We argue that by neglecting the fact that procedural memory may also have episodic qualities, and by considering only a systems approach to memory, Walker's account of consolidation of learning during subsequent sleep ignores alternative accounts of how sleep stages may be interdependent. We also question the proposition that sleep-based consolidation largely bypasses hippocampal structures.

The power of the application of bioinformatics across multiple publicly available transcriptomic data sets was explored. Using 19 human and mouse circadian transcriptomic data sets, we found that NR1D1 and NR1D2 which encode heme‐responsive nuclear receptors are the most rhythmic transcripts across sleep conditions and tissues suggesting that they are at the core of circadian rhythm generation. Analyzes of human transcriptomic data show that a core set of transcripts related to processes including immune function, glucocorticoid signalling, and lipid metabolism is (...) rhythmically expressed independently of the sleep‐wake cycle. We also identify key transcripts associated with transcription and translation that are disrupted by sleep manipulations, and through network analysis identify putative mechanisms underlying the adverse health outcomes associated with sleep disruption, such as diabetes and cancer. Comparative bioinformatics applied to existing and future data sets will be a powerful tool for the identification of core circadian‐ and sleep‐dependent molecules. (shrink)

This study investigates the negative reactions of Dutch viewers to the content of television programs. The results show that a vast majority is sometimes irritated by TV programs, that a somewhat smaller majority is sometimes shocked by the programs, and that one fifth of the viewing population consider certain programs to be intolerable. The most frequently mentioned genres are games, shows, and related entertainment programs, while reality TV (scoring high on all negative reactions), news and current affairs (often shocking), and (...) sex (often intolerable) are primarily evaluated as irritating. It appears that violent and frightening material creates by far the largest category of negative responses. Intimidating behavior worries the viewers most, immediately followed by the violation of privacy. This article also discusses the consequences of these results for broadcasting policy in the Netherlands. (shrink)

BackgroundA patient who fulfils the due diligence requirements for euthanasia, and is medically suitable, is able to donate his organs after euthanasia in Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada. Since 2012, more than 70 patients have undergone this combined procedure in the Netherlands. Even though all patients who undergo euthanasia are suffering hopelessly and unbearably, some of these patients are nevertheless willing to help others in need of an organ. Organ donation after euthanasia is a so-called donation after circulatory death (DCD), (...) Maastricht category III procedure, which takes place following cardiac arrest, comparable to donation after withdrawal of life sustaining therapy in critically ill patients. To minimize the period of organ ischemia, the patient is transported to the operating room immediately after the legally mandated no-touch period of 5 min following circulatory arrest. This means that the organ donation procedure following euthanasia must take place in the hospital, which appears to be insurmountable to many patients who are willing to donate, since they already spent a lot of time in the hospital. Case presentationThis article describes the procedure of organ donation after euthanasia starting at home (ODAEH) following anesthesia in a former health care professional suffering from multiple system atrophy. This case is unique for at least two reasons. He spent his last conscious hours surrounded by his family at home, after which he underwent general anaesthesia and was intubated, before being transported to the hospital for euthanasia and organ donation. In addition, the patient explicitly requested the euthanasia to be performed in the preparation room, next to the operating room, in order to limit the period of organ ischemia due to transport time from the intensive care unit to the operating room. The medical, legal and ethical considerations related to this illustrative case are subsequently discussed.ConclusionsOrgan donation after euthanasia is a pure act of altruism. This combined procedure can also be performed after the patient has been anesthetized at home and during transportation to the hospital. (shrink)

