bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Genetically Modified Organisms in MERCOSUR
Authors: Gilli Rosario Silva
Published: September 2010

This chapter begins by providing an outline of the process of integration which is currently being undertaken by the members of MERCOSUR, with specific reference to the legal order which governs such integration. As a further preliminary matter, it considers the extent to which the members of MERCOSUR have embraced the GM revolution, with Argentina being revealed as the most enthusiastic. The various national regimes regulating GMOs are then discussed in detail, identifying common characteristics and differences. In all cases national regimes are found to be based upon pre-existing rules governing seeds and crops, although specific regimes are also being developed. However, only in Brazil has a major statute been enacted for the purposes of governing GMOs. More generally, the chapter looks to whether there is a realistic possibility of enacting a harmonized regime for GMOs across all the members of MERCOSUR and, in this context, it identifies recent initiatives.
Genetically Modified Crops and Food in the United States: The Federal Regulatory Framework, State Measures, and Liability in Tort
Authors: Grossman Margaret Rosso
Published: September 2010

GM crops and their products in the United States are regulated the USDA, EPA, and FDA under policy articulated in the 1986 Coordinated Framework — a complex system of laws, regulations, policy statements, and guidance documents governs agency decisions. The Plant Protection Act, the Federal Insecticide, Rodenticide, and Pesticide Act, and the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act are the most important statutes. Coordinated decision-making by the agencies focuses on safety of new GM varieties for agriculture and the environment and for consumption as food and feed. Some states regulate use of GMOs, support GM technology, or impose other requirements. State tort law will resolve claims of damage from GMOs, but few cases have been decided.
The Regulation of Genetically Modified Organisms and International Law: A Call for Generality
Authors: French Duncan
Published: September 2010

Much has been written on the legal implications of the international regulation of GMOs. This chapter does not reproduce this discussion, but rather considers how general rules of international law, together with more general trends in related legal and policy fields, are likely to prove increasingly apposite in the ongoing debate over how to manage and govern GM activity. In particular, it considers two specific issues: first, the role of treaty interpretation in promoting synergies and reconciling apparently conflicting primary rules; and, secondly, the utility of the concept of sustainable development in determining a balanced framework for the inclusion of socio-economic considerations within GM decision-making processes, as permitted under the Cartagena Protocol. The chapter concludes that an approach which concentrates solely on the regulatory detail will invariably ignore the importance of general international law in regulating such an issue.
Chain of Causes
Authors: Meyer Susan Sauvé
Published: September 2010

As the chain of causes present throughout the cosmos, fate is the instrument by which the Stoic god exerts its providential activity. In fact, the Stoic god is often identified with fate understood as the chain of causes. This chapter focuses on how this chain of causes is to be understood. The metaphor of a chain of causes is often used nowadays by causal theorists. But it is argued that the Stoic usage of this metaphor differs greatly from the modern one. Stoic causes are typically simultaneous with their effects (even the so-called ‘antecedent’ causes are), and causation is not a relation between events, but between bodies. In Stoic theory, causal relations are best construed as the production by a body A of a certain effect on a body B. To take a classic example: the scalpel is cause to the flesh of the effect being cut. This conception of cause is reflected in what the Stoics mean by the chain of causes in terms of which they define fate. It is a complex system of reciprocal influence between all the bodies that exist in the cosmos.
Against Materialism
Authors: BonJour Laurence
Published: September 2010

This chapter argues that there are no compelling arguments in favor of, and very powerful, seemingly unanswerable objections to, materialism in the philosophy of mind. The arguments for materialism that appeal to (a) the ‘principle’ of causal closure and (b) the doctrine of naturalism are argued to rest entirely on undefended assumptions. The central objection that materialist views fail to offer any account of conscious states that explains their experienced character is then developed with reference to both the familiar problem of qualitative content (using Frank Jackson's example of Mary, the color-experience-deprived neurophysiologist) and the problem of conscious intentional content. It is argued that none of the available responses to the Mary example are successful; and further that an entirely parallel argument can be made about conscious intentional content. The negative conclusion is that materialist views are false, but that no positive account of conscious content is presently available.
A Simple View of Consciousness
Authors: Pautz Adam
Published: September 2010

This chapter argues for primitivism about sensory consciousness. On primitivism, sensory consciousness cannot be fully reductively explained in physical or functional terms. The chapter's arguement for primitivism is not based on the usual a priori considerations, for instance the knowledge argument, the explanatory gap, or the thesis of revelation. Instead, the argument is based on a philosophical claim about the structure of consciousness together with an empirical claim about its physical basis.
Saving Appearances: A Dilemma for Physicalists
Authors: Siewert Charles
Published: September 2010

