People tend to judge that agents bring about the ends more intentionally than the means. In three experiments, we test a new explanation for this so-called Kraemer Effect: people tend to judge that agents bring about the ends more intentionally than the means because they think that the agent's actions increase the probability of the ends more than the means, even though their objective probabilities are the same. In Experiment 1, we replicated the Kraemer Effect in English and German. In (...) Experiment 2, we aimed to manipulate people's perceived probability increase of bringing about the ends and test whether this would decrease the size of the Kraemer Effect. In Experiment 3, we aimed to manipulate people's perceived probability increase of bringing about the means and test whether this would decrease the size of the Kraemer Effect. In both experiments, we found no evidence that manipulating the perceived probability increase of bringing about the means or the ends decreased the size of the Kraemer Effect. Overall, we found no evidence that a probability-raising account of intentionality explains the Kraemer Effect. (shrink)

This graduate textbook provides a basic introduction to experimental philosophy (x-phi). In nine chapters, different methods and tools used in X-Phi are explained, spanning quantitative vignette studies, interactive experiments, corpus analysis, psycholinguistic experiments as well as qualitative interview studies. Each chapter introduces a specific experimental method by means of a case study in an easily accessible way and covers the whole research process from the development of a research question to the interpretation of the data.

“Experimental philosophy is philosophy with a little something extra” (Sytsma et al., 2023, 9). This “little something extra” is the fact that experimental philosophers conduct their own experimental studies to provide empirical insights to address philosophical issues. They use qualitative and quantitative research methods such as interactive experiments, reaction time studies, corpus analysis, vignette studies, interviews, and so forth.

The FORTEe randomised controlled trial (NCT05289739) investigates an exercise intervention for children and adolescents undergoing cancer treatment. Conducting research with this vulnerable population poses unique ethical challenges, including participant burden, child autonomy, and parental decision-making. This study explored the ethical experiences of healthcare professionals (HCPs) involved in the trial. A multicentre survey was conducted across ten clinical sites in Europe using a structured, browser-based questionnaire comprising both closed and open-ended questions. Domains included burden and benefits assessment, informed consent, child autonomy, (...) parental influence and moral distress. Quantitative responses were analysed descriptively, while qualitative data underwent content analysis. Seventy-nine HCPs participated, including exercise professionals (n = 30), physicians (n = 19), nurses (n = 8), psychologists (n = 5), social workers (n = 3), one social scientist, one medical ethicist and 12 individuals in other roles. A large majority of respondents (86.1%) agreed or strongly agreed that the overall burden-benefit balance of trial participation was appropriate, while 11.4% were unsure and 2.5% disagreed. Open-text responses described perceived challenges related to questionnaire burden, logistical demands, and emotional discomfort associated with control-group allocation. Informed consent procedures were generally perceived as appropriate. However, some respondents reported situations in which parental influence appeared to outweigh children’s expressed preferences, and difficulties were noted in assessing children’s evolving decision-making capacity. Among HCPs who described prognosis-related events (n = 45), 68.9% described experiences they associated with moral distress, particularly in relation to communication and decisions regarding continuation of participation. The trial's ethical climate was largely perceived as positive, though emotional and logistical burdens were noted. Reports of emotional discomfort and moral distress among staff highlight the ethical tensions between research integrity and individual well-being. Furthermore, divergent views on children’s capacity to give consent suggest the need for clearer guidance on paediatric autonomy and shared decision-making. Ethically sound paediatric research must address real-world burdens and emotional dynamics beyond procedural compliance. Findings from the FORTEe trial staff survey highlight the importance of flexible, child-centred approaches, sustainable access to beneficial interventions, and institutional structures that promote ethical reflection. Registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT05289739, 21 March 2022) and in the German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS00027978, 28 January 2022). (shrink)

Experimental methods from psycholinguistics allow experimental philosophers to study important automatic inferences, with a view to explaining and assessing philosophically relevant intuitions and arguments. Philosophical thought is shaped by verbal reasoning in natural language. Such reasoning is driven by automatic comprehension inferences. Such inferences shape, e.g., intuitions about verbally described cases, in philosophical thought experiments; more generally, they shape moves from premises to conclusions in philosophical arguments. These inferences can be examined with questionnaire-based and eye-tracking methods from psycholinguistics. We explain (...) how these methods can be adapted for use in experimental philosophy. We demonstrate their application by presenting a new eye-tracking study that helps assess the influential philosophical ``argument from illusion.'' The study examines whether stereotypical inferences from polysemous words (viz., appearance verbs) are automatically triggered even when prefaced by contexts that defeat the inferences. We use this worked example to explain the key conceptual steps involved in designing behavioural experiments, step by step. Going beyond the worked example, we also explain methods that require no laboratory facilities. (shrink)