Research has shown that negotiators sometimes misrepresent their emotions, and communicate a different emotion to opponents than they actually experience. Less is known about how people evaluate such negotiation tactics. Building on person perception literature, we investigated in three preregistered studies (N = 853) how participants evaluate negotiators who deceptively (vs. genuinely) communicate anger or happiness, on the dimensions of morality, sociability, and competence. Study 1 employed a buyer/seller setting, Studies 2 and 3 employed an Ultimatum Bargaining Game (UBG). In (...) all studies, participants learned a negotiator’s (the target’s) experienced and communicated emotions (anger or happiness), before evaluating the target. Across studies, targets were evaluated lower on morality if they deceptively (vs. genuinely) communicated anger or happiness. Notably, negotiators deceptively communicating anger were evaluated lower on morality and sociability but higher on competence than those deceptively communicating happiness. Studies 2 and 3 investigated behavioral consequences by examining whether in a future negotiation participants chose the target to be their opponent or representative. Results showed that for opponents, participants preferred targets who genuinely communicated happiness (vs. anger), which was associated with their perceived morality or sociability. For representatives, participants not only preferred targets who had genuinely communicated happiness (vs. anger), but also targets who had deceptively communicated anger (vs. happiness), which was associated with their perceived competence. These findings show that when evaluating deceptive (vs. genuine) communication strategies, people distinguish between morality, sociability, and competence. The importance they attach to these dimensions is also contingent on the behavioral decisions they face. (shrink)

We would like to respond to the comment we received from our colleagues on our case report about organ donation after euthanasia starting at home. We reply to their statements on medical and legal aspects, and provide more information on our view of informed consent.

Is morality viable without the notions of desert, moral demand, and moral obligation, notions threatened by possible limitations in human abilities? This essay contends that it may well be. Instead of invoking desert, blame can be largely forward-looking, recast as appropriate moral protest, and aiming at protection, moral formation, and reconciliation. Moral demands in relationships can be re-envisioned as commitments deriving from care, and failure to act in accord with one’s commitments can be conceived as wrong in the sense that (...) they are appropriately protested. Moral obligations can be reconfigured as axiological recommendations. Revision of morality poses risks, but it is argued that the changes envisioned are practically viable. (shrink)

The book argues we are not free in the sense required for moral responsibility that involves basic desert, but that a conception of life without this type of free will would not be devastating to morality or to our sense of meaning in life, and in certain respects it may even be beneficial. This chapter sets out a notion of blame and its place in the moral life consistent with a denial of the sort of free will required for moral (...) responsibility in the basic desert sense, and the chapter specifies the respect in which this sort of blame requires that its target have an ability to do otherwise. (shrink)

This chapter sets out a notion of moral responsibility that incorporates the central features of the answerability conception advocated by T. M. Scanlon, Hilary Bok, and Angela Smith, and of Michael McKenna’s more specific conversational account, but which excludes any notion of desert, whether basic or non-basic. The point of blaming and praising on this notion is largely forward-looking: its main objectives are protection, reconciliation, and moral formation. Agents are blameworthy and praiseworthy by virtue of being appropriate recipients of blame (...) and praise given these aims. Blaming on this conception can involve causing harm, but the justifiability of such harming does not reintroduce the legitimacy of desert. The resulting notion of moral responsibility is immune to any threat from the causal determination of action. (shrink)

This chapter examines the fact that one cannot rationally accept both theological determinism and the libertarian conception of free will, and asks which of the two is preferable. The main reason to opt for theological determinism is that it provides an uncontroversial route to a strong notion of divine providence. The only proposal for securing such a conception of providence absent theological determinism is Molinism, and its status is uncertain. Libertarianism would provide us with basic desert moral responsibility, and also (...) a promising response to the problem of evil. But theistic religion can do without basic desert moral responsibility, and responses to the problem of evil that essentially involve free will on the libertarian conception turn out to be ineffective when it comes to horrendous evils. Accordingly, this chapter contends that theological determinism is preferable, and regards the libertarian conception of free will as dispensable. (shrink)

This chapter explores the viability of theological determinism as a route to securing a strong doctrine of divine providence. A perennial concern for theological determinism is that it would have God be the author of sin. But on a hard determinist option, God would be the cause of wrongdoing, but not of actions for which we deserve blame, since deserved blame is ruled out by determinism. The extent to which the hard determinist perspective can retain a theistic ethic of guilt, (...) forgiveness, gratitude, and love is then addressed. The article closes with a skeptical theist response to the problem of evil that appeals only to goods that do not involve free will. (shrink)

