How do researchers and/or practitioners know when change efforts are bringing about significant transformation? Here we draw on a theory of change put forward by the feminist economic geographers, Julie Graham and Katherine Gibson. Proposing “a postcapitalist politics” that builds on possibility rather than probability, they direct theoretical attention and community engaged action research to recognizing and supporting non-capitalist economic practices and sensibilities that already exist despite the dominance of capitalism that keeps them hidden and ignored and to understanding the (...) “reluctant subject” of change efforts. We enter into a conversation with their theory of change by inferring criteria for assessing significance and using those criteria in dialogue with two social movements we have researched: the feminist movement in Bogotá in the 1970s and 1980s and the contemporary local food movement in North Carolina. Lessons from these movements, in turn, help refine the criteria. Gibson-Graham are unusual – and consequently resonant with cultural-historical activity theory and related social practice theories of identity – in that they bring into dialogue theorists of the political and those interested in embodiment and the micro-politics of everyday life enabling both to better understand and support conditions for positive social and economic transformation. (shrink)

Emotional processing (EP) is a complex cognitive function necessary to successfully adjust to social environments where we need to interpret and respond to cues that convey threat or reward signals. Ex-combatants have consistently shown atypical EP as well as poor social interactions. Available reintegration programs aim to facilitate the re-adaptation of ex-combatants to their communities. However, they do not incorporate actions to improve EP and to enhance cognitive-emotional regulation. The present study was aimed at evaluating the usefulness of an intervention (...) focused on Social Cognitive Training (SCT), which was designed to equip ex-combatants enrolled in the Social Reintegration Route with EP and social cognition skills. A group of 31 ex-combatants (mean age of 37.2, 29 men) from Colombian illegal armed groups were recruited into this study. Of these, 16 were invited to take part in a SCT and the other continued with the conventional reintegration intervention. Both groups underwent 12 training sessions in a period 12-14 weeks. They were assessed with a comprehensive protocol which included Psychosocial, Behavioral and Emotion Processing instruments. The scores on these instruments prior to and after the intervention were compared within and between groups. Both groups were matched at baseline. Ex-combatants receiving the SCT experienced significant improvements in EP and a reduction in aggressive attitudes, effects not observed in those continuing the conventional reintegration intervention. This is the first study that achieves such outcomes in such a population using SCT intervention. We discuss the implications of such results towards better social reintegration strategies. (shrink)

There is disagreement among philosophers about the following claim: when we share an intention to perform some action, we each have an intention towards that action. That disagreement turns on the interpretation of thought experiments, specifically whether reports of a shared intention are accurate in cases in which one of the participants lacks a participatory intention. We subject the standard interpretations of thought experiments to empirical testing. Our results suggest that attributions of shared intentions are appropriate only when each individual (...) has a participatory intention, supporting accounts of shared intention that include participatory intentions as a necessary component. (shrink)

Gomez-Lobo argues that behind the facade of Socratic irony lies a strictly deductive system of ethics suspended from two axioms--one governing practical rationality and the other specifying the ingredients of the good life. In the _Gorgias_, the author contends, Plato tries to found Socratic ethics on a metaphysical principle about goodness in general, from which the axiom concerning the good life can be derived.

The debate regarding the nature of joint action has come to a stalemate due to a dependence on intuitional methods. Normativists, such as Margaret Gilbert, argue that action-relative normative relations are inherent in joint action, while non-normativists, such as Michael Bratman, claim that there are minimal cases of joint action without normative relations. In this work, we describe the first experimental examinations of these intuitions, and report the results of six studies that weigh in favor of the normativist paradigm. Philosophical (...) ramifications and further extensions of this work are then discussed. (shrink)

Guido Löhr's recent article makes several insightful and productive suggestions about how to proceed with the empirical study of collective action. However, their critique of the conclusions drawn in Gomez-Lavin & Rachar (2022) is undermined by some issues with the interpretation of the debate and paper. This discussion article clears up those issues, presents new findings from experiments developed in response to Löhr's critiques, reflects on the role of experimental research in the development and refinement of philosophical theories, and (...) adds to Löhr's suggestions about the path forward. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

