This article offers a novel, conservative account of material constitution, one that incorporates sortal essentialism and features a theory of dominant sortals. It avoids coinciding objects, temporal parts, relativizations of identity, mereological essentialism, anti-essentialism, denials of the reality of the objects of our ordinary ontology, and other departures from the metaphysic implicit in ordinary ways of thinking. Defenses of the account against important objections are found in Burke 1997, 2003, and 2004, as well as in the often neglected six paragraphs (...) that conclude section V of this article. (shrink)

Should you care less about your distant future? What about events in your life that have already happened? How should the passage of time affect your planning and assessment of your life? Most of us think it is irrational to ignore the future but harmless to dismiss the past. But this book argues that rationality requires temporal neutrality.

Existing puzzles about coinciding objects can be divided into two types, corresponding to the manner in which they bear upon the endurantism v. perdurantism debate. Puzzles of the first type, which involve temporary spatial co-location, can be solved simply by abandoning endurantism in favor of perdurantism, whereas those of the second type, which involve career-long spatial co-location, remain equally puzzling on both views. I show that the possibility of backward time travel would give rise to a new type of puzzle. (...) The new puzzles confront perdurantists and can be solved just by shifting to endurantism. (shrink)

Leibniz's earliest philosophy and its importance for his mature philosophy have not been examined in detail, particularly in the level of detail that one can achieve by placing Leibniz's philosophy in the context of the sources for two of the most basic concerns of his philosophical career: his metaphysics of individuals and the principle oftheir individuation. In this book I provide for the first time a detailed examination of these two Leibnizian themes and trace its implications for how we should (...) interpret other major Leibnizian themes and for how we should read Leibniz and other philosophers of the sixteenth and later centuries as 'modem' philosophers. Leibniz began his philosophical career more than 300 years ago, a fact that shapes fundamentally my attempt in the pages that follow to come to terms now with the texts that he left us. Leibniz's did not do philosophy in a way wholly congenial to twentieth century philosophical methodologies, especially those that have enjoyed some prominence in recent Anglo-American philosophy. Moreover, as we shall see, Leibniz is not a modem philosopher, when 'modem' is understood to mean making a sharp break with medieval philosophy. Indeed, I shall argue, scholars should discard such terms as 'modem' from historical philosophical scholarship, so that old texts can be allowed to remain old - to stand on their own in and from times now long past. (shrink)

Multi-level marketing companies such as Amway, Herbalife, or Tupperware differ from most other companies. They market their products and services by means of self-employed distributors who typically work from home, sell products to end consumers, and recruit, motivate, and educate new distributors to do the same. Although the industry’s growth seems to illustrate the attractiveness of MLMs, the industry has been facing several legal and ethical problems. In this paper, we focus on these problems and argue that an extended MLM (...) model may help us to understand why such problems continue to occur, despite the countermeasures that have been implemented. By explicating how problems relate to a specific but often overlooked characteristic of MLMs, i.e., the so-called distributor network, we provide an extended understanding of MLMs’ mode of operation, the sources of their legal and ethical problems, and the reason that currently implemented and suggested countermeasures may not suffice. Moreover, based on our extended understanding of MLMs and their problems, we propose additional countermeasures. (shrink)

Using an analogy between moths and men, in 1916, Richard Goldschmidt proposed that homosexuality was a case of genetic intersexuality. As he strove to create a unified theory of sex determination that would encompass animals ranging from moths to men, Goldschmidt's doubts grew concerning the association of homosexuality with intersexuality until, in 1931, he dropped homosexuality from his theory of intersexuality. Despite Goldschmidt's explicit rejection of his theory of homosexuality, Theo Lang, a researcher in the Genealogical-Demographic Department of the Institute (...) for Psychiatric Research in Munich, revived it, maintained Goldschmidt's association with it, and argued on its behalf in publications from 1936 to 1960. Lang's appropriation of Goldschmidt's theory did not depend on his resolution of the difficulties Goldschmidt had found with his own theory. Lang and Goldschmidt, I argue, had fundamentally different scientific and social commitments that allowed one to reject this theory of homosexuality and the other to accept it. (shrink)