This chapter contends that a Kantian perspective on the nature of introspective representation inspires a defense of a physicalist understanding of phenomenal states in the face of the most prominent arguments against it. Immanuel Kant claims that introspective representations (those of _inner sense_) are entities caused by the states they represent and are distinct from them, and that they mediate the representational relationship between the subject and the introspected psychological states. As a result, the subject may not represent these states (...) as they are in themselves. It is argued that Kant's position yields a significant challenge to Frank Jackson's knowledge argument, and that it provides a response to those — like Joseph Levine and Robert Adams — who maintain that there is an explanatory gap between the physical and the phenomenal that the physicalist will have difficulty closing. (shrink)

Many of John Calvin’s followers took him to be advocating a supralapsarian view of salvation history according to which God has decided, from all eternity, what will happen, who will be elected, and who will be damned. This raises obvious questions about divine goodness—or, put another way, this brand of Calvinism raises questions about the extent to which there is a streak of the diabolical even in the heart of the divine. Such a view of the divine tends to provoke (...) a strong reaction, which we see in Horace Mann’s turn to a view of the divine that foregrounds kindness and ethical integrity. (shrink)

According to Russellian monism, there are non-structural properties that both underlie physical, structural properties and help constitute, and thus necessitate, phenomenal properties (Alter and Pereboom Citation2023). Derk Pereboom (Citation2011, Citation2014, Citation2015, Citation2019) characterizes the relevant non-structural properties as absolutely intrinsic properties, where ‘P is an absolutely intrinsic property of X just in case P is an intrinsic property of X and P is not grounded in extrinsic properties of either X or parts of X’ (Pereboom Citation2019: 184). Justin Mendelow (...) (Citation2024) argues that Pereboom’s characterization is inadequate because it implies that non-structural properties do not necessitate phenomenal properties, either alone or in combination with structural properties. We argue that Mendelow’s argument rests on premises that Pereboom can reasonably reject. (shrink)

Since its original publication in Chinese in the 1930s, this work has been accepted by Chinese scholars as the most important contribution to the study of their country's philosophy. In 1952 the book was published by Princeton University Press in an English translation by the distinguished scholar of Chinese history, Derk Bodde, "the dedicated translator of Fung Yu-lan's huge history of Chinese philosophy" (New York Times Book Review). Available for the first time in paperback, it remains the most complete (...) work on the subject in any language. Volume I covers the period of the philosophers, from the beginnings to around 100 B.C., a philosophical period as remarkable as that of ancient Greece. Volume II discusses a period lesser known in the West--the period of classical learning, from the second century B.C. to the twentieth century. (shrink)

This analysis builds on the arguments of Manuel Castells, Jan Van Dijk and others who describe the emergence of network societies and networked global communication, economics, and political communication. Research has shown that those who are building communication networks that have political significance are also able to create new contacts, retrieve useful political information, distribute and discuss retrieved information with others, and establish contacts with various centers of power that provide them with new channels of access and political interactivity. (...) Castells and others argue that those who are left out of the network society and important political networks are members of a Fourth World of inequalities, growing poverty, and sustained disempowerment. In this paper, the study of digital democracy and networks of political communication is related to what Van Dijk calls polycentric politics and what Castells describes as variable political geometry. From the concepts of network society and digital democracy, a concept of network democracy is proposed. With this concept, the argument is made that the structurational aspects of digital democracy can be used to establish ICT systems that help new participants become part of networked power structures rather than serving to extend the participation of those who are already involved in systems of empowerment. (shrink)

This chapter contends first that agent-causal libertarianism avoids the objections raised in the previous chapter against the event-causal and non-causal positions. It then argues that the arguments that attempt to show that agent-causal libertarianism is internally incoherent do not succeed, although several such arguments have some force. The best objection to agent-causal libertarianism is that it is highly implausible that the physical effects of undermined agent-causal decisions reconcile with our best scientific theories, whether these theories are ultimately deterministic or indeterministic.

