Accumulation of neurotransmitters in the lumen of synaptic vesicles (SVs) relies on the activity of the vacuolar‐type H+‐ATPase. This pump drives protons into the lumen, generating a proton electrochemical gradient (ΔμH+) across the membrane. Recent work has demonstrated that the balance between the chemical (ΔpH) and electrical (ΔΨ) components of ΔμH+ is regulated differently by some distinct vesicle types. As different neurotransmitter transporters use ΔpH and ΔΨ with different relative efficiencies, regulation of this gradient balance has the potential to influence (...) neurotransmitter uptake. Nevertheless, the underlying mechanisms responsible for this regulation remain poorly understood. In this review, we provide an overview of current neurotransmitter uptake models, with a particular emphasis on the distinct roles of the electrical and chemical gradients and current hypotheses for regulatory mechanisms. -/- . (shrink)

Purpose: Studies of reactive and proactive modes of inhibitory control tend to show age-related declines and are accompanied by abnormalities in the prefrontal cortex. We explored which mode of inhibitory control would be more amenable to change and accrue greater benefits following engagement in a 4-week theater acting intervention in older adults. These gains were evaluated by performance on the AX-CPT task. We hypothesized that an increase in proactive control would relate to an increase in AY errors and a decrease (...) in BX errors. In contrast, an increase in reactive control would be associated with a decrease in AY errors, no change in AY reaction time, and an increase in BX response time. Further, we posited that an increase in behavioral proactive control would accompany greater cue versus probe activity for previously identified regions in the prefrontal cortex. In contrast, an increase in behavioral reactive control would be accompanied by greater probe activation in these identified brain areas.Materials and Methods: The participants were 179 community-dwelling adults aged 60–89 years who were on average, college-educated. Participants were pseudo-randomly assigned to either an active-experiencing acting intervention condition or the active control condition ; participant assignment was subject to time of enrollment. Participants in both groups were trained by theater-actor researchers with expertise in acting interventions. In contrast to the active control participants who attended a course on theater acting, the acting-intervention group was required to consistently deploy proactive and reactive control mechanisms. Both groups met two times/week for 75-min for 4 weeks. Participant brain-behavioral performance on the AX-CPT task was evaluated prior to and after this four-week period.Results: No intervention effects were found in favor of proactive control. Behavioral evidence in favor of reactive control was weak. Brain-related benefits to reactive control was illustrated by greater probe-activation in Brodmann areas 6 and 8, relative to controls and pre-intervention.Conclusion: We found some evidence for improvements in reactive control via brain measures, attributed to engagement in the acting intervention. (shrink)

One of the key achievements of critical realism has been to expose the modernist myth of universal reason, which holds that authentic knowledge claims must be objectively ‘pure’, uncontaminated by the subjectivity of local place, specific time and particular culture. Wright aims to address the lack of any substantial and sustained engagement between critical realism and theological critical realism with particular regard to: (a) the distinctive ontological claims of Christianity; (b) their epistemic warrant and intellectual legitimacy; and (c) scrutiny of (...) the primary source of the ontological claims of Christianity, namely the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth. As such, it functions as a prolegomena to a much needed wider debate, guided by the under-labouring services of critical realism, between Christianity and various other religious and secular worldviews. This important new text will help stimulate a debate that has yet to get out of first gear. This book will appeal to academics, graduate and post-graduate students especially, but also Christian clergy, ministers and informed laity, and members of the general public concerned with the nature of religion and its place in contemporary society. (shrink)

Field theories have been central to physics over the last 150 years, and there are several theories in contemporary physics in which physical fields play key causal and explanatory roles. This paper proposes a novel field trope-bundle (FTB) ontology on which fields are composed of bundles of particularized property instances, called tropes and goes on to describe some virtues of this ontology. It begins with a critical examination of the dominant view about the ontology of fields, that fields are properties (...) of a substantial substratum. (shrink)