This chapter takes as its target ‘ambitious physicalism’: an approach that aims to provide an explanatory reduction of consciousness to a physical and functional base. The chapter uses a range of cases involving the phenomenon of ‘blindsight’ to argue for the reality of phenomenal appearances of such a kind that cannot be accounted for by the standard physicalist theories, whether eliminativist, functionalist, or representationalist. It argues that the physicalist faces a dilemma: either denying the reality of phenomenal appearances by trying to identify those appearances with something manifest and describable in non-phenomenal terms, or facing an unavoidable arbitrariness in deciding which hidden features should be assigned metaphysically necessary and constitutive status with respect to conscious phenomena. The chapter argues that the cost of abandoning ambitious, reductive physicalism is not high, since we can still study the systematic relations between phenomenal appearances and physical conditions. The persistent failure to find an ultimate explanation of the real ‘nature’ of consciousness does not threaten the explanatory completeness of science.
Epistemological Objections to Materialism
Authors: Koons Robert C.
Published: September 2010

This chapter argues that materialism is vulnerable to two kinds of epistemological objections: transcendental arguments, that show that materialism is incompatible with the very possibility of knowledge; and defeater arguments, that show that belief in materialism provides an effective defeaters to claims to knowledge. It constructs objections of these two kinds in three areas of epistemology: our knowledge of the laws of nature (and of scientific essences), our knowledge of the ontology of material objects, mathematical and logical knowledge. The chapter argues that these epistemological weaknesses place the materialist in a dialectically weak position in respect of ontological identity claims, since the materialist cannot know the causal powers or persistence conditions of material objects. It also argues that the materialist can provide no non-circular account of epistemic normativity. Anti-realist accounts of normativity are unavailable because normativity is already implicated in all intentionality. Moreover, materialists face a fatal dilemma in attempting to carry out an etiological reduction of teleological norms, since neither Humean nor anti-Humean accounts of causation yield defensible results.
Dualizing Materialism
Authors: Jubien Michael
Published: September 2010

This chapter suggests that if we take materialism simply to be the doctrine that human beings are entirely material entities, then a certain version of ‘property dualism’ is fully compatible with materialism and is indeed the most plausible account of the mental available. The latter claim is supported in part by an argument exploiting Jaegwon Kim's well-known conception of events as objects having properties at times. The argument concludes that ‘token-token’ identity theories are actually committed to ‘type-type’ identities. It is then argued from the perspective of conceptual analysis and linguistic competence that the relevant type identities are straightforwardly false. This argument is contrasted with familiar arguments from intentionality and conceivability and is held to be more fundamental. Arguments from obscurity and from mental causation against property dualism are addressed. Finally, it is suggested (following Russell) that causation is essentially a ‘folk’ concept playing no real role in the hard sciences, whose fundamental goal is instead the discovery of law-like connections between properties of material objects. When intuitively ‘mental’ properties are ultimately connected in law-like ways with intuitively ‘physical’ properties, the upshot will be a broadening of our conception of physical properties so that they will include those we may now consider intuitively to be mental in a sense incompatible with being physical. Thus, the dualism of property dualism would merely amount to a difference between types of physical properties.
Soul, Mind, and Brain
Authors: Leftow Brian
Published: September 2010

This chapter adumbrates a Thomistic, non-Cartesian version of dualism, defending the Thomistic theory from the familiar charge of inconsistency by showing how it is possible to assert simultaneously that the human being is a single, unitary substance, that the soul is the ‘form’ of the human body, and yet that the soul can exist without the body by virtue of being an immaterial particular. It demonstrates that a Thomistic ‘form’ need not be a mere state of a thing, like a shape: it may also be an immaterial particular, present in every part of a substance, that causes it be in a certain state (such as that of being alive). Aquinas's view of the embodied souls avoids being dualistic by denying that the human body is a separable substance in its own right. What combines with the soul to produce a substantial human thing is not one thing but a plurality. Moreover, the chapter explains that Aquinas's claim that human thought has no bodily ‘organ’ does not entail the natural independence of our cognitive functions from the physical condition of the brain. It does, however, imply that mental content cannot be fully and determinately encoded in the brain's physical condition. Finally, the chapter clarifies the sense in which the disembodied soul is not for Aquinas (unlike Descartes) a substance.
7 The United Kingdom and the Human Rights Act (1998)
Authors: Erdos David
Published: September 2010

This chapter examines the socio‐politics of bill of rights debates and outcomes in the United Kingdom including, in particular, the origins of the Human Rights Act (HRA) (1998). Following a brief chronological overview, the first part of the chapter explores the forces which have fuelled the gradually increased background pressures for a bill of rights. Since the 1960s, a postmaterialist rights lobby of civil libertarians and social equality seekers not only emerged politically but came to advocate for a bill of rights. The United Kingdom's participation in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) also encouraged and shaped the domestic formalization of rights, particularly as instantiated in the HRA. The second part of the chapter explores the much more sporadic nature of elite political interest in a bill of rights. Focusing on the genesis of the HRA, it argues that this was politically triggered by Labour and the left's ‘aversive’ reaction against the perceived authoritarianism of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Administration. The chapter closes with a brief consideration of the prospects of a fully indigenous British bill of rights designed either to complement or replace the HRA.
2 Naked Life; Arendt and the Exile at Colonus
Authors: Sjöholm Cecilia
Published: September 2010