Using a particular example of a research problem in experimental philosophy, this chapter illustrates one way to design, conduct, and analyze interactive experiments in behavioral science. Several steps of the research process are described, including developing the research question and hypotheses, designing the study, programming and conducting the experiment, analyzing the data, and interpreting the results. The chapter provides step-by-step instructions for programming the experiment using the online survey tool Unipark, conducting the experiment using Amazon Mechanical Turk, and performing the (...) analysis using the statistical analysis applications JASP and R. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologıes, Erotic Generosities by Debra B. Bergoffen, Sex and Existence: Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘The Second Sex’ by Eva Lundgren-Gothlin, Beauvoir and The Second Sex: Feminism, Race, and the Origins of Existentialism by Margaret A. Simons, Philosophy as Passion: The Thinking of Simone de Beauvoir by Karen VintgesNancy BauerDebra B. Bergoffen. The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologıes, Erotic Generosities. Albany: (...) State University of New York Press, 1997. Pp. x + 250. Cloth, $54.50.Eva Lundgren-Gothlin. Sex and Existence: Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘The Second Sex.’ Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press and University Press of New England, 1996. Pp. xii + 329. Paper, $19.95.Margaret A. Simons. Beauvoir and The Second Sex: Feminism, Race, and the Origins of Existentialism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. Pp. xx + 263. Cloth, $25.95.Karen Vintges, Philosophy as Passion: The Thinking of Simone de Beauvoir. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Pp. xii + 202. Paper, $19.95.Anyone who is seriously interested in Simone de Beauvoir’s place in the history of philosophy must contend sooner or later with the fact that she denied, repeatedly and vehemently throughout her lifetime, that she was a philosopher. Of course, a certain species of Beauvoir-detractor will be tempted to take these denials at face value, especially since they almost always went hand in hand with Beauvoir’s plausible-sounding [End Page 688] declarations that anything philosophical about her work could be traced to the thinking of her lifelong companion Jean-Paul Sartre, who, she underscored, was the “real” philosopher in their relationship. But the very strength and frequency of her abjurations of the title of philosopher is a sign that, like Freud, Beauvoir (who wrote several straightforwardly philosophical essays, including the monograph-length Ethics of Ambiguity and Pyrrhus et Cınéas) was motivated not so much by modesty or self-abnegation but by a desire to distance herself from what counted, at least in the middle of this century, as philosophy.For most of the past 50 years, English-speaking readers of Beauvoir have simply accepted her portrayal of her relationship to philosophy. On the ordinary view, The Second Sex, while an important historical touchstone for “feminist theory” is not, or not quite, a philosophical piece of writing, and those of her publications that merit that title are mere apologetics for Sartrean existentialism. But in the years since Beauvoir’s death in 1986 allowed for the release of her voluminous and revealing letters to Sartre, more and more feminist philosophers have been taking a second look at The Second Sex and Beauvoir’s other essays and fiction as they try to engage productively both with non-academic feminist work and with the philosophical mainstream. As a result, the difficult question of just how to assess Beauvoir’s relationship both to philosophy in general and to Sartre in particular has become pressing and is at the center of the four books under review here.The authors of these books are each committed, in their own sometimes strikingly different ways, to two theses: first, that to understand Beauvoir’s place in the history of philosophy one must study her appropriations of the work of philosophers other than just Sartre and, second, that at the heart of Beauvoir’s enterprise