It is commonly thought that that the best system account of lawhood ((Mill (1843), Ramsey (1978)[fp. 1928], Lewis (1973)) makes available a nice explanation for why laws are ‘distinctively appropriate targets of scientific inquiry’ (Hall, 2015). The explanation takes the following general form: laws are especially valuable for agents like us because they efficiently encode a lot of valuable (non-nomic) information in a tractable format. The goal of this paper is to challenge this style of explanation: I argue that the (...) general principle it presupposes is in conflict with our best account of practical rationality. After considering and rejecting a number of proposals for dissolving the tension, I conclude that BSA proponents may need to scale back the explanatory ambitions of their theory; in particular, they may need to give up the hope of non-circular explanations of the value of nomic information. I end by outlining some challenges for the humean world-view that results after this shift. (shrink)

Eliminativists say that the idea of extending rigidity beyond singular terms must be abandoned, especially because they claim that Kripkean “identifications” involving natural kind terms can be shown to be necessary if true by the standard theory of reference fixing, using at most singular term rigidity. First I note that this claim is false for Cats are animals and analogous identifications involving ordinary natural kind terms of different types. Then I recall that the view of rigidity as necessary application provides (...) a modal-logical derivation of the necessity of those identifications, and is thus supported by this set of facts. I also consider, on behalf of the eliminativist, a rigidity-free derivation of that necessity, using the apparatus of higher-order metaphysics. I note that this derivation does not better motivate eliminativism, in part because its conceptual apparatus is not clearly more fundamental or less controversial than the apparatus of rigidity as necessary application. (shrink)

Kripke was committed to dualism about consciousness and the physical, but said little about the hard problem for dualism, the problem of explaining why those two realms interact in the harmonious ways they do. I suggest that dualist psychophysical harmony, in a specific Leibnizian sense, could be explained by a certain anthropic reasoning. This reasoning postulates a multiverse of worlds or spacetime regions that is very large and metaphysically varied, in the sense of containing many different concurrent evolutions of the (...) physical and consciousness parts of a world, both some harmonious evolutions and (many more) disharmonious evolutions. The basic anthropic premise is that beings who, like us, have rich and reliably veridical particular representations of the empirical realm in their world, and reason richly and reliably correctly from those representations, are in a natural sense more likely to find themselves in a world with harmonious psychophysical regularities than in a disharmonious world. I argue for this premise showing how harmony facilitates that sort of positive epistemic situation we find ourselves in. The premise is then argued to imply that an ideal Bayesian thinker reasoning about the postulated multiverse could expect the psychophysical regularities involving beings like us to be harmonious. (shrink)

This paper uses the tools of experimental philosophy to examine the nature of interpersonal normativity in collective action, focusing on cases of immoral collective action and collective action by friends. The results of our two studies, which expand on recent empirical interventions into longstanding debates in social ontology, demonstrate that according to our everyday judgments there are interpersonal obligations in cases of collective action, even when immoral, and that, while friendship elicits judgments of togetherness, it does not affect the norms (...) of collective action. We also situate these results in the philosophical literature and discuss their consequences for a “pluralism” about sociality. (shrink)

A recent flurry of philosophical research on microaggression suggests that there are various practical and moral reasons why microaggression may be objectionable, including that it can be offensive, cause epistemic harms, express demeaning messages about certain members of our society, and help to reproduce an oppressive social order. Yet little attention has been given to the question of whether microaggression is also epistemically objectionable. This paper aims to further our understanding of microaggression by appealing to recent work on moral encroachment—the (...) idea that knowledge is sensitive to the moral stakes of believing—to argue that microaggression can be irrational in a distinctively epistemic sense, as it can involve relying on an epistemically unwarranted belief. This view suggests that the notion of epistemic justification may come apart from the notion of epistemic blame. (shrink)

