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Mind wandering is a pervasive feature of experience. But why does the mind wriggle about rather than stay focused? The answer depends on understanding mind wandering as task‐unrelated thought. Despite being the standard view of mind wandering in cognitive psychology, there has been no systematic elaboration of the task‐unrelated thought view of mind wandering. I argue for the task‐unrelated thought view by showing how mind wandering reflects a distinctive form of non‐vigilant thinking. This argument defuses several objections to the task‐unrelated thought view. The account of mind wandering defended here is also compatible with a naturalistic account of subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Arts Magazine is the property of Thamar University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Does Seneca entirely reject the utility of dialectical study for moral improvement? No, I argue here. Focusing on Letter 87, I propose that Seneca raises and disarms objections to formal Stoic arguments to help moral progressors avoid backsliding and advance towards ethical knowledge. I trace this method back to Chrysippus and show that reading Letter 87 in this Chrysippean framework yields a satisfying explanation of its otherwise puzzling features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the advance of the Open Access (OA) movement, most scholarly production can only be accessed through a paywall. We conduct an international survey among researchers (N = 3304) to measure the willingness and motivations to use (or not use) scholarly piracy sites, and other alternatives to overcome a paywall such as paying with their own money, institutional loans, just reading the abstract, asking the corresponding author for a copy of the document, asking a colleague to get the document for them, or searching for an OA version of the paper. We also explore differences in terms of age, professional position, country income level, discipline, and commitment to OA. The results show that researchers most frequently look for OA versions of the documents. However, more than 50% of the participants have used a scholarly piracy site at least once. This is less common in high-income countries, and among older and better-established scholars. Regarding disciplines, such services were less used in Life & Health Sciences and Social Sciences. Those who have never used a pirate library highlighted ethical and legal objections or pointed out that they were not aware of the existence of such libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Desired C-section" is about a legal dispute in which the plaintiff sues the defendants for alleged treatment and disclosure errors during childbirth. The plaintiff claims that he had requested a cesarean section, which is disputed by the defendants. It is determined that the settlement between the parties is valid and that the plaintiff's declaration of annulment is ineffective. It is also noted that errors regarding motives or calculations in a settlement are irrelevant. The article also contains information about the course of the birth and the medical measures taken. The plaintiff was born with Apgar scores of 6/6/8 and was transferred to the neonatology department due to respiratory adaptation disorder. Movement restrictions of the right arm and diaphragmatic paralysis were detected. The plaintiff was fed through a tube and had to be treated in the pediatric intensive care unit for almost four weeks. The plaintiff claims that the treating doctors should have performed a cesarean section as his mother was recommended to do so due to his sister's previous difficult birth. The court dismissed the lawsuit as no treatment error was proven. In the present case, it concerns a medical treatment during childbirth that resulted in complications. An expert determined that the treatment was appropriate and no errors were made. In particular, the administration of the medication Cytotec for labor induction was considered professional. Furthermore, no connection could be established between the use of Cytotec and the occurring complications. The court also decided that the disclosure regarding labor induction was sufficient. The appeal does not raise any legal objections to the findings of the district court and also does not contain any specific objections to the court's evaluation of evidence. The court does not doubt the correctness and completeness of the findings of the district court. It assumed the mother's consent to the intake of the medication Cytotec based on the disclosure form and the mother's statements. Even if the disclosure about the effects of the medication should not have been sufficient, this would not result in liability of the defendants. Liability due to a lack of disclosure about a primary cesarean section as an alternative treatment also does not arise. Finally, the court rightly denied liability due to disregarding an expressed desire for an elective cesarean section and failing to disclose its risks. In the present case, it concerns a lawsuit regarding an alleged vaccine injury after a COVID-19 vaccination. The plaintiff completed training as a nurse for the sick and elderly and was vaccinated against COVID-19 with the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine by the defendants. The plaintiff had previously received an information leaflet and filled out the medical history form. After the vaccinations, a vaccine reaction was observed in the plaintiff. The court decided that administering COVID-19 vaccines is a sovereign activity and therefore the state is solely liable. Self-liability of the sovereign actor is not possible. [Extracted from the article]

