An inseparable part of the history of the philosophical thought in Slovakia is also a short term existence of the year-book Philosophica slovaca. A scientific periodical published by the Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, appeared for the first time in 1946, as the second Slovak philosophical periodical in a short period between two totalitarian regimes. Characteristic for this short intermediate period was the comeback and development of the principle of plurality and liberalism, making the existence of various (...) streams and tendencies od theoretical activity possible. The history of Philosophica slovaca gives us an example how a violent enforcing of totalitarianism can inhibit the creative thought in humanities and especially in philosophy. (shrink)

The paper examines the origins and the development of the first philosophical journal – Filosofický sborník – established and published by the Philosophical department of the national cultural institution Matica slovenská. The specific character of the journal was determined also by the fact that its publishing house was the first philosophical non-university institution in Slovakia . The attention is paid mainly to the professional and ideological ambitions of the periodical, which have changed dramatically several times during the time of its (...) existence. The reasons of these changes were of external as well as of internal character. (shrink)

The author analyses the development of the views of A. Sirácky from the second half of the 1960s on the role of philosophy and its relationship to the newly established sociology. It was a period, when the most part of the humanities felt themselves free and independent. During the normalisation period this process was violently interrupted. The author's point is, that A. Sirácky as a representative of Slovak intellectual elite also took part in this process, enforced from outside. In spite (...) of certain criticism against Marxist dogmatism he himself in his conception pursued consequently a dogma, according to which both sociology and philosophy are ideological disciplines. (shrink)

ABSTRACT One of the most ambitious and sophisticated recent approaches to provide a theory of global health justice is Sridhar Venkatapuram's recent work. In this commentary, we first outline the core idea of Venkatapuram's approach to global health justice. We then argue that one of the most important elements of the account, Venkatapuram's basis of global health duties, is either too weak or assumed implicitly without a robust justification. The more explicit grounding of the duty to protect and promote health (...) capabilities is based on Martha Nussbaum's version of the capability approach. We argue that this foundation gives rise to humanitarian duties rather than duties of justice proper. Venkatapuram's second argument from the social determinants of health thesis is instead a stronger candidate for grounding duties of justice. However, as a justificatory argument, it is only alluded to and has not yet been spelled out sufficiently. We offer plausible justificatory steps to fill this gap and draw some implications for global health action. We believe this both strengthens Venkatapuram's approach and serves to broaden the basis for future action in the area of global health. (shrink)

Health-worker migration, commonly called "medical brain drain", refers to the mass migration of trained and skilled health professionals from low-income to high-income countries. This is currently leaving a significant number of poor countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, with critical staff shortages in the healthcare sector. A broad consensus exists that, where medical brain drain exacerbates such shortages, it is unethical, and this review presents the main arguments underpinning this view. Notwithstanding the general agreement, which policies are justifiable on ethical grounds (...) to tackle brain drain and how best to go about implementing them remains controversial. The review offers a discussion of the specific ethical issues that have to be taken into account when deciding which policy measures to prioritise and suggests a strategy of policy implementation to address medical brain drain as a matter of urgency. (shrink)

In this article, we defend a normative theory of prenatal equality of opportunity, based on a critical revision of Rawls's principle of fair equality of opportunity . We argue that if natural endowments are defined as biological properties possessed at birth and the distribution of natural endowments is seen as beyond the scope of justice, Rawls's FEO allows for inequalities that undermine the social conditions of a property-owning democracy. We show this by considering the foetal programming of disease and the (...) possibility of germ-line modifications. If children of lower socioeconomic background are more likely to develop in a poor foetal environment and germ-line enhancements are available only to the rich, initial inequalities between the rich and the poor would grow, and yet FEO would be satisfied. In order to avoid the problem, we propose a revised FEO principle omitting any reference to the comparison of natural endowments. Our revised FEO requires that institutions mitigate social class effect from reproduction and gestation to the greatest extent compatible with parental freedoms and the value of the family. (shrink)

