We investigate agents that have incomplete information and make decisions based on their beliefs expressed as situation calculus bounded action theories. Such theories have an infinite object domain, but the number of objects that belong to fluents at each time point is bounded by a given constant. Recently, it has been shown that verifying temporal properties over such theories is decidable. We take a first-person view and use the theory to capture what the agent believes about the domain of interest (...) and the actions affecting it. In this paper, we study verification of temporal properties over online executions. These are executions resulting from agents performing only actions that are feasible according to their beliefs. To do so, we first examine progression, which captures belief state update resulting from actions in the situation calculus. We show that, for bounded action theories, progression, and hence belief states, can always be represented as a bounded first-order logic theory. Then, based on this result, we prove decidability of temporal verification over online executions for bounded action theories. (shrink)

The issue of interpersonal comparisons of utility is about the possibility (or not) of comparing the utility or welfare or the mental states in general, of different individuals. Embedded in the conceptual framework of utilitarianism, interpersonal comparisons were admissible in economics as part of the theoretical justification of welfare policies until the first decades of the twentieth century. Under the strong influence of the scientific philosophy of positivism as reflected in the works of early neoclassical economists and as epitomized by (...) Lionel Robbins, utility comparisons were subsequently rejected as a value judgement. Robbins’ methodological stance is still prevalent among mainstream economists. Despite the explicit rejection of comparability by the majority of economists, interpersonal comparisons are necessary for many key policy issues, such as progressive taxation, social welfare policies, GDP-based welfare comparisons, cost–benefit analysis, and public goods provision. In this paper, the case of interpersonal utility comparisons is discussed as an illustrative example of the usefulness of the study of the role of value judgements, and generally of the interrelationship between ethics and economics. It is argued that the current tension between theory and policy practice might be resolved through the efforts of prominent economists and philosophers to challenge positivism, and especially its problematic treatment of value judgements and of ethical assumptions in general. The discussion also provides more strength to the view that policy makers and their economic advisers cannot avoid ethical questions in their analysis of the workings of the economic system. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Kuhn's account of science, as it was articulated in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, was mainly defended on philosophical rather than historical grounds. I thus lend support to Kuhn's later claim that his model can be derived from first principles. I propose a transcendental reading of his work and I suggest that Kuhn uses historical examples as anti-essentialist Wittgensteinian "reminders" that expose a variegated landscape in the development of science.

Background:Previous research has linked missed nursing care to nurses’ work environment. Ethical climate is a part of work environment, but the relationship of missed care to different types of ethical climate is unknown.Research objectives:To describe the types of ethical climate in adult in-patient cancer care settings, and their relationship to missed nursing care.Research design:A descriptive correlation design was used. Data were collected using the Ethical Climate Questionnaire and the MISSCARE survey tool, and analyzed with descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation and analysis (...) of variance.Participants and research context:All nurses from relevant units in the Republic of Cyprus were invited to participate.Ethical considerations:The research protocol has been approved according to national legislation, all licenses have been obtained, and respondents participated voluntarily after they have received all necessary information.Findings:Response rate was 91.8%. Five types identified were as follows: caring ; law and code ; rules ; instrumental ; and independence. Reported overall missed care was M = 2.51, and this was positively related to instrumental and independence types and negatively related to caring, rules, and law and code.Discussion:The reported levels of missed care and the types of ethical climates present similarities and differences with the relevant literature. All types of ethical climate were related to the reported missed care.Conclusion:Efforts to reduce the influence of instrumental and independence types and fostering caring, law and code, and rules types might decrease missed nursing care. However, more robust evidence is needed. (shrink)

This bold argument is at the center of this book that challenges the widespread assumption that environmentalism reflects a radical departure from modernity.

