Austin Coates
Biographic Data
| ID | 744062 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Austin Coates |
| GIVEN NAMES | Austin |
| FAMILY NAME | Coates |
| SIGNATURE | COATES A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Witwatersrand |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8557-3163 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1953 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Grounding Conception of Governance
According to the governing conception of the laws of nature, laws, in some sense, determine concrete goings-on. Just how to understand the sort of determination at play in governance is, however, a substantial question. One potential answer to this question, which has recently received some attention, is that laws govern by grounding what happens in the concrete world. If this account succeeded, it would show that governance can be understood in …
Sentience, Communal Relations, and Moral Status
Thaddeus Metz has developed and defended a “modal-relational” account of moral status based on his interpretation of salient Sub-Saharan African values. Roughly, on this account, a being has moral status to the degree it can enter into friendly or communal relationships with characteristic human beings. In this paper, it is argued that this theory’s true significance for environmental ethics has thus far not been recognized. Metz’s own view is th…
The meta-grounding theory of powerful qualities
A recent, seemingly appealing version of the powerful qualities view defines properties’ qualitativity via an essentialist claim and their powerfulness via a grounding claim. Roughly, this approach holds that properties are qualities because they have qualitative essences, while they are powerful because their instances or essences ground causal-modal facts. I argue that this theory should be replaced with one that defines the powerfulness of qua…
Awe’s Place in Ethics
Tropes, Unmanifested Dispositions and Powerful Qualities
Essence, Triviality, and Fundamentality
I defend a new account of constitutive essence on which an entity’s constitutively essential properties are its most fundamental, nontrivial necessary properties. I argue that this account accommodates the Finean counterexamples to classic modalism about essence, provides an independently plausible account of constitutive essence, and does not run into clear counterexamples. I conclude that this theory provides a promising way forward for attempt…
Unmanifested powers and universals
The Primitivist Response to the Inference Problem
While the inference problem is widely thought to be one of the most serious problems facing non-Humean accounts of laws, Jonathan Schaffer has argued that a primitivist response straightforwardly dissolves the problem. On this basis, he claims that the inference problem is really a pseudo-problem. Here I clarify the prospects of a primitivist response to the inference problem and their implications for the philosophical significance of the proble…
Making sense of powerful qualities
Essence and the inference problem
A Macao Narrative
Macao, 40 miles west of Hong Kong, became a place of Portuguese residence between 1555–57. In this short, lively and affectionate book, Austin Coates explains how and why the Portuguese came to the Far East, and how they peacefully settled in Macao with tacit Chinese goodwill. Macao’s golden age, from 1557 to the disastrous collapse of 1641, is vividly reconstructed. There follows the cuckoo-in-the-nest situation of the late eighteenth century wh…
City of Broken Promises
The city is Macao, the Portuguese settlement on the China Coast, as it was more than 200 years ago. The promises are those made by Englishmen to marry their Macao mistresses, only to leave them abandoned and their children bastards. Martha Merop and her English lover are unique in this period. He, son of the founder of Lloyd’s and cousin of the philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, was one of the first merchants to oppose the trade in opium. She, Chinese,…
The Road
Set in 1950s Hong Kong, The Road paints an evocative picture of comfortable colonial life, while at the same time presenting the local people with the shrewd understanding that the author had acquired as a District Officer in rural Hong Kong. Perhaps the central character is the road itself, now easily recognized as the very real Lantau coast road. But in this novel, the road was an idea tossed off by the Acting Governor between cocktails in the …
Macao and the British, 1637–1842
The story of the British acquisition of Hong Kong is intricately related to that of the Portuguese enclave of Macao. The British acquired Hong Kong in 1841, following 200 years of European endeavours to induce China to engage in foreign trade. As a residential base of European trade, Portuguese Macao enabled the West to maintain continuous relations with China from 1557 onwards. Opening with a vivid description of the first English voyage to Chin…
Does nutritionist review of a self-administered food frequency questionnaire improve data quality
Objective: This study sought to evaluate the benefit of utilizing a nutritionist review of a self-administered food frequency questionnaire (FFQ), to determine whether accuracy could be improved beyond that produced by the self-administered questionnaire alone. Design: Participants randomized into a dietary intervention trial completed both a FFQ and a 4-day food record (FR) at baseline before entry into the intervention. The FFQ was self-adminis…
Differences in fertility associated with caffeinated beverage consumption
OBJECTIVES: The effect of caffeine consumption on fertility was examined prospectively in 210 women. METHODS: Women reported on caffeinated beverage consumption and pregnancy status monthly. Odds ratios for becoming pregnant were calculated for both high and moderate vs low consumption. RESULTS: No significant association was found for any of the caffeinated beverages except tea. Drinking one-half cup or more of tea daily approximately doubled th…
City of Broken Promises
Rizal
Myself a Mandarin
Rizal
Invitation to an Eastern Feast
Making sense of powerful qualities
Differences in fertility associated with caffeinated beverage consumption