An increasing number of learning goals refer to the acquisition of cognitive skills that can be described as ‘resource-based,’ as they require the availability, coordination, and integration of multiple underlying resources such as skills and knowledge facets. However, research on the support of cognitive skills rarely takes this resource-based nature explicitly into account. This is mirrored in prior research on mathematical argumentation and proof skills: Although repeatedly highlighted as resource-based, for example relying on mathematical topic knowledge, methodological knowledge, mathematical strategic (...) knowledge, and problem-solving skills, little evidence exists on how to support mathematical argumentation and proof skills based on its resources. To address this gap, a quasi-experimental intervention study with undergraduate mathematics students examined the effectiveness of different approaches to support both mathematical argumentation and proof skills and four of its resources. Based on the part-/whole-task debate from instructional design, two approaches were implemented during students’ work on proof construction tasks: (i) asequential approachfocusing and supporting each resource of mathematical argumentation and proof skills sequentially after each other and (ii) aconcurrent approachfocusing and supporting multiple resources concurrently. Empirical analyses show pronounced effects of both approaches regarding the resources underlying mathematical argumentation and proof skills. However, the effects of both approaches are mostly comparable, and only mathematical strategic knowledge benefits significantly more from the concurrent approach. Regarding mathematical argumentation and proof skills, short-term effects of both approaches are at best mixed and show differing effects based on prior attainment, possibly indicating an expertise reversal effect of the relatively short intervention. Data suggests that students with low prior attainment benefited most from the intervention, specifically from the concurrent approach. A supplementary qualitative analysis showcases how supporting multiple resources concurrently alongside mathematical argumentation and proof skills can lead to a synergistic integration of these during proof construction and can be beneficial yet demanding for students. Although results require further empirical underpinning, both approaches appear promising to support the resources underlying mathematical argumentation and proof skills and likely also show positive long-term effects on mathematical argumentation and proof skills, especially for initially weaker students. (shrink)

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. David Miller’s political philosophy of immigration employs two complementary argumentative strategies to challenge open border theories. The first strategy is to defeat the principled case for open borders, such as the global equality of opportunity argument for more lax immigration control. The second strategy is to establish the democratic community’s prima facie right to determine the shape of its future, including membership and the right to exclude. First, I argue (...) that Miller’s conception of global equality of opportunity is overly narrow and that his objections to the principle, to the metric and to what counts as feasible political action misfire against other, more plausible, accounts. Second, I argue that his democratic interpretation of collective self-determination does not solve the pressing question concerning the morally justified scope and content of self-determination and the moral limits of the right to exclude. I conclude by questioning Miller’s general strategy: whether theories of immigration should be engaged in an exercise of shifting the burden of proof between open and closed borders. By contrast, I argue that a more desirable task for the political philosophy of immigration is to find ways in which the joint requirement of global equality of opportunity and collective self-determination can be coherently upheld. (shrink)

Michael Blake holds that liberal states are precluded from introducing compulsory medical service to improve access to health care under conditions of critical health worker shortage. "Emergency circumstances" are the only exception when the suspension of liberty may be justified. I argue that there are three problems with Blake's emergency justification of compulsory service. First, his concept of emergency is vague. Second, his account does not really rely on emergency as much as liberty. Third, his conception of permissible restrictions of (...) liberty is too narrow. I argue that liberties may be limited to some degree, temporarily, for the sake of attaining the capacities necessary for the exercise of liberties and for safeguarding the social conditions of the right to health. I conclude that in poor societies, temporarily delaying emigration through a highly qualified compulsory medical service can sometimes be justified. (shrink)

How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" -- it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book A Secular Age (2007) provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present -- a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book is a (...) compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers. Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are -- whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on. (shrink)

The concept of voluntariness permeates the ethics and politics of migration and is commonly used to distinguish refugees from migrants. Yet, neither the precise nature and conditions of voluntariness nor its ethical significance for migrant rights and state obligations has received enough attention. The articles in this collection move the debate forward by demonstrating the complex ethical judgments involved in delineating voluntary from forced migration and in drawing out its political and institutional implications. In addition to highlighting the interplay between (...) the voluntary and nonvoluntary elements of migration over time and across different sites of the migration journey, they provide a nuanced account of the various conditions of voluntariness and they challenge common ideas about its normative political consequences. (shrink)