Background:In the face of scarcity, nurses may inevitably delay or omit some nursing interventions and give priority to others. This increases the risk of adverse patient outcomes and threatens safety, quality, and dignity in care. However, it is not clear if there is an ethical element in nursing care rationing and how nurses experience the phenomenon in its ethical perspective.Objectives:The purpose was to synthesize studies that relate care rationing with the ethical perspectives of nursing, and find the deeper, moral meaning (...) of this phenomenon.Research design:A systematic review and thematic synthesis of qualitative studies was used. Searching was based on guidelines suggested by Joana Brigs Institute, while the synthesis has drawn from the methodology described. Primary studies were sought from nine electronic databases and manual searches. The explicitness of reporting was assed using consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research. Nine studies involving 167 nurse participants were included. Synthesis resulted in 35 preliminary themes, 14 descriptive themes, and four analytical themes. Discussion of relationships between themes revealed a new thematic framework.Ethical consideration:Every effort has been taken, for the thoroughness in searching and retrieving the primary studies of this synthesis, and in order for them to be treated accurately, fairly and honestly and without intentional misinterpretations of their findings.Discussion:Within limitations of scarcity, nurses face moral challenges and their decisions may jeopardize professional values, leading to role conflict, feelings of guilt, distress and difficulty in fulfilling a morally acceptable role. However, more research is needed to support certain relationships.Conclusions:Related literature is limited. The few studies found highlighted the essence of justice, equality in care and in values when prioritizing care—with little support to the ethical effects of rationing on nurses. Further research on ethical dimension of care rationing may illuminate other important aspects of this phenomenon. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Arbeit ist die teilweise überarbeitete Fassung meiner Dissertation, die im Wintersemester 1994/95 von der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität zu Köln angenommen wurde (Tag des Rigorosums war der 5. Februar 1995). Zur ursprünglichen Fassung (Einleitung und Kommentar) ist später die kritische Ausgabe des Textes hinzugefügt worden. Die Veröffentlichung der Arbeit wurde aus verschiedenen Gründen verschoben. Ich habe allerdings versucht, die inzwischen erschienene Literatur, soweit es mir möglich war, zu berücksichtigen. In der Einleitung werden alle Fragen ausführlich behandelt, auf eine (...) Diskussion über die Beziehung Platons zu Thukydides wurde aber verzichtet. Diesem Problem werde ich an anderem Ort nachgehen. Im Kommentar wurde bewußt besonderes Gewicht sowohl auf auf textkritische als auch auf historische Fragen gelegt, nicht jedoch die zahlreichen rhetorischen Figuren, da sie schon in der Dissertation von Th. Berndt übersichtlich zusammengestellt sind. Betreut wurde die Arbeit von Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. RudolfKassel. Seine große Gelehrsamkeit und wissenschaftliche Strenge haben meine Arbeit stark gefördert. Für seine Kritik, fiir seine zahlreichen Hinweise und nicht zuletzt fiir seine Geduld möchte ich ihm sehr herzlich danken. Mein Dank gilt auch all jenen, die mir während meines Studiums in Deutschland und bei der Entstehung dieser Arbeit geholfen haben: Prof. Dr. K. Bormann hat bereitwillig das Korreferat übernommen; Prof. Dr. P. Funke hat den Teil über den Korinthischen Krieg gelesen und einige nützliche Hinweise beigesteuert; Prof. Dr. G. A. Lehmann hat mein Studium der Alten Geschichte stets freundlich begleitet; Prof. Dr. D. (shrink)

Non-Humean accounts of the metaphysics of nature posit either laws or powers in order to account for natural necessity and world-order. We argue that such monistic views face fundamental problems. On the one hand, neo-Aristotelians cannot give unproblematic power-based accounts of the functional laws among quantities offered by physical theories, as well as of the place of conservation laws and symmetries in a lawless ontology; in order to capture these characteristics, commitment to governing laws is indispensable. On the other hand, (...) ontologies that entirely exclude some kind of power ascription to worldly entities face what we call the Governing Problem: such ontologies do not have the resources to give an adequate account of how laws play their governing role. We propose a novel dualist model, which, we argue, has the resources to solve the difficulties encountered by its two dominant competitors, without inheriting the problems of either view. According to the dualist model, both laws and powers are equally fundamental and irreducible to each other, and both are needed in order to give a satisfactory account of the nomological structure of the world. The dualist model constitutes thus a promising alternative to current monistic views in the metaphysics of science. (shrink)