In this article I argue that justice often requires that candidates who are sufficiently qualified for jobs be hired via lottery on the basis that this is the best way to recognise each candidate's equal moral claim to access meaningful work. In reaching this conclusion I consider a variety of potential objections from the perspectives of the employer, of the most qualified candidate, and of third parties, but ultimately reject the idea that a person's status as the most qualified candidate can explain why they ought to be appointed over other sufficiently qualified candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a question seldom addressed in a straightforward manner by political theorists: whether populism is intrinsically anti-science. This article identifies three different ways in which populist actors worldwide have grounded their scepticism, distrust, or hostility to scientific inputs, to the extent that they are relevant for political action: (1) they raise a moral objection against scientists who have been allegedly corrupted by foreign interests, turning them into enemies of the people; (2) they present a democratic objection against the technocratic claim that scientific experts should rule regardless of the popular will; and (3) they employ an epistemic argument against scientific reasoning, which is said to be inferior to common-sense and folk wisdom, and antithetical to the immediateness of political action. While these objections have been wielded in a selective and unsystematic way, they all speak to the core feature of populism, which is the people versus elites divide: the moral objection targets scientists as members of an elite in cahoots with alien powers; the democratic objection targets an unelected elite that seeks to undermine the people's rule; the epistemic objection questions that the standard to validate knowledge-claims is a complex and detached-from-ordinary-experience rationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late nineteenth century, scholars have formulated theories about the role and placement of organs in the St. Matthew Passion, using them to interpret the work's theological message and anchor broader ideas about how Bach positioned his other players and singers for performances in the Thomaskirche. The church housed two permanently fixed organs: a large one in the west gallery and the misleadingly labeled swallow's nest organ in a gallery on the east wall. The latter, smaller organ has become the central point in debates about the Passion, leading to a variety of interpretations. The current evidence, reviewed here in substantial detail, does not unequivocally prove any of the main theories. Yet not all are equally strong, By examining the history of scholarship on the St. Matthew Passion and by carefully reexamining the evidence, we can grow more aware of weaknesses stemming from the enduring influence of older scholar ship, based on questionable premises, outdated information, or seemingly unintentional misreading. The results argue strongly against one of the most common theories, which posits a small auxiliary role for the east gallery organ, along with a "third choir," for most of Bach's performances. Proponents of this theory have sometimes harnessed it to add another layer of theological symbolism to Bach's music. This too is questionable. Musical evidence may also argue against it. Bach's changing approach to scoring the chorale "O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig in the opening movement shows that the melody does not work in dialectic opposition to the two main choruses, as sometimes claimed, but emerges from within the group. In place of this theory, two alternatives stand out: either the full separation of the two choirs beTween the two galleries of the Thomaskirche or the positioning of all performers in the west gallery, with no role for the east gallery or its organ for any of Bach's Passion performances. Though neither fully accounts for every detail in the evidence nor answers all possible objections, they do offer more satisfying explanations than the alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present work I will try to explain two lines of interpretation of the discussed article that regulates the crime of feminicide in our Penal Code, making known the consequences that would follow from accepting them, in addition to some objections to them. Much of the essay will examine the best interpretation of the criminal offense and then the strongest objection that must be faced; I consider the latter the real problem of feminicide. Finally, I will suggest an interpretation of feminicide and the conclusions will be compiled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We access most of our most cherished beliefs via testimony. Philosophy is no exception. We treat spoken and written philosophical testimony as evidence for philosophical claims. Nonetheless, this paper argues that philosophical testimony is unable to justify philosophical beliefs. If testimony is the only evidence we have to justify philosophical beliefs, this entails skepticism about philosophy. Call this the testimony challenge. First, the paper argues that philosophical testimony does not meet the conditions under which evidence can justify our beliefs. Second, it shows that philosophical testimony cannot provide preemptive epistemic reasons as science and mathematics do. Finally, it answers the self‐defeat objection and a set of objections aiming to block the thesis that philosophical testimony does not justify philosophical beliefs. The paper aims to rethink the role of philosophical testimony in philosophy and reinforce the skeptical worries raised by methodological and disagreement challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laborde contrasts Default Republicanism with Labordian Republicanism. The latter view 'answers' the Probabilistic and the Anti-Psychology Objections to Default Republicanism. The former objection holds that the mere possibility of unconstrained intervention does not matter for unfreedom, whereas the latter contends that it is by virtue of the experience-independent fact of servitude that one is unfree. I