The immigration debate in political theory has produced a series of accounts that justify the state’s right to exclude potential immigrants, where the right of self-determination figures prominently. We challenge two prominent accounts of the self-determination-based right to exclude and defend a circumscribed right to exclude and a corollary duty to admit immigrants, based on our ‘people relationship goods’ account of self-determination. Our conception reconciles the moral claims of global opportunity migrants with the well-being and non-alienation interests of the locals. (...) It therefore provides a principled answer to the philosophical question underlying pressing political conflicts today, namely what is the permissible scope of exclusion by self-determining political communities, in light of weighty global moral demands of inclusion. (shrink)

Inequality causes a variety of social ills, which give egalitarians reasons for concerns of justice. In particular, inequality is deemed to undermine people’s fundamental moral capacity of self-respect. In this paper, we explore the complex relationship between inequality and self-respect from a philosophical and an empirical angle, arguing that a theory of justice should take both into account. To this purpose, we first clarify the normative objection to inequality from the alleged erosion of self-respect. Then, we elaborate on empirical findings (...) showing the crucial role that ‘relative deprivation’ plays in the causal mechanism that connects inequalities to the erosion of self-respect. We conclude that this role is best understood in philosophical terms as a form of deprivation that affects thesignificance that people attach to the value of the choices they make. (shrink)

Born in Ireland in 1842, Edith O’Gorman immigrated to America where she joined the Sisters of Charity in 1862. In January 1868, O’Gorman left or ‘escaped’ from this convent, and in 1871 she wrote Trials and Persecu tions of Miss Edith O’Gorman which described the cruelty she endured. O’Gorman began to speak against the alleged horrors of convent life, and eventually travelled to England in 1881. This article deals with O’Gorman’s lectures throughout England which attacked sisterhoods. Some individuals, fearing that (...) convents would harm the Protestant character of the Anglican Church, applauded her condemnation of con vents, while others protested and threatened her with violence. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 503-514, June 2022.

One of the most ambitious and sophisticated recent approaches to provide a theory of global health justice is Sridhar Venkatapuram's recent work. In this commentary, we first outline the core idea of Venkatapuram's approach to global health justice. We then argue that one of the most important elements of the account, Venkatapuram's basis of global health duties, is either too weak or assumed implicitly without a robust justification. The more explicit grounding of the duty to protect and promote health capabilities (...) is based on Martha Nussbaum's version of the capability approach. We argue that this foundation gives rise to humanitarian duties rather than duties of justice proper. Venkatapuram's second argument from the social determinants of health thesis is instead a stronger candidate for grounding duties of justice. However, as a justificatory argument, it is only alluded to and has not yet been spelled out sufficiently. We offer plausible justificatory steps to fill this gap and draw some implications for global health action. We believe this both strengthens Venkatapuram's approach and serves to broaden the basis for future action in the area of global health. (shrink)

In our article, we argue, following Nelson Goodman and Arthur Danto, that in contrast to the essentialist conception of authenticity, it is more fertile to consider authentic patterns not as the inner core of the person, but as a case of metaphorical exemplification. According to our approach, if we accept that authentic style is a metaphorical exemplification, then, based on Richard Rorty’s concepts of language and metaphor, style can be seen as an exaptation or reuse of symbols previously adapted through (...) cultural selection to other specific functions. To support this approach, we proceed as follows. First, using Goodman’s and Danto’s model, we argue that authentic style can best be grasped through metaphorical exemplification. We then show that the metaphorical use of linguistic, pictorial, and other symbols is the result of exaptation. According to our results, the authentic style is the exaptation of symbols previously adapted to culturally selected functions. We then separate authenticity from creativity through the concepts of style and manner—borrowed from Danto—and we point out that whether a particular symbol is authentic or not is not affected by whether creative or mechanical mental processes are responsible for its creation. Finally, we examine the relationship between authenticity and autonomy, and we show that in an environment that promotes autonomous decisions and authentic style, agents that originally generated inauthentic symbols may be able to produce authentic ones. (shrink)

