3,074 research outputs found
No Harm Done? An Experimental Approach to the Nonidentity Problem
Discussions of the non-identity problem presuppose a widely shared intuition that actions or policies that change who comes into existence don't, thereby, become morally unproblematic. We hypothesize that this intuition isnât generally shared by the public, which could have widespread implications concerning how to generate support for large-scale, identity-affecting policies relating to matters like climate change. To test this, we ran a version of the well-known dictator game designed to mimic the public's behavior over identity-affecting choices. We found the public does seem to behave more selfishly when making identity-affecting choices, which should be concerning. We further hypothesized that one possible mechanism is the notion of harm the public uses in their decision-making and find that substantial portions of the population seem to each employ distinct notions of harm in their normative thinking. These findings raise puzzling features about the publicâs normative thinking that call out for further empirical examination
On the Persistence of Homogeneous Matter
Some recent philosophical debate about persistence has focussed on an
argument against perdurantism that discusses rotating perfectly homogeneous
discs (the `rotating discs argument'; RDA). The argument has been mostly
discussed by metaphysicians, though it appeals to ideas from classical
mechanics, especially about rotation. In contrast, I assess the RDA from the
perspective of the philosophy of physics.
After introducing the argument and emphasizing the relevance of physics
(Sections 1 to 3), I review some metaphysicians' replies to the argument
(Section 4). Thereafter, I argue for three main conclusions. They all arise
from the fact, emphasized in Section 2, that classical mechanics
(non-relativistic as well as relativistic) is both more subtle, and more
problematic, than philosophers generally realize.
The main conclusion is that the RDA can be defeated (Section 6 onwards).
Namely, by the perdurantist taking objects in classical mechanics (whether
point-particles or continuous bodies) to have only temporally extended, i.e.
non-instantaneous, temporal parts: which immediately blocks the RDA.
Admittedly, this version of perdurantism defines persistence in a weaker sense
of `definition' than {\em pointilliste} versions that aim to define persistence
assuming only instantaneous temporal parts. But I argue that temporally
extended temporal parts are supported by both classical and quantum mechanics.Comment: 100 pages, no figures; an extract of this paper is at:
physics/040602
Universality caused: the case of renormalization group explanation
Recently, many have argued that there are certain kinds of abstract mathematical explanations that are noncausal. In particular, the irrelevancy approach suggests that abstracting away irrelevant causal details can leave us with a noncausal explanation. In this paper, I argue that the common example of Renormalization Group explanations of universality used to motivate the irrelevancy approach deserves more critical attention. I argue that the reasons given by those who hold up RG as noncausal do not stand up to critical scrutiny. As a result, the irrelevancy approach and the line between casual and noncausal explanation deserves more scrutiny
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