Mikael M. Karlsson

Seasonal affective disorders: relevance of Icelandic and Icelandic-Canadian evidence to etiologic hypotheses.

Objective: This study tests the suggestion of earlier studies concerning the importance of genetic factors in the etiology of win ter seasonal affective disorders (SADs) and sub syndromal win ter SAD (S- SAD). Method: Two study populations of Winnipeg, Manitoba residents were canvassed: 250 adults of wholly Icelandic de scent and 1000 adults of non-Icelandic de scent. We distributed the Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire by mail to these 2 populations, yielding 204 and 449 valid responses, respectively. Results: Rates of SAD and S- SAD proved markedly lower in the Icelandic population than those in the non-Icelandic population. Conclusions: These differences seem unexplained by differences in ambient light or climate, thus indicating that genetic factors contribute to the expression of SADs. Compared with earlier findings from a group of adults of wholly Icelandic de scent living in nearby rural Manitoba, the etiologic importance of as-yet-undetermined environmental factors unrelated to latitude or ambient light is also indicated.

Agency and Patiency: Back to Nature?

Abstract The distinction between acting and suffering underlies any theory of agency. Among contemporary writers, Fred Dretske is one of the few who has attempted to explicate this distinction without restricting the notion of action to intentional action alone. Aristotle also developed a global account of agency, one which is deeper and more detailed than Dretskes, and it is to Aristotles account (with some modifications) that the bulk of this paper is devoted. Dretskes sketchier theory faces at least two ground-level problems. It is shown in the course of the paper how these can be handled by the Aristotelian account, in a way which is friendly to Dretskes approach. 1 An earlier, and fuller, version of this paper was presented at the international conference “Supervenience, Causality, Mind and Action”, Université de Provence (Aix-Marseille 1), Aix-en-Provence, 9-11 May 1999. I would like to thank Thorsteinn Gylfason, Logi Gunnarsson, Torfi Sigurdsson, Andri Björnsson and Lynne Rudder Baker for their helpful comments and criticisms. My research on causality and explanation, which forms the background for this paper, has been supported by the Icelandic Council of Science and the Research Fund of the University of Iceland.

Rational Ends: Humean and Non-Humean Considerations

1. Moral philosophers have long been divided between those who believe that reason can provide us with ends and those who do not. Hume is famous for not believing this. As Thomas Reid once put it: [. . .] some Philosophers, particularly Mr HUME, think that it is no part of the office of reason to determine the ends we ought to pursue, or the preference due to one end above another. This, he thinks, is not the office of reason, but of taste or feeling.2 “If this be so,” Reid added, “reason cannot, with any propriety, be called a principle of action.” Reid himself was of the opposite mind. “I shall endeavour to shew,” he said, that, among the various ends of human actions, there are some, of which, without reason, we could not even form a conception; and that, as soon as they are conceived, a regard to them is, by our constitution, not only a principle of action, but a leading and governing principle [. . .] These I shall call rational principles . . .3 Despite its being a nominal focus of contention, the subject of rational ends has received surprisingly little specific philosophical treatment. One apparent reason for this lack of attention is that the subject of rational ends has not generally been well distinguished from another (admittedly closely related) subject, that of rational goods. Questions of ends, rational or otherwise, cannot be considered apart from questions of goods. Nevertheless, the questions are not identical, or so I maintain. The subject of rational ends is also intimately bound up with issues of motivation, particularly the question whether reason or cognition can move us to action, unless in subservience to sentiment or “passion”; and attention has regularly been drawn towards these motivational issues and away from questions about ends. About goods (usually, in English, called “values”) there is a formidable philosophical literature; and likewise about motivation; ends have received shorter shrift. Since, in the modern period, much of the fuss about rational ends (as well as

Cognition, Desire and Motivation: “Humean” and “Non-Humean” Considerations

Foreword The present paper, while it stands on its own feet, was written as a companion to another paper, which appeared in a recent issue of this journal.1 But this is not the companion-piece that was earlier envisioned and, indeed, announced in a footnote. The announced piece was to carry the title “Rational Ends: Disconnecting the Pleasure Engine”; but that is still a work in progress. In order to prepare the ground for it, I found that I had to deal with a subject I had hoped to bypass: the question of moral motivation. There is a large literature on this latter subject, much of it centering around the conflict between “motivational internalists” and “motivational externalists”. I had no great wish to add to that mass of material; but I did have some unfinished business with John McDowell. I thought that in order to pave the way for the pleasure engine, I had to show why we needed to turn away from motivational issues and towards questions of goods and ends; and I thought that a brief discussion of some old work of McDowell’s would help me do this. In the event, the discussion of motivation escaped and occupies the whole of the present paper. The pleasure engine still chugs away, awaiting eventual publication either here, or in some other place.