The philosophical readings of Sophocles, from Hegel to Irigaray, have largely stuck to the tragedies as isolated plots, looking at Antigone or King Oedipus in their own right. Oedipus at Colonus, in turn, has rarely been made the object of a philosophical reading. And yet it presents to us a figure of high political significance: the refugee. What happens when we read Antigone with Oedipus at Colonus? As this chapter will argue, such a reading may well alter our view of Antigone from the way her character has been interpreted in the philosophical tradition, displacing the issues from being concerned with Antigone as a symbol of a feminine position in society, to placing the tragedy in relation to the question of the refugee. If we are to perform such a reading, we may resort to the work of Giorgio Agamben, and in particular, Hannah Arendt. Arendt does not perform a reading of Antigone, but as this chapter argues, Arendt's philosophy of the polis and of public space on the one hand, and her ideas on the position of the refugee, indicates a way of rereading Antigone with the latter work by Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus. Such a rereading points to an intrinsic relation between the notion of public space, and the question of ‘bare life’, a concept forwarded by Giorgio Agamben (inspired by Arendt). The characters of Antigone and Oedipus appear to unravel the exception and the foreclosure of the refugee in relation to political space. Rereading Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus through the philosophy of Arendt, we find that the tragedies are concerned with the emergence of a political community, and the laws conditioning the space of such a community. It may be the very exception of the refugee which, in the end, will serve to enforce the validity of such a space.
3 Biopolitics: Antigone's Claim
Authors: Žukauskaitė Audronė
Published: September 2010

The Lacanian philosopher Slavoj Žižek interprets Antigone as a figure driven by some pathological desire, being attached to the Other (Polyneices) without the mediation of symbolic rules and laws. In this sense, Antigone's decision to bury her brother is seen as an authoritarian or even totalitarian act. On the other hand, the same gesture, which is seen as pathological, can also be interpreted as an ethical act par excellence: Antigone's transgression is an ethical act, which intervenes into social reality and changes the very coordinates of what is perceived to be possible. These coordinates, it is argued, can't be explained either in terms of kinship, or in terms of the unconscious. The very idea of transgression acquires meaning only in a more general framework of the analysis of power relationships. But what kind of power relationships could we have in mind and what is Antigone's position in it? The Chorus describes Antigone as ‘inhuman’ and it is necessary to decide how to interpret this ‘inhumanness’. Lacan points out that inhuman ‘literally means something uncivilized, something raw’. It is precisely this ‘raw flesh’, this ‘inhumanness’, on which the chapter's interpretation is focused. Two thinkers, Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, are very important in order to reconsider this ‘rawness’ of Antigone not as an insignificant feature, but, probably, as the main conflict of the tragedy. This ‘rawness’ or biological life of man, which Foucault made the main object of his research, appears to be not the ‘natural condition’ of human life, but a result of power relations. Agamben develops Foucault's ideas further, establishing a clear connection between what he calls ‘bare life’ and modern state power. The question, asked in the chapter, is this: are these theories of sovereign power relevant in interpreting the Sophoclean play? Can it be presupposed that the limit, for which Antigone stands, is ‘the trace of an alternate legality that haunts the conscious, public sphere as its scandalous future’ and that comes into existence in modern times?
5 Lacan's Antigone
Authors: Eagleton Terry
Published: September 2010

This chapter concerns what Lacan calls the Real and its relationship with the inner truth of Antigone. Like God, the sublime, alcohol, and the unconscious, the Real is Janus‐faced, with both a creative and a destructive dimension. Negatively speaking, it signifies the jouissance which the death drive persuades us to derive from the process of our own dismemberment. In effect, Lacan remarks of Antigone that she has been declaring from the outset ‘I am dead and desire death’—and tragedy, one might add, is above all the art‐form that investigates the problematic relation of humanity to its own mortality, and thus in Heideggerian style to its own essential being. But there is also a positive aspect of the Real—a way of plugging into this lethal drive which can carry us beyond the fudges of the so‐called symbolic order, the domain of conventional morality, law and social consensus, into some far‐flung outpost of being where one is in a sense both alive and dead, and where one manifests the kind of purity or integrity of selfhood which Lacan so admires in Antigone. The avatars of the Real are those who stay faithful against all the moral and political odds to the desire which makes them what they are—which is to say, in Lacanian terms, to the lack which makes them what they are, and therefore—since this lack prefigures the absolute absence which is death—to their own morality.
11 Between Myth and History: The Tragedy of Antigone
Authors: Irigaray Luce
Published: September 2010

