It Takes More than Moore to Answer Existence-Questions

© 2019 Springer Nature. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Erkenntnis. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00107-4Several recent discussions of metaphysics disavow existence-questions, claiming that they are metaphysically uninteresting because trivially settled in the affirmative by Moorean facts. This is often given as a reason to focus metaphysical debate instead on questions of grounding. I argue that the strategy employed to undermine existence-questions fails against its usual target: Quineanism. The Quinean can protest that the formulation given of their position is a straw man: properly understood, as a project of explication, Quinean metaphysics does not counsel us to choose between obvious ordinary-language claims and absurd revisionist claims, even if appeal to Moorean facts is permitted.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Player Engagement with Games: Formal Reliefs and Representation Checks

Alongside the direct parallels and contrasts between traditional narrative fiction and games, there lie certain partial analogies which provide their own insights. This paper begins by examining a direct parallel between narrative fiction and games – the role of fictional reliefs and reality checks in shaping aesthetic engagement – before arguing that from this a partial analogy can be developed which stems from a feature that distinguishes most games from most traditional fictions: the presence of rules. The relation between rules and fiction in games has heretofore been acknowledged but not examined in detail, giving an impression of a tension that is constant. However the paired concepts of formal reliefs and representation checks, once introduced, allow us to explain how rules and fiction interact to alter the ways in which players engage with games in a dynamic but limited way

Susan Stebbing and the Truthmaker Approach to Metaphysics

Susan Stebbing's reflections on method in metaphysics are deserving of sustained attention by historians of analytic philosophy, not least because her work was for some time unduly sidelined. In this paper I build on recent reassessments of Stebbing's work to argue that she can fruitfully be seen as attempting in the mid-1930s to articulate a precursor to the Truthmaker Approach in metaphysics -- doing so departs from Janssen-Lauret's account of Stebbing as a stepping-stone to later Quinean holism while still recognising that she was not simply a proponent of a Moorean--Russellian position. This different perspective reveals (i) the emergence of a difference in metametaphysical approaches at an earlier stage than is typically thought and (ii) a difference between ways of critiquing the logical positivist project which would otherwise be difficult to see

Player Engagement with Games: Formal Reliefs and Representation Checks

Alongside the direct parallels and contrasts between traditional narrative fiction and games, there lie certain partial analogies that provide their own insights. This article begins by examining a direct parallel between narrative fiction and games—the role of fictional reliefs and reality checks in shaping aesthetic engagement—before arguing that from this a partial analogy can be developed stemming from a feature that distinguishes most games from most traditional fictions: the presence of rules. The relation between rules and fiction in games has heretofore been acknowledged but not examined in detail, giving an impression of a tension that is constant. However, the paired concepts of formal reliefs and representation checks, once introduced, allow us to explain how rules and fiction interact to alter the ways in which players engage with games in a dynamic but limited way

Transformative experience and the principle of informed consent in medicine

This paper explores how transformative experience generates decision-making problems of particular seriousness in medical settings. Potentially transformative experiences are especially likely to be encountered in medicine, and the associated decisions are confronted jointly by patients and clinicians in the context of an imbalance of power and expertise. However in such scenarios the principle of informed consent, which plays a central role in guiding clinicians, is unequal to the task. We detail how the principle’s assumptions about autonomy, rationality and information handle transformative experiences poorly, appealing to several difficult cases for medical decision-making to illustrate the resulting problem, and we consider how the existing literature on complications with consent fails to offer a resolution. We argue that recognition of the problem has a role to play in achieving a more effective response to transformative decisions. In Sect. 1 we introduce several representative cases of challenging patient decision-making that clinicians might face. In Sect. 2 we detail how transformative experience has been analysed in the recent literature, before outlining in Sect. 3 the theoretical basis of the principle of informed consent, which plays a central role in how clinicians are expected to support decision-making. In Sect. 4, having laid the groundwork for a clear description, we return to the cases given in Sect. 1 to confirm how their transformative nature presents a problem: either clinicians treat the decisions faced by these patients as ‘normal’, encouraging them to focus on information provision that patients may be unable to act on, or they treat them as transformative, in which case they lack the resources to recognise whether they are helping patients make (subjectively) good decisions. In Sect. 5 we argue that the existing literature does not offer any escape from this problem. We close in Sect. 6 by noting the significant impact that appreciating the problem of transformative experience could have on supporting transformative decisions in medicine and briefly suggesting how we might aim to develop new approaches to dealing with these

