This chapter examines Soren Kierkegaard's views and relationship with the Church, explaining that while Kierkegaard was a frequent churchgoer, he also considered the Church a corrupt and disgraceful business enterprise. It discusses Kierkegaard's criticism on the development of the Church as an institution and analyses various aspects of his ecclesiastical conception of the Church. The chapter also considers Kierkegaard's own experiences in writing and delivering sermons.

Designer Biology: The Ethics of Intensively Engineering Biological and Ecological Systems consists of thirteen chapters that address the ethical issues raised by technological intervention and design across a broad range of biological and ecological systems. Among the technologies addressed are geoengineering, human enhancement, sex selection, genetic modification, and synthetic biology.

Genetic modification leads to several important moral issues. Up until now they have mainly been discussed from the viewpoint that only individual living beings, above all animals, are morally considerable. The standpoint that also collective entities such as species belong to the moral sphere have seldom been taken into account in a more thorough way, although it is advocated by several important environmental ethicists. The main purpose of this article is to analyze in more detail than often has been done (...) what the practical consequences of this ethical position would be for the use of genetic engineering on animals and plants. The practical consequences of the holistic standpoint (focused on collective entities) of Holmes Rolston, III, is compared with the practical consequences of the individualistic standpoints (focused on individual living beings) of Bernard E. Rollin and Philipp Balzer, Klaus Peter Rippe, and Peter Schaber, respectively. The article also discusses whether the claim that species are morally considerable is tenable as a foundation for policy decisions on genetic engineering. (shrink)

Ich will meine Gedanken folgendermaßen zusammenfassen: Ein spontanes und früh erlerntes Glaubenserlebnis ringt immer mit einer wissenschaftlichen Analyse. Zwar wird die Religionspsychologie negativ aufgefaßt, aber sie hilft uns auch einzusehen, wie solch eine Einstellung entstehen kann. Die intensive Glaubenserfahrung enthält immer eine Totalitätsorientierung, die den eigentlichen Grund in transzendentalen Größen sucht. Eine aufgezwängte Umorientierung bringt immer einen gewissen Schmerz mit sich. Eine religionspsychologische Analyse der Glaubensmotive führt jedoch auch zu einem Verständnis für das wichtige Zusammenspiel, das die Symbol-motive der Tradition (...) haben, und müßte auch mit den persönlich erlebten Situationen seit der Kindheit rechnen. Dadurch, daß man Zusammenspielsmöglichkeiten zwischen den historisch gegebenen Modellen und den individuellen Situationen findet, geschieht ein Wechsel, der wichtige Modelle des menschlichen Lebens vertieft und ins Bewußtsein bringt. Dies ist doch kein selbstverständlicher oder automatischer Prozeß, sondern falsche Verbindungen und negative Bindungen sind auch möglich. Hier muß eine religionsspychologische Ethik entwickelt werden. Große Aufträge erwarten uns in der Zukunft. Das oben Erwähnte kann man auch so ausdrücken: Der Glaube an Gottes Wirken ist nicht streitig mit dem Handhaben wissenschaftlicher Modelle. Ebensowenig wie das Brot und der Wein des Abendmahls was anderes als Brot und Wein zu sein brauche, ebensowenig brauchen das Gesundbeten, das Zungenreden, die Prophezeiung, die Stigmatisierung, ja des Lebens heilige Momente etwas anderes zu sein als die Ergebnisse menschlich gegebener Prozesse, um Gottes Gegenwart zu erleben. Durch die innere symbolische Interaktion wird menschliche Dürftigkeit in eine Heiligkeit mit Ewigkeitswert verwandelt - und umgekehrt: Die jahrhundertelange Mythologie findet ihre menschliche Inkarnation. (shrink)

Berg, J. Buñuels dagdröm.--Bergström, L. Pessimismens konsekvenser.--Furberg, M. Möjliga teser hos Johannes Climacus.--Halldén, S. Teckenrelationen och språkreglernas juridik.--Hedenius, I. Ett argument mot den rättsfilosofiska domstolsrealismen.--Mates, B. Om Platons argument "den tredje människan."--Marc-Wogau, K. Kant om lögnen.--Næss, A. Om filosofiske projekter som forener empirisk semantikk og metafysisk spekulasjon.--Ofstad, H. Får nazister lettere magesår enn humanister?--Prawitz, D. Om moraliska och logiska satsers sanning.--Stenius, E. Om Descartes' psykofysiska modell.--Tranøy, K. E. Filosofenes etiske ansvar.--Wright, G. H. von. En filosof ser på filosofien.