argue that people sympathetic to these objections should have reservations about Labordian Republicanism. In any case, republicans should reject the Anti-Psychology Objection. More generally, Pluralist Republicanism might be preferable to Labordian Republicanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hyperagency objections appeal to the risk that cognitive enhancement may negatively impact our well-being by giving us too much control. I charitably formulate and engage with a prominent version of this objection due to Sandel (2009) —viz. that cognitive enhancement may negatively impact our well-being by creating an "explosion" of responsibilities. I first outline why this worry might look prima facie persuasive, and then I show that it can ultimately be defended against. At the end of the day, if we are to resist cognitive enhancement, it should not be based on a Sandel-style hyperagency argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the principle of indifference, when a set of possibilities is evidentially symmetric for you – when your evidence no more supports any one of the possibilities over any other – you're required to distribute your credences uniformly among them. Despite its intuitive appeal, the principle of indifference is often thought to be unsustainable due to the problem of multiple partitions: Depending on how a set of possibilities is divided, it seems that sometimes, applying indifference reasoning can require you to assign incompatible credences to equivalent possibilities. This paper defends the principle of indifference from the problem of multiple partitions by offering two guides for how to respond. The first is for permissivists about rationality, and is modeled on permissivists' arguments for the claim that a body of evidence sometimes does not uniquely determine a fully rational credence function. The second is for impermissivists about rationality, and is modeled on impermissivists' arguments for the claim that a body of evidence does always uniquely determine a fully rational credence function. What appears to be a decisive objection against the principle of indifference is in fact an instance of a general challenge taking different forms familiar to both permissivists and impermissivists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, narrative accounts of the self have gained increasing attention. It is widely accepted that humans are storytelling creatures, that stories shape our self‐conception, and that we fail to be agents without a narrative framework. While there is less agreement on what constitutes a narrative, it is generally understood to be more than a chronological listing of life events; it is also an account of the explanatory relationships among these events—a story of how events lead to other events. However, specifying the nature of this explanatory relationship has proven difficult. As critics have pointed out, narrativists often resort to simplistic notions of narrative when faced with criticism. The concept of narrative explanation needs to be elaborated in a way that is both substantive enough to exclude trivial behaviours from being considered narratives and nonrestrictive enough to accommodate ordinary lives that may not be particularly story‐like. In this paper, I review existing accounts of narrative explanation and propose a teleological account, according to which narratives consist of goal‐directed explanations of a sequence of events. I argue that a teleological account of narrative explanation can be a fruitful way to clarify the concept of "narrative" in the context of the narrative self by addressing the most common objections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One crucial premise in the argument from illusion is the Phenomenal Principle. It states that if there sensibly appears to be something that possesses a sensible quality, then there is something of which the subject is aware that has that sensible quality. The principle thus enables the inference from a mere appearance to an existence (usually a mental one). In the argument from appearance, a similar move is taken by some philosophers—they infer a content from a mere appearance. There are two kinds of defences for the Phenomenal Principle in the literature, namely, the epistemological one (e.g. H.H. Price) and the semantic one (e.g. Frank Jackson). I argue that neither consolidates the Phenomenal Principle. I particularly demonstrate that the appearance verb in premise 1 of the argument from illusion is not used in the phenomenal sense as it is used in the Phenomenal Principle, which renders the argument essentially invalid. To avoid invalidity, the proponents either give up the phenomenal use, which makes the argument unable to serve its original purpose, i.e. inferring an unusual existence, or they insist on the phenomenal use in all premises of the argument, which will trivialise the argument. I also demonstrate that a similar objection applies to the argument from appearance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After examining the problem that gratuitous suffering poses for Nietzsche's notion of life affirmation, I mount a skeptical response to this problem on Nietzsche's behalf. I then consider an orthogonal objection to Nietzschean life affirmation, which argues that the need to justify life is symptomatic of life denial and show how strengthening the skeptical defense sidesteps this worry. Nietzsche's skepticism about our all‐too‐human, epistemic position thus aids his project of life affirmation in two ways. First, it suggests that we are unable to determine reliably whether a given instance of suffering is, in fact, gratuitous. Second, it provides a corrective to the moralistic need to redeem life, showing that all attempts to justify life as a whole are epistemically fraught. Before concluding, I examine Nietzsche's reasons for advancing such an epistemological argument and suggest how we might approach