Chapter 5 sets out an account of forgiveness consistent with the rejection of the retributive emotions. On the standard view, forgiveness is the renunciation and overcoming of resentment, which is at least typically a retributive emotion. Thus on the standard view forgiveness involves the renunciation of an attitude that for the skeptic about retribution was inappropriate in the first place. If forgiveness is instead understood as renunciation of the stance of moral protest, then for the skeptic forgiveness is in the (...) clear, since that stance need not presuppose desert. Renunciation of moral protest potentially qualifies as a general feature of forgiveness, by contrast with renunciation of resentment. In a range of cases of wrongdoing resentment is initially unfitting for reasons independent of concerns about retribution. (shrink)

Chapter 4 contends that evaluation of a number of criticisms of conceivability arguments against physicalism highlights the advantages of the challenge to arguments of this kind based on the qualitative inaccuracy hypothesis. This challenge crucially involves the claim that we introspectively represent phenomenal properties as having certain qualitative features, while it is an open possibility that they actually lack them. Robert Stalnaker, John Hawthorne, and David Braddon-Mitchell each contend that the apparent conceivabilities at issue in these arguments presuppose the falsity (...) of physicalism, and as a result they fail to pose a strong objection to the physicalist. Daniel Stoljar has argued that due to our ignorance, the conception of the physical operative in these arguments is in effect not ideal, and that this undercuts their force. Stephen Yablo calls into question the Kripke-inspired thought that once it is established that conceivability arguments are not subject to confusion about which propositions are being conceived, then they are in the clear. In his analysis, a defect that may still persist is a failure of the ideality condition on conceivability. I argue that in each case the qualitative inaccuracy hypothesis can correct or embellish these contentions profitably. In the discussion of Yablo’s contribution, I develop a more comprehensive diagnosis of why conceivability arguments might be compelling while at the same time unsound. (shrink)

Chapter 7 sets out a robust conception of nonreductive physicalism in which mental entities, either type or token, are not identical with neural or microphysical entities, and mental causes are causally efficacious as mental. I then examine whether nonreductive physicalism can finesse the causal exclusion problem that Jaegwon Kim has pressed. I claim that it can, and that one way it to do so is by grounding the mental in the neural and the microphysical by a constitution relation. I then (...) set out my version of this position and differentiate it from other nonreductive physicalist views. Subsequently I argue that there are significant differences between the controversial sort of emergentism and a plausible sort of nonreductive physicalism, and that nonreductive physicalist need not be emergentist in this sense. (shrink)

Chapter 3 develops a response to David Chalmers’s conceivability argument against (ordinary) physicalism analogous to the objection to the knowledge argument set out in Chapter 1. The conceivability argument hinges on the claim that it is conceivable, in an appropriately sophisticated way, that a world that is (nothing but) an exact physical duplicate of the actual world feature no phenomenal consciousness – i.e., that a zombie world is conceivable. From this premise the argument reasons to the conclusion that the complete (...) physical truth does not necessitate the complete phenomenal truth, or even any phenomenal truth, and that therefore physicalism is false. I develop a response to this argument appeals to the same central claim as the foregoing reply to the knowledge argument. Physicalism requires that phenomenal truths be a priori derivable from the complete physical truth about the actual world. However, if introspection did represent phenomenal states inaccurately, on analogy with our ordinary visual color representations on Locke’s conception, then the truth of physicalism would not require propositions about phenomenal properties as they are represented introspectively to be derivable a priori from the complete physical truth about the actual world. For if the qualitative natures these phenomenal properties are introspectively represented as having are incorrectly attributed to them, and are features these properties actually lack, then it might well be that all facts about the real natures of phenomenal states are derivable a priori from the complete physical truth after all. (shrink)

First, against the event-causal libertarian view the chapter presents the disappearing agent objection. In the paradigm case of a free decision no occurrence of antecedent events settles whether the decision will occur, and since only antecedent events are causally relevant, _nothing_ settles whether the decision will occur. Thus the agent will lack the control required for moral responsibility for it. Secondly, the chapter argues that the non-causal view falls to a dilemma. Non-causalists maintain that basic free actions are not only (...) causally undetermined but also uncaused. If the agent nonetheless makes the basic action occur or makes the difference whether it will occur, as non-causalists specify, then she will cause the action after all, since the making-relation and the difference-making relations are causal relations. If she does not make the basic action occur or make the difference whether it occurs, then she will lack the control required for moral responsibility for it. (shrink)