There are deep connections between education and the question of life's meaning, which derive, ultimately, from the fact that, for human beings, how to live—and therefore, how to raise one's children—is not a given but a question. One might see the meaning of life as constitutive of the meaning of education, and answers to the question of life's meaning might be seen as justifying education. Our focus, however, lies on the contributory relation: our primary purpose is to investigate whether and (...) how education might contribute to children's ability to find meaning in life or at least deal with the question. This issue is not only theoretically interesting —it also has practical urgency. For people have a need for meaning that, if unfulfilled, leads to personal and potentially social crises—a need that often expresses itself first and strongly in adolescence; and there are reasons to have doubts about the contribution of today's traditional formal education system to the meaningfulness of children's lives. We argue for the importance of frameworks of values, as well as for a greater emphasis on the affective dimension of meaning, though we reject pure subjectivism. The underlying purpose of this article, however, is not to argue for a particular comprehensive position, but to persuade philosophers of education of the importance of the issue of life's meaning in thinking about education today. (shrink)

The Principles of Biomedical Ethics by Beauchamp and Childress is a classic in the field of medical ethics. The first edition was published in 1979 and “unleashed” the four principles of respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice on the newly emerging field. These principles were argued to be mid-level principles mediating between high-level moral theory and low-level common morality, and they immediately became very popular in writings about medical ethics. Over the years Beauchamp and Childress have developed this approach (...) and vigorously defended it against the various criticisms that have been raised. The 5th edition of this book is, as all the …. (shrink)

Holmes Rolston challenges the sociobiological orthodoxy that would naturalize science, ethics, and religion. The book argues that genetic processes are not blind, selfish, and contingent, and that nature is therefore not value-free. The author examines the emergence of complex biodiversity through evolutionary history. Especially remarkable in this narrative is the genesis of human beings with their capacities for science, ethics, and religion. A major conceptual task of the book is to relate cultural genesis to natural genesis. There is also a (...) general account of how values are created and transmitted in both natural and human cultural history. The book is written by one of the most well-respected figures in the philosophy of biology and religion. (shrink)

There are those who would argue that, recently, the profession of nursing has made a radical shift, while others believe that a schism has been created among both scholars and clinicians as a result of the emerging dominance of the evidence‐based nursing movement. This paper offers a philosophical critique of this movement using Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concept of schizoanalysis. As a conclusion, the authors posit that nursing professionals maintain a stance of academic freedom of thought and scientific integrity (...) through the acceptance of multiplicity, diversity, and polyvocality, and by challenging with politically charged concepts the totalizing perspectives that often spread through the profession/discipline of nursing. (shrink)

This Second Edition of A New Environmental Ethics: The Next Millennium for Life on Earth offers clear, powerful, and often moving thoughts from Holmes Rolston III, one of the first and most respected philosophers to write on the environment and often called the "father of environmental ethics." Rolston surveys the full spectrum of approaches in the field of environmental ethics and offers critical assessments of contemporary academic accounts. He draws on a lifetime of research and experience to suggest an outlook, (...) and even hope, for the future. This forward-looking analysis, focused on the new millennium, will be a necessary complement to any balanced textbook or anthology in environmental ethics. The First Edition guaranteed "to put you in your place." Beyond that, the Second Edition, asks whether you want to live a "de-natured life on a de-natured planet." Key Updates in the Second Edition - Covers the worsening environmental situation due to actions of the Trump administration, including withdrawal from the Paris accord and from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change - Includes information on legislation in key U.S. states aimed to ameliorate the damage done at the Federal level - Increases coverage of group knowledge, group agreement and disagreement, and group action in collective environmental ethics, as distinguished from individual knowledge and action - Examines the deleterious effects of online consumer behavior - Explains how a loss of solidarity among a nation's citizens and even a larger solidary among humanity leads to environmental degradation - Offers new analysis of the effects of epistemic bubbles, echo chambers, and fake news on the behavior of voters and consumers - Provides an extended critique of the Anthropocene Epoch, and the prospect of geo-engineering Earth to become a synthetic environment. (shrink)