life affirmation in nonrational terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his contribution to this special issue, Hindriks considers the Security Principle, an account of pro tanto obligations based on our account of reasons (Gunnemyr and Touborg 2023a). According to the Security Principle, you have a pro tanto obligation not to perform an action that makes a harm more secure. Hindriks raises two objections to this account. First, that it is too flexible; second, that it gives wrong verdicts when agents are robustly unwilling to act in a certain way. Here, we respond to Hindriks' objections and argue that Hindriks' account, the Threshold Principle, gives counterintuitive verdicts in preemption and low-probability cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Necmettin Erbakan University School of Law Review is the property of Necmettin Erbakan University School of Law Review and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Sufficientarian theories of distributive justice are often considered to be vulnerable to the 'blindness to inequality and other values objection'. This objection targets their commitment to holding the moral irrelevance of requirements of justice above absolute thresholds of advantage, making them insufficiently sensitive to egalitarian moral concerns that do have relevance for justice. This paper explores how sufficientarians could reply to this objection. Particularly, I claim that, if we accept that the force of the aforementioned objection comes from relational, and not distributive, inequalities, different strategies are open for sufficientarians in order to be sensitive to these concerns. Drawing on recent literature about the relation between distributive and relational egalitarianism, and the possibility of reducing one to the other, strategies of 'internalizing' and 'externalizing' relational egalitarian concerns to a distributive sufficientarian framework are explored. In turn, I suggest that both strategies fail in their standard versions, but argue that a particular 'hybrid view' about justice is an attractive candidate for the sufficientarian theorist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Derecho Comunitario Europeo is the property of Centro de Estudios Politicos y Constitucionales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of FinanzRundschau is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Pierre-Sylvain Regis, once a well-known defender of Cartesianism, offers an unusually rich and innovative refutation of Spinoza. While many of his early modern contemporaries raised narrower objections to particular claims in Spinoza's Ethics , Regis develops a broader anti-Spinozistic position, one that threatens the very core of Spinoza's metaphysical ambitions and offers a philosophically robust alternative. However, as with any far-reaching philosophical commitment, Regis's gambit comes with substantive costs of its own, including creating instabilities within the core of his own philosophical system. Far from diminishing the significance of Regis's anti-Spinozism, this critical appraisal helps us better appreciate both the conceptual pull of Spinozism within early modern metaphysics and one sweeping, albeit costly way of escaping its orbit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are certain characteristics of dispute resolution procedures associated with higher levels of procedural justice? We address this question through a quantitative analysis of real-world experiences of 194 professional legal representatives with the objection procedures of 81 Dutch administrative authorities. In our analysis, two general procedural characteristics are taken into account: the involvement of an independent third party and the extent to which the procedure is focused on the conciliation of competing interests. The involvement of an independent third party was not associated with higher levels of procedural justice. Procedures that were perceived to be more focused on the conciliation of competing interests were evaluated as more procedurally just, even more so in disputes where the administrative authority was perceived to have a higher degree of discretion and in disputes that ended in a negative result for the litigant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criminal law abolitionists claim that legal punishment cannot be morally justified and that we should therefore abolish criminal law. While this is still a minority position in the current debate, the number of proponents has been increasing, and even opponents have developed a certain degree of sympathy for such claims in recent years. Yet one of the reasons many remain hesitant regarding the abolition of criminal law appears to be the lack of a thought-through alternative, in addition to abolitionists disagreeing considerably amongst themselves on what an alternative should look like. I will call this the missing alternative objection. To address this central concern, I will argue in this paper that the most prominent versions of abolitionism actually converge on the same alternative core to criminal law — even though they are driven by vastly different motivations. This core that current abolitionist theories converge on is two-fold: first, the claim that the state should compel offenders to provide restitution for the victim; second, the claim that restorative processes should be used wherever possible when addressing criminal wrongdoing. This common core is enough to reject the missing alternative objection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Parfit's Mixed Maxim Objection against the Formula of Universal Law Reconsidered" examines Derek Parfit's criticism of Kant's Formula of Universal Law (FUL) and its implications for Kantian ethics. Parfit argues that FUL should be revised and that the concept of a maxim should be abandoned. However, contemporary Kantians have not taken Parfit's criticism seriously and believe that his project is too different from Kant's to engage in fruitful dialogue. The article explores Parfit's "Mixed Maxims Objection" and proposes a response to it, arguing that a notion of maxims as policies can still be ethically evaluated. The author distinguishes different versions of the objection and focuses on the version that poses a fundamental challenge to Kant's ethics. They argue that Kantians can respond to some versions of the objection but must address the version that questions the bridge between evaluating maxims and evaluating actions. The article concludes that it is possible to evaluate maxims as policies while making plausible judgments about the morality of actions. [Extracted from the article]

