Making sense of the libertarian’s semantic claim about agential phenomenology

Libertarians about free will sometimes argue for their position on the grounds that our phenomenology of action is such that determinism would need to be false for it to be veridical. Many, however, have thought that it would be impossible for us to have an experience that is in contradiction with determinism, since this would require us to have perceptual experience of metaphysical facts. In this paper I show how the libertarian claim is possible. In particular, if experience depicts the world such that there is more than one physically possible future, then determinism would need to be false for that experience to be veridical. I show that we have experiences, or perceptual episodes, of this kind on the basis of recent work in the study of perception. Theorists in this area have argued that we have vision-for-action, and that what we visually perceive are not just objects but also possibilities for action. If we experience that it is possible that we ?, then we also experience that it is possible that we not ?. Furthermore, we probably experience more than one possibility for action at any one moment. I argue that these are physical possibilities, and therefore that we experience the world such that there is more than one physically possible future. So the libertarian claim about the semantics of agential phenomenology is highly plausible, even if this does not entail libertarianism.     

From Altruistic Donation to Conditional Societal Organ Appropriation After Death

Since we have learned that human organs can be used to treat severe health problems, only donation has been considered for organ procurement. Among the other possibilities that can be used after a person’s death, purchase or systematic removal have been a priori rejected. However, we will show that the appeal to individual altruism have resulted in some of the aporias of the present situation. Subsequently, we will consider how systematic organ removal from deceased persons can be made acceptable in liberal and democratic societies. Finally, we will suggest that individual choices with regard to systematic organ removal could well be registered in a way that allows proper implementation of present French legislation.     

Representational Momentum Beyond Internalized Physics

Abstract— Prediction of future motion is necessary in order to successfully deal with moving objects. Implicit measures have been used to evaluate the sources of information used in this task. For instance, observers may be asked to localize the final position of a moving target. Judgments have been found to be displaced in the direction of motion (forward displacement), suggesting that observers have internalized a mental analogue of physical momentum. However, more recent studies have shown that forward displacement may not be caused by cognitive mechanisms alone. Rather, predictive mechanisms at the perceptual and motor levels may contribute to the forward error. Supporting the notion that mechanisms of anticipation may be embodied, the forward error was found to depend on the execution of eye and pointing movements. Also, forward displacement depended on the motion type that was presented (smooth vs. jerky or implied), which suggests that attention moves to the next expected target position to facilitate responses to this position.     

On fineness of grain

A central job for propositions is to be the objects of the attitudes. Propositions are the things we doubt, believe and suppose. Some philosophers have thought that propositions are sets of possible worlds. But many have become convinced that such an account individuates propositions too coarsely. This raises the question of how finely propositions should be individuated. An account of how finely propositions should be individuated on which they are individuated very finely is sketched. Objections to the effect that the account individuates propositions too finely are raised and responses to the objections are provided. It is also shown that theories that try to individuate propositions less finely have serious problems.     

Obstructive sleep apnea and depression

Is there an association between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and depression? OSA is a common breathing-related sleep disorder. There have been reports that depressive symptoms can be associated with this sleep disorder. A number of investigations have addressed this issue. Although some have found no correlation, most studies have concluded that there is an association between OSA and depressive symptoms. Other investigations have shown that depressive symptoms improve with treatment of OSA, and that untreated OSA may contribute to treatment resistance in some cases of mood disorders. Within the framework of current psychiatric diagnostic criteria, the depressive symptoms associated with OSA can be viewed as a combination of a mood disorder secondary to a primary medical condition and an adjustment disorder with depressed mood. The question of whether OSA causes depressive symptoms can perhaps be best answered by viewing OSA and depression as having certain symptoms that are common to both disorders.     