This book offers an exciting re-interpretation of Auguste Comte, the founder of French sociology. Following the development of his philosophy of positivism, Comte later focused on the importance of the emotions in his philosophy resulting in the creation of a new religious system, the Religion of Humanity. Andrew Wernick provides the first in-depth critique of Comte's concept of religion and its place in his thinking on politics, sociology and philosophy of science. He places Comte's ideas in the context of (...) post-1789 French political and intellectual history, and of modern philosophy, especially postmodernism. Wernick relates Comte to Marx and Nietzsche as seminal figures of modernity and examines key features of modern and postmodern French social theory, tracing the inherent flaws and disintegration of Comte's system. Wernick offers original and fascinating insights in this rich study which will attract a wide audience from sociologists and philosophers to cultural theorists and historians. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the pedagogical and political shift marked by the meaning and practice of diversity offered through New Labour education policy texts, specifically, the policy and practice of personalized learning (or personalization). The aim of this paper is to map the ways in which diversity relays and mobilizes a set of neoliberal positions and relationships in the field of education and seeks to govern education institutions and education users through politically circulating norms and values. These norms and (...) values, I want to argue, echo and redeem the kinds of frameworks, applications and rationalities typically aligned with modes of neoliberal or advanced liberal governance, e.g. marketization, monetarization, atomization and deregulation. I conclude the paper by considering how diversity in education renders problematic conventional antinomies of the citizen and consumer, public and private, state and civil society, etc., and forces us to confront the rhizomatic character of contemporary governance and education in the era of neoliberalism. (shrink)

Baghdad, California -- Calm down -- Clearing the dust -- Proof -- The big bang -- Evolution -- Evil -- Religion -- A crisis of reason.

This article compares Alexander von Humboldt 's and John Ruskin's writings on landscape art and natural landscape. In particular, Humboldt 's conception of a habitat's essence as predominantly composed of vegetation as well as judgment of tropical American nature as the realm of nature of the highest aesthetic enjoyment is examined in the context of Ruskin's aesthetic theory. The magnitude of Humboldt 's contribution to the natural sciences seems to have clouded our appreciation of his prominent status in the field (...) of art history. In addition to his position as scientist, Humboldt 's role as aesthetician is demonstrated in this paper. Unlike Ruskin, who comfortably resides in the canon of art history relative to his minor significance in the field of geology, Humboldt has not been recognized for his impact on the world of art; his tremendous scientific importance seems to have overshadowed an appreciation of it. (shrink)

In timing perception studies, the timing of one event is usually manipulated relative to another, and participants are asked to judge if the two events were synchronous, or to judge which of the two events occurred first. Responses are analyzed to determine a measure of central tendency, which is taken as an estimate of the timing at which the two events are perceptually synchronous. When these estimates do not coincide with physical synchrony, it is often assumed that the sensory signals (...) are asynchronous, as though the transfer of information concerning one input has been accelerated or decelerated relative to the other. Here we show that, while this is a viable interpretation, it is equally plausible that such effects are driven by shifts in the criteria used to differentiate simultaneous from asynchronous inputs. Our analyses expose important ambiguities concerning the interpretation of simultaneity judgement data, which have hitherto been underappreciated. (shrink)

We discuss the view that a hole is identical to the region of spacetime at which it is located. This view is more parsimonious than the view that holes are sui generis entities located at those regions surrounded by their hosts and it is more plausible than the view that there are no holes. We defend the spacetime view from several objections.

