I want now to argue that just as no intentional representations of retinal images intervene between physical objects and the seeing of those objects, no representations of speaker intentions in speaking need intervene between world affairs spoken of by speakers and hearers' understandings of those words.1 When conventional signs are true or satisfied and when this has come about in the normal way, conventional signs are locally recurrent natural signs. True, tokens of the same conventional sign may have diverse etiologies, (...) through different people's perceptual systems and cognitive systems. They differ from more ordinary recurrent natural signs in that there will usually be numerous different kinds of causal paths to their production, depending on the ways that different speakers have managed to translate diverse prior natural signs into a uniform medium of thought and expression. But there are reasons why the same linguistic form continues to coincide with the same kind of represented affair over a certain domain --it is no accident-- and we have decided to take that as the primary criterion for a locally recurrent sign. Assuming that this step in the production of a conventional sign has been accomplished through normal mechanisms --the speaker is not confused, does not lie, and so forth-- then reading a conventional sign is mainly a matter of tracking its natural domain, that is, determining what reproducing family it has been copied from. Compare tracking the. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: A Story of Aisling — Part Four.

The growth of knowledge and its effects on the practice of medicine have been issues of philosophical and ethical interest for several decades and will remain so for many years to come. The outline of the present volume was conceived nearly three years ago. In 1987, a conference on this theme was held in Maastricht, the Netherlands, on the occasion of the founding of the European Society for Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care (ESPMH). Most of the chapters of this (...) book are derived from papers presented at that meeting, and for the purpose of editing the book Stuart Spicker, Ph. D., joined two founding members of ESPMH, Henk ten Have and Gerrit Kimsma. The three of them successfully brought together a number of interesting contribu tions to the theme, and ESPMH is grateful and proud to have initiated the production of this volume. The Society intends that annual meetings be held in different European countries on a rotating basis and to publish volumes related to these meetings whenever feasible. In 1988, the second conference was held in Aarhus, Denmark on "Values in Medical Decision Making and Resource Allocation in Health Care". In 1989, a meeting was held in Czestochowa, Poland, on "European Traditions in Philosophy of Medicine. From Brentano to Bieganski". It is hoped that these conferences and the books to be derived from them, will initiate a new European tradition, lasting well into the 21 st century! P. J. (shrink)

Mill was a progressive thinker whose views on gender and race were well in advance of his times. But although he rejected both the natural or innate superiority of men over women and of whites over blacks, and attributed their differences to their different circumstances, his proposals for social and political changes seem be contrast sharply in the two cases. He argued for “perfect equality” between men and women, including the extension of the suffrage to women and the elimination of (...) the near absolute power of husbands over their wives. On the other hand, Mill justified British imperial rule in India, maintaining that despotism was an appropriate form of government for “barbarians”, provided it was the most effective means of raising them to a higher stage of development where they were capable of ruling themselves. This chapter discusses the complexities of Mill's views on gender and race. (shrink)

This volume in the Routledge History of Philosophy series discusses the philosophers belonging to both the `analytical' and `continental' traditions, as well as the now influential American pragmatists. Each chapter is written by a different author who presents the issues in the context of the period when they arose, while also keeping an eye on their relevance to current philosophical interests. A few philosophers are discussed in multiple chapters in different but mutually illuminating contexts.

Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law are related ideas about how the powers of government and of state officials are to be limited. The two ideas are sometimes equated. But constitutionalism, generally understood, usually refers to various constitutional devices and procedures, such as the separation of powers between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, the independence of the judiciary, due process or fair hearings for those charged with criminal offences, and respect for individual rights, which are partly constitutive of (...) a liberal democratic system of government. The Rule of Law, on the other hand, embodies certain standards that define the characteristic virtues of a legal system as such. (shrink)