in all of her work is a desire to think about how to create and sustain reciprocity between an existentially committed self and an equally autonomous other.The most historically oriented and, on my view, meticulous exploration of Beauvoir’s relationship to her philosophical influences is Lundgren-Gothlin’s superb Sex and Exıstence, which chronicles Beauvoir’s indebtedness to and interest in, especially, Hegel and Marx. Lundgren-Gothlin, a philosophically trained Swedish intellectual historian, shows decisively that one cannot make philosophical sense of The Second Sex as long as one reduces its philosophical dimension to boilerplate Sartreanism. Indeed, given Sartre’s antipathy toward Marx and his ambivalence about Hegel in Beıng and Nothingness, Lundgren-Gothlin’s work raises serious questions about the extent to which Beauvoir’s considered views in The Second Sex are even compatible with those of the early... (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Der dargelegte Befund deutet darauf hin, daß es in Konstantinopel wie in Rom und anderen Provinzmetropolen zahlreiche Statuen hoher Beamter und Würdenträger gab. Allerdings fehlt ein entsprechender Befund für die Regierungszeit Konstantins d. Gr.; erst unter der Regierung Konstantius' II. lassen sich die ersten Beamtenstatuen feststellen. Das mag am Zufall der Überlieferung liegen, deckt sich aber immerhin damit, daß erst unter diesem Kaiser der Rahmen für eine breite magistratische Repräsentation gegeben war. Unter Konstantius II. wurde der Konstantinopler Senat zahlenmäßig (...) beträchtlich erweitert, zudem gleichberechtigt neben den römischen Senat gestellt, wurde das Amt des Stadtpräfekten eingeführt und, wie Paul Speck gezeigt hat, zugleich die Allpräsenz des Gründerkaisers Konstantin im Stadtbild relativiert, so daß überhaupt erst die Grundlagen für die öffentliche Repräsentation der Senatsaristokratie gegeben waren. Hatte Konstantin die nach ihm benannte Stadt zunächst als Residenzstadt errichtet, deren Bauten und Ausstattung ganz auf seine Person ausgerichtet waren, so schuf sein Sohn Konstantius die Voraussetzungen für die Entwicklung einer selbstbewußten Senatsaristokratie und einer entsprechenden Präsenz im Stadtbild. Die wenigen Indizien deuten darauf hin, daß sich die Statuen dieser Würdenträger, sofern es sich um senatorische Beamte handelte, beim Senat am Augusteion befanden. Stets dürfte es sich dabei um ‚einfache’ Statuen gehandelt haben, die allenfalls vergoldet waren, um bronzene Statuen oder um solche aus Marmor, die den Beamten in der Toga mit seinen Insignien zeigten. Seit dem fünften Jahrhundert läßt sich beobachten, daß eine kleine Gruppe einflußreicher Beamter und Heerführer entweder durch eine Vielzahl verschiedener Bildnisse an verschiedenen Orten oder aber durch die wesentlich aufwendigere Denkmalform eines Reiterstandbilds an prominenten Orten geehrt wird. Nie jedoch fand sich die Statue eines Nichtkaisers auf einem Ehrenbogen oder einer Säule, von denen es in Konstantinopel so viele gab. Diese blieben dem Kaiser und seiner Familie vorbehalten, der so im Denkmal den Abstand zu den aufwendigen Monumenten einflußreicher Personen wahren und auch erhöhen konnte. Doch beschränkte sich das kaiserliche Denkmal nicht nur auf einfache Ehrensäulen. Mehrfach sind Gruppen von Ehrensäulen überliefert, die städtebaulich an zentralen Stellen plaziert wurden. Zudem begegnet in der Spätantike zum erstenmal die Reiterstatue auf einem Säulenmonument, werden also zwei zunächst verschiedene Monumentformen miteinander verbunden (Abb. 7). Diese für die Spätantike typische Potenzierung der Wirkungsstrukturen und die Kombination bislang verschiedener Repräsentationsformen des imperialen Monuments ist wohl auch Folge des Konkurrenzdrucks durch allmächtige Militärs, die ihrerseits solche Selbstdarstellungsmodi aufgriffen. Die Kaiserdenkmäler bestimmen bis heute unser Bild von der Stadt Konstantinopel und lassen bisweilen vergessen, daß sie vor dem Hintergrund zahlreicher kleinerer Denkmäler hochrangiger Beamter errichtet wurden, unter denen einige so aufwendig waren, daß sie den Kaiser zum Aufgriff neuer, bislang noch nicht dagewesener Monumentformen zwangen. (shrink)