This chapter explores the Antigone myth and its unveiling in history from the context of sexual difference. Sexual difference is the most basic and universal difference, starting from which we can reach a global democratic community and culture respectful of all our other differences. Antigone's respect for the unwritten laws—the laws of human nature and the gods—reveals her respect for living beings and the cosmic order. She sees Polynices as the ‘son of my mother’. To Antigone humanity is comprised of man and of woman and she respects this sexual difference just as she respects her brother as a brother and her duty to him as a sister before her marriage to Haemon. Antigone fights not solely for her brother's burial but also to maintain the cosmic harmony. She tries to maintain a delicate balance between the gods of the underworld, her world, and Zeus. Life is the supreme value for Antigone. She only asks to live, to be. Creon breaks the cosmic harmony. He does not take female sexual identity into consideration. Creon can be viewed as a eunuch due to his lack of differentiation from the maternal world. Irigaray questions how the maternal world that asserts itself as patriarchy has been established in an arbitrary way. She believes that the maternal world should not begin with function but with sexual difference. A woman is first and foremost a woman before she is a mother. A feminine order can help men provide for differentiation (not repression) and growth of identity.
15 Reclaiming Femininity: Antigone's ‘Choice’ in Art and Art History
Authors: Meyer Martina
Published: September 2010

Feminist responses to Antigone's choice to rebel against masculine authority have largely refocused the text as a discourse of gender difference in order to expose patriarchy's victimization of women. This chapter, while acknowledging feminine defiance as a crucial aspect of the text's internal contradictions, equally recognizes that Antigone's performance of the burial rites situates her firmly within paternalistic constructions of femininity. In classical art, contemporary (roughly) with Sophocles' play, defiance becomes invisible: only the traditional feminine role is portrayed. A long visual tradition follows from the classical one, always casting the ancient heroine in this same, typically feminine role, and this tradition serves as a perfect example of the modern feminist critique of the history of images, in which women are robbed of their agency. Such endemic aversion to the depiction of overt defiance is, it is proposed, symptomatic of the broader cultural response to the play's revelation of two discrete, but mutually dependent feminine constructs: one demands Antigone's submission to a patriarchal definition of femininity that would require her to relinquish her autonomous perception of her feminine role, and the other involves her wilful conformance to that self‐generated identity. Meyer proposes in this chapter to demonstrate that by politicizing Antigone in the most conservative fashion, images reinforce patriarchal gender and kinship hierarchies, implying a perception of the dangers of what the author interprets here as expressions of ‘excess’ femininity, and underlining the need for continuing oppression in the interests of masculine political systems and social stability.
Macroscopic Superpositions, Decoherent Histories, and the Emergence of Hydrodynamic Behaviour
Authors: Halliwell Jonathan
Published: September 2010

Macroscopic systems are described most completely by local densities (particle number, momentum, and energy) yet the superposition states of such physical variables, indicated by the Everett interpretation, are not observed. In order to explain this, it is argued that histories of local number, momentum, and energy density are approximately decoherent when coarse-grained over sufficiently large volumes. Decoherence arises directly from the proximity of these variables to exactly conserved quantities (which are exactly decoherent), and not from environmentally induced decoherence. This chapter discusses the approach to local equilibrium and the subsequent emergence of hydrodynamic equations for the local densities. The results are general but the chapter focuses on a chain of oscillators as a specific example in which explicit calculations may be carried out. It discusses the relationships between environmentally-induced and conservation-induced decoherence, and presents a unified view of these two mechanisms.
Can the World be Only Wavefunction?
Authors: Maudlin Tim
Published: September 2010

A common understanding of both the many-worlds theory and the original version of the GRW theory holds that they are ontologically monistic, postulating only the existence of the wavefunction and nothing else. Sometimes an appeal to Occam's razor is used to promote this as a boon for these theories. But without more detailed argumentation, it is hard to see how such an austere ontology can make comprehensible contact with the experimental facts that inspired the development of quantum theory in the first place, or indeed with our whole pre-theoretical picture of the physical world.
A Metaphysician Looks at the Everett Interpretation
Authors: Hawthorne John
Published: September 2010

This chapter compares the relation of emergent branching structure to the quantum state to the fundamental ontology with philosophically more familiar examples of emergence — of ordinary objects, in relation to classical atomism, and of mental properties or attributes, in relation to material bodies. It is argued that there remain ‘explanatory gaps’ in all such cases, and that these are likely to be particularly acute in the case of the Everett interpretation.
Commentary: Reply to Hawthorne: Physics before Metaphysics
Authors: Ladyman James
Published: September 2010