Twentieth-century anthropology has been operating with the assumption of one nature and many cultures, one reality experienced and lived in many different ways. Its primary job, therefore, has been to render the otherness of the other understandable, to demonstrate that although different it is also the same; in short, to show that although other, others are people like us. The latest theoretical paradigm, known as the ‘ontological turn’, appears to reverse this assumption and to posit many natures and one culture. (...) Whether it does in fact reverse it and constitutes a meta-ontology, as critics have pointed out, or it is only a heuristic, methodological device, as some of the proponents of the ‘turn’ have recently argued, the contention of my article is the same: first, this move – the ontological – is made in the hope of doing a better job in redeeming otherness than earlier anthropological paradigms; second, it fails as they did – in the same way and for the same reasons. (shrink)

Recent work by Matthew Bedke and Max Hayward develops a new attack on metaethical non-naturalists: that they are committed to an immoral state of mind, because they must be willing to change their mind about the moral importance of certain actions given possible evidence about the layout of the non-natural realm. For example, they must be willing to decrease their credence that torturing babies is bad, if they ever get evidence that torturing babies is not in the extension of a (...) non-natural property. The present paper aims to both develop the strongest version of this argument and propose a response to it. The first section argues that the strongest version of this attack does not depend on whether accepting non-naturalism commits one to believing a certain kind of conditional proposition. Rather, it depends on whether accepting non-naturalism commits one to having a certain kind of conditional credences. Moreover, the moral criticism at hand does not hinge on the causal inertness of non-natural properties. And in so far as the argument does not depend on causal inertness, the people threatened by immorality are not just non-naturalists, but metaethicists in general (Sect. 2). This is because the worry hinges instead on particular relationships of epistemic dependence between our metaethical and some of our ethical views. But it is not clear that those relationships obtain; we could adopt metaethical methodologies that preclude morally problematic dependence of relevant first order views on evidence about our metaethical theories (Sect. 3). (shrink)

Most scholars have focused on The Second Sex and Simone de Beauvoir’s fiction, concentrating on gender issues but ignoring her broader emancipatory vision. Though Beauvoir’s political thinking is not as closely studied as her feminist works, it underpinned her activism and helped her navigate the dilemmas raised by revolutionary thought in the postwar period. In Emancipatory Thinking Elaine Stavro brings together Beauvoir’s philosophy and her political interventions to produce complex ideas on emancipation. Drawing from a range of work, including novels, (...) essays, autobiographical writings, and philosophic texts, Stavro explains that for Beauvoir freedom is a movement that requires both personal and collective transformation. Freedom is not guaranteed by world historical systems, material structures, wilful action, or discursive practices, but requires engaged subjects who are able to take creative risks as well as synchronize with existing forces to work towards collective change. Beauvoir, Stavro asserts, resisted the trend of anti-humanism that has dominated French thinking since the 1960s and also managed to avoid the pitfalls of voluntarism and individualism. In fact, Stavro argues, Beauvoir appreciated the impact of material, socio-economic, institutional forces, without forgoing the capacity to initiate. Applying Beauvoir’s existential insights and understanding of embodied and situated subjectivity to recent debates within gender, literary, sociological, cultural, and political studies, Emancipatory Thinking provides a lens to explore the current political and theoretical landscape. (shrink)

In this study we examine the information in the sources concerning the Byzantine family of Opoi in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. According to the sources, the Opoi were an important family in that period. Although they did not belong to the major aristocratic families, many of them were distinguished in the military administration of the Empire, such as Constantine Opos during the reign of Romanos III Argyros and Michael IV Paphlagon , the homonymous officer of Alexios I Komnenos , (...) the megas hetaireiarches Opos under John II Komnenos and Constantine Opos under Manuel I Komnenos. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the new evidence concerning the conception of cosmic justice in Greek thought offered by the Derveni papyrus. Beginning with a Heraclitean dictum about the regularity of the sun cited in column IV, I attempt to understand it in the context of Heraclitus’ cosmology. Accordingly, I turn to the Derveni author’s exegesis of the Orphic theogony and suggest that the prominent role of Zeus in the Derveni cosmogony and the allegorical interpretation of him as air and Mind (...) implies that the Derveni author adopts a distinct conception of cosmic justice intermingled with theological elements. Zeus, air, and Mind are the supplementary aspects of the cosmic god who directs the cosmogonic process and maintains the current configuration of the cosmos. (shrink)