In a previous article, I developed transcendental arguments to refute several versions of Nick Bostrom's simulation hypothesis. I called some of these arguments the SIM-style argument. In this article, I have four main aims. First, I employ the SIM-style argument to remedy a defect in Hilary Putnam's brain-in-vat argument. Second, I show that the most radical skepticism, which Tim Button called the nightmarish Cartesian skepticism, can be refuted by the SIM-style argument or by another transcendental argument I develop here. Third, I compare my approach to radical skepticisms with Donald Davidson's, as it is often regarded as an exemplar of transcendental arguments. Fourth, I explain how the prominent objections, mainly developed by Barry Stroud, to transcendental arguments can incur two undesirable results: psychologism and Kantian skepticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A theme running through Katherine Hawley's recent works on trust and trustworthiness is that thinking about the relations between these and Miranda Fricker's notion of testimonial injustice offers a perspective from which we can see several limitations of Fricker's own account of testimonial injustice. This paper clarifies the aspects of Fricker's account that Hawley's criticisms target, focusing on her objections to Fricker's proposal that its primary harm involves a kind of epistemic objectification and her characterization of testimonial injustice in terms of prejudicial credibility deficits. I also offer an assessment of the potency of Hawley's objections, concluding that they do point to genuine limitations of Fricker's account, but that we can appreciate Hawley's points without adopting her trust-centric approach to testimonial injustice, or her specific commitment-based accounts of trust and trustworthiness. However, in the last section I examine the positive picture of testimonial injustice that emerges from Hawley's discussion of unequally distributed obstacles to both being trustworthy and maintaining a reputation for trustworthy testimony in her recent book How To Be Trustworthy, considering how this picture contrasts with Fricker's account and where it might have important affinities with other accounts in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At first glance the understandings of theological authority in Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism are quite different. This fact has the potential to hinder effective dialogue between the two traditions. This article examines the possibility of the Protestant understanding of theological authority being read and interpreted through the reformer’s doctrine of the Testimonium Spiritus Sancti Internum (the Inner Witness of the Holy Spirit) such that it meets the Eastern Orthodox objections. Applying the teaching of the Spirit’s witness provides an opportunity to emphasise some important features and highlight nuances in the understanding of authority that otherwise could be easily neglected. While it does not solve all the problems in the dialogue, this approach could possibly lead to important rapprochement of the two positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are two justifications for the major questions doctrine. The first justification, vigorously offered by Justice Neil Gorsuch, might be described as Lockean; it sees the doctrine as an effort to preserve legislative primacy and to reduce the policymaking authority of the executive branch. On the Lockean view, the major questions doctrine is a clear-statement principle, and it is in evident tension with textualism. The second justification, vigorously offered by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, might be described as Wittgensteinian; it sees the doctrine as an effort to capture Congress's likely instructions. The Wittgensteinian justification fits comfortably with textualism, and it does not operate as a clear-statement principle at all. The Court can be seen as having adopted an incompletely theorized agreement in favor of the major questions doctrine, but at some point, the two justifications might lead in different directions. While neither justification is implausible, both of them run into serious objections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine a type of objection lodged against the central premise in Hartshorne's reconstruction of Anselm's ontological argument. The main claim that the proponents of this type of objection have in common is that owing to the logical status of terms such as "exists" or "necessary existence," no legitimate inference can be made from Anselm's Principle to the actual existence of a Perfect Being. I will examine versions of this "logical leap" objection as set forth by Alston, Shaffer, and Hick. I argue that given a certain plausible interpretation of Anselm's Principle and of the necessity operator involved, the objections fail to undermine Anselm's Principle or the relevant inferences the argument draws from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Problematic content on social media can be countered through objections raised by other community members. While intended to deter offenses, objections can influence the surrounding audience observing the interaction, leading