Practical deliberation often involves conditional judgements about what will (likely) happen if certain alternatives are pursued. It is widely assumed that the conditionals useful in deliberation are counterfactual or subjunctive conditionals. Against this, I argue that the conditionals of deliberation are indicatives. Key to the argument is an account of the relation between 'straightforward' future-directed conditionals like ' If the house is not painted, it will soon look quite shabby' and * "w e r e ' ' e d F (...) D C s like ' If the house were not to be painted, it would soon look quite shabby': an account on which both of these types of FDCs are grouped with the indicatives for semantic treatment and on which, while conditionals of both types are properly used in means/ends deliberations, those of the ' were'ed-up variety are especially well suited for that purpose. (shrink)

This article explores the enduring mysteries of consciousness and the afterlife, two enigmatic topics that have fascinated humanity for ages. Despite extensive scientific efforts, the existence of an afterlife remains unproven, and understanding consciousness remains a significant challenge. The research introduces innovative hypotheses through simple thought experiments with empirical evidence and robust theoretical foundations. It delves into the complexities of consciousness, its relationship with the brain, and the need for interdisciplinary approaches encompassing physics, psychology, and philosophy. Boldly contemplating the probability (...) of a continuous consciousness after death, the study argues that existing evidence strongly supports this idea. Beyond theoretical implications, it envisions practical outcomes, suggesting that insights into these mysteries could enhance human well-being and contribute to a more harmonious world. In summary, this article embarks on a quest to shed light on age-old questions about consciousness and the afterlife. Through fresh methodologies, it aims to provide new perspectives that could reshape our understanding of existence and inspire intellectuals to positive individual and societal advancements. -/- . (shrink)

are ambiguous. In the mouth of someone who cannot remember whether it was Michael, or rather someone else, who was top scorer, can express the epistemic possibility that Michael led the league in scoring. But from someone who knows that Michael did not even play last season, but is wondering what would have happened if he had, means something quite different. Now where it has this quite different meaning, may still turn out to be the expression of some epistemic possibility. (...) Perhaps where does not express the epistemic possibility of ‘Michael led the league in scoring’, it expresses the epistemic possibility of ‘Michael would have led the league in scoring’. Analysis of this ‘would have’ statement, together with an exploration of the suspicion that the ‘might have’ statement is ambiguous between these two epistemic possibilities, will have to await another occasion. The important point for present purposes is that is ambiguous between an expression of the epistemic possibility of ‘Michael led the league in scoring’ and some quite different reading. (shrink)

What are the criteria for reasonable clinical judgements? The reasonableness of macro-level decision-making has been much discussed, but little attention has been paid to the reasonableness of applying guidelines generated at a macro-level to individual cases. This paper considers a framework for reasonable clinical decision-making that will capture cases where relevant guidelines cannot reasonably be followed. There are three main sections. (1) Individual claims on healthcare from the point of view of concerns about equity are analysed. (2) The demands of (...) responsibility and equity on professional clinical performance are discussed, and how the combination of these demands emerges into seven requirements that constitute the framework is explored. Since this framework is developed to assist in reasonable clinical decision-making, practical implications of all these requirements are also suggested. (3) Challenges concerning the framework are discussed. First, a crucial presumption that the framework relies upon is considered—namely, clinicians’ willingness to justify their decisions as requested. Then how public deliberation may influence clinical decision-making is discussed. Next is a consideration of how clinicians’ need to have confidence in their own judgements in order to perform in a manner worthy of trust would be compatible with adherence to the framework supported by public deliberation. It is concluded that fair distribution in the interplay between macro- and micro-level considerations can be secured by legitimising procedures on each level, by ensuring well-organised and continuing public debate and by basing individual clinical judgements upon well-justified and principled normative bases. (shrink)

It is only when mixing two or more pure substances along a reversible path that the entropy of the mixing can be made physically manifest. It is not, in this case, a mere mathematical artifact. This mixing requires a process of successive stages. In any finite number of stages, the external manifestation of the entropy change, as a definite and measurable quantity of heat, isa fully continuous function of the relevant variables. It is only at an infinite and unattainable limit (...) thata non-uniform convergence occurs. And this occurs when considered in terms of the number of stages together with a distinguishability parameter appropriate to the particular device which is used to achieve reversibility. These considerations, which are of technological interest to chemical engineers, resolve a paradox derived in chemical theory called Gibbs'' Paradox. (shrink)