The metaphysical conception of the generation of the macroworld from fundamental physics that Hawthorne considers is criticized in this Commentary, and compared with the scientific account offered by Halliwell and Hartle. It is argued that Hawthorn's critique of Everettian quantum mechanics fails.
Quantum Jumps, Born's Rule, and Objective Reality
Authors: Hubert Zurek Wojciech
Published: September 2010

This chapter describes three insights into the transition from quantum to classical that are based on the recognition of the role of the environment. It starts with a minimalist derivation of preferred sets of states. This breaking of the unitary symmetry of the Hilbert space yields — without the usual tools of decoherence — quantum jumps and pointer states consistent with those obtained via einselection. Pointer states obtained this way dene events without appealing to Born's rule for probabilities, which can be now derived from envariance-symmetry of entangled quantum states. With probabilities at hand one can analyze information flows in the course of decoherence. They explain how classical reality can arise from the quantum substrate by accounting for the objective existence of the einselected states of quantum systems through the redundancy of pointer state records in their environment — through quantum Darwinism. Taken together, and in the right order, these three advances (which fit well within Everett's relative states framework, but do not require ‘many worlds’ per se) extend the existential interpretation of quantum theory.
De Broglie–Bohm Pilot‐Wave Theory: Many Worlds in Denial?
Authors: Valentini Antony
Published: September 2010

This chapter replies to claims that the pilot-wave theory of de Broglie and Bohm is really a many-worlds theory with a superfluous configuration appended to one of the worlds. Assuming that pilot-wave theory does contain an ontological pilot wave (a complex-valued field in configuration space), the chapter shows that such claims arise from not interpreting pilot-wave theory on its own terms. Specifically, the theory has its own (‘subquantum’) theory of measurement, and in general describes a ‘non-equilibrium’ state that violates the Born rule. Furthermore, in realistic models of the classical limit, one does not obtain localised pieces of an ontological pilot wave following alternative macroscopic trajectories: from a de Broglie–Bohm viewpoint, alternative trajectories are merely mathematical and not ontological. Thus, from the perspective of pilot-wave theory itself, many worlds is an illusion. It is further argued that, even leaving pilot-wave theory aside, the theory of many worlds is rooted in the intrinsically unlikely assumption that quantum measurements should be modelled on classical measurements, and is therefore unlikely to be true.
Reply to Valentini, ‘De Broglie–Bohm Pilot‐Wave Theory: Many Worlds in Denial?’
Authors: Brown Harvey
Published: September 2010

The reality of the patterns in the wave-function representing different worlds is not like that of locality and the uncertainty relations, which hold only for the equilibrium distribution. Nor, in the light of the Deutsch–Wallace representation theorem for the Born rule, is the appeal to non-equilibrium probability distributions as the ground for the distinction between pilot-wave theory and many-worlds theory well-motivated. Finally, Valentini's counter-claim, that the latter is motivated by eigenvalue realism, ignores the need to give an account of macroscopic superpositions.
Many Worlds in Context
Authors: Tegmark Max
Published: September 2010

This chapter discusses Everett's many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics in the context of other physics disputes and other proposed kinds of parallel universes. It finds that only a small fraction of the usual objections to Everett's theory are specific to quantum mechanics, and that all of the most controversial issues crop up also in settings that have nothing to do with quantum mechanics.
Definition and Division in Plato'sSophist
Authors: Brown Lesley
Published: September 2010

This chapter investigates the so-called method of division, purportedly used in the dialogue Sophist to give the essence of the sophist, i.e., of the sophistic art or expertise. The dialogue's enigma is that it offers not one but seven different definitions, all of them satirical or whimsical, and each purporting to be the account of what sophistry is. The chapter rejects readings on which each of these ‘definitions’, or just the final one — the sophist as a producer of images — is meant seriously as an account of what sophistry is. It argues that the initial assumption — that there is a definable expertise (technē) of sophistry — is one Plato can hardly have shared, given his criteria for what counts as a technē. The chapter concludes that in the Sophist Plato shows both how close sophistry and true philosophy are, and also how they differ — all this without intending the reader to assume that the method of division has revealed any essence of sophistry, since there can be no such thing.
Nominal Definition in Aristotle
Authors: Modrak Deborah
Published: September 2010

The challenge for the interpreter addressing Aristotle's conception of nominal definition is to discover whether Aristotle has a comprehensive theory of definition that is broad enough to cover both real definition and linguistic definition. This chapter examines the analysis of definition in Posterior Analytics II and in Metaphysics VII, and the account of universals in Posterior Analytics II 19 and Metaphysics I 1 in order to sharpen the challenge. For instance, the strong unity requirement on a definition of essence in Metaphysics VII seems too restrictive to be met by a linguistic definition or even by a demonstrative definition of a natural kind. Aristotle's final position on a comprehensive theory of definition (it is argued) is that the closer a nominal definition approximates a scientific definition, the stronger its claim to be a proper definition becomes. His position is then contrasted with Chrysippus' conception of definition.
Biosand Explanatory Unity in Aristotle's Biology
Authors: Lennox James G.
Published: September 2010