The Late Bronze Age gypsum mould discussed hère was first interpreted as a gold worker's mould. It wears the matrices, for the "lost wax" process, of three figures. At one side, a man is shown holding a jug in each hand and wearing a short kilt and a short-sleaved, tightly fitting garment. He probably formed part of a ritual scène. At the other side are two figures fighting with spears and wearing kilts with horizontal stripes. They may hâve formed a (...) "lutte sportive", a fréquent thème in Aegean iconography. The object under discussion is actually a mould for the décorative éléments of a four-sided bronze stand. Such stands are well known in Cypriot bronzeworking and this mould expands their décorative repertory. (shrink)

Rituels et images sont mis en miroir dès le titre, annonçant d’emblée le sujet traité dans cet ouvrage collectif soigneusement édité par Anne-Françoise Jaccottet. Au croisement de l’iconographie, de l’histoire des religions et de l’archéologie, dix-neuf contributions mettent en lumière des points précis questionnant les liens réciproques entre images et rituels et donnent à cette publication un caractère remarquable. Ce recueil d’études s’inscrit dans le prolongement d’autres ouvrages connus...

This paper advances the thesis of methodological mechanism, the claim that to be committed to mechanism is to adopt a certain methodological postulate, i.e. to look for causal pathways for the phenomena of interest. We argue that methodological mechanism incorporates a minimal account of understanding mechanisms, according to which a mechanism just is a causal pathway described in the language of theory. In order to argue for this position we discuss a central example of a biological mechanism, the mechanism of (...) cell death, known as apoptosis. We argue that this example shows that our philosophically deflationary account is sufficient in order to have an illuminating account of mechanisms as the concept is used in biology. (shrink)

The paradoxes of globalization and the efforts toward the establishment of a consolidated healthcare ministry have caused tensions while affording the possibility for true ecumenical dialogue. As today's societies become more pluralistic, Orthodox Christian healthcare ministry finds itself amongst these paradoxes and tensions. The content of Orthodox healthcare chaplaincy, which is centered in its Eucharistic expression, maintains a sense of catholicity and unity. This though differs from a “psychological” understanding of pastoral care, which has developed. Therefore, there is a question (...) of the chaplain's identity, a crisis of theology and ecclesiology, which must be faced so that true unity can be attained. This article explains the content of Orthodox healthcare chaplaincy and addresses the issues of pastoral identity, theology and psychology, together with the crisis of ecclesiology. It is written with a true agony for unity. (shrink)

Conventional economic theory portrays privatization as a transformative event for a company, even when it is partial and the state maintains control. According to this view, private investors have stronger incentives than voters to monitor management performance and constrain side-payments to political allies of the government. But how exactly can private investors discipline managers they cannot fire? Proponents of privatization place their hopes on disclosure obligations under securities laws, triggered by privatized companies’ stock exchange listings. They argue that, because company (...) disclosures can reveal side-payments to government allies and cause private investors to abandon the stock, management should avoid political favoritism after a stock exchange listing. The Article explores whether investors responded to indications of political favoritism as the above theory would predict. Case study evidence comes from major privatizations in Greece during the last two decades in telecommunications, energy, and gaming. The Article examines the public disclosures of partially privatized companies in two key areas where the risk of political side-deals and corruption remains high: contracts with suppliers and relationships with labor. Greek companies’ disclosure documents included clear indications that payouts to suppliers and labor continued to increase during the period of partial privatization. However, these companies’ stocks remained attractive to investors. (shrink)