Nomothetic science and idiographic history in twentieth-century Americanist anthropology

For over a century, Americanist anthropologists have argued about whether their discipline is a historical one or a scientific one. Proponents of anthropology as history have claimed that the lineages of human cultures are made up of unique events that cannot be generalized into laws. If no laws can be drawn, then anthropology cannot be a science. Proponents of anthropology as science have claimed that there indeed are laws that govern humans and their behaviors and cultures, and these laws can be discovered. Interestingly, both sides have the same narrow view of what science is. The same sorts of debates over science and history were played out in evolutionary biology over a half-century ago, and what emerged was the view that that discipline and its sister discipline, paleontology, were both history and science--hence the term "historical sciences." Anthropology and its sister discipline, archaeology, have only recently begun to realize that they too are historical sciences.     

(Neuro)predictions,Dangerousness, and Retributivism

Through the criminal justice system so-called dangerous offenders are, besides the offence that they are being convicted of and sentenced to, also punished for acts that they have not done but that they are believe to be likely to commit in the future. The aim of this paper is to critically discuss whether some adherents of retributivism give a plausible rationale for punishing offenders more harshly if they, all else being equal, by means of predictions are believed to be more dangerous than other offenders. While consequentialism has no problem, at least in principle, with this use of predictions most retributivists have been opponents of punishing offenders on the basis of predictions. How can an offender deserve to be punished for something that he has not done? But some retributivists like Anthony Duff and Stephen Morse have argued in favor of punishing offenders who are considered to be dangerous in the future more harshly than non-dangerous offenders. After having reconstructed their arguments in detail, it will be argued that both Duff’s and Morse’s attempts to give a retributivistic justification have several shortcomings.     

Charisma, status, and gender in groups with and without gurus

A number of studies have noted that small religious groups with charismatic leaders seem to have different gender dynamics than do groups without. We argue that the presence of such a leader changes what charisma “means” in such a group. Without such a leader, strong personalities may appear charismatic and lead to positions of high status—and such dynamics historically have tended to be associated with a positional advantage to males. With such a leader, however, charisma is more likely to be compatible with receptivity and decoupled from gender characteristics that tend to disadvantage women, leading charismatic women to have greater status than they would otherwise have.     

The role of inferences in children's comprehension of pronouns

Several researchers have suggested that children have difficulty in drawing inferences to understand prose and, although inferences have been shown to be important in the reference decisions of adults there have been very few studies that have specifically investigated children's use of them in reference assignments. The results of the three sentence comprehension studies reported here suggest that some children are able to draw the relevant inferences to assign reference. But many children appear to use an order-of-mention strategy which biases them towards the first-mentioned noun phrase. This strategy seems to be adopted even when children are aware that the resulting pronoun assignment conflicts with their inferences. Children in the third study appear to be able to use local selectional information to reject a noun phrase chosen by their order-of-mention strategy but, at least at the youngest ages (4.5 years), children do not use the information provided by the whole sentence. These results are seen as yet another example of the lack of comprehension monitoring in young children.     

Natural deduction in connectionist systems

The relation between logic and thought has long been controversial, but has recently influenced theorizing about the nature of mental processes in cognitive science. One prominent tradition argues that to explain the systematicity of thought we must posit syntactically structured representations inside the cognitive system which can be operated upon by structure sensitive rules similar to those employed in systems of natural deduction. I have argued elsewhere that the systematicity of human thought might better be explained as resulting from the fact that we have learned natural languages which are themselves syntactically structured. According to this view, symbols of natural language are external to the cognitive processing system and what the cognitive system must learn to do is produce and comprehend such symbols. In this paper I pursue that idea by arguing that ability in natural deduction itself may rely on pattern recognition abilities that enable us to operate on external symbols rather than encodings of rules that might be applied to internal representations. To support this suggestion, I present a series of experiments with connectionist networks that have been trained to construct simple natural deductions in sentential logic. These networks not only succeed in reconstructing the derivations on which they have been trained, but in constructing new derivations that are only similar to the ones on which they have been trained.     

