There is a growing body of empirical evidence which shows that infants and non-human primates have the ability to represent the mental states of other agents, i.e. that they possess a Theory of Mind. We will argue that this evidence also suggests that infants and non-human primates possess the concept of truth, which, as we will explain, is good news for primitivists about truth. First, we will offer a brief overview of alethic primitivism, focusing on Jamin Asay’s conceptual version of (...) the view. Next, we will survey relevant work on Theory of Mind which indicates that children younger than two and non-human primates are able to attribute false beliefs. Then, we will bring these false-belief data to bear on Asay’s form of primitivism, arguing that the data support two of the four distinctive theses of this view and offering some remarks about the empirical evaluability of the two remaining theses. We hope that our discussion will help to bridge the gap between psychological and philosophical inquiry and that it will encourage further empirical research on the cognitive significance of the concept of truth for humans and other thinking creatures. (shrink)

The seventh edition of this pragmatic guide to determining right and wrong in the workplace is updated with new case studies and ancillary materials to combine stakeholder perspectives with a deep dive on workplace ethics issues. Using a unique stakeholder-based approach, this book takes business ethics out of the theory realm and provides practical ways to analyze any business decision. Including dozens of cases, Joseph Weiss looks beyond the impacts of ethical lapses on share price and profit to focus (...) on relationships between stakeholders, including individuals, groups, corporations, and governments. The new seventh edition includes seven new cases and ten new Point/Counterpoint exercises, which challenge students to argue both sides of a contemporary issue. It incorporates the latest research as well as updated cases dealing with recent scandals at organizations such as Boeing, Facebook, and Uber. Professors will have access to online support, including teaching notes, PowerPoint slides, and sample tests. The book is equipped with a step-by-step guide to implementing stakeholder analysis, tips to help students apply ethical principles in their personal and professional lives, and comprehensive coverage of employee workplace issues. Addressing relevant topics such as risk management, preferential hiring, and sexual harassment in conjunction with the digital divide, bribery, the environment, and more, Business Ethics, seventh edition explores ethical implications in today's increasingly interconnected global business environment. (shrink)

This research explores the impact of media engagement on the identity perceptions of the Aeta Ambala, an indigenous group in the Philippines, particularly after the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption. This catastrophic event led to significant displacement and cultural shifts for the Aeta, who were forced to adapt to urban lifestyles. The study focuses on the differences in identity perceptions between the older and younger generations, with the former holding onto pre-eruption cultural norms and the latter aligning more with urban and (...) resettlement community cultures. Employing in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, the study finds that media representations often negatively portray the Aeta Ambala, leading to discrimination and altering self-perception. Despite this, the community maintains a strong sense of ethnic identity, viewing it as an immutable aspect of their heritage. Media engagement is seen as inevitable for staying informed, particularly in emergencies, but it also influences perceptions of the outside world and reshapes cultural and ethnic identity. Younger generations, more engaged with media, tend to adopt external beauty standards and lifestyles, leading to early marriages and cultural indifference. There is also a noted mistrust towards media organizations due to exploitation concerns. In conclusion, the study highlights the complex relationship between media interaction and self identification within the Aeta Ambala community, suggesting that while media engagement alters perceptions and behaviors, the core Aeta Ambala culture remains strong and resilient. (shrink)

The ‘black box problem’ is a long-standing talking point in debates about artificial intelligence. This is a significant point of tension between ethicists, programmers, clinicians and anyone else working on developing AI for healthcare applications. However, the precise definition of these systems are often left undefined, vague, unclear or are assumed to be standardised within AI circles. This leads to situations where individuals working on AI talk over each other and has been invoked in numerous debates between opaque and explainable (...) systems. This paper proposes a coherent and clear definition for the black box problem to assist in future discussions about AI in healthcare. This is accomplished by synthesising various definitions in the literature and examining several criteria that can be extrapolated from these definitions. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

This essay conducts an analysis of the underlying factors contributing to the ideological and strategic disagreement between Emilio Aguinaldo and Andres Bonifacio during the Philippine Revolution. Employing a multi-dimensional approach, the essay scrutinizes the distinct objectives each leader had for the revolution, highlighting the complexities of their conflicting perspectives. Likewise it evaluates the substantive impact of the Aguinaldo-Bonifacio schism on what was otherwise considered a unified revolutionary movement, thereby presenting implications for the interpretation of historical revolutions.

Juan Luna was a major force of painting tradition in the Philippines particularly in the late 19th Century. Like his colorful paintings, his life was also interestingly complicated which scholars and historians were fond of studying about. His paintings are known to be packed with symbolism. In this study, I tried to interpret the painter's works and the intricacies of his life as a nationalist and as a private person. By employing semiotic-hermeneutic interpretation, an exposition of various symbols embedded in (...) his works and what they signify was made. As gleaned in the works interpreted, messages and contents were conveyed and made powerful through his visual metaphors. Apparently, Luna concealed his nationalistic ideas and his innermost feelings in his work. (shrink)

(2013). Life, the Unhistorical, the Suprahistorical: Nietzsche on History. International Journal of Philosophical Studies: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 64-91. doi: 10.1080/09672559.2012.744532.