For decades, nursing as a discipline has tried to establish itself within the socio‐professional and the socio‐political arenas. To date, several theorists have attempted to thoroughly define the essence (ontology) of nursing while others have proposed means (syntax) to achieve this ‘collective’ objective. Considering that this preoccupation, rooted in essentialism, is pervasive in the nursing literature, our claim is that these quests should be criticized because they impede innovative and transdisciplinary approaches to nursing theory. Our criticism includes the perspective supported (...) by the so‐called ‘postmodern nursing theorists’. We argue that the oeuvre of some nursing postmodern scholars is as prescriptive and linear as the ones they critique. Like it was done before, the discourse of these thinkers perpetuates the status quo by excluding alternative forms of knowledge that cross the boundaries of the discipline of nursing. Using the work of Deleuze and Guattari, this paper proposes an alternative way to conceive the development of nursing knowledge, which, we think, could represent an alternative way to explore the discipline of nursing. (shrink)

This paper discusses a sequence of extensions ofNFU, Jensen's improvement of Quine's set theory “New Foundations” (NF) of [16].The original theoryNFof Quine continues to present difficulties. After 60 years of intermittent investigation, it is still not known to be consistent relative to any set theory in which we have confidence. Specker showed in [20] thatNFdisproves Choice (and so proves Infinity). Even if one assumes the consistency ofNF, one is hampered by the lack of powerful methods for proofs of consistency and (...) independence such as are available for use withZFC; very clever work has been done with permutation methods, starting with [18] and [5], and exemplified more recently by [14], but permutation methods can only be applied to show the consistency or independence of unstratified sentences (see the definition ofNFUbelow for a definition of stratification). For example, there is no method available to determine whether the assertion “the continuum can be well-ordered” is consistent with or independent ofNF. There is one substantial independence result for an assertion with nontrivial stratified consequences, using metamathematical methods: this is Orey's proof of the independence of the Axiom of Counting fromNF(see below for a statement of this axiom).We mention these difficulties only to reassure the reader of their irrelevance to the present work. Jensen's modification of “New Foundations” (in [13]), which was to restrict extensionality to sets, allowing many non-sets (urelements) with no elements, has almost magical effects. (shrink)

Novelty is neither necessary nor sufficient to link curiosity and creativity as stated in the target article. We point out the article's logical shortcomings, outline preconditions that may link curiosity and creativity, and suggest that curiosity and creativity may be expressions of a common epistemic drive.

Inference has long been a concern in epistemology, as an essential means by which we extend our knowledge and test our beliefs. Inference is also a key notion in influential psychological or philosophical accounts of mental capacities, from perception via utterance comprehension to problem-solving. Consciousness, on the other hand, has arguably been the defining interest of philosophy of mind over recent decades. Comparatively little attention, however, has been devoted to the significance of consciousness for the proper understanding of the nature (...) and role of inference. It is commonly suggested that inference may be either conscious or unconscious. Yet how unified are these various supposed instances of inference? Does either enjoy explanatory priority in relation to the other? In what ways or senses, can an inference be conscious, or fail to be conscious, and how does this matter? This book brings together original essays from established scholars and emerging theorists that illustrate how several current debates in epistemology, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of mind can benefit from reflections on these and related questions about the significance of consciousness for inference. Contributors include: Kirk Ludwig and Wade Munroe; Michael Rescorla; Federico Bongiorno and Lisa Bortolotti; Berit Brogaard; Nicholas Allott; Jake Quilty-Dunn and Eric Mandelbaum; Corine Besson; Anders Nes; David Henderson, Terry Horgan, and Matjaž Potrč; Elijah Chudnoff; and Ram Neta. (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays which originate from two, mainly European, workshops in 1996 on ethics codes before, and especially after, the appearance of the Nuremberg code in 1947. The book has previously been published in German, and a number of contributions have been translated from the original German and French manuscripts. The majority of the 26 papers cover the development of ethics codes from the Hippocratic oath to the present time, but some papers look at possible codes (...) for new areas such as predictive medicine and resource allocation in health care, …. (shrink)

The purpose of the study was to investigate how numeracy and acuity of the approximate number system (ANS) relate to the calibration and coherence of probability judgments. Based on the literature on number cognition, a first hypothesis was that those with lower numeracy would maintain a less linear use of the probability scale, contributing to overconfidence and nonlinear calibration curves. A second hypothesis was that also poorer acuity of the ANS would be associated with overconfidence and non-linearity. A third hypothesis, (...) in line with dual-systems theory (e.g., Kahneman and Frederick, 2002 ) was that people higher in numeracy should have better access to the normative probability rules, allowing them to decrease the rate of conjunction fallacies. Data from 213 participants sampled from the Swedish population showed that: (i) in line with the first hypothesis, overconfidence and the linearity of the calibration curves were related to numeracy, where people higher in numeracy were well calibrated with zero overconfidence. (ii) ANS was not associated with overconfidence and non-linearity, disconfirming the second hypothesis. (iii) The rate of conjunction fallacies was slightly, but to a statistically significant degree decreased by numeracy, but still high at all numeracy levels. An unexpected finding was that participants with better ANS acuity gave more realistic estimates of their performance relative to others. (shrink)