Despite his impressive influence on nineteenth-century philosophy, F. A. Trendelenburg's own philosophy has been largely ignored. However, among Kant scholars, Trendelenburg has always been remembered for his feud with Kuno Fischer over the subjectivity of space and time in Kant's philosophy. The topic of the dispute, now frequently referred to as the ?Neglected Alternative? objection, has become a prominent issue in contemporary discussions and interpretations of Kant's view of space and time. The Neglected Alternative contends that Kant unjustifiably moves from (...) the claim that we have a priori intuitions of space and time to the sceptical conclusion that space and time are exclusively subjective. Most current discussions trace the objection back to Trendelenburg and often use him to motivate the objection. However, to date Trendelenburg's actual arguments and reasons for rejecting the Kantian view of space and time have not been sufficiently uncovered; my goal here is to fill this lacuna. By better understanding what Trendelenburg actually argued, we will be in a better position to assess whether the Neglected Alternative objection against Kant is successful. But in addition, Trendelenburg's own system is of independent philosophical interest, and my work here will shed light on one part of it. (shrink)

There seems to exist a general consensus on how to conceptualize cooperation in the field of international relations (IR). We argue that this impression is deceptive. In practice, scholars working on the causes of international cooperation have come to implicitly employ various understandings of what cooperation is. Yet, an explicit debate about the discipline's conceptual foundations never materialized, and whatever discussion occurred did so only latently and without much dialog across theoretical traditions. In this paper, we develop an updated conceptual (...) framework by exploring the nature of these differing understandings and situating them within broader theoretical conversations about the role of cooperation in IR. Drawing on an array of studies in IR and philosophy, our framework distinguishes between three distinct types of cooperative state interactions – cooperation through tacit policy coordination (‘minimal’ cooperation), cooperation through explicit policy coordination (‘thin’ cooperation), and cooperation based on joint action (‘thick’ cooperation). The framework contributes to better theorization about cooperation in two main ways: it allows scholars across theoretical traditions to identify important sources of disagreement and previously unnoticed theoretical common ground; and the conceptual disaggregation it provides grants scholars crucial theoretical leverage by enabling type-specific causal theorization. (shrink)

Theoretical explication of a growing body of empirical data on consciousness-related anomalous phenomena is unlikely to be achieved in terms of known physical processes. Rather, it will first be necessary to formulate the basic role of consciousness in the definition of reality before such anomalous experience can adequately be represented. This paper takes the position that reality is constituted only in the interaction of consciousness with its environment, and therefore that any scheme of conceptual organization developed to represent that reality (...) must reflect the processes of consciousness as well as those of its environment. In this spirit, the concepts and formalisms of elementary quantum mechanics, as originally proposed to explain anomalous atomic-scale physical phenomena, are appropriated via metaphor to represent the general characteristics of consciousness interacting with any environment. More specifically, if consciousness is represented by a quantum mechanical wave function, and its environment by an appropriate potential profile, Schrödinger wave mechanics defines eigenfunctions and eigenvalues that can be associated with the cognitive and emotional experiences of that consciousness in that environment. To articulate this metaphor it is necessary to associate certain aspects of the formalism, such as the coordinate system, the quantum numbers, and even the metric itself, with various impressionistic descriptors of consciousness, such as its intensity, perspective, approach/avoidance attitude, balance between cognitive and emotional activity, and receptive/assertive disposition. With these established, a number of the generic features of quantum mechanics, such as the wave/particle duality, and the uncertainty, indistinguishability, and exclusion principles, display metaphoric relevance to familiar individual and collective experiences. Similarly, such traditional quantum theoretic exercises as the central force field and atomic structure, covalent molecular bonds, barrier penetration, and quantum statistical collective behavior become useful analogies for representation of a variety of consciousness experiences, both normal and anomalous, and for the design of experiments to study these systematically. (shrink)

Critical Realism and Marxism addresses controversial debates, revealing a potentially fruitful relationship; deepening our understanding of the social world and contibuting towards eliminating barbarism in contemporary capitalism.