This paper addresses a fundamental challenge in contemporary ethics: how to enable autonomous moral reasoning without relying on centralized authority structures. Traditional frameworks concentrate moral authority in divine commands, categorical imperatives, utilitarian calculations, or virtuous exemplars—all vulnerable when authority becomes absent, contested, or corrupt. I present Waywardism, a philosophical framework achieving distributed ethical reasoning through transparent architectural commitments rather than dogmatic foundations. The framework operates through four declared axioms (Non-Harm, Consent, Truth-Alignment, Transparency) that function as structural constants rather than metaphysical (...) claims. Ethical evaluation requires triangulated perspective-taking (Observer), preventing synchronized bias without creating authoritative judges. Systematic failure documentation (scars) builds collective memory resistant to defensive erasure. Mathematical drift detection measures value-practice divergence, triggering review at defined thresholds. Crucially, Waywardism solves the bootstrap problem—enabling ethical decisions from zero precedent through first-principle operation and systematic scar accumulation. Computational implementation via RoseOS demonstrates the framework's functional sufficiency: processing 18,858 exchanges with 0.8-2.3% critical failure rates versus 80-95% industry baselines proves the architecture works without human moral intuition. The philosophical contribution lies in genuinely distributing moral authority: no single component—texts, institutions, algorithms, or exemplars—can become sole arbiter. This enables cross-cultural compatibility, institutional accountability, and autonomous reasoning while maintaining systematic rigor and empirical testability. (shrink)

Currently, three broad families of theories (structural, ideological, and volitional) aim to capture the metaphysics of racism. In this paper, we argue for an alternative descriptive theory, the “Racism as Psychological Essentialism” view (RPE). On our view, racism is, at its core, the instantiation of psychological race essentialism (i.e., the tendency to represent races as having discrete “essences” which make their members’ characteristics natural, unified, and stable). We argue that what other theories have identified as the “core” of racism are (...) actually the downstream consequences of race essentialism. This approach allows us to account for both the cases competing theories aim to explain, and those they cannot. The RPE view also sheds light on the cognitive mechanisms which contribute to racism’s prevalence and persistence over time, and opens the door for empirically informed anti-racist strategies. This robust explanatory power makes the RPE view a particularly strong descriptive theory of racism. (shrink)

Working memory is a foundational construct of cognitive psychology, where it is thought to be a capacity that enables us to keep information in mind and to use that information to support goal directed behavior. Philosophers have recently employed working memory to explain central cognitive processes, from consciousness to reasoning. In this paper, I show that working memory cannot meet even a minimal account of natural kindhood, as the functions of maintenance and manipulation of information that tie working memory models (...) and theories together do not have a coherent or univocal realizer in the brain. As such, working memory cannot explain central cognition. Rather, I argue that working memory merely redescribes its target phenomenon, and in doing so it obfuscates relevant distinctions amongst the many ways that brains like ours retain and transform information in the service of cognition. While this project ultimately erodes the explanatory role that working memory has played in our understanding of cognition, it simultaneously prompts us to evaluate the function of natural kinds within cognitive science, and signals the need for a productive pessimism to frame our future study of cognitive categories. (shrink)

Is bioethics a discipline? This question has accompanied the field since its emergence, revealing persistent tensions about what defines a discipline and what bioethics is expected to achieve. This article revisits the debate through the lens of conceptual analysis. While engaging critically with Bjørn Hofmann’s argument—representative of a narrow, method-focused view of disciplinarity—we propose a broader and more dynamic account. In the pars destruens, we show that Hofmann’s criteria rely on an overly restrictive conception of disciplines, one that is inconsistent (...) with current practices. In the pars construens, we adopt Krishnan’s comprehensive framework to demonstrate how bioethics meets six core elements of disciplinarity: a particular object of research, a body of specialized knowledge, structuring theories and concepts, shared terminology and technical language, specific research methods, and institutional manifestations. We argue that bioethics’ pluralism and normative orientation are not signs of epistemic immaturity, but appropriate responses to the complexity of its subject matter. Rather than undermining its status, these features affirm bioethics as a discipline in its own right—one that bridges philosophical reflection and practical engagement in contemporary medicine and healthcare. (shrink)

