Are there some things it is morally wrong to make-believe? An examination of imaginative resistance as a measure of the morality of pretence

This paper discusses the morality of make-believing deviant moral truths within the context of fictional narratives (e.g. make-believing that the killing of innocent people is a morally good thing to do). By examining popular explanations of imaginative resistance (one’s unwillingness to imagine certain fictitious content), the paper assesses the extent to which reasons for our unwillingness to entertain certain forms of pretence might constitute a form of moral wisdom, and so offer insight into what a normative approach to make-believe might look like (qua a sufficient condition for moral proscription). The paper concludes that while imaginative resistance may provide a psychological measure of what some may find insensitive or tasteless within the realm of pretence, it does not have the resources to be co-opted as a suitable measure of moral wisdom, and therefore cannot be used to guide, morally, what we should or should not be willing to make-believe

A meta-ethical approach to single-player gamespace: introducing constructive ecumenical expressivism as a means of explaining why moral consensus is not forthcoming

The morality of virtual representations and the enactment of prohibited activities within single - player gamespace (e.g., murder, rape, paedophilia) continues to be debated and, to date, a consensus is not forthcoming. Various moral arguments have been presented (e.g., virtue theory and utilitarianism) to support the moral prohibition of virtual enactments, but their applicability to gamespace is questioned. In this paper, I adopt a meta-ethical approach to moral utterances about virtual representations, and ask what it means when one declares that a virtual interaction ‘ is morally wrong ’. In response, I present constructive ecumenical expressivism to (i) explain what moral utterances should be taken to mean , (ii) argue that they mean the same when referring to virtual and non-virtual interactions and ( iii) , given (ii), explain why consensus with regard to virtual murder, rape and paedophilia is not forthcoming even though such consensus is readily found with regard to their non-virtual equivalents

The principle of alternate possibilities as sufficient but not necessary for moral responsibility: a way to avoid the Frankfurt counter-example

The aim of this paper is to present a version of the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) which is not susceptible to the Frankfurt-style counter-example. I argue that PAP does not need to be endorsed as a necessary condition for moral responsibility and, in fact, presenting PAP as a sufficient condition maintains its usefulness as a maxim for moral accountability whilst avoiding Frankfurt-style counter-examples. In addition, I provide a further sufficient condition for moral responsibility – the twin world condition – and argue that this provides a means of justifying why the protagonist in Frankfurt-style scenarios (e.g., Jones) is still felt to be morally responsible. I conclude by claiming that neither the amended PAP nor the twin world condition is necessary for the ascription of moral responsibility; rather, what is necessary is simply that one of these conditions is satisfied

Knowledge how, ability, and the type-token distinction

This paper examines the relationship between knowing how to G and the ability to G, which is typically presented in one of the following ways: (a) knowing how to G entails the ability to G; (b) knowing how to G does not entail the ability to G. In an attempt to reconcile these two putatively opposing positions, I distinguish between type and token actions. I t is my contention that S can know how to G in the absence of an ability to G token, where this action is derived from an action-type, but not in the absence of the ability to perform the action-type itself (G type). This refinement is an attempt to reconcile differences between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism (broadly construed) with regard to knowledge how and ability

Selective scepticism over thought: am I ever justified in doubting that I think that thought but not this one?

In this paper, I subject a number of statements avowing selective doubt about an act of thinking to philosophical analysis (e.g., "A thought occurred just now but I do not believe that I was thinking it") to ascertain those circumstances under which they constitute a legitimate expression of scepticism. C an a case be made for epistemic discrepancy sufficient to justify the following claim : "I doubt that I think that thought but not this one"? In support of selective scepticism, I discuss the ontological and epistemic properties evident in an indirect form of Moore’s paradox which features beliefs about a thought and a thinker: notably, "I experienced a thought just now but I do not believe that I was thinking it". I argue that the conjunction above contains conjuncts which are ontologically equivalent but epistemically distinct. This difference explains not only why the statement is indirectly Moore paradoxical but how selective scepticism over thought might be justified. To further support my claim for the legitimacy of selective scepticism, I consider research on how a child acquire s beliefs about thinking , and speculate over the cause of a rare pathological condition known as thought insertion

Ultrasonic metal etching for metallographic analysis

Ultrasonic etching delineates microstructural features not discernible in specimens prepared for metallographic analysis by standard chemical etching procedures. Cavitation bubbles in ultrasonically excited water produce preferential damage /etching/ of metallurgical phases or grain boundaries, depending on hardness of metal specimens

\u3cem\u3eYoungstown\u3c/em\u3e, \u3cem\u3eHamdan\u3c/em\u3e, and Inherent Emergency Presidential Policymaking Powers

This brief article explores the contribution that Hamdan v Rumsfeld may have made to clarifying what should happen in the large interstices of the rules created by the Youngstown case for determining the validity of claims of Presidential power. It offers its own view of the scope of Presidential powers in extreme emergencies involving the incapacitation of the legislative branch

Federal Corporate Law, Federalism, and the Federal Courts

To parallelize a sequential source code, a parallelization strategy must be defined that transforms the sequential source code into an equivalent parallel version. Since parallelizing compilers can sometimes transform sequential loops and other well-structured codes into parallel ones automatically, we are interested in finding a solution to parallelize semi-automatically codes that compilers are not able to parallelize automatically, mostly because of weakness of classical data and control dependence analysis, in order to simplify the process of transforming the codes for programmers.Invasive Interactive Parallelization (IIP) hypothesizes that by using anintelligent system that guides the user through an interactive process one can boost parallelization in the above direction. The intelligent system's guidance relies on a classical code analysis and pre-defined parallelizing transformation sequences. To support its main hypothesis, IIP suggests to encode parallelizing transformation sequences in terms of IIP parallelization strategies that dictate default ways to parallelize various code patterns by using facts which have been obtained both from classical source code analysis and directly from the user.In this project, we investigate how automated reasoning can supportthe IIP method in order to parallelize a sequential code with an acceptable performance but faster than manual parallelization. We have looked at two special problem areas: Divide and conquer algorithms and loops in the source codes. Our focus is on parallelizing four sequential legacy C programs such as: Quick sort, Merge sort, Jacobi method and Matrix multipliation and summation for both OpenMP and MPI environment by developing an interactive parallelizing assistance tool that provides users with the assistanceneeded for parallelizing a sequential source code