by evolutionary theorists. Using the propensity interpretation of fitness, we provide a Hempelian reconstruction of explanations of evolutionary phenomena, and we show why charges of circularity which have been levelled (...) against explanations in evolutionary theory are mistaken. Finally, we provide a definition of natural selection which follows from the propensity interpretation of fitness, and which handles all the types of selection discussed by biologists, thus improving on extant definitions. (shrink)

Throughout, the emerging theory of aspect is extensively compared with alternative theories, and the book concludes with general reflections on the semantic ...

Imitation, deliberation, and mindreading are characteristically human sociocognitive skills. Research on imitation and its role in social cognition is flourishing across various disciplines. Imitation is surveyed in this target article under headings of behavior, subpersonal mechanisms, and functions of imitation. A model is then advanced within which many of the developments surveyed can be located and explained. The shared circuits model (SCM) explains how imitation, deliberation, and mindreading can be enabled by subpersonal mechanisms of control, mirroring, and simulation. It is (...) cast at a middle, functional level of description, that is, between the level of neural implementation and the level of conscious perceptions and intentional actions. The SCM connects shared informational dynamics for perception and action with shared informational dynamics for self and other, while also showing how the action/perception, self/other, and actual/possible distinctions can be overlaid on these shared informational dynamics. It avoids the common conception of perception and action as separate and peripheral to central cognition. Rather, it contributes to the situated cognition movement by showing how mechanisms for perceiving action can be built on those for active perception.;>;>The SCM is developed heuristically, in five layers that can be combined in various ways to frame specific ontogenetic or phylogenetic hypotheses. The starting point is dynamic online motor control, whereby an organism is closely attuned to its embedding environment through sensorimotor feedback. Onto this are layered functions of prediction and simulation of feedback, mirroring, simulation of mirroring, monitored inhibition of motor output, and monitored simulation of input. Finally, monitored simulation of input specifying possible actions plus inhibited mirroring of such possible actions can generate information about the possible as opposed to actual instrumental actions of others, and the possible causes and effects of such possible actions, thereby enabling strategic social deliberation. Multiple instances of such shared circuits structures could be linked into a network permitting decomposition and recombination of elements, enabling flexible control, imitative learning, understanding of other agents, and instrumental and strategic deliberation. While more advanced forms of social cognition, which require tracking multiple others and their multiple possible actions, may depend on interpretative theorizing or language, the SCM shows how layered mechanisms of control, mirroring, and simulation can enable distinctively human cognitive capacities for imitation, deliberation, and mindreading. (shrink)

Imitation, deliberation, and mindreading are characteristically human sociocognitive skills. Research on imitation and its role in social cognition is flourishing across various disciplines; it is here surveyed under headings of behavior, subpersonal mechanisms, and functions of imitation. A model is then advanced within which many of the developments surveyed can be located and explained. The shared circuits model explains how imitation, deliberation, and mindreading can be enabled by subpersonal mechanisms of control, mirroring and simulation. It is cast at a middle, (...) functional level of description, between the level of neural implementation and the level of conscious perceptions and intentional actions. The shared circuits model connects shared informational dynamics for perception and action with shared informational dynamics for self and other, while also showing how the action/perception, self/other and actual/possible distinctions can be overlaid on these shared informational dynamics. It avoids the common conception of perception and action as separate and peripheral to central cognition. Rather, it contributes to the situated cognition movement by showing how mechanisms for perceiving action can be built on those for active perception. (shrink)

I defend the view that we should not overintellectualize the mind. Nonhuman animals can occupy islands of practical rationality: they can have contextbound reasons for action even though they lack full conceptual abilities. Holism and the possibility of mistake are required for such reasons to be the agent's reasons, but these requirements can be met in the absence of inferential promiscuity. Empirical work with animals is used to illustrate the possibility that reasons for action could be bound to symbolic or (...) social contexts, and connections are made to simulationist accounts of cognitive skills. (shrink)

The book is an investigation of the semantics of numericals, counting and measuring, and its connection to the mass/count distinction from a theoretical and crosslinguistic perspective. It reviews some recent major linguistic results in these topics, and presents the author's new research including in-depth case studies of a number of typologically unrelated languages.