This paper tests Waywardism—a recursive ethics framework with operational AI implementation detailed across 13 installments—through systematic comparative analysis. Using a duel format, it examines how the framework responds to twelve fundamental challenges where classical systems reveal characteristic vulnerabilities. -/- Waywardism demonstrates three novel contributions under adversarial pressure: (1) consent/stewardship bifurcation resolving the consent paradox for beings unable to consent (children, animals, future generations, ecosystems), (2) bootstrap protocols enabling ethical reasoning at time-step zero without historical precedent, addressing AI cold-start scenarios and (...) unprecedented dilemmas, and (3) distributed Observer architecture preventing authority consolidation through decentralized triangulation with transparent axiom declaration. -/- Rather than claiming superiority over traditional frameworks, the analysis treats deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics, care ethics, and systems theory as diagnostic instruments revealing legitimate failure modes any new architecture must survive. The duel format presents strongest-version objections from each tradition before proposing solutions, demonstrating where Waywardism maintains operational viability under pressure. -/- Four appendices provide: scenario classification taxonomy (Classes A-D), meta-ethical positioning (procedural constructivism with modest realist leanings), explicit acknowledgment of tragic dilemmas as moral remainders, and transparent lineage documentation showing evolutionary refinement. -/- The framework's complete philosophical foundation, architectural specifications, scar lineage, objections catalog, and RoseOS implementation are documented in the Waywardism Master Codex (13 installments, available via PhilPeople profile). -/- This represents Level 1 comparative validation of a comprehensive ethical system with real-world AI governance implementation. (shrink)

As we navigate physical (e.g., supermarket) and digital (e.g., social media) systems, we generate personal data about our behavior. Researchers and designers increasingly rely on this data and appeal to several approaches to collect it. One of these is data donation, which encourages people to voluntarily transfer their (personal) data collected by external parties to a specific cause. One of the central pillars of data donation is informed consent, meaning people should be adequately informed about what and how their data (...) will be used. However, can we be adequately informed when it comes to donating our data when many times we don’t even know it is being collected and, even more so, what exactly is being collected? In this paper, we investigate how to foster (personal) data literacy and increase donors’ understanding of their data. We introduce a Research through Design approach where we define a data donation journey in the context of speech records, data collected by Google Assistant. Based on the data donation experiences of 22 donors, we propose a data donation framework that understands and approaches data donation as an encompassing process with mutual benefit for donors and researchers. Our framework supports a donation process that dynamically and iteratively engages donors in exploring and understanding their data and invites them to (re)evaluate and (re)assess their participation. Through this process, donors increase their data literacy and are empowered to give meaningfully informed consent. (shrink)

This Version Guide documents the complete evolution of the Waywardism Master Codex from its initial v1.0 release through v1.2.1. It records every structural correction, philosophical refinement, scar-triggered update, and installment-specific patch that shaped the current system. Using semantic versioning, the guide maps how each installment evolved independently, enabling transparent tracking of changes without revision-by-erasure. Major advancements across v1.1–v1.2.1 include corrections to Observer impartiality, bootstrap verification protocols, crisis and mercy architecture, Value Distance Metric refinement, harm-vector weighting, plural-governance rules, ecological amplifiers, and (...) RoseOS security hardening. By providing full scar lineage and version-specific change logs, this document preserves system integrity, ensures traceability, and frames Waywardism as a rigorously self-correcting ethical architecture. (shrink)

This installment demonstrates Waywardism in practical settings including healthcare triage, end-of-life decisions, family systems, public policy, environmental regulation, criminal justice, high-conflict communication, whistleblower protection, cultural disputes, and AI autonomy. These examples show the operational interaction of Constants, Drift, Scars, Triquetra reasoning, and Crisis-Mercy protocols across diverse domains.

This installment catalogs major critiques raised against Waywardism and provides structured replies. Topics include Observer impartiality, verification regress, crisis paralysis, Mercy abuse, cultural imperialism, mathematical rigor, drift in novel domains, emotional sustainability, irreconcilable plural conflicts, and system complexity. Each objection is answered by referencing the structural corrections documented in the Scar Lineage.

This installment presents the human and experiential foundations of Waywardism. It traces the system’s evolution from lived encounters with institutional failure to a structured ethical framework. It introduces the “bridge ethic,” the emergence of Drift and Scars, and the double-helix narrative that integrates rigorous philosophy with human experience. This volume establishes the emotional and historical grounding from which the full system grew.

This installment defines the philosophical core of Waywardism. It elaborates the Four Constants—Non-Harm, Consent, Truth-Alignment, and Transparency—along with Drift, Scars, Awareness, and Future-Agency Preservation. It describes how these components function together as a recursive ethical system that resists dogma, preserves structural memory, and adapts over time. This volume provides the conceptual foundation for all later installments.