The book combines philosophical exposition and legal analysis, and pays special attention to issues of tort law.

Nietzsche was a philosopher who prided himself, in deliberate contradistinction with previous philosophers, on his ‘historical sense’. But this leaves many questions unanswered about the precise role of the historical in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Perhaps most importantly, can the conception of genealogy in Nietzsche’s later philosophy, as a revised historical method, be taken to represent his mature philosophical methodology in general? I argue, firstly, that there is considerable continuity between Nietzsche’s conceptions of history in the early essay ‘On the uses and (...) disadvantages of history for life’ and those of his later philosophy. The former can therefore be used as a resource for understanding the latter. Through a reading of the early history essay I demonstrate that Nietzsche’s conception of the historical here is intimately bound up with the notion of the ‘unhistorical’ and that it is precisely renewed access to the unhistorical which is required in order for history to be conducive to the flourishing of humanity. I go on to contend that this holds for Nietzsche’s later writings as well, and that genealogy, being purely historical, must therefore be seen as one subsidiary part of a broader philosophy in which the unhistorical will play, literally, a vital role. (shrink)

This article considers two different ways of formulating a desire-satisfaction theory of prudential value. The first version of the theory (the object view) assigns basic prudential value to the state of affairs that is the object of a person’s desire. The second version (the combo view) assigns basic prudential value to the compound state of affairs in which (a) a person desires some state of affairs and (b) this state of affairs obtains. My aims in this article are twofold. First, (...) I aim to highlight that these are not mere notational variants, but in fact have quite different implications, so that this distinction is not one that the theorist of prudential value should ignore. More positively, I argue that the object view is better able to capture what is distinctive and appealing about subjective theories of prudential value, on any plausible account of what the central subjectivist insight is. (shrink)

[1] Biographie, Philosophie, Praxis -- [2] Het spel van het naamloze / naar een concept van Joseph Kosuth.

This is the first translation into English of an important early work of the German idealist philosopher F.W.J. Schelling. Philosophy and Religion (1804) is considered a precursor to his major work on freedom, his Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom (1809). In Philosophy and Religion, Schelling raises the question of how philosophy can come to terms with the failure of approaching the highest principle of being, the Absolute (or God), rationally. He argues that the only possibility of recognizing (...) the Absolute lies in intellectual intuition, which goes beyond presentiment or religious intuition. For Schelling, it is the task of philosophy to lead the soul towards the intuition of the Infinite: "All philosophy begins . . . with an animated idea of the Absolute." In recent years, Schelling's philosophical ideas have been adopted by contemporary thinkers such as the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalytic theorist Slavoj Žižek and the French theorist of "Non- Philosophy," François Laruelle. (shrink)

Proceedings of a conference held in Apr. 2008 in Washington, D.C.

Back to the Rough Ground is a philosophical investigation of practical knowledge, with major import for professional practice and the ethical life in modern society. Its purpose is to clarify the kind of knowledge that informs good practice in a range of disciplines such as education, psychotherapy, medicine, management, and law. Through reflection on key modern thinkers who have revived cardinal insights of Aristotle, and a sustained engagement with the Philosopher himself, it presents a radical challenge to the scientistic assumptions (...) that have dominated how these professional domains have been conceived, practiced, and institutionalized. (shrink)

Voltaire (1694-1778), novelist, dramatist, poet, philosopher, historian, and satirist, was one of the most renowned figures of the Age of Enlightenment. In this collection of anti-clerical works from the last twenty-five years of Voltaire's life, he roundly attacks the philosophical optimism of the deists, the so-called inspiration of the Bible, the papacy, and vulgar superstition. These great works reveal Voltaire not only as a polemicist but also as a profound humanitarian. Selections include "Poem on the Lisbon Disaster," "We Must Take (...) Sides," "The Questions of Zapate," "The Sermon of the Fifty," homilies on superstition and the interpretation of the Old and New Testaments, and his famous "Treatise on Toleration.". (shrink)

This is a new edition of Joseph Fletcher's 1966 work that ignited a firestorm of controversy at the time of its publication.

The thesis of the present volume is critical and dual. (1) Present day philosophy of man and sciences of man suffer from the Greek mis taken polarization of everything human into nature and convention which is (allegedly) good and evil, which is (allegedly) truth and fal sity, which is (allegedly) rationality and irrationality, to wit, the polar ization of all fields of inquiry, the natural and social sciences, as well as ethics and all technology, whether natural or social, into the (...) totally positive and the totally negative. (2) Almost all philosophy and sci ences of man share the erroneous work ethic which is the myth of man's evil nature - the myth of the beast in man, the doctrine of original sin. To mediate or to compromise between the first view of human nature as good with the second view of it as evil, sociologists have devised a modified utilitarianism with deferred gratification so called, and the theory of the evil of artificial competition (capitalist and socialist alike) and of keeping up with the Joneses. Now, the mediation is not necessary. For, the polarization makes for abstract errors which are simplistic views of rationality, such as reductionism and positivism of all sorts, as well as for concrete errors, such as the disposition to condemn repeatedly those human weaknesses which are inevitable, namely man's inability to be perfectly rational, avoid all error, etc. , thus setting man against himself as all too wicked. (shrink)