Death and the value of life

The Epicurean argument that death cannot be a misfortune for the person who dies because, when death occurs, there is no longer a person to whom any misfortune can befall, fails to establish the conclusions which its defenders have sought from it. Beginning with the premise that death can be bad, either for the victim or in quasi-impersonal terms, the author seeks to define that badness through philosophical analysis. The belief that to have more life than is worth living is always better than to have less is reconciled with the notion that the badness of death increases with the degree of psychological connectedness, using the examples of the deaths of an unborn fetus and of a 35-year-old woman. The author contends it can be better for a person to suffer a worse death at 35 than never to have lived at all.     

The Right to Meaningful Education: The role of values and beliefs

This article argues that children have a right to education that assists them to find a meaning in life. The right of children to meaningful education is interpreted as a right to be raised within a coherent concept of the good and to learn about a variety of alternative conceptions. Both parents and teachers have duties that correspond with the two aspects of meaningful education. I argue that parents have a freedom to raise their children within the conception of the good they themselves hold, but that this freedom is restricted in two ways. Firstly, they have to give their children the freedom to explore alternative conceptions. Secondly, the conception of the good that they offer to their children has to be moral.     

The Epistemic Status of Auxiliary Hypotheses: A Reply to Douven

I have previously argued that anti-realism cannot use the claim that theories have empirically equivalent rivals (EE) to establish that theories are underdetermined by evidence (UD). Douven objects that the auxiliary hypotheses needed to generate observational equivalence need not as I claimed be themselves underdetermined if (EE) is true, because they may be either compatible with observation or acceptable in the constructive-empiricist sense. I reply that these conditions are not strong enough to establish (EE): the auxiliaries have to be epistemically warranted if they are to fix a theory's observational commitments unambiguously. The support they require need not presuppose their respective observational consequences, because there are more holistic sources of warrant.     

On human needs and moral appraisals

For a large and important range of cases the connection between ‘X needs y’ and ‘X ought to have y’, though not an entailment, is still non‐contingent. Sentences in which ‘needs’ occurs have several uses) one of which is normative; when such sentences are used to make statements, the statements constitute a good reason for asserting that what is needed ought to be done. It must, however, be recognized that such a reason may not be a sufficient reason for the moral appraisal that what is needed ought to be done. It is not self‐contradictory to assert ‘He needs it but he ought not to have it’, though in moral contexts if it is stated that someone needs something or that something is needed we are entitled to infer that, everything else being equal, he should have it or that it should be done. But often there are countervailing considerations which defeat that initial presumption. I attempt to support these contentions by 1) describing several key uses of “need sentences” and 2) by elucidating the relations between the uses of such sentences and moral judgments.     

The Levels Hypothesis: A Re-Examination and Reorientation

The levels-hypothesis appears to be derived from psychoanalytic theory, and in its most popular interpretation is concerned with levels of consciousness. However, it is argued that a gradient of consciousness has no application to projective techniques, essentially because there are no principles of differentiation. It is for this reason that the studies which have been done have concerned themselves with such concepts as pathology, concepts which have a tenuous relation to the original levels-hypothesis. The paper has proposed that consciousness in the sense of awareness can more meaningfully be applied to projective material, and that when it is used in this sense a levels-hypothesis can be derived which is both testable and has an adequate rationale.     

Counseling Adolescents and the Challenges for Genetic Counselors

Genetic counselors may have an important role in helping the adolescent make an informed decision with regard to genetic testing and in helping them to adjust to genetic risk information. However, counseling techniques that are used with adults may not be always be suited to the adolescent population. Adolescence is a time of development during which separation from the family and formation of identity is achieved. The process of this development may impact the genetic counseling relationship. Family relationships may have a strong influence on the client's decision to have genetic testing. Additionally, it may be difficult to engage the client as adolescents may not have the ability to think abstractly and consider the short and long term consequences of genetic testing. It is helpful therefore to discuss the counseling process and techniques that may be useful when counseling these clients. This paper presents two case studies that illustrate some of the difficulties that may occur when counseling adolescents for genetic testing. The authors' have reflected on their clinical experience with these clients and this is presented here to add to the growing literature on this subject.     

