This paper analyzes and evaluates quine's influential thesis that epistemology should become a chapter of empirical psychology. quine's main point, it is argued, is that normativity must be banished from epistemology and, more generally, philosophy. i claim that without a normative concept of justification, we lose the very concept of knowledge, and that belief ascription itself becomes impossible without a normative concept of rationality. further, the supervenience of concepts of epistemic appraisal shows that normative epistemology is indeed possible.

This paper explores the fundamental ideas that have motivated the idea of emergence and the movement of emergentism. The concept of reduction, which lies at the heart of the emergence idea is explicated, and it is shown how the thesis that emergent properties are irreducible gives a unified account of emergence. The paper goes on to discuss two fundamental unresolved issues for emergentism. The first is that of giving a “positive” characterization of emergence; the second is to give a coherent (...) explanation of how “downward” causation, a central component of emergentism, is able to avoid the problem of overdetermination. (shrink)

Somewhat loose arguments that non-reductive physicalist realism is untenable. Anomalous monism makes the mental irrelevant, functionalism is compatible with species-specific reduction, and supervenience is weak or reductive.

This study identifies the roles of consumers’ ethical orientations and CSR motives and the dynamics of these two variables on the subsequent consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral responses to CSR—perceived corporate authenticity and pro-firm behavioral intentions. To examine the impact of individual consumers’ ethical orientations, the authors measured consumers’ ethical orientations such as deontology and consequentialism through a Web-based survey conducted in Korea and in the USA. Further, to investigate the role of perceived CSR motives, the authors measured the perception of (...) a company’s business-oriented motives and society-oriented motives in conducting CSR. Results demonstrate the different role of ethical orientation in impacting consumers’ responses across these countries. Consumers’ consequentialist orientation appears to be positively associated with pro-firm behavioral intention in both the Korean and the US studies. In the Korean study, Consumers’ deontological orientation reduces perceived corporate authenticity when corporate motives seem business-oriented. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

The International Research library of Philosophy collects in book form a wide range of important and influential essays in philosophy, drawn predominantly from English language journals. Each volume in the library deals with a field of enquiry which has received significant attention in philosophy in the last 25 years and is edited by a philosopher noted in that field.

Developing and motivating the notion of supervenience. Investigating the relationship to reducibility and definability (equivalence, under certain conditions), and to microphysical determination.

THIS PAPER CORRECTS AN ERROR IN MY EARLIER PAPER, "CONCEPTS OF SUPERVENIENCE" ("PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH", VOLUME 45, 1984), AND PRESENTS FURTHER MATERIAL ON SUPERVENIENCE. THE ERROR IS THE CLAIM THAT "GLOBAL" SUPERVENIENCE ENTAILS "STRONG" SUPERVENIENCE. HOWEVER, IT IS ARGUED THAT THIS FAILURE OF ENTAILMENT ONLY GOES TO SHOW THE INADEQUACY OF GLOBAL SUPERVENIENCE AS AN EXPLICATION OF "DEPENDENCY" OR "DETERMINATION" RELATION, AND, IN PARTICULAR, THAT MATERIALISM FORMULATED IN TERMS OF GLOBAL SUPERVENIENCE APPEARS TOO WEAK. (IT IS POINTED OUT, AMONG (...) OTHER THINGS, THAT GLOBAL SUPERVENIENCE DOES NOT ENTAIL "WEAK" SUPERVENIENCE). A STRONGER FORM OF GLOBAL SUPERVENIENCE, BASED ON "SIMILARITY" RATHER THAN "INDISCERNIBILITY" BETWEEN WORLDS, IS FORMULATED AND BRIEFLY DISCUSSED. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to investigate the association between work-related moral stress, moral climate and moral sensitivity in mental health nursing. By means of the three scales Hospital Ethical Climate Survey, Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and Work-Related Moral Stress, 49 participants’ experiences were assessed. The results of linear regression analysis indicated that moral stress was determined to a degree by the work place’s moral climate as well as by two aspects of the mental health staff’s moral sensitivity. The (...) nurses’ experience of ‘moral burden’ or ‘moral support’ increased or decreased their experience of moral stress. Their work-related moral stress was determined by the job-associated moral climate and two aspects of moral sensitivity. Our findings showed an association between three concepts: moral sensitivity, moral climate and moral stress. Despite being a small study, the findings seem relevant for future research leading to theory development and conceptual clarity. We suggest that more attention be given to methodological issues and developing designs that allow for comparative research in other disciplines, as well as in-depth knowledge of moral agency. Copyright © 2011 by SAGE Publications. (shrink)

