Can’t We All Just be Compatibilists?: A Critical Study of John Martin Fischer’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">My Way</Emphasis>

My aim in this study is not to praise Fischer's fine theory of moral responsibility, but to (try to) bury the “semi” in “semicompatibilism”. I think Fischer gives the Consequence Argument (CA) too much credit, and gives himself too little credit. In his book, The Metaphysics of Free Will, Fischer gave the CA as good a statement as it will ever get, and put his finger on what is wrong with it. Then he declared stalemate rather than victory. In my view, Fischer’s view amounts to sophisticated compatibilism. It would be nice to be able to call it by its right name. In The Metaphysics of Free Will, Fischer develops his own version of Consequence Argument, which turns on two principles, one of which is the fixity of the past. FP: For any action Y, agent S and time t, if it is true that is S were to do Y at t, some fact about that past relative to t would not have been a fact, then S cannot at t do Y at t. I argue that the equipment needed to reject FP (and thereby defend the most plausible version of compatibilism) is needed to deal with the problem of fatalism. In addition, I argue that the rejection of FP is compatible with Fischer’s approach to Frankfurt cases and with his account of transfer principles.     

Conflict of Interest Policies at Canadian Universities: Clarity and Content

Discussions of conflict of interest (COI) in the university have tended to focus on financial interests in the context of medical research; much less attention has been given to COI in general or to the policies that seek to manage COI. Are university COI policies accessible and understandable? To whom are these policies addressed (faculty, staff, students)? Is COI clearly defined in these policies and are procedures laid out for avoiding or remedying such situations? To begin tackling these important ethical and governance questions, our study examines the COI policies at the Group of Thirteen (G13) leading Canadian research universities. Using automated readability analysis tools and an ethical content analysis, we begin the task of comparing the strengths and weaknesses of these documents, paying particular attention to their clarity, readability, and utility in explaining and managing COI.     

TELEOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT

Abstract. Current teleology in Western biology, philosophy, and theology draws on resources from four main Western philosophers. (1) Plato's Timaeus shows how to interpret the universe as the handiwork of a purposive Creator who subordinates secondary, necessary, causes to primary, intelligent, causes. (2) Aristotle's Physics sets forth purpose as implicit in the nature of things. Purposes of different sorts inhere in different types of being, and everything has a natural function. Living things grow to actualize the potentials of the goal whose principle they bear within themselves. (3) Kant's Critique of Judgment denies that purpose is anything that human beings can know, strictly speaking. Nevertheless, purpose is a concept we must use to make sense of biological systems. (4) Hegel's Philosophy of Nature articulates organic systems as dialectically including and transcending mechanical and chemical systems. Teleological themes persist, in different ways, in contemporary discussions; I consider two lines of criticism of traditional teleology—by Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould—and one line that continues traditional teleology in an updated way—by Holmes Rolston, III.     

EVOLUTION AND SUBJECTIVITY

Evolutionary theory is becoming an all‐encompassing form of explanation in many branches of philosophy. However, emergence theory uses the concept of self‐organization to support yet alter traditional evolutionary explanation. Biologist Stuart Kauffman suggests that the new science will need to tell stories, not simply as a heuristic device but as part of its fundamental task. This claim is reminiscent of C. S. Peirce's criticism of the doctrine of necessity. Peirce's suggestions reference Hegel, and this essay draws out this Hegelian background, addressing the question of subjectivity and issuing some Hegelian reminders so that such evolutionary and emergent theories will consider the implication of this research program on philosophy of mind. The primary focus is on two post‐Kantian, neo‐Hegelian thinkers in contemporary philosophy who deal with this problem: John McDowell and Robert Brandom.     

Algebraic study of Sette's maximal paraconsistent logic

The aim of this paper is to study the paraconsistent deductive systemP ¹ within the context of Algebraic Logic. It is well known due to Lewin, Mikenberg and Schwarse thatP ¹ is algebraizable in the sense of Blok and Pigozzi, the quasivariety generated by Sette's three-element algebraS being the unique quasivariety semantics forP ¹. In the present paper we prove that the mentioned quasivariety is not a variety by showing that the variety generated byS is not equivalent to any algebraizable deductive system. We also show thatP ¹ has no algebraic semantics in the sense of Czelakowski. Among other results, we study the variety generated by the algebraS. This enables us to prove in a purely algebraic way that the only proper non-trivial axiomatic extension ofP ¹ is the classical deductive systemPC. Throughout the paper we also study those abstract logics which are in a way similar toP ¹, and are called hereabstract Sette logics. We obtain for them results similar to those obtained for distributive abstract logics by Font, Verdú and the author.     

Abstract modal logics

In this paper we develop a general framework to deal with abstract logics associated with a given modal logic. In particular we study the abstract logics associated with the weak and strong deductive systems of the normal modal logicK and its intuitionistic version. We also study the abstract logics that satisfy the conditionC ⁺(X)=C( _in I ⁿ X) and find the modal deductive systems whose abstract logics, in addition to being classical or intuitionistic, satisfy that condition. Finally we study the deductive systems whose abstract logics satisfy, in addition to the already mentioned properties, the property that the operatorC ⁺ is classical relative to some new defined operations.Work partially supported by Spanish DGICYT grant PB90-0465-C02-01.Presented byJan Zygmunt     

Altruism: A Social Science Chameleon

The self-interest paradigm that has dominated and defined social science is being questioned today in all the social sciences. Frontline research is represented by C. Daniel Batson's experiments, which claim to present empirical evidence of altruism. Impressive though this is against the background of the self-interest paradigm, its ultimate significance might be to illustrate the inadequacy of social science to deal with a transcendent reality like altruism.     

A developmental perspective on reading dysfunction: Accuracy and rate criteria in the subtyping of dyslexic children

Children referred with specific reading dysfunction were subtyped as accuracy disabled or rate disabled according to criteria developed from an information processing model of reading skill. Multiple measures of oral and written language development were compared for two subtyped samples matched on age, sex, and IQ. The two samples were comparable in reading fluency, reading comprehension, word knowledge, and word retrieval functions. Accuracy disabled readers demonstrated inferior decoding and spelling skills. The accuracy disabled sample proved deficient in their understanding of oral language structure and in their ability to associate unfamiliar pseudowords and novel symbols in a task designed to simulate some of the learning involved in initial reading acquisition. It was suggested that these two samples of disabled readers may be best described with respect to their relative standing along a theoretical continuum of normal reading development.     

A feature analysis of stuttered phonemes

Stuttered and nonstuttered phonemes of 20 adult males were analyzed for distinctive feature patterns using the Chomsky-Halle system. The features (+ consonantal), (- voice), (+ continuant), and (- strident) occured significantly more often in stuttering than in nonstuttering instances. Results suggest that adult stuttering is most likely to occur when the primary sites of tension and discoordination are lingual and laryngeal and when the speaker must shift from (- voice) to (+ voice).     

Applied developmental psychology

Applied developmental psychology is emerging as a new subspecialty in psychology. The perspective provided in this paper is grounded in the premise that it is primarily a research discipline of scholars and researchers who will carry out their activities in a university setting. The students of the described program have found academic or research institute positions. Most of these have been in an academic department of psychology. Some have been in medical schools or research institutes with university affiliations. I believe there is a further market, for example in hospital or school settings, where a research and evaluation program or center is maintained. However, applied developmentalists, as such, should not be expected to be in the business of primary care delivery.This paper is based on the experience of establishing an applied developmental program that is described briefly below. In addition, the content is influenced by a consulting role in establishing a program at another university and from the small conference on Training in Applied Developmental Psychology held at the Mailman Center in 1980.