In order to contextualize the view of Jesus presented in The Anti-Christ as well as elsewhere, this chapter examines older examples of the critique of the “historical” Jesus before turning to the “quest for the historical Jesus” (as Albert Schweitzer called it) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Ancient examples of the critique of the “historical Jesus” include Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian the Apostate, and it is argued that, despite the overlap between them as exemplars of the tradition of anti-Christian (...) writing and his own critique, Nietzsche does not mention them because, as a classical philologist, he could assume that his audience would be familiar at least with the existence of these works, if not with their specific arguments. The chapter then considers such significant staging-posts in the quest for the historical Jesus as Reimarus, Christian Hermann Weisse, and Bruno Bauer; A.F. Gfrörer and G.F. Daumer; and Ernest Renan, a figure in whom renewed interest has been shown since the appearance of Robert D. Priest’s study, The Gospel According to Renan: Reading, Writing, & Religion in Nineteenth-Century France (2015). Although nowadays it can be hard to appreciate the extent to which Renan was a public intellectual, he exercised an important influence on such theologically divergent figures as Paul Claudel and Alfred Loisy, and Nietzsche drew on material from Renan’s Histoire des origines du christianisme (7 vols, 1863–1883) while nevertheless voicing (at times, acerbic) criticism of Renan. In its conclusion, the chapter considers some of the problems with Nietzsche’s instrumentalization or even “weaponization” of the discourse of philology against the discourse of theology (such as those highlighted by Anthony K. Jensen in his account of Nietzsche’s role in the “quest” for the historical Jesus). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 285 than" which is both immanent and transcendent, a kind of "coincidentia oppositorum" beyond logic and definition. It is the realm of the "person" within which, although the tragic conflict is not resolved, there arises the free self from whose non-dual perspective the unity and eternity of life are seen. Within this realm the individual gains an illumination the result of which is "amor fad," his free (...) decision to affirm his being. In this act of decision lies the "meaning" and "value" of life. The substance and point of Miss Bauer's book is to show the connection between the metaphysical ground of Simmel's concept of the tragic and its manifestations in different aspects of human experience. Her account is especially interesting in her chapter on the "tragic opposition" in which as an example of a tragic personality she cites Socrates who, by his refusal to flee from his prison, freely embraced his fate and, by choosing to die, confirmed his decisive, binding truth that the heavenly powers remain silent to the questions asked by a doubting and despairing humanity. His act declares that the individual must really stand alone in the world, taking counsel only from himself. Miss Bauer's book is written with a sympathetic understanding of Simmel's philosophy. By opening our eyes to the significant in human existence she succeeds in showing file relevance of his thought to our time. RIA STAVR1DES Vassar College Dialogo con Maurizio Blondel. By Michele Federico Sciacca. (Milano: Carlo Marzorati Editore, 1962. Pp. 159. L. 1300.) Sciacca has gathered here various articles which he had written about Blondel as well as new notes about this French thinker. Blondel struggled against the cult of science seeking to vindicate man's religious needs. Man longs for an end which transcends the natural order. Hence philosophy cannot ignore religion which points to a supernatural human destiny. According to Blondel, God is the only Word which answers the search of man and makes his action both fruitful and progressive. PAUL T. FUHRMANN Columbia Theological Seminary Essays in Ontology. By E. G. Allaire, M. Brodbeck, R. Grossman, H. Hochberg, R. G. Turnbull. Vol. I, Iowa Publications in Philosophy. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963. Pp. 216.) Essays in Ontology is the introductory volume of a new series of monographs to be published by the Department of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. The first volume, as its title indicates, is a collection of essays whose authors are closely affiliated with the Iowa Philosophy Department, being faculty members there now (Allaire and Turnbull) or former students (Hochberg, Grossman, and Brodbeck). Considered as a representative display of talent, the collection is somewhat unbalanced, since twelve of the fourteen papers are by three of the contributors, Allaire, Grossman, and Hochberg, while the other two are contributed by Brodbeck and Turnbull. It is also a matter of some disappointment that eleven of the fourteen papers have seen the light of print elsewhere; although this feeling is somewhat offset by the impact of sustained inquiry into one philosophical problem which the papers make when brought together in this way. The three new papers are "Particulars and... (shrink)

