The Ladder of Rationality

This paper is a review and critical discussion of John Broome’s Rationality Through Reasoning. In particular, it engages critically with (i) Broome’s view on the independence of normative reasons and rationality, (ii) his construal of the capacity, property, and requirement senses of “rationality”, and (iii) his account of reasoning as a conscious, rule-following operation on mental contents.     

Decreased locomotor and investigatory exploration after denervation of catecholamine terminal fields in the forebrain of rats.

Exploratory behaviors were examined after bilateral microinjections of 6-hydroxydopamine into two hypothalamic sites that produced different patterns of denervation of forebrain catecholamine terminal fields. After anterolateral injections rats locomoted and reared less in a novel open field, responded abnormally to changes in the degree of novelty of the open field, and investigated a novel object less. These are deficits in exploratory behavior because they were not secondary to the inhibition of open-field behavior by hyperemotionality, by general motor disability, or by the failure to detect novel spaces or objects. Such anterolateral injections produced loss of catecholamine fibers, determined histochemically, in neocortical, hippocampal, anterolateral hypothalamic, mesolimbic, mesocortical, and anteromedioventral striatal terminal fields and loss of dopaminergic perikarya in the A10 and anteromedial A9 cell groups. No deficits in exploratory behaviors occurred, however, after bilateral anteromedial 6-hydroxydopamine injections that denervated neocortical, hippocampal, and anteromedial hypothalamic catecholamine terminal fields. A critical forebrain catecholaminergic innervation for exploratory responses to novel stimuli may be within areas that were denervated by anterolateral but not by anteromedial hypothalamic 6-nydroxydopamine injections. These areas are mesolimbic, mesocortical, anteromedioventral, and anterolateral hypothalamic terminal fields.     

Theorising from the Global Standpoint: Kant and Grotius on Original Common Possession of the Earth

The paper contrasts Kant's conception of original common possession of the earth with Hugo Grotius's superficially similar notion. The aim is not only to elucidate how much Kant departs from his natural law predecessors—given that Grotius's needs‐based framework very much lines in with contemporary theorists’ tendency to reduce issues of global concern to questions of how to divide the world up, it also seeks to advocate Kant's global thinking as an alternative for current debates. Crucially, it is Kant's radical shift in perspective—from an Archimedean ’view from nowhere‘, to a first‐personal standpoint through which agents reflexively recognise their systematic interdependence in a world of limited space—that provides him with the more thorough and ultimately convincing global standpoint. This standpoint does not come with ready‐made solutions to shared global problems, but provides a promising perspective from which to theorise them.     

The Effect of Sport Commentator Framing on Viewer Attitudes

An experimental analysis was conducted to determine the effects of involvement, commentator framing, and gender on viewer attitudes toward female athletes. The sample was comprised of 112 students at a mid-western university in the United States. Hypotheses and research questions were tested through a 2 × 3 multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA). Results indicated the overall MANCOVA was significant. Involvement was positively related to viewer attitudes’ towards the dependent variables and explained 27.8% of the variance. Gender explained 39.3% of the variance in attitudes as male viewers had significantly lower mean scores on all dependent variables. Male viewers had significantly lower scores than female viewers in the positive framing condition; the interaction explained 8% of the variance in viewers’ perceptions of respectability of female athletes.     

Gender and Sex Diversity in Sport Organizations: Concluding Comments

This article utilizes the work found within the special issue to note that sport as an institution still serves to produce, reinforce, and perpetuate male hegemony. However, it additionally argues that the collective works point to progress in some areas of sport. It highlights the ideas for future research regarding sex and gender diversity in sport and notes that these concerns are often situated in multi-level, sometimes subtle, and usually taken-for-granted structures, policies, and behaviors embedded in sport organizations. It concludes with a call for continued work in this area.     

"I've also experienced loss and fear": Effects of prior similar experience on empathy

Although it is frequently argued that empathy is increased by similar experiences, this idea has rarely been tested. This study investigated the relationship between empathy and prior similar experience. Participants read four different stories and rated the degree of empathy they felt. They also reported the extent to which they had prior similar experience of the events in the stories. We found that these self-reports of prior similar experience increased empathy for the persons in the stories. Similar experience may be an important situational antecedent for feeling empathy for another person. Pointing out similarities among experiences may be a fruitful means of training empathy.     

Semantic Primitivism and Normativity

Kripke-Wittgenstein meaning scepticism appears as a serious threat to the idea that there could be meaning-constituting facts. Some people argue that the only viable response is to adopt semantic primitivism (SP). SP is the doctrine that meaning-facts are sui generis and irreducibly semantic. The idea is that by allowing such primitive semantic facts into our ontology Kripke's sceptical paradox cannot arise. I argue that SP is untenable in spite of its apparent resourcefulness. No version of SP can account for the normative and practical aspects of meaning while remaining non-reductive. A sparse, basic SP does not adequately deal with the sceptical paradox. A richer SP, with an added intuitive epistemology, can only explain the practical aspect of meaning by aligning itself with reductive use-based accounts of meaning. SP with essential relations between meanings and meaning-bearers could possibly avoid these problems, but we have no reason to think such a version of SP is really non-reductive. I conclude that Kripke-Wittgenstein meaning scepticism should not lead us to adopt SP, instead we should re-examine use-based, dispositionalist accounts of meaning.