A pyxis in a registered private collection in Limassol, said to have been found in a tomb at Amathus. Several pyxides of the same early Geometric period are already known from this site, similarly decorated, but are all rectangular, whereas the one we describe here is crescent-shaped and has on its front a figurine in high relief of a standing female with uplifted arms, the well-known goddess who was introduced to Cyprus from Crete. In Cyprus she was assimilated with the (...) goddess of fertility, whose symbol, in the Near East, is the crescent. Is it possible that the shape of the pyxis may be related with the figurine? (shrink)

In this re-reading of The Second Sex, the author argues that Beauvoir transgressively employs Sartre’s universal binary categories of Being and Nothingnessin her effort to account for the economic, political, cultural and psychological conditions of women’s situation. In doing so, she challenges Sartre’s theory of radical ontological freedom and concretizes his abstract philosophic voice, thereby avoiding their rationalist and voluntarist implications. Contesting Beauvoir’s feminist critics, who saw her as emotionally and philosophically dependent on Sartre and her work as an amalgam (...) of Sartrean existentialism and feminist insights, the author maintains that Beauvoir had her own independent project – to transform Sartrean existentialism to make it contextually sensitive. Distancing herself from Sartre’s theory of freedom and its valorization of masculine experience and disembodied consciousnesses, Beauvoir’s theory of situational freedom and embodied subjectivity draws her closer to the existentialism of Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

This essay discusses the changes promoted in European universities by the ‘Bologna Process’ and the ‘European Higher Education Area’. Through an analysis of the main policy documents and mechanisms, the paper demonstrates that the European Higher Education Area is designed to dismantle academic autonomy across the continent. Before setting out to examine this transnational policy process, the paper specifies in its first part the meaning of academic autonomy – a particular European creation, as it argues – through an overview of (...) the historical material. (shrink)

This article contextualizes digital practices within architectural spaces, and explores the opportunities of experiencing and perceiving domestic environments with the use of media and computing technologies. It suggests methods for the design of reflexive and intimate interiors that provide informational, communicational, affective, emotional and supportive properties according to embedded sensorial interfaces and processing systems. To properly investigate these concepts, a fundamental criterion is magnified and dissected: dwelling, as an important ingredient in this relationship entails the magical power to merge physical (...) environment with the psyche of inhabitants. For this reason, a number of views are presented and discussed, providing necessary conditions to include matters of affectivity, ubiquity and layering complexity of interior space. Moreover, specific processes of the possibilities of the digital are mentioned, and examples are presented of the infusion and diffusion of ubiquitous computing technologies within domestic spaces. To briefly conclude, this article is an attempt to discuss the relationship of human-architecture-computer symbiosis and the design process of creative and innovative spaces that affect states of memory, perception, experience, as well as mood and emotion. (shrink)

Based on earlier studies of J. C. R. Licklider, this article translocates the context of symbiosis between man and the machine into the built environment, and more specifically into contemporary methods for the design of domestic/residential spaces. According to this, a discussion is made concerning the implementation of media and sensor technologies within the architectural DNA that initiate the emergence of psychotropic spaces of Ballardian Architecture; structures that are capable of becoming extensions of the inhabitant’s mood, emotion and psyche. Furthermore, (...) this article presents Plinthos Pavilion, a collaborative artwork that confronts issues of transparency, ubiquity and invisibility; an example of synergy between the primary notions of architectural and media design, which blend with the use of electronic and digital technology, transforming a physical structure to an organism that breathes, reacts and communicates. (shrink)

Although most of the marginalist economists' methodology was influenced by nineteenth-century classical physics, the work of Francis Ysidro Edgeworth represents the highest point of classical physics influence to the development of mainstream economic methodology. Subsequent leading theorists were not as explicit, although economic theory continued to be influenced by physics as the work of Pareto, Fisher and Samuelson indicates. However, the physics methodological framework has made a recent reappearance in the relatively new field of econophysics. Although there are a few (...) methodological similarities, there are also many important differences between mainstream economics and econophysics. Econophysicists' emphasis to statistical mechanics rather to mechanical models, their reservations towards rational agent theory and their rejection of many standard assumptions of mainstream economics are examples of such differences. The paper examines the above from a methodological viewpoint. It also discusses the p.. (shrink)