The problem of the validity and interpretation of the energy-time uncertainty relation is briefly reviewed and reformulated in a systematic way. The Bohr-Einsteinphoton-box gedanken experiment is seen to illustrate the complementarity of energy andevent time. A more recent experiment with amplitude-modulated Mößbauer quanta yields evidence for the genuine quantum indeterminacy of event time. In this way, event time arises as a quantum observable.

This review essay examines the emergence of the patient narrative or “pathography” in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in relation to the great cultural, epistemological, and ethical transformations that enabled the formation of modern medicine. John Wiltshire’s book provides an historical overview of this complex process, as well as laying the basis for a contemporary critique of some of its key assumptions.

Music uses the evolutionarily unique temporal sensitivity of the auditory system and its tight coupling to the motor system to create a common neurophysiological clock between individuals that facilitates action coordination. We propose that this shared common clock arises from entrainment to musical rhythms, the process by which partners' brains and bodies become temporally aligned to the same rhythmic pulse.

Electrical resistivity and ac-calorimetric measurements reveal a complex magnetic phase diagram for single crystals of the ferromagnetic Kondo-lattice compound CeAgSb2 at high pressures up to 80 kbar. The ferromagnetic order at TC = 9.6 K at ambient pressure is completely suppressed at a critical pressure PC = 35 kbar. Another magnetic transition, possibly antiferromagnetic, found above 27 kbar, attains a maximum value TN 6 K at 44 kbar and then appears to be completely suppressed by 50 kbar. Thermodynamic and transport (...) measurements in the ferromagnetic state indicate an energy gap Δ 30 K in the spin-wave excitation spectrum at ambient pressure which decreases to Δ 10 K at P = 30 kbar. No superconductivity is observed at ambient pressure above T 0.1 K, under applied pressure in the ferromagnetic state (P = 28.5 kbar), nor in the antiferromagnetic state (P = 33 − 46 kbar) above 0.3 K. © 2003 The American Physical Society. (shrink)

Should a principle of charity be applied to the interpretation of the colour concepts exercised in visual experience? We think not. We shall argue, for one thing, that the grounds for applying a principle of charity are lacking in the case of colour concepts. More importantly, we shall argue that attempts at giving the experience of colour a charitable interpretation either fail to respect obvious features of that experience or fail to interpret it charitably, after all. Charity to visual experience (...) is therefore no motive for resisting the natural, Galilean response to a scientific understanding of light and vision. The best interpretation of colour experience ends up convicting it of widespread and systematic error. (shrink)

This volume presents a series of influential essays by Paul Boghossian on the theory of content and on its relation to the phenomenon of a priori knowledge. The essays are organized under four headings: the nature of content; content and self-knowledge; knowledge, content, and the a priori; and colour concepts.

It is very common these days to come across the claim that the notions of mental content and linguistic meaning are normative notions. In the work of many philosophers, it plays a pivotal role. Saul Kripke made it the centerpiece of his influential discussion of Wittgenstein’s treatment of rulefollowing and private language; he used it to argue that the notions of meaning and content cannot be understood in naturalistic terms. Kripke’s formulations tend to be in terms of the notion of (...) linguistic meaning, but his argumentative strategy makes it clear that he holds both versions of the claim.... (shrink)

An irrealist conception of a given region of discourse is the view that no real properties answer to the central predicates of the region in question. Any such conception emerges, invariably, as the result of the interaction of two forces. An account of the meaning of the central predicates, along with a conception of the sorts of property the world may contain, conspire to show that, if the predicates of the region are taken to express properties, their extensions would have (...) to be deemed uniformly empty. The question then becomes whether the predicates are best understood as expressing properties, and hence as founded on error, or whether they ought to be understood along non-factualist lines.z Historically, irrealist models were developed primarily in connection with evaluative discourse, although as physicalism has flourished and as reductionist programs have failed, their application has been extended to many other domains. Indeed, it is one of the more influential suggestions in contemporary philosophy of mind that they apply even to ordinary belief/desire psychology. A correct understanding of the semantics and metaphysics of content-based psychology leaves us, so the proponents of the in-. (shrink)

According to a very natural picture of rational belief, we aim to believe only what is true. However, as Bernard Williams used to say, the world does not just inscribe itself onto our minds. Rather, we have to try to figure out what is true from the evidence available to us. To do this, we rely on a set of epistemic rules that tell us in some general way what it would be most rational to believe under various epistemic circumstances. (...) We reason about what to believe; and we do so by relying on a set of rules.... (shrink)