This chapter discusses an issue raised in David Charles' Meaning and Essence in Aristotle, Chapter 12: can the intimate relationship between definition and explanation that Aristotle defends in the Posterior Analytics be maintained in a scientific study of animals in the face of their complex natures? It is argued that the concept of bios (way of life) plays a critical role in this respect, accounting for why different animals have the particular constellation of parts and activities they have. By looking at the central role this concept plays both in the organization of biological information in the History of Animals and in the explanation of animal differentiation in the Parts of Animals, the chapter argues that an animal's way of life is that defining feature which explains the coordinated differentiation of its parts and activities into a functional unity.
Essence and Cause in Plotinus' Ennead VI.7 [38] 2: An Outline of Some Problems
Authors: Schiaparelli Annamaria
Published: September 2010

The concepts of essence and cause are widely discussed in philosophy: they are central themes of the philosophical speculation in Antiquity as well as nowadays. In Antiquity, the concept of definition was closely connected to that of essence: at least from Aristotle onwards, it was generally assumed that the definition indicates or expresses the essence. However, these concepts are highly problematic. Furthermore, when one tries to analyse the relation between essence and cause, the task becomes even more challenging. This chapter focuses on some aspects of the concepts of essence and cause as they are presented in Plotinus' Ennead VI.7 [38] 2. In particular, the influence of Aristotle's viewpoint on Plotinus' discussion is analysed. For this reason, some Aristotelian texts are also presented. It brings evidence in support of the view that Plotinus is interested in applying part of the Aristotelian conceptual apparatus in his analysis on the causality of Forms.
IBE, GMR, and Metaphysical Projects
Authors: Shalkowski Scott A.
Published: September 2010

David Lewis defends Genuine Modal Realism (GMR) by way of an inference to the best explanation (IBE); reasons of theoretical utility are taken as markers of truth. Warrant for thinking that IBE is reliable depends on the availability of access to the relevant matters that is independent of the various uses of IBE. Domains permitting no such independent access are domains over which we can have no confidence that instances of IBE are reliable. Genuine Modal Realism's plurality of worlds is one such domain. The wider implication is that IBE is not reliable for adjudicating metaphysical disputes.
Modal Commitments
Authors: Divers John
Published: September 2010

This chapter has three principal aims. Firstly, to promote interest in the question of the function, or utility, of judgements of modality (showing what it is that we presently lack in this regard, and defending the legitimacy of the question). Secondly, to endorse an alternative to orthodox contemporary methodology, advocating that we prioritize the question of function in modal philosophy (identifying exactly which modal judgements play a useful role, and constraining the accumulation of philosophically substantial commitments to the accommodation of those judgements). Thirdly, to consider among our modal judgements exactly which are the proper and exact source of various different kinds of substantial philosophical commitments in ontology, epistemology, and elsewhere. An illustration is offered, in the de dicto case, of how minimal a philosophical theory of modality might be if constructed properly, and carefully, according to functional methodology.
Demonstrative Reference, the Relational View of Experience, and the Proximality Principle
Authors: Campbell John
Published: September 2010

The relational view of conscious perceptual experience is the view that conscious perceptual experience is a relation between perceiver and objects and properties perceived. A perceiver experiencing a yellow lemon stands in a relation to the lemon and its yellowness. The relational view grounds our knowledge of reference because, in using demonstratives to refer to perceived objects, perceivers know which objects they perceptually attend to for they stand in relations to those very objects. This chapter defends the relational view of experience against a charge by Burge that it is incompatible with a principle, the Proximality Principle, that, according to Burge, vision science rests upon. The multi‐pronged defense proposes that Burge's attack proves too much, excising the distinction between seeing and hallucinating and diminishing the importance of attention and perceptual conscious experience to knowledge of demonstrative reference.
Fictional Singular Imaginings
Authors: García‐Carpintero Manuel
Published: September 2010

In a series of papers, Robin Jeshion has developed an ‘acquaintanceless' account of singular thoughts. Her account of singular thoughts is a psychological one, rejecting any epistemic constraint. Having singular thoughts is a matter of deploying ‘mental files' or ‘dossiers' that play a significant role in the cognitive life of the individual. This chapter elaborates an alternative account that preserves acquaintance, and focuses on aspects of the semantics of fictional reference and discourse. It addresses the behaviour of intuitively empty referential expressions, proper names, indexicals, and referentially used descriptions, mostly in two specific and related sorts of cases: the use of those expressions in speech acts by the creator of the fiction and critical discourse of fictions aimed at getting its content right. The chapter concludes that a certain epistemic, acquaintance‐based account of singular thoughts provides an intuitively satisfactory analysis of those two types of cases.
Introduction
Authors: Joshua Castellino , David Keane
Published: September 2010