to their collective approval or disapproval. The results of an experiment manipulating seven types of objections against common types of offenses indicate audiences' support for objections that implore via appeals and disapproval of objections that threaten the offender, as they view the former as more moral, appropriate, and effective compared to the latter. Furthermore, audiences tend to prefer more benign and less threatening objections regardless of the offense severity (following the principle of "taking the high road") instead of objections proportionate to the offense ("an eye for an eye"). Taken together, these results show how objections to offensive behaviors may impact collective perceptions on social media, paving the way for interventions to foster effective objection strategies in social media discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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There is, on a given moral view, an agent‐centered restriction against performing acts of a certain type if that view prohibits agents from performing an instance of that act‐type even to prevent two or more others from each performing a morally comparable instance of that act‐type. The fact that commonsense morality includes agent‐centered restrictions is often seen as a decisive objection to act‐consequentialism. Despite this, I'll argue that agent‐centered restrictions are more plausibly accommodated within an act‐consequentialist framework than within the more standard side‐constraint framework. For I'll argue that when we combine agent‐relative act‐consequentialism with a Kantian theory of value, we arrive at a version of consequentialism—namely, Kantsequentialism—that has several advantages over the side‐constraint approach. What's more, I'll show that this version of consequentialism avoids the disadvantages that critics of consequentializing have presumed that such a theory must have. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, nature has often been thought to be structured by essential forms providing the generic features of natural things and thus the foundations for scientific explanations. In contrast, human history and the social domain have been thought to be the realm of ever‐changing appearances, where contingency prevails. The paper argues that the existence of essential forms is compatible with the contingent, mind‐dependent and historical character of the social world, and that essential forms can also be found in the social domain. Two categories of entities are discussed that suggest themselves to be identified as social forms, namely social kinds and social identities. To this end, it is shown that standard arguments for the existence of essential forms also apply to the social domain, and objections to the existence of social forms are rebutted. Particular attention is paid to the explanatory appeal of social forms. The paper concludes by suggesting that, far from being oppressive, essential social forms are presupposed by liberating social practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frequently it has been pointed out that in Biblical Hebrew literature the narrator tends to be less overt. Nonetheless, this has seldom been substantiated with the narrative mode as an analytical category. The latter especially applies to the representation of speech. Herein, it is debated, if besides direct and indirect speech also free indirect discourse may be attested in the Hebrew Bible. Cynthia L. Miller has denied this possibility, which has been notably advocated by Meir Sternberg. However, using a linguistically substantiated narrative analysis Miller's objections can be called into question. This justifies the fundamental possibility of free indirect discourse with wehinne -phrases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, non-participation in inter-state cases has been on the rise. While previous research on the topic has centred around the impact of states' non-participation, this article delves into the reasons behind non-participation. By analysing states' public statements, diplomatic documents, informal correspondence with adjudicators, as well as commentators' views, this article describes the evolution of reasons for non-participation. The research reveals that over time, more states refer to jurisdictional objections, doubts about the impartiality of adjudicators and concerns about the strategic use of judicial proceedings for achieving political goals as reasons for non-participation. Moreover, the reasons behind non-participation have become increasingly diverse. These findings suggest a growing sense of distrust and suspicion towards the use of international courts and tribunals to resolve inter-state disputes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes different objections in moral philosophy to question the legitimacy of state punishment towards social outcasts. These objections include hypocrisy, community, and complicity. The author concludes that the objection of complicity can partially delegitimize the punishment of crimes favored by the excluding policies of the State. The objection of hypocrisy and its relationship with criminal law and social exclusion are also discussed. Additionally, the objection of community and its impact on belonging to the family community is raised. The text argues that none of these objections is a good argument to question the legitimacy of punishing social outcasts. Bibliographic references related to the topic of criminal punishment and social exclusion are also mentioned. [Extracted from the article]