Compatibilism combines an externalist view of mental content with a doctrine of privileged self‐knowledge. The essay presents a reductio of compatibilism by arguing that if compatibilism were true, we would be in a position to know certain facts about the world a priori, facts that no one can reasonably believe are knowable a priori. Whether this should be taken to cast doubt on externalism or privileged self‐knowledge is not discussed. Consideration is given to the ’empty case’—the case in which a (...) thinker expresses what he takes to be a genuine thought concerning a natural kind but where there is in fact no relevant natural kind, so that the putative natural kind term fails to refer. It is argued that, in such a case, on an externalist conception of natural kind terms, the thinker is deluded in taking himself to be expressing a complete thought, and that such delusions are not compatible with privileged self‐knowledge. (shrink)

I believe that the notion of epistemic transparency does play an important role in our ordinary conception of mental content and I want to say what that role is. Unfortunately, the task is a large one; here I am able only to begin on its outline. I shall proceed somewhat indirectly, beginning with a discussion of externalist conceptions of mental content. I shall show that such conceptions violate epistemic transparency to an extent that has not been fully appreciated. Subsequently, I (...) shall look at the implications of this violation and at the reconstructive project that a rejection of transparency entails. I am inclined to think it unlikely that we will get a conception of propositional content that underwrites epistemic transparency. But I am concerned that we have not fully appreciated the role that transparency currently plays and the work that would need to be done were we to discard it. (shrink)

The paper is a defense of the project of explaining the a priori via the notion of meaning or concept possession. It responds to certain objections that have been made to this project—in particular, that there can be no epistemically analytic sentences that are not also metaphysically analytic, and that the notion of implicit definition cannot explain a priori entitlement. The paper goes on to distinguish between two different ways in which facts about meaning might generate facts about entitlement—inferential and (...) constitutive. It concludes by outlining a theory of the latter. (shrink)

The dispute between realists about color and anti-realists is actually a dispute about the nature of color properties. The disputants do not disagree over what material objects are like. Rather, they disagree over whether any of the uncontroversial facts about material objects--their powers to cause visual experiences, their dispositions to reflect incident light, their atomic makeup, and so on--amount to their having colors. The disagreement is thus about which properties colors are and, in particular, whether colors are any of the (...) properties in a particular set that is acknowledged on both sides to exhaust the properties of material objects. In a previous paper we discussed at length one attempt to identify colors with particular properties of material objects--namely, with their dispositions to cause visual experiences. Here we shall discuss a different and perhaps more influential version of realism, which says that the colors of material objects are microphysical properties of their surfaces. We shall call this theory physicalism about color (physicalism, for short). In order to evaluate this theory, however, we shall first have to clarify some methodological issues. Our hope is that we can bring some further clarity to the question of color realism, whether or not we succeed in our critique of the physicalists' answer. (shrink)

The question I want to look at in this paper is this: To what extent does an externalist conception of mental content threaten our ability to know the contents of our thoughts? I shall argue that, in an important sense, externalism is inconsistent with the thesis that we have authoritative first-person knowledge of thought content: in particular, I shall argue, it is inconsistent with the thesis that our thought contents are epistemically transparent to us. I shall further argue that this (...) is true in a sense that falsifies another important and traditionally fundamental view —that we can detect a priori whether our inferences are logically valid or not. I shall leave for another occasion the question whether these results reflect badly on epistemic transparency or on externalism. (shrink)

This collection of newly commissioned essays, edited by NYU philosophers Paul Boghossian and Christopher Peacocke, resumes the current surge of interest in the proper explication of the notion of a priori. The authors discuss the relations of the a priori to the notions of definition, meaning, justification, and ontology, explore how the concept figured historically in the philosophies of Leibniz, Kant, Frege, and Wittgenstein, and address its role in the contemporary philosophies of logic, mathematics, mind, and science. The editors’ (...) Introduction familiarizes the reader with the issues that are to be explored in detail in later parts of the anthology. (shrink)