Unrestricted Composition (UC) is, roughly, the claim that given any objects at all, there is something which those objects compose. (UC) conflicts in an obvious way with common sense. It has as a consequence, for instance, that there is something which has as parts my nose and the moon. One of the more influential arguments for (UC) is Theodore Sider’s version of the Argument from Vagueness. (A version of the Argument from Vagueness was first presented by David Lewis (1986), pp. (...) 212–213). That argument purports to show that some plausible claims concerning the nature of vagueness entail (UC). In this paper I will suggest a response to this argument. I will show that the proponent of Supersubstantivalism (SS)—the view that material objects are identical to regions of spacetime—can reject a premise of Sider’s argument without denying the plausible claims concerning vagueness. Doing so requires only rejecting a certain view concerning the relationship between the proper sub-region relation and the proper parthood relation. So, proponents of (SS) are in a better position than many of us to side with common sense regarding composition. In the first section of the paper, I will present Sider’s argument. In the second section, I will introduce (SS) and briefly discuss some reasons one might have to believe that it is true. In the third section, I will show how the proponent of (SS) can avoid commitment to (UC) and reject a premise of Sider’s argument. Last, I’ll briefly consider and respond to some objections. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging interview Andrew Sayer discusses how he became a realist and then the development of his work over the subsequent decades. He comments on his postdisciplinary approach, his early work on economy and its influences, how he came to write Method in Social Science and the transition in Realism and Social Science to normative critical social science and moral economy. The interview concludes with discussion of his three most recent books and the themes that connect them, not (...) least the ongoing problem of a ‘diabolical double crisis’ of capitalism: extreme inequality and climate change. (shrink)

This chapter explores two kinds of testimonial trust, what we call ‘evidential trust’ and ‘non-evidential trust’ with the aim of asking how testimonial trust could provide epistemic reasons for belief. We argue that neither evidential nor non-evidential trust can play a distinctive role in providing evidential reasons for belief, but we tentatively propose that non-evidential trust can in some circumstances provide a novel kind of epistemic reason for belief, a reason of epistemic facilitation. The chapter begins with an extensive discussion (...) of standard accounts of both kinds of trust and criticises especially the standard accounts of non-evidential trust. A new account of non-evidential trust is offered that avoids a number of difficulties that plague the standard accounts by rejecting what we call ‘attitude-liability assumptions’. (shrink)

The scientific, personal, and social implications of this revolutionary work are staggering. MARGINS OF REALITY is nothing less than a fundamental reevaluation of how the world really works.

In this paper, we explore an under-investigated question concerning the class of formal models that aim at providing normative guidance. We call such models normative models. In particular, we examine the question of how normative models can successfully exert normative guidance. First, we highlight the absence of a discussion of this question – which is surprising given the extensive debate about the success conditions of descriptive models – and motivate its importance. Second, we introduce and discuss two potential accounts of (...) the success conditions of normative models. Our tentative conclusion is that the second account is more promising. (shrink)

Andrew Sayer undertakes a fundamental critique of social science's difficulties in acknowledging that people's relation to the world is one of concern. As sentient beings, capable of flourishing and suffering, and particularly vulnerable to how others treat us, our view of the world is substantially evaluative. Yet modernist ways of thinking encourage the common but extraordinary belief that values are beyond reason, and merely subjective or matters of convention, with little or nothing to do with the kind of beings (...) people are, the quality of their social relations, their material circumstances or well-being. The author shows how social theory and philosophy need to change to reflect the complexity of everyday ethical concerns and the importance people attach to dignity. He argues for a robustly critical social science that explains and evaluates social life from the standpoint of human flourishing. (shrink)

In this paper, we explicate an underappreciated distinction between two conceptions of valuing. According to the first conception, which we call the surface-account, valuing something is exclusively a matter of having certain behavioral, cognitive, and emotional dispositions. In contrast, the second conception, which we call the layer-account, posits that valuing is constituted by the presence of certain representational mental states underlying those dispositions. In the first part of the paper, we introduce the distinction in proper detail and show that the (...) accounts have different implications regarding the valuings of agents. In the second part, we situate the accounts within the extant philosophical literature. First, we relate them to the recent debate between so-called dispositionalists and representationalists about the nature of beliefs and point out that this debate can help anticipate some of the main dialectical fault lines to be expected between surface- and layer-theorists. Second, we examine the contemporary meta-ethical debate on conceptualizing valuing, indicate that scholars have largely ignored the distinction introduced here, and outline that this oversight has substantial theoretical costs: as we show, key arguments within the meta-ethical debate require thorough re-evaluation in light of the proposed distinction. The third part of the paper illustrates the theoretical leverage of the distinction for practical research by exploring its implications for behavioral welfare economics. (shrink)