Extended Cognition (EC) hypothesizes that there are parts of the world outside the head serving as cognitive vehicles. One criticism of this controversial view is the problem of “cognitive bloat” which says that EC is too permissive and fails to provide an adequate necessary criterion for cognition. It cannot, for instance, distinguish genuine cognitive vehicles from mere supports (e.g. the Yellow Pages). In response, Andy Clark and Mark Rowlands have independently suggested that genuine cognitive vehicles are distinguished from supports in (...) that the former have been “recruited,” i.e. they are either artifacts, or, products of evolution. I argue against this proposal. There are counter examples to the claim that “Teleological” EC is either necessary or sufficient for cognition. Teleological EC conflates different types of scientific projects, and inherits content externalism’s alienation from historically impartial cognitive science. (shrink)

Debates about “populism” in recent years have used thin understandings of the term, which conceal theoretically richer possibilities. This essay explores the thicker understanding of populism developed in Christopher Lasch’s The True and Only Heaven and bell hooks’s belonging. In so doing, the essay suggests other roads forward for arguments about populism in America.

Conservation Biologists have found that demographic stochasticity causes the mean time to extinction to increase exponentially with population size. This has proved helpful in analyses determining extinction times and characterizing the pathway to extinction. The aim of this investigation is to explore the possible interactions between environmental/demographic noises and the scaling effect of the mean population size with its variance, which is expected to follow Taylor’s power law relationship. We showed that the combined effects of environmental/demographic noises and the scaling (...) of population size variability interact with the population dynamics and affect the mean time to extinction. (shrink)

Mentalistic (or Lockean) accounts of personal identity are normally formulated in terms of causal relations between psychological states such as beliefs, memories, and intentions. In this paper we develop an alternative (but still Lockean) account of personal identity, based on phenomenal relations between experiences. We begin by examining a notorious puzzle case due to Bernard Williams, and extract two lessons from it: first, that Williams's puzzle can be defused by distinguishing between the psychological and phenomenal approaches, second, that so far (...) as personal identity is concerned, it is phenomenal rather than psychological continuity that matters. We then consider different ways in which the phenomenal approach may be developed, and respond to a number of objections. That with which the consciousness of this present thinking thing can join itself, makes the same person, and is one self with it, and with nothing else; and so attributes to itself and owns all the actions of that thing, as its own, as far as that consciousness reaches, and no farther; as every one who reflects will perceive. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding [II.xxvii.17]. (shrink)

Many political disagreements are deeper than differences of opinion. People who simply differ in their opinions can understand and argue with one another, but between liberals and conservatives there is often a kind of mutual incomprehension. Employing different rules of relevance and inherence, they finds the views of their opponents to lack plausible grounds. By describing these forms of thinking in some detail, it is possible to better analyze intransigent problems of political dialogue and competing ideals of political association. The (...) results of analysis also indicate that it is possible to describe further forms of thinking in addition to those that have enjoyed dominance in the past, in particular a form of democratic thinking that is distinct from the conservative and liberal forms. It is not possible to show that one form of thinking is inherently superior to the other, so that problems of dialogue will continue, but democratic thinking has resources that permit discussion to yield a former practical consensus than the alternatives. (shrink)

This article draws on relational psychoanalysis to reinterpret Ovid’s version of Narcissus and Echo as a means to reflect on the dynamics of how subjects connect to others and themselves through listening. Attuning to a long tradition of scholarship, we understand Ovid’s tale as a rich template for contemplating the difficulties of becoming social. We underline how both protagonists take on essential roles in each other’s transformations. While acknowledging how each actor’s unique biography creates an intrapsychic vector, we highlight the (...) effect of their encounters in their mutual becoming. We illustrate how the relational space between them plays an essential role in their development as they overcome their unique difficulties in connecting to each other. Our relational-psychoanalytic analysis offers a surprising interpretation, namely, that Narcissus and Echo can ultimately overcome their isolation and connect through their transformation. This illustrates the potential of relational psychoanalysis as an interpretative tool that allows us to understand social dynamics as a product of a relational space in which intra-psychic representations encounter and transform each other, thus contributing to ongoing discussions on the concept of relational subjectivity. (shrink)