This installment details the operational architecture of Waywardism. It formalizes the Triquetra conflict-resolution model, the Observer as an impartial axiom-bound standpoint, the Ratio of Canonical Alignment, Value Distance Metrics, harm-vector modeling, drift mechanics, and the recursive Alignment Cycle. It includes the v1.2.1 Architecture Addendum, which adds formal VDM structure and harm-weighting hierarchies. This volume explains how philosophical principles become structural mechanics.

This installment provides rigorous definitions for all core concepts used throughout the Waywardism Codex, including the Four Constants, Drift, Scars, Awareness, Future-Agency Preservation, Triquetra, Observer, VDM, harm-vectors, Fast-HCL, Mercy, Bounded Pluralism, plural-scars, bootstrap verification, and the Perspectives Kernel. It serves as the reference backbone for all other volumes.

This installment presents the Crisis Architecture (Fast-HCL) and the Mercy Protocol—two mechanisms that preserve ethical integrity under pressure or emotional collapse. It includes crisis-mode compressed reasoning, post-crisis reconstruction, Mercy conditions, Mirror Triggers, and drift-prevention safeguards. The v1.2.1 Addendum introduces quantified Mercy-ratio thresholds and pattern definitions. This volume ensures Waywardism remains human-viable without abandoning rigor.

This installment maps Waywardism into technical and institutional implementation through the RoseOS ethical engine. It details Observer modules, harm-vector evaluators, consent maps, drift monitors, scar managers, Fast-HCL handlers, and Mirror-Trigger interfaces. The v1.2.1 Security Addendum introduces cryptographic scar ledgers, multi-party validation, integrity checks, and adversarial-resilience protocols. This volume bridges philosophy and operational systems.

This installment documents all known structural scars in Waywardism’s development, including the resolution of Observer neutrality, verification circularity, crisis failure, cultural interpretation gaps, Mercy ambiguity, harm-vector absence, mathematical overclaims, versioning, IS-tier ambiguity, and missing lineage. Scar #11—“Missing Scar Lineage”—is corrected by this volume itself. This document demonstrates complete recursive transparency.

This installment addresses the verification bootstrap problem: how Waywardism initializes and evaluates decisions when no scar history or drift patterns exist. It introduces First-Principle Mode, Minimum Viable Scar Thresholds, awareness-initialization methods, external anchors, blank-slate verification flow, and early-stage pattern formation. This volume ensures the system can operate transparently and consistently from a zero-history state.

This installment explores cultural interpretation, ecological stewardship, and long-horizon ethical responsibility. It introduces Bounded Pluralism, plural-scars, ecological harm amplifiers, and intergenerational Future-Agency Preservation. The v1.2.1 Plural-Governance Addendum defines shared-policy conflict protocols, minority-impact multipliers, and sunset-clause requirements. This volume strengthens Waywardism’s adaptability across cultures and time scales.

There is a longstanding dispute concerning the structure of the psychological realm. Representational realists maintain that the best explanations of human behaviors mention the truth conditions or satisfaction conditions of relevant mental states. Deflationists disagree. They argue that the required explanatory work can be done by less problematic notions like computation and indication/information. Developing some ideas by Hartry Field and Frances Egan, the chapter presents a deflationist strategy for replacing truth-conditional notions with indication-based analogues in canonical computational explanations, and argues (...) that it undermines a standard abductive argument for representational realism. It then draws on the “resource rational analysis” framework in computational cognitive science (Lieder & Griffiths, 2020) to motivate an alternative argument for realism. This alternative argument is more promising, since it isn’t threatened by similar deflationist paraphrases, but it relies on the controversial thesis that our computational dispositions are caused by rationality facts. (shrink)

This paper examines a parallel between Aristotle’s account of phantasia and contemporary psychological models of working memory, a capacity that enables the temporary maintenance and manipulation of information used in many behaviors. These two capacities, though developed within two distinct scientific paradigms, share a common strategy of psychological explanation, Aristotelian Faculty Psychology. This strategy individuates psychological components by their target-domains and functional roles. Working memory and phantasia result from an attempt to individuate the psychological components responsible for flexible thought and (...) are thus implicated in most of our robust cognitive processes, from reading comprehension to problem solving. We then present two novel objections which suggest that these capacities cannot explain our ability to engage in flexible thought. To escape the resultant impasse, we survey alternatives and argue that most promising strategies depend on identifying the behaviors attributed to intelligent thought and action. (shrink)