This paper discusses a sequence of extensions ofNFU, Jensen's improvement of Quine's set theory “New Foundations” (NF) of [16].The original theoryNFof Quine continues to present difficulties. After 60 years of intermittent investigation, it is still not known to be consistent relative to any set theory in which we have confidence. Specker showed in [20] thatNFdisproves Choice (and so proves Infinity). Even if one assumes the consistency ofNF, one is hampered by the lack of powerful methods for proofs of consistency and (...) independence such as are available for use withZFC; very clever work has been done with permutation methods, starting with [18] and [5], and exemplified more recently by [14], but permutation methods can only be applied to show the consistency or independence of unstratified sentences (see the definition ofNFUbelow for a definition of stratification). For example, there is no method available to determine whether the assertion “the continuum can be well-ordered” is consistent with or independent ofNF. There is one substantial independence result for an assertion with nontrivial stratified consequences, using metamathematical methods: this is Orey's proof of the independence of the Axiom of Counting fromNF(see below for a statement of this axiom).We mention these difficulties only to reassure the reader of their irrelevance to the present work. Jensen's modification of “New Foundations” (in [13]), which was to restrict extensionality to sets, allowing many non-sets (urelements) with no elements, has almost magical effects. (shrink)

BackgroundEthical problems in everyday healthcare work emerge for many reasons and constitute threats to ethical values. If these threats are not managed appropriately, there is a risk that the patient may be inflicted with moral harm or injury, while healthcare professionals are at risk of feeling moral distress. Therefore, it is essential to support the learning and development of ethical competencies among healthcare professionals and students. The aim of this study was to explore the available literature regarding ethics education that (...) promotes ethical competence learning for healthcare professionals and students undergoing training in healthcare professions.MethodsIn this integrative systematic review, literature was searched within the PubMed, CINAHL, and PsycInfo databases using the search terms ‘health personnel’, ‘students’, ‘ethics’, ‘moral’, ‘simulation’, and ‘teaching’. In total, 40 articles were selected for review. These articles included professionals from various healthcare professions and students who trained in these professions as subjects. The articles described participation in various forms of ethics education. Data were extracted and synthesised using thematic analysis.ResultsThe review identified the need for support to make ethical competence learning possible, which in the long run was considered to promote the ability to manage ethical problems. Ethical competence learning was found to be helpful to healthcare professionals and students in drawing attention to ethical problems that they were not previously aware of. Dealing with ethical problems is primarily about reasoning about what is right and in the patient’s best interests, along with making decisions about what needs to be done in a specific situation.ConclusionsThe review identified different designs and course content for ethics education to support ethical competence learning. The findings could be used to develop healthcare professionals’ and students’ readiness and capabilities to recognise as well as to respond appropriately to ethically problematic work situations. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPast research reveals important connections between meditative practices and compassion. Most studies, however, focus on the effects of one type of meditation (vs. a no-intervention control...

One of the arguments that is often put forward in the discussion of human cloning is that it is in itself wrong to create a copy of a human being.

The everyday novelties of contemporary society require emotional reflexivity (Holmes, 2010a), but how can it be researched? Joint interviews can give more insight into the relational and embodied nature of emotional reflexivity than analysis of text-based online sources. Although textual analysis of online sources might be useful for seeing how people relationally negotiate what to feel when feeling rules are unclear, interviews allow observation of emotional reflexivity as done in interaction, especially if there is more than one interviewee. This highlights (...) not only the relational, but the embodied aspects of emotional reflexivity, and shows how it is a useful concept for researching aspects of emotionality not well addressed by other concepts such as “emotional intelligence” and “emotion work.”. (shrink)

TOPICS DISCUSSED INCLUDE THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN, THE THEOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE NEW NATURAL SCIENCES, ARGUMENTS FROM MIRACLES, THE MEANING OF STATEMENTS ABOUT GOD, THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE IDEA OF GOD AND VARIOUS APOLOGETIC ARGUMENTS, AND ETHICAL AND META-ETHICAL THEORIES. (BP, EDITED).