Chapter 8 develops a model of the mental that is not functional in the external-relations sense; that is, one in which the essences of types of mental properties do not consist in their causal relations to sensory inputs, behavioral outputs, and other mental states. Instead mental properties — and this includes phenomenal properties — are identical to broadly physical _compositional properties_, properties things have solely by virtue of intrinsic features of their parts, either proper or improper, and relations these parts (...) have to one another. This model would secure the causal efficacy of the mental qua mental in a way that the most common sort of functionalism cannot. It preserves nonreductivism, since multiple realizability arguments indicate that mental compositional properties would not be essentially neural or microphysical. At the same time, given the identities that it affirms, in a significant respect the position espoused amounts to a compromise with the type-type reductionist views. I close by considering several objections that have been raised against nonreductive views generally, arguing that in each case the model yields an adequate response. (shrink)

The idea that motivates a manipulation argument against compatibilism is that an action’s production by a deterministic process, even when the agent satisfies the conditions on moral responsibility specified by compatibilists, presents no less of a challenge to basic-desert responsibility than does deterministic manipulation by other agents. The chapter’s multiple-case manipulation argument sets out several such examples, the first of which features the most radical manipulation consistent with the compatibilist conditions. The subsequent cases are progressively more like a final example, (...) which the compatibilist might envision to be realistic, in which the action is causally determined in a natural way. A challenge for the compatibilist is to point out a principled difference between any two adjacent cases that would show why the agent might be responsible in the later but not in the earlier one. This chapter presents an updated version of the argument and responses to objections raised against it. (shrink)

This chapter presents a justification for prevention of dangerous crime that is neither undercut by free will skepticism nor by other moral considerations. This theory is based on the right to self-defense, and draws an analogy between treatment of dangerous criminals and treatment of carriers of dangerous diseases. Those infected with such diseases are not morally responsible for the danger they pose, but we generally agree that it is sometimes justifiable to quarantine them nonetheless. But then, even if a dangerous (...) criminal is not morally responsible for his crimes (in the basic desert sense), it would be as legitimate to preventatively detain him as to quarantine the non-responsible carrier of a dangerous disease. In addition, just as fairness counsels that we attempt to cure the diseased we quarantine, so fairness would recommend that we attempt to rehabilitate the criminals we detain. (shrink)

This chapter addresses two concerns for the compatibility of free will skepticism and our sense of meaning in life. First, personal relationships are critically important to our sense of meaning, but P. F. Strawson contends that a skeptical view would threaten to supplant our ordinary reactive attitudes such as resentment and indignation with an objective attitude toward others, and this would undermine these relationships. The chapter argues that one might give up these attitudes while retaining non-reactive emotions such as moral (...) disappointment and sorrow, which can have similar salutary roles in relationships. The second concern is that the skeptical view is incompatible with the sense of meaning that derives from success in one’s projects. The chapter contends that meaning of this kind does not require that we act freely in the sense required for basic desert moral responsibility, because there is a sense of achievement that does not involve basic desert. (shrink)

Chapter 5 and 6 explore an unconventional sort of physicalism that explains phenomenal properties, supposing this accuracy claim, by way of fundamentally intrinsic properties of the physical world. This idea has its source in Leibniz, who developed it in an idealist direction. In the context of his conceivability argument, Chalmers develops this theme, but in a less resolutely anti-physicalist way. He envisions the possibility of physical (and also of non-physical) properties of whose nature we are currently ignorant in a significant (...) respect and that have a dual foundational role: they not only ground the properties that current physical theory specifies, but are _protophenomenal_ by virtue of explaining phenomenal properties as well. Because Bertrand Russell advocated a position of this general sort, Chalmers calls his view _Russellian Monism_. In these chapters I consider the key ideas and arguments in this discussion, with an eye to formulating a more thorough characterization of Russellian monism, and to test the plausibility of this position. In Chapter 5 I begin by setting out a provisional account in terms of unknown categorical bases of dispositions, and then to determine more precisely what it is that we might be ignorant about. I argue that what is actually at issue is ignorance about properties that are intrinsic in a fundamental way. With the aid of Leibniz and Kant, I characterize this claim in terms of the notion of an _absolutely intrinsic property_, and propose a definition. (shrink)