Leading scholars continue the debate over whether consciousness causes behavior or plays no functional role in it, discussing the question in terms of neuroscience, philosophy, law, and public policy.

Throughout history there have been people who say it is all illusion. I think they may be right. But if they are right what could this mean? If you just say "It's all an illusion" this gets you nowhere - except that a whole lot of other questions appear. Why should we all be victims of an illusion, instead of seeing things the way they really are? What sort of illusion is it anyway? Why is it like that and not (...) some other way? Is it possible to see through the illusion? And if so what happens next. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom and commonsense morality tend to take the integrity of persons for granted. But for people in systematically unjust societies, self-respect and human dignity may prove to be impossible dreams.Susan Babbitt explores the implications of this insight, arguing that in the face of systemic injustice, individual and social rationality may require the transformation rather than the realization of deep-seated aims, interests, and values. In particular, under such conditions, she argues, the cultivation and ongoing exercise of moral imagination is (...) necessary to discover and defend a more humane social vision. Impossible Dreams is one of those rare books that fruitfully combines discourses that were previously largely separate: feminist and antiracist political theory, analytic ethics and philosophy of mind, and a wide range of non-philosophical literature on the lives of oppressed peoples around the world. It is both an object lesson in reaching across academic barriers and a demonstration of how the best of feminist philosophy can be in conversation with the best of “mainstream” philosophy—as well as affect the lives of real people. (shrink)

We all know about the vehicle/content distinction (see Dennett 1991a, Millikan 1991, 1993). We shouldn't confuse properties represented in content with properties of vehicles of content. In particular, we shouldn't confuse the personal and subpersonal levels. The contents of the mental states of subject/agents are at the personal level. Vehicles of content are causally explanatory subpersonal events or processes or states. We shouldn't suppose that the properties of vehicles must be projected into what they represent for subject/agents, or vice versa. (...) This would be to confuse the personal and subpersonal levels. (shrink)

I defend the view that we should not overintellectualize the mind. Nonhuman animals can occupy islands of practical rationality: they can have context‐bound reasons for action even though they lack full conceptual abilities. Holism and the possibility of mistake are required for such reasons to be the agent's reasons, but these requirements can be met in the absence of inferential promiscuity. Empirical work with animals is used to illustrate the possibility that reasons for action could be bound to symbolic or (...) social contexts, and connections are made to simulationist accounts of cognitive skills. (shrink)

In this book, Sara Monoson challenges the longstanding and widely held view that Plato is a virulent opponent of all things democratic. She does not, however, offer in its place the equally mistaken idea that he is somehow a partisan of democracy. Instead, she argues that we should attend more closely to Plato's suggestion that democracy is horrifying and exciting, and she seeks to explain why he found it morally and politically intriguing.Monoson focuses on Plato's engagement with democracy as he (...) knew it: a cluster of cultural practices that reach into private and public life, as well as a set of governing institutions. She proposes that while Plato charts tensions between the claims of democratic legitimacy and philosophical truth, he also exhibits a striking attraction to four practices central to Athenian democratic politics: intense antityrantism, frank speaking, public funeral oratory, and theater-going. By juxtaposing detailed examination of these aspects of Athenian democracy with analysis of the figurative language, dramatic structure, and arguments of the dialogues, she shows that Plato systematically links democratic ideals and activities to philosophic labor. Monoson finds that Plato's political thought exposes intimate connections between Athenian democratic politics and the practice of philosophy.Situating Plato's political thought in the context of the Athenian democratic imaginary, Monoson develops a new, textured way of thinking of the relationship between Plato's thought and the politics of his city. (shrink)

: Chronic illness is a major cause of disability, especially in women. Therefore, any adequate feminist understanding of disability must encompass chronic illnesses. I argue that there are important differences between healthy disabled and unhealthy disabled people that are likely to affect such issues as treatment of impairment in disability and feminist politics, accommodation of disability in activism and employment, identification of persons as disabled, disability pride, and prevention and "cure" of disabilities.

Chronic illness is a major cause of disability, especially in women. Therefore, any adequate feminist understanding of disability must encompass chronic illnesses. I argue that there are important differences between healthy disabled and unhealthy disabled people that are likely to affect such issues as treatment of impairment in disability and feminist politics, accommodation of disability in activism and employment, identification of persons as disabled, disability pride, and prevention and “cure” of disabilities.