“Doğal din” terimi, bazen doğanın kendisinin ilahi olduğu bir panteistik doktrine atıfta bulunur. “Doğal teoloji” terimi ise aksine, başlangıçta gözlemlenen doğal gerçekler temelinde (ve bazen) Tanrı’nın varlığını savunmaya yönelik projeye atıfta bulunur. Bununla birlikte çağdaş felsefede, hem “doğal din” hem de “doğal teoloji” genel olarak, dinî veya teolojik konuları araştırmak için insana, “doğal” olan bilişsel yetilerini – akıl, algı, içgözlem- kullanma projesini ifade eder. Doğal din veya teoloji, mevcut anlayış üzerine, doğayla ilgili ampirik araştırmalarla sınırlı olmamakla birlikte ayrıca panteistik bir (...) sonuçla da bağlantılı değildir. Bununla birlikte o, özel doğal olmayan yetilere (ESP, telepati, mistik deneyim) veya doğaüstü bilgi kaynaklarına (kutsal metinler, vahiy teolojisi, inanç otoriteleri, doğrudan doğaüstü iletişim) hitap etmekten kaçınır. Genel olarak, doğal din veya teoloji (bundan böyle “doğal teoloji” olarak anılacaktır), diğer felsefi ve bilimsel girişimlerle aynı rasyonel inceleme standartlarına uymayı amaçlamaktadır ve aynı değerlendirme ve eleştiri yöntemlerine tabidir. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION I What is teleology? If you ever look closely at an ants' nest, you will see an intricate network of pathways and chambers teeming with ...

A list of resources for virtue theories of argumentation. Last updated October 31st, 2023.

The fallacy fallacy is either the misdiagnosis of fallacy or the supposition that the conclusion of a fallacy must be a falsehood. This paper explores the relevance of these and related errors of reasoning for the appraisal of arguments, especially within virtue theories of argumentation. In particular, the fallacy fallacy exemplifies the Owl of Minerva problem, whereby tools devised to understand a norm make possible new ways of violating the norm. Fallacies are such tools and so are vices. Hence a (...) similar problem arises with argumentative vices. Fortunately, both instances of the problem have a common remedy. (shrink)

A dynamic systems (DS) approach uncovers important connections between emotion and neurophysiology. It is critical, however, to include a developmental perspective. Strides in the understanding of emotional development, as well as the present use of DS in developmental science, add significantly to the study of emotion. Examples include stranger fear during infancy, intermodal perception of emotion, and development of individual emotional systems.

Die Studien und Texte zur Sozialgeschichte der Literatur (STSL)veröffentlichen seit 1975 herausragende literatur-, geschichts- und kulturwissenschaftliche Arbeiten zur vornehmlich deutschen Literatur vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Schwerpunkt der literaturgeschichtlichen und theoretischen Abhandlungen sowie der Quellen- und Materialienbände ist das Verhältnis von literarischem Text und gesellschaftlich-historischem Kontext. Als maßgebliche Publikationsreihe einer seit den 1960er Jahren einflussreichen Sozialgeschichte der Literatur prägt STSL zugleich die literaturwissenschaftliche Diskussion über mögliche Austauschbeziehungen zwischen Literatur-, Geschichts- und Sozialwissenschaften.

The Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopadie der Theologie und der Kirchen (DBETh) (German Biographical Encyclopaedia of Theology and the Church) offers biographical articles on 8,000 people from the areas of church, theology and the non-Christian religions, in the German-speaking regions. This biographical encyclopaedia of the church and the history of religion reaches from the early Middle Ages to the present, covering a period of more than a thousand years. Christians of different confessions and communities, Jews, prominent theologians and religious leaders and representatives (...) of religious studies are presented with their life histories and life's work. The DBETh is a unique type of lexical work of unparalleled extensiveness. The geographical area covered by the DBETh is defined by the German language. Besides Germany, it covers Austria, German-speaking Switzerland, the Alsace and Transylvania, the Baltic and South Tyrol. The biographical articles are free of value judgements and censorship, and do not cover people still living. Men and women, who made a significant impact during their lives and had far reaching influence following their deaths, are dealt with more extensively in articles written and signed by experts. Almost all the articles have details of further reading. Indexes of persons and places make it easier to use and to find connections. The sphere of people covered is broad: theologians, holders of church offices, philosophers with a religious-theological emphasis as well as artists concentrating primarily on ecclesiastical themes and activities - writers, musicians, painters, sculptors, and architects. Also included are secular leaders who were specifically influential in church politics. Vicars recognized as writers or as naturalists are not forgotten any more than members of orders, acknowledged as astronomers or mathematicians.". (shrink)

This experimental study examines individuals’ legitimacy judgments. We develop a model that demonstrates the role of attributed motives and corporate credibility for the evaluation of organizational legitimacy and test this model with an experimental vignette study. Our results show that when a corporate activity creates benefits for the firm—in addition to social benefits—individuals attribute more extrinsic motives. Extrinsic motives are ascribed when a corporation is perceived as being driven by external rewards as opposed to an altruistic commitment to a social (...) cause. Extrinsic motives negatively affect corporate credibility and organizational legitimacy judgments. This article contributes to a better understanding of the complex process of organizational legitimacy judgment by shedding light on the individual’s perspective and expounding the relationship between attributed motives, corporate credibility, and organizational legitimacy. (shrink)

Virtue theories have become influential in ethics and epistemology. This paper argues for a similar approach to argumentation. Several potential obstacles to virtue theories in general, and to this new application in particular, are considered and rejected. A first attempt is made at a survey of argumentational virtues, and finally it is argued that the dialectical nature of argumentation makes it particularly suited for virtue theoretic analysis.

The traditional view of evidence in mathematics is that evidence is just proof and proof is just derivation. There are good reasons for thinking that this view should be rejected: it misrepresents both historical and current mathematical practice. Nonetheless, evidence, proof, and derivation are closely intertwined. This paper seeks to tease these concepts apart. It emphasizes the role of argumentation as a context shared by evidence, proofs, and derivations. The utility of argumentation theory, in general, and argumentation schemes, in particular, (...) as a methodology for the study of mathematical practice is thereby demonstrated. Argumentation schemes represent an almost untapped resource for mathematics education. Notably, they provide a consistent treatment of rigorous and non-rigorous argumentation, thereby working to exhibit the continuity of reasoning in mathematics with reasoning in other areas. Moreover, since argumentation schemes are a comparatively mature methodology, there is a substantial body of existing work to draw upon, including some increasingly sophisticated software tools. Such tools have significant potential for the analysis and evaluation of mathematical argumentation. The first four sections of the paper address the relationships of evidence to proof, proof to derivation, argument to proof, and argument to evidence, respectively. The final section directly addresses some of the educational implications of an argumentation scheme account of mathematical reasoning. (shrink)

Disagreements that resist rational resolution, often termed “deep disagreements”, have been the focus of much work in epistemology and informal logic. In this paper, I argue that they also deserve the attention of philosophers of mathematics. I link the question of whether there can be deep disagreements in mathematics to a more familiar debate over whether there can be revolutions in mathematics. I propose an affirmative answer to both questions, using the controversy over Shinichi Mochizuki’s work on the abc conjecture (...) as a potential example of both phenomena. I conclude by investigating the prospects for the resolution of mathematical deep disagreements in virtue-theoretic approaches to informal logic and mathematical practice. (shrink)