André Gallois’s Occasions of Identity is a detailed, well-written presentation and defense of one attempt to solve many of the recently much discussed puzzles in the metaphysics of material objects. It is engaging not only for Gallois’s ingenious attempt to defend his view that objects can be “occasionally identical”—identical at one time but not another —but for his discussion throughout of the puzzles and of alternative solutions. Gallois does a fine job of keeping the motivations for a position, whether his (...) own or others’, in view while working out details and responding to objections. Even where one disagrees, there is excellent food for thought and discussion here. (shrink)

Most offenders, even persistent offenders, eventually desist from crime, and the fastest period of deceleration in the frequency of offending is in the early twenties. This article summarises results from a longitudinal study of desistance from or persistence in crime in this age range, illustrated by three case histories. A key finding is that, because of their deep prior engagement in crime, would-be desisters from repeat offending need to make many adjustments to their patterns of daily life. The authors (...) explain why virtue ethics has been found to be a valuable resource in theorising these results. (shrink)

In this chapter I outline some metaphysical views about time, and about persistence, and discuss how they can help us clarify our thinking about life and death.

This paper asks whether persistence can be a matter of convention. It argues that in a rather unexciting de dicto sense persistence is indeed a matter of convention, but it rejects the notion that persistence can be a matter of convention in a more substantial de re sense. However, scenarios can be imagined that appear to involve conventional persistence of the latter kind. Since there are strong reasons for thinking that such conventionality is impossible, it is (...) desirable that our metaphysical-cum-semantic theories of persistence be able to account for such scenarios in terms of conventions of the first kind. Later parts of the article therefore investigate whether three of the currently most influential metaphysical-cum-semantic theories of persistence—the endurance theory, the stage theory, and the perdurance theory—can do this. Fortunately, for them, it turns out that all can, though some philosophers have disputed this. However, when we ask how they account for a typical case of “conventional persistence” some problematic features of the theories—having to do with reference, persistence conditions, how they relate, and the epistemology of persistence—are revealed. (shrink)

When do the folk think that material objects persist? Many metaphysicians have wanted a view which fits with folk intuitions, yet there is little agreement about what the folk intuit. I provide a range of empirical evidence which suggests that the folk operate with a teleological view of persistence: the folk tend to intuit that a material object survives alterations when its function is preserved. Given that the folk operate with a teleological view of persistence, I argue for (...) a debunking explanation of folk intuitions, concluding that metaphysicians should dismiss folk intuitions as tied into a benighted view of nature. (shrink)

The rise of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), especially large language models (LLMs), has fueled debates on whether these technologies genuinely emulate human intelligence. Some view LLM architectures as capturing human language mechanisms, while others, from a posthumanist and a transhumanist perspective, herald the obsolescence of humans as the sole conceptualizers of life and nature. This paper challenges, from a practical philosophy of science perspective, such views by arguing that the reasoning behind equating GenAI with human intelligence, or proclaiming the “demise (...) of the human,” is flawed due to conceptual conflation and reductive definitions of humans as performance-driven semiotic systems deprived of agency. In opposing theories that reduce consciousness to computation or information integration, the present proposal posits that consciousness arises from the holistic integration of perception, conceptualization, intentional agency, and self-modeling within biological systems. Grounded in a model of Extended Humanism, I propose that human consciousness and agency are tied to biological embodiment and the agents’ experiential interactions with their environment. This underscores the distinction between pre-trained transformers as “posthuman agents” and humans as purposeful biological agents, which emphasizes the human capacity for biological adjustment and optimization. Consequently, proclamations about human obsolescence as conceptualizers are unfounded, as they fail to appreciate intrinsic consciousness-agency-embodiment connections. One of the main conclusions is that the capacity to integrate information does not amount to phenomenal consciousness as argued, for example, by Information Integration Theory (ITT). (shrink)