The Lawn Mowing Puzzle

In this brief paper, I present a puzzle for consideration.     

The Causal Exclusion Puzzle

The article is divided into two parts. The first part offers a careful reconstruction and detailed discussion of the argument of causal exclusion, as well as of the implications it has for physicalism. In its second part the article examines two important objections to the causal exclusion argument: the generalization objection, which holds that the argument is unacceptable since it confers causal efficacy only to ultimate basic properties, which arguably might not exist; and Yablo's objection, according to which underlying the argument of causal exclusion there is a principle of causal parsimony which leads to strong counterintuitive results and should therefore be abandoned. The article offers grounds for rejecting both objections as well as a new diagnosis of the problem for mental causation generated by the causal exclusion argument.     

妖魔击磬之迷

唐朝的时候,洛阳有一座寺庙,建造在风光旖旎的郊外.寺庙里金碧辉煌,香烟缭绕.信男信女络绎不绝地来求神拜佛.然而,寺院僧众却被寺院里出现的妖魔所困惑,一个个忧心忡忡.原来是一个禅房的磬,每天都不击自鸣.     

The Puzzle of Factual Praise

It seems that we are not willing to give up the intuitions that (1) works of fiction are free from the constraints of historical truth and (2) historical inaccuracies sometimes count against the artistic value of works of fiction. Christopher Bartel calls this the puzzle of historical criticism. I argue that this puzzle extends beyond historical facts. While it is especially salient that historical accuracy at times appears relevant to the evaluation of fictional works, such relevance appears to be a feature of facts in general. I then propose a partial strategy for resolving the puzzle.     

The Puzzle of Absolute Pitch

Absolute pitch—the ability to name or produce a note of particular pitch in the absence of a reference note—is generally considered to be extremely rare. However, it has been found that native speakers of two different tone languages—Mandarin and Vietnamese—display a remarkably precise form of absolute pitch in enunciating words. Given these findings, it is proposed that absolute pitch may have evolved as a feature of speech, analogous to other features such as vowel quality. It is also conjectured that tone–language speakers generally acquire this feature during the 1st year of life, in the critical period when infants acquire other features of their native language. For speakers of nontone languages, the acquisition of absolute pitch by rare individuals may be associated with a critical period of unusually long duration, so that it extends to the age at which the child can begin taking music lessons. According to this line of reasoning, the potential for acquiring absolute pitch is universal at birth, and can be realized by giving the infant the opportunity to associate pitches with verbal labels during the 1st year or so of life.     

The Puzzle of Multiple Endings

Why is it that most fictions present one and only one ending, rather than multiple ones? Fictions presenting multiple endings are possible, because a few exist; but they are very rare, and this calls for an explanation. We argue that such an explanation is likely to shed light on our engagement with fictions, for fictions having one and only one ending seem to be ubiquitous. After dismissing the most obvious explanations for this phenomenon, we compare the scarcity of multiple endings in traditional kinds of fiction to their profusion in the case of interactive fictions. This contrast poses a challenge to accounts of our engagement with fictions in terms of games of make‐believe. We conclude that solving this puzzle is likely to improve our philosophical understanding of fictions.     

The Real Puzzle From Radford

In this paper, I will argue that Radfords real question is not the conceptual one, as it is usually taken, but the causal one, and show that Waltons account, which treats Radfords puzzle as the conceptual question, is not a satisfactory solution to it. I will also argue that contrary to what Walton claims, the causal question is not only important, but also closely related to the conceptual and normative questions. What matters is not that Walton has not solved Radfords puzzle per se, but that he has not recognized the importance of this puzzle. While doing this, I will suggest a revision to the cognitive theory of emotion.     

Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness

Book Information Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness. Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness Levine Joseph New York Oxford University Press 2001 204 Hardback £22.50 By Levine Joseph. Oxford University Press. New York. Pp. 204. Hardback:£22.50,     

彗星之谜

彗星体态奇特,行踪莫测,很早就引起了古人的注意。我国最早的彗星记载可追溯到三千多年前的武王伐纣的年代。除了彗星这一名称外,古人还根据彗星的外貌特征与亮度等,给它起了许多别名,如称其为孛星,另外还有天棓、天(?)、蚩尤旗、烛星、蓬星、长星、枉天、天枪等名称。从殷商到20世纪,我国各种典籍中至少有550余次关于彗星的记录。但由于时代不同,所用名称不尽一致,其中记为“彗星”的约有250多次。 彗星外貌奇特,披头散发,很像一把倒挂在天上的扫帚,故我国民间把彗星称作“扫帚星”、“灾星”,认为它是不祥之星。其实,中国的彗字就是扫帚的意思,西方彗星一词源于希腊文Komefe,     

The Lucretian Puzzle and the Nature of Time

If a person’s death is bad for him for the reason that he would have otherwise been intrinsically better off, as the Deprivation Approach says, does it not follow that his prenatal nonexistence is bad for him as well? Recently, it has been suggested that the “A-theory” of time can be used to support a negative answer to this question. In this paper, I raise some problems for this approach.     

The Puzzle of Theodoret's Christology: A Modest Suggestion

This article suggests that the perplexities of Theodoret's Christologycan be understood well if one regards them as stemming not froma doctrinal evolution (as some scholars argue), but rather froma fundamental (but usually unnoticed) inconsistency that ispresent at all times in Theodoret's life. The inconsistencylies between his normal pattern for writing about Christ andthe way he sometimes writes of Christ when he is dealing withthe crucifixion. Theodoret usually sees the personal subjectof Christ (the one who acts and to whom the human experienceshappen) as the Logos himself, but at times when he discussesthe death of Christ, his strong view of divine impassibilityleads him to see the personal subject who undergoes sufferingand death as the man Jesus. The article substantiates its caseby reviewing the most significant twentieth-century scholarlyliterature on Theodoret and by examining his christologicalwritings from three different periods of his career: the yearsaround the Council of Ephesus (431–3), the year he wrotethe Eranistes (probably 447), and the years immediately priorto the Council of Chalcedon (448–51).