Is there a theory that explains the essence of consciousness? Or is consciousness itself just an illusion? The "last great mystery of science," consciousness was excluded from serious research for most of the last century but is now a rapidly expanding area of study for students of psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience. Recently the topic has also captured growing popular interest. This groundbreaking book is the first volume to bring together all the major theories of consciousness studies--from those rooted in traditional (...) Western philosophy to those coming out of neuroscience, quantum theory, and Eastern philosophy. Broadly interdisciplinary, Consciousness: An Introduction is divided into nine sections that examine such topics as how subjective experiences arise from objective brain processes, the basic neuroscience and neuropathology of consciousness, altered states of consciousness, mystical experiences and dreams, and the effects of drugs and meditation. It also discusses the nature of self, the possibility of artificial consciousness in robots, and the question of whether or not animals are conscious. Enhanced by numerous illustrations and profiles of important researchers, the book also includes self-assessment questions, further reading suggestions, and practical exercises that help bring the subject to life. (shrink)

How do our personalities and mental processes, our " states of consciousness" , derive from a gray mass of tissue with the consistency of a soft-boiled egg? How can mere molecules constitute an idea or emotion? Some of the most important questions we can ask are about our own consciousness. Our personalities, our individuality, indeed our whole reason for living, lie in the brain and in the elusive phenomenon of consciousness it generates. Thinkers in many disciplines have long struggled with (...) such questions, often in ways that have seemed incompatible, if not downright contradictory. Philosophers have meditated on the subjective experience of consciousness, with little attention to the physical realm, while scientists have sought to establish a causal relation between brain function and mind, often ignoring the qualitative aspects of experience. In Journey to the Centers of the Mind, neuroscientist Susan Greenfield offers an intriguing, unifying theory of consciousness that encompasses both phenomenological mental events and physical aspects of brain function. Using information gathered from clues in animal behavior, human brain damage, computer science, neurobiology, and philosophy, Greenfield offers a " concentric theory" of consciousness, and shows how certain events in the brain correspond to our qualitative experience of the world. Demonstrating the ways in which we can interpret the experience of consciousness in terms of interactions among neurons, she explores how much we can learn by continuing to find the links between our physical and mental inner worlds. (shrink)

Organizations are increasingly embedded with consultants and other non-employees who have the opportunity to engage in wrongdoing. However, research exploring the reporting intentions of employees regarding the discovery of wrongdoing by consultants is scant. It is important to examine reporting intentions in this setting given the enhanced presence of consultants in organizations and the fact that wrongdoing by consultants changes a key characteristic of the wrongdoing. Using an experimental approach, the current paper reports the results of a study examining employees' (...) reporting intentions subsequent to their discovery of wrongdoing by a consultant. The results of the study indicate that perceptions about the seriousness of a wrongdoing, personal costs and personal responsibility related to reporting a wrongdoing, and moral-equity judgments are significantly associated with reporting intentions for a normal reporting channel. Only perceptions of seriousness and personal costs are significantly associated for an anonymous reporting channel. Lastly, while personal costs for the anonymous reporting channel were lower than the normal reporting channel, reporting intentions were similar across the two channels. (shrink)

Who should decide? In When Doctors Say No, philosopher and bioethicist Rubin examines this controversial issue.

Conversations on Consciousness is just that - a series of twenty lively and challenging conversations between Sue Blackmore and some of the world's leading philosophers and scientists. Written in a colloquial and engaging style the book records the conversations Sue had when she met these influential thinkers, whether at conferences in Arizona or Antwerp, or in their labs or homes in Oxford or San Diego. The conversations bring out their very different personalities and styles and reveal a wealth of fascinating (...) detail about their theories and beliefs. Why is consciousness such a special and difficult issue for twenty-first century science? Sue, herself a researcher into this controversial and difficult topic, begins by asking each of her colleagues this simple question and is immediately plunged into the depths of the debate: How do the subjective experiences we call consciousness arise from the physical brain? Is this even the right question to ask? Can zombies - people who behave outwardly just like others but have no inner mental life - exist? What can dreams tell us about consciousness? Should we all be learning to meditate? Do we have free will, and if not is it possible to live without it? With an introduction setting out the broad structure of the debate on consciousness, and an extensive glossary, this book provides an engaging and accessible account of the most challenging problem of all, through the words of some of the leading figures involved in seeking to solve it. (shrink)