This introductory chapter begins with a brief description of states in the Pacific Basin and how these have received very little attention in international law and politics. It lays out the purpose of this book, which is to study the issue of human rights in the Pacific. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
1 An Overview of Indigenous Peoples and Minority Rights in the Pacific
Authors: Joshua Castellino , David Keane
Published: September 2010

This chapter begins with a historical overview of the Pacific Islands. It then discusses Pacific and international law and minority rights in the Pacific.
4 Fiji
Authors: Joshua Castellino , David Keane
Published: September 2010

This chapter begins by tracing the historical background to ethnic division in Fiji. Section 4.2 then identifies the groups that fall within the category of ‘minorities’ and ‘indigenous peoples’. Section 4.3 examines the rights of minorities, with particular emphasis on the themes of land, religion, education, language, membership of the military/police, and hate speech. The final section seeks remedies for the continued violations of the rights of minority groups in Fiji, focusing on affirmative action.
5 Papua New Guinea
Authors: Joshua Castellino , David Keane
Published: September 2010

This chapter begins with a historical background on Papua New Guinea. It then identifies the groups that fall within the category of ‘minorities’ and ‘indigenous peoples’. This is followed by a discussion of the rights of minorities.
9 Pollution across Chinese Provinces
Authors: Yap Co Catherine , Kong Fanying , Lin Shuanglin
Published: September 2010

This chapter revisits the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis using 1987–95 data for Chinese provinces for six pollutants. A comparison of off-sample (1996–2004) predicted and actual emissions show that industrial COD per capita discharge rates have leveled off; however, actual industrial waste water and industrial dust per capita discharge rates in 1996–2004 were higher than the predictions. And, contrary to the predictions of the estimated income-emission regression model, actual industrial waste water emissions increase with income. Auxiliary regressions show that conditional on income, northern provinces have lower industrial waste water pollution; non-coastal and provinces with smaller secondary industry shares have lower industrial pollution; provinces with smaller SOEs shares have lower industrial COD pollution; and, commitment to control industrial dust pollution is correlated with local governments' budget balance.
Lying and Deception
Authors: Carson Thomas L.
Published: September 2010

This book addresses questions in ethical theory and practical questions about lying, deception, and information disclosure in public affairs, business and professional ethics, and personal relationships. Part I is a conceptual map for the rest of the book. It proposes an analysis of the concepts of lying and deception and related concepts such as withholding information, “keeping someone in the dark,” and “half-truths.” Part II addresses questions in ethical theory. The book examines the implications of Kant's theory, act-utilitarianism, Ross's theory, and rule-consequentialism for moral questions about lying and deception. The book argues that Kant's absolutism about lying is untenable and that his moral theory doesn't commit him to being an absolutist. It also argues that the standard debates about lying and deception between act-utilitarians and their critics are inconclusive because they rest on appeals to disputed intuitions. The book defends a version of the golden rule and a theory of moral reasoning. The book's theory implies that there is a moral presumption against lying and deception that cause harm — a presumption that is at least as strong as that endorsed by act-utilitarianism. The book uses this theory to justify its claims about the issues it addresses in Part III: deception and withholding information in sales, deception in advertising, bluffing and deception in negotiations, the duty of professionals to inform their clients, lying and deception by leaders as a pretext for fighting wars (or avoiding wars), lying and deception about history (with special attention to the Holocaust), and cases of distorting the historical record by telling half truths. The book concludes with a qualified defense of the view that honesty is a virtue.
Introduction and Précis
Authors: Carson Thomas L.
Published: September 2010

Few, if any, moral questions have greater bearing on the conduct of our everyday lives than questions about lying and deception, the Introduction states. The Introduction provides an outline of the contents of the book. It summarizes chapter by chapter the arguments to follow.
Deception and Related Concepts
Authors: Carson Thomas L.
Published: September 2010