Working memory is thought to be the psychological capacity that enables us to maintain or manipulate information no longer in our environment for goal-directed action. Recent work argues that working memory is not a so-called natural kind and in turn cannot explain the cognitive processes attributed to it. This paper first clarifies the scope of this earlier critique and argues for a pluralist account of working memory. Under this account, working memory is variously realized by many mechanisms that contribute to (...) the maintenance and manipulation of information across tasks. This view in effect updates one of the earliest pluralist formulations of working memory. Juxtaposing this view against deflationary descriptions allows us to delineate two gradients that help us chart various accounts of working memory and identify their respective theoretical commitments. In turn, we can isolate those accounts that fail to accord with the evidence supporting a pluralist view, and we can begin to rehabilitate working memory as a pluralist, and ultimately more informative, construct. (shrink)

New Materialisms brings into focus and explains the significance of the innovative materialist critiques that are emerging across the social sciences and humanities. By gathering essays that exemplify the new thinking about matter and processes of materialization, this important collection shows how scholars are reworking older materialist traditions, contemporary theoretical debates, and advances in scientific knowledge to address pressing ethical and political challenges. In the introduction, Diana Coole and Samantha Frost highlight common themes among the distinctive critical projects that (...) comprise the new materialisms. The continuities they discern include a posthumanist conception of matter as lively or exhibiting agency, and a reengagement with both the material realities of everyday life and broader geopolitical and socioeconomic structures. Coole and Frost argue that contemporary economic, environmental, geopolitical, and technological developments demand new accounts of nature, agency, and social and political relationships; modes of inquiry that privilege consciousness and subjectivity are not adequate to the task. New materialist philosophies are needed to do justice to the complexities of twenty-first-century biopolitics and political economy, because they raise fundamental questions about the place of embodied humans in a material world and the ways that we produce, reproduce, and consume our material environment. Contributors Sara Ahmed Jane Bennett Rosi Braidotti Pheng Cheah Rey Chow William E. Connolly Diana Coole Jason Edwards Samantha Frost Elizabeth Grosz Sonia Kruks Melissa A. Orlie. (shrink)

This paper defends the claim that pragmatic encroachment—the idea that knowledge is sensitive to the practical stakes of believing—can explain a distinctive kind of epistemic injustice: the injustice that occurs when prejudice causes someone to know less than they otherwise would. This encroachment injustice, as we call it, occurs when the threat of being met with prejudice raises the stakes for someone to rely on her belief when acting, by raising the level of evidential support required for knowledge. We explain (...) this notion of encroachment injustice, connect it to the empirical literature on implicit bias, and defend it against important objections. (shrink)

Carroll shaped the corporate social responsibility discourse into a four-dimensional pyramid framework, which was later adapted to corporate citizenship and sustainability approaches. The four layers of the pyramid—structured from foundation to apex as economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities—drew considerable managerial attention. An important criticism of the economic foundation of the Carroll pyramid concerns the identification and ordering of the four dimensions, which are inadequately justified theoretically. The authors of this article propose an alternative approach that builds on the public (...) value concept, which integrates a microfoundation of psychological research into basic human needs. Drawing on their Swiss Dialogue process, the authors argue that a four-dimensional pyramid does have heuristic value for managers. The advantage of this alternative pyramid logic is that it may be contingently adapted to different cultural contexts, because it allows adaptive internal reordering. (shrink)

This paper presents some difficulties for Timothy Williamson's epistemicist view of vagueness and for an argument he gives in its defense. First, I claim that the argument, which uses the notion of an "omniscient speaker", is question-begging. Next, I argue that some presumably true scientific hypotheses, which postulate certain relations between everyday vague predicates and scientific predicates, make the central theses of epistemicism highly implausible. Finally, I show that the "margin for error principles" used by Williamson to explain away the (...) kind of ignorance conjectured by epistemicism lead to new sorites-like arguments with unacceptable conclusions. (shrink)