Two protechnology arguments, the “hopeful principle” and the “automatic escalator”, often used in bioethics, are identified and critically analysed in this paper. It is shown that the hopeful principle is closely related to the problematic precautionary principle, and the automatic escalator argument has close affinities to the often criticised empirical slippery slope argument. The hopeful principle is shown to be really hopeless as an argument, and automatic escalator arguments often lead nowhere when critically analysed. These arguments should therefore only be (...) used with great caution. (shrink)

Introduction: Raising the Issues John Bowker What ought I to do? Or not to do, as the case may be? What 'the case' is turns out to be all-important: the ...

This paper analyses the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority's 2002 public consultation on sex selection, a consultation that was mainly concerned with sex selection for non-medical reasons. Based on a close reading of the consultation document and questionnaire it is argued that the consultation is biased towards certain outcomes and can most plausibly be construed as an attempt not to investigate but to influence public opinion.

This paper analyses the question what other healthcare professions should learn from nursing ethics, e.g. what should medical ethics learn from nursing ethics. I first analyse and reject all strong versions of the claim that nursing ethics is unique, because nursing is a unique practice. I then move to the question of whether the link between nursing ethics and nursing theory can be a model for other areas of healthcare ethics. I provide an analysis of the possibility of creating a (...) theory of medicine and find that there cannot be a theory of medicine, and I argue briefly that this finding is also applicable to nursing. If there cannot be a theory of nursing, this entails that nursing ethics cannot be justifiably based on such a theory. In the final section, I then analyse the success of nursing ethics in resisting certain of the vices of Anglo‐American analytic ethics, in particular the reductionism and individualism that characterizes much of healthcare ethics. I conclude that other healthcare ethics could usefully learn from this aspect of nursing ethics. (shrink)

The possibility of creating human embryonic stem cell lines from the inner cell mass of blastocysts has led to considerable debate about how these scientific developments should be regulated. Part of this debate has focused on the ethical analysis and part on how this analysis should influence policymaking.

It has often been said that discourse ethics as developed by Jürgen Habermas can be understood as a dialogical continuation of the monological ethics developed by Immanuel Kant, as formulated in the categorical imperative in Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Like Kant’s categorical imperative, Habermas’ principle of universalization specifies a rule for impartial testing of norms for their moral worthiness. This article will substantiate that discourse ethics develops a dialogical version of the categorical imperative, and will make this explicit. (...) This is done by presenting a new interpretation of the Kantian ethics. Renewing the traditional understanding, four instead of two or three formulations of the categorical imperative are identified. Finally it is shown how this interpretation relates to Jürgen Habermas’ discourse ethics. This analysis shows that one must specify which formulation of the categorical imperative one is talking about when discussing it. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that sufficientarian principles are indispensable in the set of principles that have bearing on issues in distributive ethics. I provide two arguments in favor of this claim. First, I argue that sufficientarianism is the only framework that allows us to appropriately analyze what sort of obligations we have toward individuals who are badly off due to their own faults and choices. Second, I argue that sufficientarianism is the only theory that provides an adequate framework for (...) thinking about the desperately badly off. (shrink)

In this introduction to The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism special issue on the aesthetics of creative activism, we canvas influential scholarship of political aesthetics to sculpt a broad typology of six interconnected mechanisms by which art might intervene in the world. We label these: Documentation, Disruption, Recognition, Participation, Imagination, and Beauty. Each has a compelling tradition of theory and application, augmented, extended, and sometimes challenged by the thirteen fresh and provocative contributions in the special issue. Yet, we ask, (...) if both politically minded artists and culturally minded activists are convinced of the power of art to provoke social change, and if we live a world that by almost all measures is now saturated with politically inclined, aesthetically informed practices, interfaces, objects, and texts, why does art not seem to be making a difference? Clearly, we need to think harder about the relationships between art and action, a task the articles assembled here call upon us to take seriously. (shrink)

Environmental Ethics is a systematic account of values carried by the natural world, coupled with an inquiry into duties toward animals, plants, species, and ecosystems. A comprehensive philosophy of nature is illustrated by and integrated with numerous actual examples of ethical decisions made in encounters with fauna and flora, endangered species, and threatened ecosystems. The ethics developed is informed throughout by ecological science and evolutionary biology, with attention to the logic of moving from what is in nature to what ought (...) to be. The ethical theory is applied in detail to social, public, and business policy. Written in an engaging style, using diagrams and figures as well as numerous case studies, Environmental Ethics prods the reader into concrete application and invites reader participation in the ethical discussions. The ethics concludes by exploring the historical experiences of personal residence in a surrounding environment. Here is an adventure into what it means to live as responsible human beings in the community of life on Earth. In the series Ethics and Action, edited by Tom Regan. (shrink)