Deception can be defined roughly as intentionally causing someone to have false beliefs, but this definition needs to be qualified to deal with certain cases, including the following. I intentionally cause you to believe statement X and X is false, but I neither believe that X is true nor believe that X is false. The chapter also discuss several other cases that may require modifications of this definition and formulate several revised versions of the definition; the chapter counts cases in which people intentionally cause others to persist in false beliefs as cases of deception. There are two main differences between lying and deception. First, unlike “lying,” “deception” implies success. An act must actually cause someone to have false beliefs in order to count as a case of deception. Intentional false statements need not succeed in deceiving others in order to count as lies. Second, although a lie must be a false statement, deception need not involve making a false statement; true statements can be deceptive, and many forms of deception do not involve making statements of any sort. Thus, many instances of deception do not constitute lying. The chapter also explains the relationship between deception and the notions of withholding information, concealing information, “keeping someone in the dark,” “spin,” and “half‐truths,” and the chapter analyzes the relationship between lying, deception, and bullshit. Harry Frankfurt, to the contrary, suggests bullshit does not require the intent to deceive and bullshit can constitute lying. The chapter also argues that Frankfurt's famous claim that bullshitters, qua bullshitters, are unlike liars in that they are unconcerned with the truth (unconcerned with knowing “how things are”) is mistaken. As Frankfurt claims that unconcern with the truth is the essence of bullshit, this shows that his analysis of bullshit is mistaken.
The Golden Rule and a Theory of Moral Reasoning
Authors: Carson Thomas L.
Published: September 2010

This chapter develops a theory of moral reasoning in the form of rationality conditions for moral judgments. The chapter argues that moral judges must be: 1) consistent, 2) adequately informed by knowledge of relevant facts (this requires vividly understanding relevant considerations, including the feelings of others), and 3) able to reason properly and have properly functioning cognitive abilities. The chapter argues that requirements of consistency commit us to the following version of the golden rule: “If I think it would be morally permissible for someone to do a certain act to another person, then I must not object to someone doing the same act to me (or someone I love) in relevantly similar circumstances.” The chapter answers several well-known objections to the golden rule and illustrate how it can be applied to cases.
The Partial Overlap/Convergence of Reasonable Views
Authors: Carson Thomas L.
Published: September 2010

The rationality and consistency tests defended in Chapter 6 can be used to discredit and rule out certain moral principles and moral judgments and, thus, indirectly establish the truth of certain other moral judgments and moral principles. This chapter argues that there is a large overlap or convergence in the moral judgments about lying and deception of people whose judgments satisfy rationality/consistency requirements. The moral principles and moral judgments about lying and deception that survive rationality and consistency tests support a moral presumption against harmful lying and deception that is at least as strong as that endorsed by (welfare maximizing versions of) act-utilitarianism. Moral principles and moral judgments that claim or imply that lying or deception is permissible in cases in which it harms others and the harm it causes outweighs the benefits it produces fail rationality/consistency tests. In addition, the view that lying and/or deception are always wrong no matter what does not survive consistency and rationality tests.
Deception and Withholding Information in Sales
Authors: Carson Thomas L.
Published: September 2010

The chapter argues that salespeople have prima facie duties to: (1) warn customers of potential hazards; (2) refrain from lying and deception; (3) fully and honestly answer questions about what they are selling (insofar as their knowledge and time constraints permit); and (4) refrain from steering customers toward purchases they have reason to think will be harmful to customers. The chapter defend this theory by appeal to the version of golden rule and the strong presumption against harmful lying and deception established in Chapters 6 and 7. The chapter also analyzes cases of deception and withholding information in sales. This chapter gives the book's most detailed application of the golden rule to particular cases.
Honesty, Professionals, and the Vulnerability of the Public
Authors: Carson Thomas L.
Published: September 2010

Often, professionals are in a position to advance their own financial interests by means of lying and deception, e.g., lying to a client to manipulate her into purchasing unneeded services. This creates very serious ethical problems because clients often have no way to assess the truth of what professionals tell them. We are at the mercy of professionals and need to rely on their honesty. This chapter presents examples that illustrate this important and wide‐spread phenomenon and argue that the financial benefits professionals often derive from deception create systemic conflicts of interest. Professionals should adhere to a strong presumption against lying and deception in their dealings with their clients. In addition, all, or almost all, professionals have a duty to warn others of potential health and safety hazards and refrain from steering clients/customers toward decisions they have reason to think will be harmful to them. Professionals who work on the understanding that they are acting as fiduciaries (or quasi‐fiduciaries) for the benefit of their clients/employers are obligated to do much more than this. They must be candid and provide salient information that clients/employers need. Those who have fiduciary duties to others have extensive positive duties to provide information to others – they must do more than refrain from lying and deception. Perhaps the most fully developed account of the obligation of individuals to provide information is found in the principle of informed consent in medicine. The chapter explains this principle and ask how far it can or should be extended to other professions. The chapter argues that informed consent is a good model for professionals who are hired and paid by their clients and have fiduciary duties to act for the benefit of their clients, but not for professionals who do not have fiduciary duties to their clients/customers.
Features: essential notions
Authors: Corbett Greville G.
Published: September 2010

Features are standard currency in linguistics; they allow generalizations in syntax, and equally in morphology. Yet while features are heavily used, they are often taken for granted. It is therefore worth considering: the use of features (their logic, their place in different components), the substantive semantics of features, and the inventory of features.