Writers on jurisprudence often stress that conflict between positive laws and morality does not invalidate the positive laws. A law which requires me to compensate another for an injury caused by a dangerous object kept on my property is not invalidated by the fact that I have not been negligent and have no moral obligation to compensate the injured person. And although I have a moral obligation to keep my promises, positive laws may validly imply that I need not keep (...) promises not made for a consideration or under seal. Thus positive law may permit acts not permitted by morals and may forbid acts permitted by morals. The lesson drawn from these thoughts is that to establish a positive law as valid we need not consider the relationships it bears to the rules of morals. A valid law is simply a law created in accordance with the constitutional conventions or ‘rules of recognition’ of the society in which it is to be applied. It is the manner of its establishment, not its relationship to morals, which makes a law valid. (shrink)

The aim of the essay is to devise a logic of conditionality which escapes the paradoxes which arise when the general conditional is identified with the universalization of the material conditional. The assumption I adopt is that the logic of one contingent form differs from that of another to the extent that the two forms have different confirmations and disconfirmations. The logic of conditionals is not, But that of their confirmations and disconfirmations is, At bottom truth-Functional; and the logical relations (...) between conditionals, And between conditionals and non-Conditionals, May be traced through the truth-Functional connections between their respective confirmations and disconfirmations. The approach necessitates the re-Definition of the notions of confirmation and entailment. A peculiarity of the system which emerges is that from it can be derived, Without existential assumptions, The twenty-Four valid forms of the syllogism, The relationships of the square of opposition and the other commonly accepted inferences of traditional logic. (shrink)

This paper addresses the doubts voiced by Wigner about the physical relevance of the concept of geometrical points by exploiting some facts known to all but honored by none: Almost all real numbers are transcendental; the explicit representation of any one will require an infinite amount of physical resources. An instrument devised to measure a continuous real variable will need a continuum of internal states to achieve perfect resolution. Consequently, a laboratory instrument for measuring a continuous variable in a finite (...) time can report only a finite number of values, each of which is constrained to be a rational number. It does not matter whether the variable is classical or quantum-mechanical. Now, in von Neumann’s measurement theory (von Neumann, Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press, Princeton, [1955]), an operator A with a continuous spectrum—which has no eigenvectors—cannot be measured, but it can be approximated by operators with discrete spectra which are measurable. The measurable approximant F(A) is not canonically determined; it has to be chosen by the experimentalist. It is argued that this operator can always be chosen in such a way that Sewell’s results (Sewell in Rep. Math. Phys. 56: 271, [2005]; Sewell, Lecture given at the J.T. Lewis Memorial Conference, Dublin, [2005]) on the measurement of a hermitian operator on a finite-dimensional vector space (described in Sect. 3.2) constitute an adequate resolution of the measurement problem in this theory. From this follows our major conclusion, which is that the notion of a geometrical point is as meaningful in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics as it is in classical physics. It is necessary to be sensitive to the fact that there is a gap between theoretical and experimental physics, which reveals itself tellingly as an error inherent in the measurement of a continuous variable. (shrink)

The purpose of this brief paper is to show that the primary problem of technology, like all problems related to possibilities and actions, is the conceptualiadequacyof the intentions and values it implies, and not, as many critics have suggested, its social effects. Presupposed for this statement and evaluation is an interpretation of experience called here experiential idealism. On the basis of this position some suggestions are made about the meaning of technology and its correlative possibilities and constraints.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The immediate motive occasioning this letter was the worker E. Kopanitsyn's letter to the newspaper Izvestiia in which he eloquently recounts his difficulties with a new machine manufactured in a factory in the city of Cheliabinsk. After telling what effort it had cost him to get this machine going, Kopanitsyn in a fit of temper exclaims: "I am completely unable to understand one simple thing: How could such a machine come into being at all? The hands of many workers touched (...) it, except that these were not working hands. Can it really be true that no one, not a single person, was aroused enough to say: Just what are we doing here, brothers?". (shrink)

This article highlights the distinction between the ‘art of nursing’ and ‘fine art’. While something in the nature of nursing can be described as ‘the art of nursing’, it is not to be misunderstood as ‘fine art’ or craft. Therefore, the term ‘aesthetic’ in relation to nursing should not be linked to the aesthetic of modern art, but instead to a broader and more general meaning of the word. The paper's main focus is the aesthetic experience, which is treated in (...) a hermeneutic way and elucidated from classical sources and the philosophy of nursing and from Art. The paper argues that the pioneers used the term ‘art of nursing’ in a metaphorical way to say something more specific on the nature of nursing. The term illustrates the nurse's ability to practise at the highest possible level of excellence. (shrink)