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Many philosophers hold that stakes affect ordinary knowledge ascriptions. Here’s a version of a pair of cases aimed at supporting this: Bob and his wife are driving home on Friday and considering whether to stop at the bank to deposit a check. The lines at the bank are very long and so Bob considers coming back on Saturday. In the low stakes version, nothing of importance hinges on whether the check is deposited; in the high stakes version, it is very important that the check be deposited. Bob’s wife asks whether the bank will be open on Saturday. Bob says he drove past the bank last Saturday, and it was open. However, his wife points out that banks sometimes change their hours. Bob says “I know the bank will be open tomorrow”. In the low stakes case, many philosophers maintain that Bob does indeed know that the bank will be open; in the high stakes case, these philosophers maintain that Bob is ignorant – his statement that he knows the bank will be open tomorrow is false. These philosophers also maintain that this pattern of judgments is what we would expect from competent speakers confronted with this and similar cases (e.g., Cohen, 1999, 2013; DeRose, 1992, 2009; Fantl and McGrath, 2002; Nagel, 2008; Rysiew, 2001; Stanley, 2005).\ud Though many philosophers agree that stakes play a role in ordinary knowledge ascriptions, there is disagreement about what explains this. One view, epistemic contextualism, holds that “to know” is a context sensitive verb and that the truth conditions for knowledge ascriptions can vary across conversational contexts (e.g., DeRose, 2009). For instance, Bob’s statement “I know the bank will be open tomorrow” can be true in low stakes contexts and false in high stakes contexts. Another view, interest-relative invariantism, denies that “to know” is a context sensitive verb and that the truth conditions for knowledge ascriptions vary according to conversational contexts. Instead, cases like the Bank cases show that practical factors—i.e., stakes—play a distinctive role in determining whether the knowledge relation obtains (e.g., Stanley, 2005). Yet another alternative, which we’ll call classical invariantism, denies that “to know” is a context sensitive verb and that practical factors, such as stakes, play a direct role in determining whether the knowledge relation obtains. Instead, stakes affect knowledge ascriptions only by affecting our assessment of factors that have traditionally been taken to constitute or be necessary for knowledge, such as e.g., belief, quality of evidence, etc. (e.g., Bach, 2005; Weatherson, 2005; Ganson, 2007; Nagel, 2008). If this is right, then the role of stakes in knowledge ascriptions fails to motivate such surprising views as epistemic contextualism or interest-relative invariantism. Naturally, epistemic contextualists and interest-relative invariantists deny this, claiming that even when the factors that have traditionally been taken to constitute or be necessary for knowledge are held fixed, stakes continue to play a role in ordinary kn...

Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator

Inclusion complexes of cyclobis(paraquat-p-phenylene) and various aromatic molecules in their neutral and oxidized form were studied at the LMP2/6-311ϩG**//BHandHLYP/6-31G* level of theory, which represents the highest level theoretical study to date for these complexes. The results show that it is dispersion interaction that contributes most to the binding energy. One electron oxidation of a guest molecule leads to complete dissociation of inclusion complex generating strong repulsion potential between guest and host molecules. Electrostatic interactions also can play an important role, provided the guest molecule has a dipole moment; however, dispersion interactions always dominate in binding energy.

Since at least Hume and Kant, philosophers working on the nature of aesthetic judgment have generally agreed that common sense does not treat aesthetic judgments in the same way as typical expressions of subjective preferences—rather, it endows them with intersubjective validity, the property of being right or wrong regardless of disagreement. Moreover, this apparent intersubjective validity has been taken to constitute one of the main explananda for philosophical accounts of aesthetic judgment. But is it really the case that most people spontaneously treat aesthetic judgments as having intersubjective validity? In this paper, we report the results of a cross‐cultural study with over 2,000 respondents spanning 19 countries. Despite significant geographical variations, these results suggest that most people do not treat their own aesthetic judgments as having intersubjective validity. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for theories of aesthetic judgment and the purpose of aesthetics in general.