The Standard Meter by Any Name is Still a Meter Long

In §50 of Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein wrote the sentence, "There is one thing of which one can say neither that it is one metre long, nor that it is not one metre long, and that is the standard metre in Paris." Although some interpreters have claimed that Wittgenstein's statement is mistaken, while others have proposed various explanations showing that this must be correct, none have questioned the fact that he intended to assert that it is impossible to describe the standard meter as being a meter long. Given that Wittgenstein introduces this sentence as analogous to the claim that "existence cannot be attributed to an element," and that the preceding passages discuss a language-game the simples of which can be described by their own names, there is good reason to think that Wittgenstein did not intend to assert this infamous sentence.     

Combat-Related Killing: Expanding Evidence-Based Treatments for PTSD

Despite its prevalence, killing in war is an experience that may not fit neatly into existing models of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its treatment. The context in which killing occurred may be complex. Furthermore, while killing may certainly be fear based, an individual may have also killed in response to losing someone close and experiencing sadness and anger, as opposed to fear. While evidence-based treatments for PTSD may be a good starting point for killing-related trauma, we argue that existing treatments need to be expanded. Complex killing-related cognitions that may not be anticipated or identified, moral injury, self-forgiveness, and loss are all important issues that arise that may need to be addressed in greater detail. Consequently, we have developed a 6- to 8-session individual treatment module for those impacted by killing in war, expressly designed for use with existing evidence-based treatments for PTSD, currently being validated for use in clinical practice. We see this module as supplementary, rather than as a replacement, building on the skills that veterans have already learned within these treatments. By expanding the types of treatments we offer those who have killed in war, we can ensure that we are providing veterans with comprehensive treatment that takes the complexities of war and its aftermath into account.     

Modest deontologism in epistemology

Deontologism in epistemology holds that epistemic justification may be understood in terms of “deontological” sentences about what one ought to believe or is permitted to believe, or what one deserves praise for believing, or in some similar way. If deonotologism is true, and people have justified beliefs, then the deontological sentences can be true. However, some say, these deontological sentences can be true only if people have a kind of freedom or control over their beliefs that they do not in fact have. Thus, deontologism in epistemology, combined with anti-skepticism, has implausible implications. I first describe one sort of control that people typically have over ordinary actions but do not have over typical beliefs. I then argue that there is a paradigmatic type of epistemic evaluation that does properly apply to beliefs even though we lack this sort of control over them. Finally, I argue that these paradigmatic epistemic evaluations are sufficient to make true some of the deontological sentences.     

Negative emotions and coronary heart disease: Causally related or merely coexistent? A review

Negative emotions have been claimed to be a cause of coronary heart disease (CHD) as well as a consequence of cardiovascular disorders. Early case studies of cardiac disorders of soldiers in battle drew attention to the possibility that strong negative emotional states could cause CHD. Subsequent reports of reactions to natural disasters supported the notion that intense negative emotions could precipitate somatic disorders such as CHD. Since then, numerous studies have investigated relations between negative emotions and CHD. Over the years, retrospective studies have found, for example, that negative emotions are often present before the occurrence of CHD. Cross-sectional studies have indicated that symptoms of depression and anxiety are often present in CHD patients. Prospective studies have shown that the likelihood of CHD tends to be higher for people with negative emotions than for those without them. The main symptoms of negative emotional states that seem to be most closely associated with CHD are nervousness, getting easily upset, feeling fatigue, being indecisive, having sleep disturbances, being usually worried about something, and feeling that others would be better off if oneself were dead. Although the findings appear to support the notion of causal connections between negative emotions and CHD, they fail to provide conclusive proof of such relations. An alternative explanation that could also account for the findings is simply that negative emotions and CHD often coexist.