Chapter 2 considers an important objection to the response to the knowledge argument developed in Chapter 1: it misconstrues the nature of our paradigmatic phenomenal concepts. In the response, I propose an account of phenomenal concepts inspired by Hilary Putnam, Frank Jackson, and David Chalmers is proposed, and I develop a view about the content of phenomenal property representation analogous to the dual-content theory of secondary quality representation advanced by Chalmers. In addition, I contend that the response can withstand an (...) objection that Sydney Shoemaker directs against projectivist accounts of sensory secondary quality representation. Finally, I argue that all of this provides the physicalist with an effective reply to those, like Joseph Levine and Robert Adams, who suggest that there is an explanatory gap between the physical and the phenomenal that we do not understand how to close. (shrink)

Chapter 4 sets out a theory for treatment of criminals that rejects the retributive justification for punishment, does not fall afoul of a plausible prohibition on using people merely as means, and can actually work in the real world. The proposal is largely justified as special deterrence by the right to self-defense and defense of others. This account features a quarantine analogy for a justification of the incapacitation of criminals, for example by preventative detention or monitoring, together with provisions for (...) rehabilitation and reintegration. It also features a justification for penalties designed to secure effective general deterrence, measures that cannot be justified as special deterrence by the self-defense right. Here consequentialist considerations and duties of compensation have a justificatory role. (shrink)

Source views claim that an agent’s moral responsibility for an action is not explained by the availability to her of alternative possibilities, but rather by her being the actual source of her action in a specific way. This chapter set’s out my Frankfurt-case argument for the source view, and defend it against David Widerker’s concern that the agent in the Frankfurt case is only derivatively morally responsible, and against Carl Ginet’s objection that relative to exactly what this agent is morally (...) responsible for, he will have an alternative possibility. I also present a theory of the robustness of an alternative possibility, that is, what it would be for an alternative possibility to explain an agent’s moral responsibility for an action. (shrink)

Chapter 3 concerns how we might justify effectively dealing with those who pose dangerous threats supposing they do not deserve to be harmed. Wrongly posing a threat, by contrast with deserving harm for posing the threat, is proposed as the core condition for what I call robust liability to defensive killing, a liability that agent A has just in case A poses a threat to agent B as a result of which B and third parties are _prima facie_ morally permitted (...) to intentionally kill A to defend B from that threat. A non-retributive measured aggressive stance appropriately facilitates taking defensive action. Such an emotional stance, if it presupposes only that its target wrongly poses a threat, accords with skepticism about free will, and is also better for those called upon to confront injustice than the alternatives. (shrink)

This chapter presents and defends an account of rational deliberation according to which it is compatible with believing the determinist version of skepticism about the sort of free will required for basic-desert moral responsibility. The position proposed is a version of the view that Tomis Kapitan has developed, which features both epistemic openness and deliberative efficacy conditions on rational deliberation. It also has much in common with Dana Nelkin’s compatibilism about rational deliberation, although it differs in its details from each (...) of these views. (shrink)

Anger with wrongdoers is often accompanied by the supposition that its target deserves to be the recipient of an expression of this emotion, one that intentionally causes pain or harm, which classify it as a retributive emotion. Chapter 1 introduces the claim that we do not need retribution, whether it be in justifying our responses to wrongdoing, or in the emotions employed in those responses. We have alternatives to retributive anger, and to anger more generally, that are practically and theoretically (...) preferable. One way to motivate this stance is by skepticism about the control in action—the free will—required for retribution to be justified. This chapter summarizes the author’s argument for free will skepticism, which addresses the compatibilist and libertarian alternatives. Also proposed is that there are ethical considerations independent of the concern about control in action that serve to justify the antiretributivist stance. (shrink)