For many years poststructuralist feminists have denounced Simone de Beauvoir as a `universal humanist' who denies sexual difference and inscribes woman in a masculine discourse. Returning to the original exchanges between de Beauvoir and the French feminists of difference, where this dismissive attitude began, it is seen that de Beauvoir circulates in their discourse as representative of a bygone eraan embodiment of all that has been surpassed. Their criticisms of de Beauvoir prove for the most part, glib and disingenuous and (...) not grounded in a careful reading of The Second Sex. In this article the author defends de Beauvoir from their charges of universalism, phallocentrism and being a dupe of Sartre. Her particular form of universal humanism is not `indifferent to difference', but produces historically and socially nuanced insights. De Beauvoir does not valorize a Sartrean rational masculine subject as a model for feminist struggles, rather she theorizes an embodied, relational, situated subject. Furthermore, her theory of Otherness is able to accommodate the psychic register of subjectivity without psychologizing the socioeconomic or political world, a shortcoming of her French poststructuralist opponents. (shrink)

In this chapter we examine the relation between mechanisms and laws/counterfactuals by revisiting the main notions of mechanism found in the literature. We distinguish between two different conceptions of ‘mechanism’: mechanisms-of underlie or constitute a causal process; mechanisms-for are complex systems that function so as to produce a certain behavior. According to some mechanists, a mechanism fulfills both of these roles simultaneously. The main argument of the chapter is that there is an asymmetrical dependence between both kinds of mechanisms and (...) laws/counterfactuals: while some laws and counterfactuals must be taken as primitive (non-mechanistic) facts of the world, all mechanisms depend on laws/counterfactuals. (shrink)

Research in Critical Discourse Studies has for long recognised the central role that both direct and indirect communicative strategies play in the reproduction of social inequality, but a main proponent of this approach has expressed scepticism with regard to the contribution that theories of pragmatics which specifically focus on speaker intentions can make to its agenda. This paper sets out to examine how relevance theory’s theoretical machinery can be applied to the critical discussion of ideology in discourse, by offering insights (...) that overcome the limitations imposed by this concentration of its precursors on speaker intentions. More specifically, I discuss how the cognitive perspective that relevance theory adopts can inform our understanding of the way in which ideological effects automatically arise during spontaneous utterance interpretation. After accounting for the derivation of these effects, I briefly suggest how it can additionally be taken to underlie the propagation of ideologies through discursive practice. (shrink)

Alcmaeon, a philosopher-cum-doctor from Croton, offers the earliest known definition of health and disease. The aim of this paper is to examine the formulation of his medical theory in terms of political organization, namely the polarity between one-man rule and egalitarianism , by taking into account contemporary philosophical and medical texts, as well as the historical context. The paper is divided into four sections. I first overview the compendium in which this medical theory is reported, trace the doxographical layers, and (...) analyse the terminology employed . I then focus on the key aspects of this medical theory, including the constitution of the body, the interaction of opposites, and the aetiology of disease . I suggest that Alcmaeon's notion of equality can be understood in various ways, and discuss the possible interpretations in the light of early Greek philosophy and medicine. The most likely interpretations are that there exists a kind of equilibrium between pairs .. (shrink)

Das Buch untersucht den griechischen Begriff des „polemos“, der die Spaltung der Gesellschaften und Öffentlichkeiten in rivalisierende, gewalttätige Parteien bezeichnet. Es zeigt das neue feindselige Paradigma der Öffentlichkeit, das nicht mehr auf die akklamatorische Gestalt des liberalen Konsenses und auf dem doxologischen Aspekt der Macht beschränkt bleibt, sondern sich vielmehr auf den „Medienkrieg“ der liberalen und autoritären Öffentlichkeiten ausgeweitet hat. Hierbei werden vor allem die Probleme des Journalismus aufgezeigt, der sich heute den liberalen oder autoritären Mächten und Kräften „antiaufklärerisch“ verschrieben (...) hat. (shrink)

Read Miguell Ramirez's original paper Credit, Indebtedness and Speculation in Marx's Political Economy...