OBJECTIVES: The effect of caffeine consumption on fertility was examined prospectively in 210 women. METHODS: Women reported on caffeinated beverage consumption and pregnancy status monthly. Odds ratios for becoming pregnant were calculated for both high and moderate vs low consumption. RESULTS: No significant association was found for any of the caffeinated beverages except tea. Drinking one-half cup or more of tea daily approximately doubled th…
Unmanifested powers and universals
Essence and the inference problem
Rizal
Invitation to an Eastern Feast
Rizal
Myself a Mandarin
Rizal
City of Broken Promises
Differences in fertility associated with caffeinated beverage consumption
OBJECTIVES: The effect of caffeine consumption on fertility was examined prospectively in 210 women. METHODS: Women reported on caffeinated beverage consumption and pregnancy status monthly. Odds ratios for becoming pregnant were calculated for both high and moderate vs low consumption. RESULTS: No significant association was found for any of the caffeinated beverages except tea. Drinking one-half cup or more of tea daily approximately doubled th…
Does nutritionist review of a self-administered food frequency questionnaire improve data quality
Objective: This study sought to evaluate the benefit of utilizing a nutritionist review of a self-administered food frequency questionnaire (FFQ), to determine whether accuracy could be improved beyond that produced by the self-administered questionnaire alone. Design: Participants randomized into a dietary intervention trial completed both a FFQ and a 4-day food record (FR) at baseline before entry into the intervention. The FFQ was self-adminis…
A Macao Narrative
Macao, 40 miles west of Hong Kong, became a place of Portuguese residence between 1555–57. In this short, lively and affectionate book, Austin Coates explains how and why the Portuguese came to the Far East, and how they peacefully settled in Macao with tacit Chinese goodwill. Macao’s golden age, from 1557 to the disastrous collapse of 1641, is vividly reconstructed. There follows the cuckoo-in-the-nest situation of the late eighteenth century wh…
City of Broken Promises
The city is Macao, the Portuguese settlement on the China Coast, as it was more than 200 years ago. The promises are those made by Englishmen to marry their Macao mistresses, only to leave them abandoned and their children bastards. Martha Merop and her English lover are unique in this period. He, son of the founder of Lloyd’s and cousin of the philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, was one of the first merchants to oppose the trade in opium. She, Chinese,…
The Road
Set in 1950s Hong Kong, The Road paints an evocative picture of comfortable colonial life, while at the same time presenting the local people with the shrewd understanding that the author had acquired as a District Officer in rural Hong Kong. Perhaps the central character is the road itself, now easily recognized as the very real Lantau coast road. But in this novel, the road was an idea tossed off by the Acting Governor between cocktails in the …
Macao and the British, 1637–1842
The story of the British acquisition of Hong Kong is intricately related to that of the Portuguese enclave of Macao. The British acquired Hong Kong in 1841, following 200 years of European endeavours to induce China to engage in foreign trade. As a residential base of European trade, Portuguese Macao enabled the West to maintain continuous relations with China from 1557 onwards. Opening with a vivid description of the first English voyage to Chin…
The Primitivist Response to the Inference Problem
While the inference problem is widely thought to be one of the most serious problems facing non-Humean accounts of laws, Jonathan Schaffer has argued that a primitivist response straightforwardly dissolves the problem. On this basis, he claims that the inference problem is really a pseudo-problem. Here I clarify the prospects of a primitivist response to the inference problem and their implications for the philosophical significance of the proble…
Making sense of powerful qualities
Essence and the inference problem
Awe’s Place in Ethics
Tropes, Unmanifested Dispositions and Powerful Qualities
Essence, Triviality, and Fundamentality
I defend a new account of constitutive essence on which an entity’s constitutively essential properties are its most fundamental, nontrivial necessary properties. I argue that this account accommodates the Finean counterexamples to classic modalism about essence, provides an independently plausible account of constitutive essence, and does not run into clear counterexamples. I conclude that this theory provides a promising way forward for attempt…
Unmanifested powers and universals
The meta-grounding theory of powerful qualities
A recent, seemingly appealing version of the powerful qualities view defines properties’ qualitativity via an essentialist claim and their powerfulness via a grounding claim. Roughly, this approach holds that properties are qualities because they have qualitative essences, while they are powerful because their instances or essences ground causal-modal facts. I argue that this theory should be replaced with one that defines the powerfulness of qua…
The Grounding Conception of Governance
According to the governing conception of the laws of nature, laws, in some sense, determine concrete goings-on. Just how to understand the sort of determination at play in governance is, however, a substantial question. One potential answer to this question, which has recently received some attention, is that laws govern by grounding what happens in the concrete world. If this account succeeded, it would show that governance can be understood in …
Sentience, Communal Relations, and Moral Status
Thaddeus Metz has developed and defended a “modal-relational” account of moral status based on his interpretation of salient Sub-Saharan African values. Roughly, on this account, a being has moral status to the degree it can enter into friendly or communal relationships with characteristic human beings. In this paper, it is argued that this theory’s true significance for environmental ethics has thus far not been recognized. Metz’s own view is th…
Philosophy (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (6 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (5 works) · History (5 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Metaphysics (4 works)