The aim of this Swedish study was to develop the concept of moral sensitivity in health care practice. This process began with an overview of relevant theories and perspectives on ethics with a focus on moral sensitivity and related concepts, in order to generate a theoretical framework. The second step was to construct a questionnaire based on this framework by generating a list of items from the theoretical framework. Nine items were finally selected as most appropriate and consistent with the (...) research team’s understanding of the concept of moral sensitivity. The items were worded as assumptions related to patient care. The questionnaire was distributed to two groups of health care personnel on two separate occasions and a total of 278 completed questionnaires were returned. A factor analysis identified three factors: sense of moral burden, moral strength and moral responsibility. These seem to be conceptually interrelated yet indicate that moral sensitivity may involve more dimensions than simply a cognitive capacity, particularly, feelings, sentiments, moral knowledge and skills. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to describe the synthesis of the concept of moral stress and to attempt to identify its preconditions. Qualitative data from two independent studies on professional issues in nursing were analysed from a hypothetical-deductive approach. The findings indicate that moral stress is independent of context-given specific preconditions: (1) nurses are morally sensitive to the patient’s vulnerability; (2) nurses experience external factors preventing them from doing what is best for the patient; and (3) nurses feel that (...) they have no control over the specific situation. The findings from this analysis are supported by recent research on stress in the workplace but differ in that the imperatives directing work are moral in nature. Stress researchers have found that persons who experience that they have no control over their work situation and at the same time experience high demands may be prone to cardiovascular diseases. An important question raised by this study is whether moral stress should be recognized as a health risk in nursing. Further research is required in order to generate intervention models to prevent or deal with moral stress. (shrink)

Once upon a time in evolutionary theory, everything happened for the best. Predators killed only the old or the sick. Pecking orders and other dominance hierarchies minimized wasteful conflict within the group. Male displays ensured that only the best and the fittest had mates. In the culmination of this tradition, Wynne-Edwards argued that many species have mechanisms that ensure groups do not over-exploit their resource base. The “central function” of territoriality in birds and other higher animals is “of limiting the (...) numbers of occupants per unit area of habitat”. Species with dominance hierarchies, species with lekking breeding systems, and species with communal breeding regulate their populations. These social mechanisms have population regulation as their “underlying primary function”. Wynne-Edwards argued that these mechanisms evolve through group selection. Populations without such mechanisms are apt to go extinct by eroding their own resource base. (shrink)

Joseph Henrich and Richard McElreath begin their survey of theories of cultural evolution with a striking historical example. They contrast the fate of the Bourke and Wills expedition — an attempt to explore some of the arid areas of inland Australia — with the routine survival of the local aboriginals in exactly the same area. That expedition ended in failure and death, despite the fact that it was well equipped, and despite the fact that those on the expedition were tough (...) and experienced. For survival in such areas depended on accumulated local knowledge. The locals had learned how detoxify seeds before making bread from them, and how to catch the local fish. Bourke and Wills and their companions lacked this local knowledge, and died as a result (Henrich and McElreath 2003). (shrink)

Two concepts of supervenience, "strong supervenience" and "weak supervenience," are characterized and contrasted, And their major properties established. Supervenience as commonly characterized by philosophers is shown to correspond to weak supervenience, Whereas the intended concept is often the stronger relation. Strong supervenience is applied to explicate the notion of "supervenient causation," and it is argued that macro-Causal relations can be understood as cases of supervenient causation, And that causal relations involving psychological events, Too, Can be so understood.

In this paper I consider the view that scientific change is the result of a selection process which has the same structure as that which drives natural selection. I argue that there are important differences between organic evolution and scientific growth. First, natural selection is much more constrained than scientific change; for example it is hard to populations of organisms to escape local maxima. Science progresses; it may not even make sense to say that biological evolution is progressive. Second, natural (...) selection depends for its power on the specifics of its domain, so I doubt that there is much point in seeing a selective regime in science as an instance of a more general family of selective regimes. Third, the replicator/interactor distinction fits scientific change much less well than biological evolution. But a family of selective theories of science can be identified ranging from the very ambitious to the very modest. Though the very ambitious programs of evolutionary epistemology are in trouble, there is space for one which is not a trivial redescription of what everyone already knows, but which is sensitive to the peculiarities of its domain. That selective theory explains important aspects of the community organization of science, an organization which is central to scientific progress. (shrink)

We report the results of an investigation of nurses’ and physicians’ sensitivity to ethical dimensions of clinical practice. The sample consisted of 113 physicians working in general medical settings, 665 psychiatrists, 150 nurses working in general medical settings, and 145 nurses working in psychiatry. The instrument used was the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire (MSQ), a self-reporting Likert-type questionnaire consisting of 30 assumptions related to moral sensitivity in health care practice. Each of these assumptions was categorized into a theoretical dimension of moral (...) sensitivity: relational orientation, structuring moral meaning, expressing benevolence, modifying autonomy, experiencing moral conflict, and following the rules. Significant differences in responses were found between health care professionals from general medical settings and those working in psychiatry. The former agreed to a greater extent with the assumptions in the categories ‘meaning’ and ‘autonomy’ and to a lesser degree with the categories ‘benevolence’ and ‘conflict’. Moreover, those from the psychiatric sector agreed to a greater extent to the use of coercion if necessary. Significant differences were also found for some of the MSQ categories, between physicians and nurses, and between males and females. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate a new model theoretical tree property (TP), called the antichain tree property (ATP). We develop combinatorial techniques for ATP. First, we show that ATP is always witnessed by a formula in a single free variable, and for formulas, not having ATP is closed under disjunction. Second, we show the equivalence of ATP and [Formula: see text]-ATP, and provide a criterion for theories to have not ATP (being NATP). Using these combinatorial observations, we find algebraic examples (...) of ATP and NATP, including pure groups, pure fields and valued fields. More precisely, we prove Mekler’s construction for groups, Chatzidakis’ style criterion for pseudo-algebraically closed (PAC) fields, and the AKE-style principle for valued fields preserving NATP. We give a construction of an antichain tree in the Skolem arithmetic and atomless Boolean algebras. (shrink)