PRESENTISM, TRUTHMAKERS, AND GOD

The truthmaker objection to presentism (the view that only what exists now exists simpliciter ) is that it lacks sufficient metaphysical resources to ground truths about the past. In this paper I identify five constraints that an adequate presentist response must satisfy. In light of these constraints, I examine and reject responses by Bigelow, Keller, Crisp, and Bourne. Consideration of how these responses fail, however, points toward a proposal that works; one that posits God's memories as truthmakers for truths about the past. I conclude that presentists have, in the truthmaker objection, considerable incentive to endorse theism.     

A Fortnight of My Life is Missing: a discussion of the status of the human 'pre-embryo'

ABSTRACT Summed up in the coinage of the term 'pre-embryo'is the denial that human beings, as such, begin to exist from the moment of conception. This denial, which may be thought to have significant moral implications, rests on two kinds of reason. The first is that the pre-embryo lacks the characteristics of a human being. The second is that the pre-embryo lacks what it takes to be an individual human being. The first reason, I argue, embodies an untenable view of what it is to be human. The second reason exploits certain logical difficulties which arise over the possibility of twinning. I question the relevance of the appeal to such difficulties and conclude that there is no good reason for denying that a human being begins to exist from the moment of conception.     

Beyond Mental Competence

Justification for psychiatric paternalism is most easily established where mental illness renders the person mentally incompetent, depriving him of the capacity for rational agency and for autonomy, hence undermining the basis for liberal rights against paternalism. But some philosophers, and no doubt some doctors, have been deeply concerned by the inadequacy of the concept of mental incompetence to encapsulate some apparently appealing cases for psychiatric paternalism. We ought to view mental incompetence as just one subset of a broader justification for psychiatric paternalism. The very basis of liberal limitations on psychiatric paternalism, whether described in terms of rights to autonomy or as respect for differences in values and lifestyles, presupposes a sense of moral persistence, and hence some sufficiently persistent self. Paternalistic intervention is warranted when we are unable to govern our lives in a manner consistent with the goals and values that comprise that ‘self’. One way that can occur is when we lack the mental capacities required for autonomy, such that we are unable to interpret and interact with our environment in order to meaningfully pursue our goals, i.e. mental incompetence. But it can also occur when we are subject to impositions that alter our goals without altering our capacity to pursue them — i.e. when it is our ‘self’ that is impaired rather than our competence.     

ASSOCIATIVE ENCODING OF WORDS IN PASSIVE SENTENCES

Subjects were presented with short passive sentences and timed to respond in a recognition test involving a series of single words. Items to be rejected included synonymous associates of critical words and associates which would fit sensibly into the sentence frame. Rejection latencies varied as a function of the position of the critical word in the sentence, the time to reject associates of the logical subject (the final noun in the passive sentences) being much slower than associates of the object.