Philosophers should be wary of using the methods they use in philosophy when engaging in discussions about policy makingThe beginning of November last year was a busy time in the bioethics calendar with four conferences taking place in New Zealand and Australia. The Fifth International Conference on Priorities in Health Care took place in Wellington; the Fifth Feminist Approaches to Bioethics congress, the Seventh World Congress of Bioethics, and the meeting of the Australasian Bioethics Association were all in Sydney.One of (...) the interesting features of these meetings was a move to a deeper exploration of the relations between ethics and political theory and political philosophy. The factors that drive this exploration are manifold but the four most important seem to be: 1) that ethicists often comment on, or propose political action and regulation; 2) that there is a growing awareness that the basic national and international societal and legal structures profoundly influences ethical issues; 3) the growing interest in global and third world issues, and 4) the move in many countries toward greater public participation in decision making concerning ethically contentious issues. All of these developments move the focus from the traditional subject matter of medical ethics—that is, the individual ethically charged action, to the question of how ethics should influence political action and regulation.To …. (shrink)

Related Works: Original Paper: M. Randall Holmes. Strong Axioms of Infinity in NFU. J. Symbolic Logic, Volume 66, Issue 1 , 87--116. Project Euclid: euclid.jsl/1183746361.

Related Works: Original Paper: M. Randall Holmes. Strong Axioms of Infinity in NFU. J. Symbolic Logic, Volume 66, Issue 1, 87--116. Project Euclid: euclid.jsl/1183746361.

Perceptual processes differ from cognitive, this paper argues, in functioning to be causally controlled by proximal stimuli, and being modular, at least in a modest sense that excludes their being isotropic in Jerry Fodor's sense. This claim agrees with such theorists as Jacob Beck and Ben Phillips that a function of stimulus-control is needed for perceptual status. In support of this necessity claim, I argue, inter alia, that E.J. Green's recent architectural account misclassifies processes deploying knowledge of grammar as perceptual. (...) _Pace_ Beck and Phillips, however, I argue a function of stimulus-control is insufficient for perceptual as opposed to cognitive status. One consideration in favour of such insufficiency, noted but (I argue) not convincingly rebutted by these theorists, concerns perpetually grounded demonstrative thought. Two other considerations trade on the fact that a function of stimulus-control can arise not from blind nature but intentional design or social institutions, where so-functioning processes may but need not be perceptual. I offer two cases where such processes are cognitive, viz. skilful play-by-play announcing of ongoing events, and voluntary visualizing of ongoing events under the guidance of apt play-by-play announcements, dubbed announcement-driven visualizing (ADV). The cognitive status of these three diverse phenomena cannot be explained by an absence of a perception-like representational format or content (for ADV has such) or by a presence of personal-level mental states causally mediating between stimuli and outputs (for perception has such). A bettter explanation invokes, I argue, the non-modular character of the generating process. (shrink)

Morality and the invention of feminine desire -- Sexuality versus recognition : feminine desire in the ethical order -- The purest poem : Heidegger's Antigone -- From Oedipus to Antigone : revisiting the question of feminine desire -- Family politics/family ethics : Butler, Lacan, and the thing beyond the object.

The orthodox view of proper names, Millianism, provides a very simple and elegant explanation of the semantic contribution of referential uses of names–names that occur as bare singulars and as the argument of a predicate. However, one problem for Millianism is that it cannot explain the semantic contribution of predicative uses of names. In recent years, an alternative view, so-called the-predicativism, has become increasingly popular. According to the-predicativists, names are uniformly count nouns. This straightforwardly explains why names can be used (...) predicatively, but is prima facie less congenial to an analysis of referential uses. To address this issue, the-predicativists argue that referential names are in fact complex determiner phrases consisting of a covert definite determiner and a count noun—and so, a referential name is a definite description. In this paper, I will argue that despite the appearance of increased theoretical complexity, the view that names are ambiguous between predicative and referential types is in fact superior to the unitary the-predicativist view. However, I will also argue that to see why this ambiguity view is better, we need to give up the standard Millian analysis. Consequently, I will first propose an alternative analysis of referential names that retains the virtues of Millianism, but provides an important explanatory connection to the predicative uses. Once this analysis of names is adopted, the explanation for why names are systematically ambiguous between referential and predicative types is both simple and elegant. Second, I will argue that the-predicativism has the appearance of being simpler than an ambiguity view, but is in fact unable to account for certain key properties of referential names without making ad hoc stipulations. (shrink)