Transformative experience and the principle of informed consent in medicine

This paper explores how transformative experience generates decision-making problems of particular seriousness in medical settings. Potentially transformative experiences are especially likely to be encountered in medicine, and the associated decisions are confronted jointly by patients and clinicians in the context of an imbalance of power and expertise. However in such scenarios the principle of informed consent, which plays a central role in guiding clinicians, is unequal to the task. We detail how the principle’s assumptions about autonomy, rationality and information handle transformative experiences poorly, appealing to several difficult cases for medical decision-making to illustrate the resulting problem, and we consider how the existing literature on complications with consent fails to offer a resolution. We argue that recognition of the problem has a role to play in achieving a more effective response to transformative decisions. In Sect. 1 we introduce several representative cases of challenging patient decision-making that clinicians might face. In Sect. 2 we detail how transformative experience has been analysed in the recent literature, before outlining in Sect. 3 the theoretical basis of the principle of informed consent, which plays a central role in how clinicians are expected to support decision-making. In Sect. 4, having laid the groundwork for a clear description, we return to the cases given in Sect. 1 to confirm how their transformative nature presents a problem: either clinicians treat the decisions faced by these patients as ‘normal’, encouraging them to focus on information provision that patients may be unable to act on, or they treat them as transformative, in which case they lack the resources to recognise whether they are helping patients make (subjectively) good decisions. In Sect. 5 we argue that the existing literature does not offer any escape from this problem. We close in Sect. 6 by noting the significant impact that appreciating the problem of transformative experience could have on supporting transformative decisions in medicine and briefly suggesting how we might aim to develop new approaches to dealing with these

Domestication-induced reduction in eye size revealed in multiple common garden experiments: The case of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.)

Domestication leads to changes in traits that are under directional selection in breeding programmes, though unintentional changes in nonproduction traits can also arise. In offspring of escaping fish and any hybrid progeny, such unintentionally altered traits may reduce fitness in the wild. Atlantic salmon breeding programmes were established in the early 1970s, resulting in genetic changes in multiple traits. However, the impact of domestication on eye size has not been studied. We measured body size corrected eye size in 4000 salmon from six common garden experiments conducted under artificial and natural conditions, in freshwater and saltwater environments, in two countries. Within these common gardens, offspring of domesticated and wild parents were crossed to produce 11 strains, with varying genetic backgrounds (wild, domesticated, F1 hybrids, F2 hybrids and backcrosses). Size-adjusted eye size was influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. Domesticated fish reared under artificial conditions had smaller adjusted eye size when compared to wild fish reared under identical conditions, in both the freshwater and marine environments, and in both Irish and Norwegian experiments. However, in parr that had been introduced into a river environment shortly after hatching and sampled at the end of their first summer, differences in adjusted eye size observed among genetic groups were of a reduced magnitude and were nonsignificant in 2-year-old sea migrating smolts sampled in the river immediately prior to sea entry. Collectively, our findings could suggest that where natural selection is present, individuals with reduced eye size are maladapted and consequently have reduced fitness, building on our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie a well-documented reduction in the fitness of the progeny of domesticated salmon, including hybrid progeny, in the wild

Quine's metametaphysics

This is the Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge/CRC Press in The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics on 14/07/2020 , available online: http://www.routledge.com/9781138082250W. V. Quine stands out as one of the foremost figures of 20th century analytic philosophy. This chapter argues that a significant part of his work’s enduring value lies in its contribution to metametaphysics, including how some more contentious aspects of Quine’s thought are indispensable to it; I problematise the widespread belief that one can isolate basic elements of Quine’s metametaphysics without eroding their warrant.§1 introduces the broad context. §2 examines Quine’s most clearly metametaphysical work: ‘On what there is’. Finding the story incomplete here, we explore other elements of Quine’s corpus in turn. §3 analyses the nascent naturalism evident in ‘Two dogmas of empiricism’, §4 explores how the principle of charity becomes significant in Word & Object, and §5 shows how the eponymous principle of ‘Ontological relativity’ aims to defuse the puzzles of indeterminacy. In the process we see how Quine’s concerns stemming from naturalism in general, and from the problems of indeterminacy in particular, make it hard to separate the basic picture from his more controversial full-blown approach – hard, that is, to avoid ontological relativity. This is bad news for those wishing to use Quine as a neutral backdrop to analytic metaphysical debate, but good news for those who value the distinctive philosophical tradition within which Quine’s work is a key development.Peer reviewe

Getting off the Inwagen: A Critique of Quinean Metaontology

Much contemporary ontological inquiry takes place within the so-called ‘Quinean tradition’ but, given that some aspects of Quine’s project have been widely abandoned even by those who consider themselves Quineans, it is unclear what this amounts to. Fortunately recent work in metaontology has produced two relevant results here: a clearer characterisation of the metaontology uniting the aforementioned Quineans, most notably undertaken by Peter van Inwagen, and a raft of criticisms of that metaontology. In this paper I critique van Inwagen’s Quinean metaontology, finding that certain challenges, supplemented by pressure to reflect more closely Quine’s work, should drive Quineans to adopt a stronger metaontology incorporating more of Quine’s radical views. I conclude that while van Inwagen’s Quineanism is problematic there are prospects for a viable, more wholeheartedly Quinean, metaontology