The foundation and administration of European Zoological gardens in the 19th century is analized. It is significant of such new institutions, that they are founded in the large cities, and that most of the founders looked at the great models in Paris and London, which are described first. Further it is shown that the change from princely menageries to public Zoological Gardens is caused both by common interests in people's education and pleasure and by scientific aims which leaded to choose (...) the name Zoological “garden” in analogy to botanical gardens. It seems to be characteristic of such public institutions created by citizens in the 19th century that they are mostly supported by commercial or scientific local societies. This is exemplified by describing the administration of the Zoological gardens of Berlin (1841), Frankfurt (1856) and Hamburg (1863), which initiated also research for acclimatization of wild animals. (shrink)

Friedman’s view on corporate social responsibility is often accused of being incoherent and of setting rather low ethical standards for managers. This paper outlines Friedman’s ethical expectations for corporate executives against the backdrop of the strong emphasis he puts on individual freedom. Doing so reveals that the ethical standards he imposes on managers can be strictly deduced from individual freedom and that these standards involve both deontological norms and the fulfillment of particular stakeholder expectations. These insights illustrate the necessity to (...) reconsider how Friedman’s approach relates to other important normative theories of business ethics. Contrasting Friedman’s approach with stakeholder theory and integrative social contract theory—when considering the importance he assigns to individual freedom—shows how and why these approaches differ. Still, the comparison also highlights striking similarities. This paper contributes to a better understanding of Friedman’s position—which is still one of the most influential approaches in business ethics research—because it enables a differentiated look at its strengths and weaknesses. (shrink)

Until recently, discussion of virtues in the philosophy of mathematics has been fleeting and fragmentary at best. But in the last few years this has begun to change. As virtue theory has grown ever more influential, not just in ethics where virtues may seem most at home, but particularly in epistemology and the philosophy of science, some philosophers have sought to push virtues out into unexpected areas, including mathematics and its philosophy. But there are some mathematicians already there, ready to (...) meet them, who have explicitly invoked virtues in discussing what is necessary for a mathematician to succeed. In both ethics and epistemology, virtue theory tends to emphasize character virtues, the acquired excellences of people. But people are not the only sort of thing whose excellences may be identified as virtues. Theoretical virtues have attracted attention in the philosophy of science as components of an account of theory choice. Within the philosophy of mathematics, and mathematics itself, attention to virtues has emerged from a variety of disparate sources. Theoretical virtues have been put forward both to analyse the practice of proof and to justify axioms; intellectual virtues have found multiple applications in the epistemology of mathematics; and ethical virtues have been offered as a basis for understanding the social utility of mathematical practice. Indeed, some authors have advocated virtue epistemology as the correct epistemology for mathematics (and perhaps even as the basis for progress in the metaphysics of mathematics). This topical collection brings together several of the researchers who have begun to study mathematical practices from a virtue perspective with the intention of consolidating and encouraging this trend. (shrink)

What should a virtue theory of argumentation say about fallacious reasoning? If good arguments are virtuous, then fallacies are vicious. Yet fallacies cannot just be identified with vices, since vices are dispositional properties of agents whereas fallacies are types of argument. Rather, if the normativity of good argumentation is explicable in terms of virtues, we should expect the wrongness of bad argumentation to be explicable in terms of vices. This approach is defended through analysis of several fallacies, with particular emphasis (...) on the ad misericordiam. (shrink)

Many philosophers accept both of the following claims: (1) consciousness matters morally, and (2) species membership doesn’t matter morally. In other words, many reject speciesism but accept what we might call 'sentientism'. But do the reasons against speciesism yield analogous reasons against sentientism, just as the reasons against racism and sexism are thought to yield analogous reasons against speciesism? This paper argues that speciesism is disanalogous to sentientism (as well as racism and sexism). I make a case for the following (...) asymmetry: (a) some non-humans clearly have interests, but (b) no non-conscious entities clearly have interests. This asymmetry, I argue, renders sentientism resistant to the standard argument against speciesism. (shrink)