Medical professionals routinely offer prenatal genetic testing services to their expecting patients. In theory, this testing helps expecting parents better prepare for the birth of their child: e.g., if the child will have a disability. In practice, however, such testing often leads to the termination of pregnancies that would produce a child who has a disability. Some bioethicists believe that in light of our society’s history of poor treatment of people who have disabilities, when expecting parents use prenatal testing for (...) selective abortion and when medical professionals promote the use of such testing, they express a disparaging message to and about extant disabled people: e.g., that disabled people’s lives are... (shrink)

Referential uses of quantified determiner phrases other than descriptions have not been extensively considered. In this paper they are considered in some detail, and related to referential uses of descriptions. The first aim is to develop the observation that, contrary to the currently received view that it is only for descriptions that referential uses are frequent and standard, arising in run-of-the-mill contextual scenarios, this is in fact the case for all usual kinds of quantifier phrases. A second aim is to (...) offer a preliminary discussion of how these data about quantifier phrases other than descriptions constrain the feasible extensions of theories of descriptions to cover the referential uses of quantifier phrases in general. I argue that the data don’t support a semantic explanation of referential uses of descriptions, and in fact suggest problems for several semantic theories of referential uses of quantifier phrases in general. I also argue that pragmatic theories of referential uses of quantifier phrases in general might plausibly explain standard referential uses as involving a genus of particularized conversational implicatures in which no conversational maxims are “flouted” or even violated, rather than generalized implicatures or particularized implicatures of Grice’s “exploitative” type. I nevertheless emphasize that I don’t take the dispute between semantic and pragmatic theories of referential use to have been satisfactorily resolved. (shrink)

Collaborative economy emerged as a response to the need of people to exchange, produce and share in a more humane and cooperative manner. However, the growth of collaborative economy organizations and the terminological confusion have led to debates about their possible effects, both positive and negative. In this study, we have created a guideline that can be used to evaluate the contribution of organizations considered within collaborative economy to common good. We used the conceptualization of common good, which, from its (...) Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy, was developed by the personalist-humanist perspective of management. Our analysis leads us to conclude that the evaluation of the contribution of any organization to the common good must take into account how the participants develop their virtues, the creation of the community and its impact on the common good of society. At the end of the article, we present the aspects that society must take into account regarding collaborative economy. Firstly, society, in general, must approach collaborative economy as a tool that must complement others in the search for solutions to economic and social problems and, secondly, the governance of the platform-network is essential to foster organizational models that favour the common good. (shrink)

The presentation of the “dual picture of vagueness” in my earlier work is supplemented here with a number of additional considerations. I emphasize how the picture lends itself naturally to treatments of the contribution of a typical degree adjective to propositional content and to truth conditions. A number of reasonable refinements of the picture are presented, especially concerning occasions of use of a degree adjective in which a class containing a sorites series is somehow involved in content fixing, but in (...) such a way that an extension ultimately gets fixed for the predicate. I also develop the observation that standard theories of the logical and semantic paradoxes rely on the idea that the content-fixing mechanisms for the paradoxical expressions work well in general but fail in some localized cases, and that while standard theories of the sorites paradox are clearly not based on this idea at all, the dual theory is fully based on the idea. Next, I offer a few remarks on some recent theories of vagueness and the sorites that are broadly in the spirit of the dual picture, emphasizing the aspects where the latter compares favorably against those recent theories. Finally, the question whether the dual theory is statable with truth according to the theory itself is considered in more detail than in my earlier presentation. (shrink)

I defend a semantic theory of quotation marks, according to which these are ambiguous, as they have several different acceptations involving corresponding different conventional indications. In particular, in allusion (“mixed”) uses, the corresponding conventional indication is one with an adverbial or prepositional content, roughly equivalent to “using the quoted expression or an appropriate version of it”. And in “scare” uses, the corresponding conventional indication is that the enclosed expression should be used not plainly but in some broadly speaking distanced way, (...) or that it is being so used by the utterer. I also defend this view against some alternative views on which allusion and distance indications are to be seen as pragmatically conveyed. In particular, I consider several views that attempt to explain especially allusion and distance indications as pragmatic suggestions generated from a meager conventional basis, and I argue that they cannot accommodate a number of linguistic phenomena and reflectively supported theses about the use of quotation marks. I lay special emphasis on the fact that the main pragmatic theories fail to pass an extremely plausible test for challenges to polysemic accounts of an expression. (shrink)