In this chapter a new problem about rule-following is outlined, one that is distinct both from Kripke’s and Wright’s versions of the problem. This new problem cannot be correctly responsed to, as Kripke’s can, by invoking Wright’s Intentional Account of rule-following. The upshot might be called, following Kant, an antinomy of pure reason: we both must — and cannot — make sense of someone’s following a rule. The chapter explores various ways out of this antinomy without here endorsing any of (...) them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.2 (2001) 233-244 [Access article in PDF] Joseph Butler on Forgiveness: A Presupposed Theory of Emotion Paul A. Newberry "I forgive him as far as humanity can forgive. I would do him no injury." Mrs. Dale in Anthony Trollope's The Last Chronicle of Barset, 1867. In the recent philosophical literature on forgiveness, a topic of great concern is the proper characterization of (...) forgiveness or, said in another way, the proper definition of forgiveness. Forgiveness has been defined in a multitude of ways: among others, as the overcoming of resentment, the overcoming of moral hatred, as a speech act, and as forbearance. Of these definitions the one that enjoys anything close to a kind of consensus is that forgiveness is the overcoming of resentment. This position, with various qualifications and stipulations, is held by numerous philosophers, among them R. S. Downie, Kathleen Dean Moore, A. C. Ewing, Martin Hughes, and Jeffrie Murphy. 1 The progenitor of this view is widely acknowledged to be Joseph Butler, who wrote sermons on both resentment and forgiveness nearly three hundred years ago. 2In this paper I will demonstrate that the attribution of this definition of forgiveness to Butler is in error: he did not define forgiveness as the overcoming of resentment but rather as the checking of revenge, or forbearance. Aside from the goal of setting the historical record straight, I have a broader and more important purpose in this essay. One sees that such an interpretation of Butler must provoke two questions. First, why did Butler define forgiveness only in terms of how one is to act, therefore paying no attention, apparently, to how one feels? Second, how do Murphy and the others incorrectly attribute this view to Butler? [End Page 233] I contend that these answers can be addressed if we take a close look at the role of emotions and theories of emotion in the definitions offered by Butler and Murphy (as representative of the group). I will attempt to establish that Butler's definition of forgiveness as the checking of revenge presupposes a feeling theory of emotions which is distinct from and in conflict with--in many ways pertinent to forgiveness--the cognitive theory of emotions presupposed by Murphy's definition. If I am successful in showing this claim to be plausible, then I will also have demonstrated that more attention needs to be paid to theories of emotion underlying work on forgiveness. But since the misinterpretation of Butler is widespread among contemporary writers on forgiveness and not peculiar to Murphy, my claim is a gesture toward what I take to be a problem greater than mere misinterpretation. Given the fact that a feeling theory of emotions was the predominant theory among philosophers in Butler's day until the end of the nineteenth century and that cognitive theory is currently a dominant philosophical theory, I fear that what has happened is that modern commentators on Butler are unaware that they are imposing their own presupposed theories of emotion onto a text from an earlier historical period.The plan of the paper is first to show by careful exegesis how Butler characterizes forgiveness and then, after a brief sketch of the difference between feeling theory and cognitive theory, to demonstrate how Butler's definition presupposes the former and Murphy's the latter. I will conclude with a few remarks about the import of these findings.Joseph Butler's treatment of forgiveness is found in a collection of his sermons first published as Fifteen Sermons in 1726. 3 Included in this collection are two sermons of primary importance to the topic of forgiveness: a sermon on resentment (Sermon VIII) and a subsequent sermon on forgiveness (Sermon IX). An understanding of Butler's definition of forgiveness properly begins with his sermon on resentment in which he distinguishes between two different kinds of resentment. One kind he calls "hasty and sudden" resentment, the other "settled and deliberate" resentment. 4 Hasty and sudden resentment is generally (and naturally) the result of sudden hurt or violence. 5... (shrink)

One prominent argument against the use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis to select a deaf embryo with the aim of creating a deaf child is that it violates the child’s right to an open future. This paper challenges the open future argument against deaf embryo selection, criticizing its major premise that deafness limits a child’s opportunity range in ways that compromise their future autonomy. I argue that this premise is not justified and is supported by negative presumptions about deaf embodiments that (...) are suspect and in need of further argumentation. First, available interpretations of the open future concept fail to justify the devaluation of deaf traits as inherently autonomy-diminishing. Second, arguing against deaf embryo selection requires demonstrating that a deaf trait generally constrains opportunity ranges independent of social context. But such analyses neglect important social and relational components of autonomy. For these reasons, merely appealing to the child’s right to an open future does not sufficiently support the conclusion that deaf embryo selection is wrong. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay offers a reconfiguration of the possibility‐space of positions regarding the metaphysics and epistemology associated with historical knowledge. A tradition within analytic philosophy from Danto to Dummett attempts to answer questions about the reality of the past on the basis of two shared assumptions. The first takes individual statements as the relevant unit of semantic and philosophical analysis. The second presumes that variants of realism and antirealism about the past exhaust the metaphysical options . This essay argues that both (...) of these assumptions should be rejected. It develops as an alternative an irrealist account of history, a view based in part on work by Leon Goldstein and Ian Hacking. On an irrealist view, historical claims ought to be treated as subject to the same conditions and caveats that apply to any theory of empirical or scientific knowledge. Irrealism argues for pasts as made and not found. The argument emphasizes the priority of classification over perception in the order of understanding and so verification. Because nothing a priori anchors practices of classification, no sense can be attached to claims that some single structure must or does determine what events take place in human history. Irrealism denies to realism the very intelligibility of any imagined view from nowhere, that is, a determinately configured past subsisting sub specie aeternitatis. A plurality of pasts exists because constituting a past always depends to some degree on socially mediated negotiations of a fit between descriptions and experience. (shrink)