The debate between impartialists and their critics has dominated both moral and political philosophy for over a decade. Characteristically, impartialists argue that any sensible form of impartialism can accommodate the partial concerns we have for others. By contrast, partialists deny that this is so. They see the division as one which runs exceedingly deep and argue that, at the limit, impartialist thinking requires that we marginalise those concerns and commitments that make our lives meaningful. This book attempts to show both (...) that the dispute between impartialists and their critics runs very deep, and that it can nonetheless be resolved. The resolution begins by asking how impartialist political philosophy can defend the priority of justice when it conflicts with people's commitments to their conceptions of the good. It is argued that priority can only defended if political impartialism has a moral foundation, and that moral foundation must not be a foundation in the ideal of equality (as is often thought), but a foundation in the partial concerns we have for others. In short, impartialist moral philosophy must take our partial concerns as central if it is to gain allegiance. However, if it does take our partial concerns as central, then it can generate a defence of political impartialism which shows why justice must take priority, but which also acknowledges that pluralism about the good is permanent. (shrink)

Written in a colloquial and engaging style the book records the conversations Sue had when she met these influential thinkers, whether at conferences in Arizona ...

The duration of “now” is shown to be important not only for an understanding of how conscious beings sense duration, but also for the validity of the phenomenological enterprise as Husserl conceived it. If “now” is too short, experiences can not be described before they become memories, which can be considered to be transcendent rather than immanent phenomena and therefore inadmissible as phenomenological data. Evidence concerning (a) the objective duration of sensations in various sensory modalities, (b) the time necessary for (...) sensations to enter consciousness and (c) the variability in the subjective sense of time's passing under different conditions is used to conclude that the duration of “now” can actually vary under normal conditions from about 10 ms to several seconds and in extreme cases up to several hours. Thus the immanent moment can be long enough to encompass a report of the contents of consciousness, making phenomenology a viable project. A further speculation from the evidence described is that consciousness takes discrete samples of the external world, at a rate inversely proportional to the duration of the “now” moment. (shrink)

Recently research on imitation and its role in social cognition has been flourishing across various disciplines. After briefly reviewing these developments under the headings of behavior, subpersonal mechanisms, and functions of imitation, I advance the _shared circuits_.

Romanis and Adkins explore the near-term prospect of artificial amnion and placenta technology (AAPT) which is being developed to supplement the gestational process following the premature ending of a pregnancy.1 While fetal-centric narratives prevail in discussions surrounding AAPT, the authors subvert this trend by centering the experience of pregnant persons with respect to pregnancy loss. The overarching aim of their paper is to move beyond a ‘philosophical understanding of pregnancy towards practical-orientated conclusions regarding the care pathways surrounding [AAPT]’ (Romanis and (...) Adkins,1 p1). This commentary will critically examine the viability of this aim. Romanis and Adkins use the term ‘pregnancy loss’ to refer to the phenomenon where individuals experience a complex set of emotions following the premature ending of pregnancy, despite the survival of the gestated entity. Following Golish and Powell, the authors note how parents may experience contradictory emotions, such as joy mixed with grief, as well as a range of negative feelings including shame, disappointment and a sense of failure.2 At present, this phenomenon has been recognised among parents, particularly the (formerly) pregnant person, in the context of neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) when the infant survives preterm delivery and …. (shrink)

It is known that a number of inference principles can be used to trivialise the axioms of naïve comprehension - the axioms underlying the naïve theory of sets. In this paper we systematise and extend these known results, to provide a number of general classes of axioms responsible for trivialising naïve comprehension.

According to the language of thought (or.