There is a need for empirically based research on social and ethical challenges related to informed consent processes, particularly in studies focusing on adolescent sexual and reproductive health. In a pilot study of a school-based pregnancy prevention intervention in rural Zambia, the majority of the guardians who were asked to consent to their daughters’ participation, refused. In this paper we explore the reasons behind the low participation in the pilot with particular attention to challenges related to the community engagement and (...) informed consent process. The pilot was implemented in two schools and examined the acceptability of a package of interventions including economic support to families to keep their girls in school, pocket money for girls, youth club meetings on reproductive health, and community meetings to sensitize the community. Focus group discussions were conducted with girls who participated in the pilot, boys in their class and with parents. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers, peer educators and community health workers involved in the coordination of the intervention as well as with religious and traditional leaders. Data were analyzed through thematic analysis. The findings indicate that inadequate use of recognized community communication channels during the community engagement process and dissemination of information about the pilot resulted in limited understanding of the pilot concept by the community. This surfaced through uncertainty and fear that the intervention may result in loss of control over daughters, worries about why money was provided unconditionally to girls, and suspicion of links to satanism. The sense of insecurity appeared to be exacerbated by low literacy levels, poverty, fear of loss of bride wealth, perceived disregard for local perceptions of social status, and scanty trust in the actors implementing the pilot. Inadequate use of locally appropriate channels in the dissemination of information created room for interpretation and facilitated development of mistrust, undermining the conditions for community engagement and actual informed consent. A key lesson learnt is the importance of taking seriously the complexity of local values and structures that may impact people’s capability to consent or not consent to a study in an informed manner. (shrink)

Joseph Agassi is a critic, a gadfly, a debunker and deflater; he is also a constructor, a speculator and an imaginative scholaro In the history and philosophy of science, he has been Peck's bad boy, delighting in sharp and pungent criticism, relishing directness and simplicity, and enjoying it all enormously. As one of that small group of Popper's students (ineluding Bartley, Feyerabend and Lakatos) who took Popper seriously enough to criticize him, Agassi remained his own man, holding Popper's work (...) itself to the criteria of critical refutation. Agassi's range is wide and his publications proliik. He has published serious studies in the historiography of science, applied sociology (on Hong Kong with LC. Jarvie), foundations of anthropology, interpretive scientific biography (Faraday), Judaic studies, philosophy of technology (which Agassi pioneered, particulady in distinguishing it from the philosophy of science), as weIl as the many works on the Iogic, methodoI­ ogy, and history of science. Even as we go to press, Agassi's works are appearing; we append an imperfect and selected bibliography. For Agassi, the test of relevance is whether something is interesting. (shrink)

Most causal discovery algorithms in the literature exploit an assumption usually referred to as the Causal Faithfulness or Stability Condition. In this paper, we highlight two components of the condition used in constraint-based algorithms, which we call “Adjacency-Faithfulness” and “Orientation- Faithfulness.” We point out that assuming Adjacency-Faithfulness is true, it is possible to test the validity of Orientation- Faithfulness. Motivated by this observation, we explore the consequence of making only the Adjacency-Faithfulness assumption. We show that the familiar PC algorithm has (...) to be modified to be correct under the weaker, Adjacency-Faithfulness assumption. The modified algorithm, called Conservative PC (CPC), checks whether Orientation- Faithfulness holds in the orientation phase, and if not, avoids drawing certain causal conclusions the PC algorithm would draw. Howtion: ever, if the stronger, standard causal Faith-. (shrink)

This essay takes issue with Alasdair MacIntyre's denial that teaching is a practice. It does so less by appeal to MacIntyre's concept of practice than by criticism of his conception of teaching. It argues that this conception, as reconstructed from adversions to teaching in a range of his writings, does less than justice to what good teachers accomplish; and that, if this inadequacy is rectified—as much else in his writings suggests that it ought to be—there are clearer grounds for acknowledging (...) teaching as a practice. (shrink)

A good therapeutic relationship in mental health services is a predictor of positive clinical outcomes for people who seek help for distressing experiences, such as voice hearing and paranoia. One factor that may affect the quality of the therapeutic relationship and raises further ethical issues is the impact of the clinical encounter on users’ sense of self, and in particular on their sense of agency. In the paper, we discuss some of the reasons why the sense of epistemic agency may (...) be especially fragile in young people with unusual experiences and beliefs. We argue that it is important to identify and avoid behaviours that can undermine young people’s contributions as epistemic agents in the clinical encounter. (shrink)

I propose to analyze the concept of basing beliefs on reasons. The concept is an important one in understanamg the so-called "inferential" or "indirect" knowledge. After briefly stating the causal analyses of this concept given by D.M. Armstrong and Marshall Swain I will present two cases which show these analyses to be too strong and too weak. Finally, I will propose an analysis which avoids these twin difficulties.