In this article, I show how it is possible, working from a Thomistic perspective, to affirm the existence of animal rights. To start, I show how it is possible to ascribe indirect rights to animals—in particular, the indirect right to not be treated cruelly by us. Then, I show how it is possible to ascribe some direct rights to animals using the same reasoning that Aquinas offers in defending the claim that animals have indirect rights. Next, I draw on elements (...) of Aquinas’s metaphysical worldview in order to buttress the claim that animals have direct rights. I then respond to an attempt to ground the ethical treatment of animals, but not direct rights for animals, in natural law. In conclusion, I affirm that it is permissible to use animals to further the human good so long as in doing so we respect the direct rights that they possess. (shrink)

W. V. Quine was the most important naturalistic philosopher of the twentieth century and a major impetus for the recent resurgence of the view that empirical science is our best avenue to knowledge. His views, however, have not been well understood. Critics charge that Quine’s naturalized epistemology is circular and that it cannot be normative. Yet, such criticisms stem from a cluster of fundamental traditional assumptions regarding language, theory, and the knowing subject – the very presuppositions that Quine is at (...) pains to reject. Through investigation of Quine’s views regarding language, knowledge, and reality, the author offers a new interpretation of Quine’s naturalism. The naturalism/antinaturalism debate can be advanced only by acknowledging and critiquing the substantial theoretical commitments implicit in the traditional view. Gregory argues that the responses to the circularity and non-normativity objections do just that. His analysis further reveals that Quine’s departure from the tradition penetrates the conception of the knowing subject, and he thus offers a new and engaging defence of Quine’s naturalism. (shrink)

Rhodopsin, upon activation by light, transduces the photon signal by activation of the G‐protein, transducin. The well‐studied rhodopsin/transducin system serves as a model for the understanding of signal transduction by the large class of G‐protein‐coupled receptors. The interactive form of rhodopsin, R*, is conformationally similar or identical to rhodopsin's photolysis intermediate Metarhodopsin II (MII). Formation of MII requires deprotonation of rhodopsin's protonated Schiff base which appears to facilitate some opening of the rhodopsin structure. This allows a change in conformation at (...) rhodopsin's cytoplasmic surface that provides binding sites for transducin. Rhodopsin's 2nd, 3rd and putative 4th cytoplasmic loops bind transducin at sites including transducin's 5 kDa carboxyl‐terminal region. Site‐specific mutagenesis of rhodopsin is being used to distinguish sites on rhodopsin's surface that are important in binding transducin from those that function in activating transducin. These observations are consistent with and extend studies on the action of other G‐protein‐coupled receptors and their interactions with their respective G proteins. (shrink)

Feminist philosopher Elizabeth A. Lloyd has contributed to the so-called science wars a lengthy book chapter attacking scientist-authors who have recently defended natural science from various indictments (e.g., sexism, racism, masculinism, militarism, imperialism) lodged against it in the field of “science studies”. Her main charge is that the named scientists, not those against whose charges they defend science, are the real enemies of objectivity. It is argued that her methods are old and well-known devices of propaganda; her conclusions are therefore (...) nugatory. (shrink)

For the last decade, feminist academics including feminist epistemologists and a number of sociologists and historians of science, have derogated the “masculinism” of natural science. A favored example thereof is the supposed elevation of the spermatozoon and diminution of the egg, and of their respective roles in fertilization and embryonic development. This essay examines the history and the reproductive biology that are adduced as evidence of this bias. Both are either false or nonexistent.