The term conceptual simulation refers to a type of everyday reasoning strategy commonly called “what if” reasoning. It has been suggested in a number of contexts that this type of reasoning plays an important role in scientific discovery; however, little direct evidence exists to support this claim. This article proposes that conceptual simulation is likely to be used in situations of informational uncertainty, and may be used to help scientists resolve that uncertainty. We conducted two studies to investigate the relationship (...) between conceptual simulation and informational uncertainty. Study 1 was an in vivo study of expert scientists; the results suggest that scientists do use conceptual simulation in situations of informational uncertainty, and that they use conceptual simulation to make inferences from their data using the analogical reasoning process of alignment by similarity detection. Study 2 experimentally manipulated experts' level of uncertainty and provides further support for the hypothesis that conceptual simulation is more likely to be used in situations of informational uncertainty. Finally, we discuss the relationship between conceptual simulation and other types of reasoning using qualitative mental models. (shrink)

This volume covers a broad spectrum of research into the role of events in grammar. It addresses event arguments and thematic argument structure, the role of events in verbal aspectual distinctions, events and the distinction between stage and individual level predicates, and the role of events in the analysis of plurality and scope relations. It is of interest to scholars and students of theoretical linguistics, philosophers of language, computational linguists, and computer scientists.

Human beings are strange animals. Although evolutionary theory has brilliantly accounted for the features we share with other creatures—from the genetic code that directs the construction of our bodies to the details of how our muscles and neurons work—we still stand out in countless ways. Our brains are exceptionally large, we alone have truly grammatical language, and we alone compose symphonies, drive cars, eat spaghetti with a fork and wonder about the origins of the universe.

One of the most influential philosophical voices in the consciousness studies community is that of Daniel Dennett. Outside of consciousness studies, Dennett is well-known for his work on numerous topics, such as intentionality, artificial intelligence, free will, evolutionary theory, and the basis of religious experience. (Dennett, 1984, 1987, 1995c, 2005) In 1991, just as researchers and philosophers were beginning to turn more attention to the nature of consciousness, Dennett authored his Consciousness Explained. Consciousness Explained aimed to develop both a theory (...) of consciousness and a powerful critique of the then mainstream view of the nature of consciousness, which Dennett called,. (shrink)

Part 1 reviews the general question of when elimination of an entity orproperty is warranted, as opposed to revision of our view of it. Theconnections of this issue with the distinction between context-drivenand theory-driven accounts of reference and essence are probed.Context-driven accounts tend to be less hospitable to eliminativism thantheory-driven accounts, but this tendency should not be overstated.However, since both types of account give essences explanatory depth,eliminativist claims associated with supposed impossible essences areproblematic on both types of account.Part 2 applies (...) these considerations to responsibility in particular. Theimpossibility of regressive choice or control is explained. It is arguedthat this impossibility does not support the claim that no one is everresponsible on either context-driven or theory-driven accounts of`responsibility''. (shrink)

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility is an edited collection of new essays by an internationally recognized line-up of contributors. It is aimed at readers who wish to explore the philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism and their implications.

In his paper [6], Greg Restall conjectured that a logic supports a naïve comprehension scheme if and only if it is robustly contraction free, that is, if and only if no contracting connective is definable in terms of the primitive connectives of the logic. In this paper, we present infinitely many counterexamples to Restall''s conjecture, in the form of purely implicational logics which are robustly contraction free, but which trivialize naïve comprehension.

While artificial womb technology is currently being studied for the purpose of improving neonatal care, I contend that this technology ought to be pursued as a means to address the unprecedented rate of unintended pregnancies. But ectogenesis, alongside other emerging reproductive technologies, is problematic insofar as it threatens to disrupt the natural link between procreation and parenthood that is normally thought to generate rights and responsibilities for biological parents. I argue that there remains only one potentially viable account of parenthood: (...) the voluntarist account, which construes parental rights as robust moral obligations that must be voluntarily undertaken. The problem is that this account mistakenly presumes a patriarchal divide between procreation and parenthood. I propose a reframing of procreation and parenthood from a feminist perspective that recognises gestational motherhood as involving robust moral obligations that ought to be voluntarily undertaken. If this were the case, all gestational mothers would be, by definition, willing mothers. To make this happen I argue that ectogenesis technology must be a widely available reproductive option. (shrink)

Curry's paradox, sometimes described as a general version of the better known Russell's paradox, has intrigued logicians for some time. This paper examines the paradox in a natural deduction setting and critically examines some proposed restrictions to the logic by Fitch and Prawitz. We then offer a tentative counterexample to a conjecture by Tennant proposing a criterion for what is to count as a genuine paradox.