Recent criticisms of medicine converge on fundamental questions about the aim of medicine. The main task of this paper is to propose an account of the aim of medicine. Discussing and rejecting the initially plausible proposal according to which medicine is pathocentric, the paper presents and defends the Autonomy Thesis, which holds that medicine is not pathocentric, but sanocentric, aiming to promote health with the final aim to enhance autonomy. The paper closes by considering the objection that the Autonomy Thesis is overly permissive and allows many highly controversial procedures as legitimate parts of medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A good part of the philosophical debate on free will and moral responsibility in the last fifty years has revolved around so-called Frankfurt-style cases. One of the most important milestones in this debate is the case described by Mele and Robb (1998), which was intended to avoid some earlier objections directed at Frankfurt's original argument. However, the success of Mele and Robb's case has been contested by Pereboom (2001), Widerker (2003), and Moya (2003, 2017), among others. The present paper aims to vindicate Mele and Robb's (and Frankfurt's) general argument by describing a variation of their case that overcomes or avoids the objections of those authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Roy Bhaskar, social science can derive values from social facts by a process called "explanatory critique." Bhaskar offers two different versions of explanatory critique: a belief‐based version and a need‐based version. Both versions are faced with a difficult objection. They seem either to employ an invalid inference or to assume the values that they are attempting to derive. I argue that at least the need‐based version of Bhaskar's explanatory critique falls to the objection, and that the belief‐based version on its own is insufficient. Bhaskar anticipates the objection and offers a defense. I show that his defense is unsuccessful. I also suggest a Baskar‐inspired alternative explanatory critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his article, 'What's Wrong with Tooley's Argument from Evil?', Calum Miller's goal was to show that the evidential argument from evil that I have advanced is unsound, and in support of that claim, Miller set out three main objections. First, he argued that I had failed to recognize that the actual occurrence of an event can by itself, at least in principle, constitute good evidence that it was not morally wrong for God to allow events of the kind in question. Miller's second objection was then that, in attempting to show that it is unlikely that God exists, I had failed to consider either positive arguments in support of the existence of God or possible theodicies, and thus that I was unjustified in drawing any conclusions concerning the probability that theism is true in the light of the total evidence available. Miller's third and final objection was that one of the approaches to logical probability that I employed – namely, that based upon a structure-description equiprobability principle, rather than a state-description equiprobability principle – was unsound since it has clearly unacceptable implications. In response, I argue that all three of Miller's objections are unsound. The third objection, however, is nevertheless important since it shows that my type of argument from evil cannot be based merely on the evils found in the world. One must also consider good states of affairs, and their relations to bad ones. I show, however, that that deficiency can be addressed in a completely satisfactory manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critics of Divine Command Theory (DCT) have advanced the counterpossible terrible commands objection. They argue that DCT implies the counterpossible 'If a necessarily morally perfect God commanded us to perform a terrible act, then the terrible act would be morally obligatory.' However, this counterpossible is false. Hence, DCT is false. Philipp Kremers has proposed that the intuition that the counterpossible above is false is due to conversational implicatures. By providing a pragmatic explanation for the intuition, he thinks that DCT proponents can then maintain that the counterpossible is actually true. In this article, I argue that Kremers's conversational implicature response fails because (a) there is good reason to think that no conversational implicature arises given what critics of DCT have expressed, (b) a competent reader would not understand the critics' utterance that TCC is false as implicating that TCC* is false, and (c) the counterpossible terrible commands objection can be easily modified to be immune to the conversational implicature response by cancelling any potential implicature. Thus, an appeal to conversational implicatures cannot save DCT from the counterpossible terrible commands objection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A person is biased toward the future when she prefers, other things being equal, bad events to be in her past rather than her future, or good ones to be in her future rather than her past. In this paper, I explain why both critics and defenders of future bias have failed to consider the best version of the view. I distinguish external time from personal time, and argue that future bias is best construed in terms of the latter. This conception of future bias avoids several standard objections. I then consider a new justification of future bias which is consistent with that construal. My discussion points to a new position regarding the basic relation that grounds rational egoistic concern over time, according to which that relation is asymmetric between persons-stages. I also explain how this way of justifying future bias would resolve the apparent tension between the future bias that we display in our own case and our relative indifference to the timing of good and bad things that happen to other people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper defends views like rule consequentialism by distinguishing between two sorts of ideal world objections. It aims to show that one of those sorts of objections is question-begging. Its success would open up a path forward for such views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]