We analyse the connection between the computability and continuity of functions in the case of homomorphisms between topological algebraic structures. Inspired by the Pour-El and Richards equivalence theorem between computability and boundedness for closed linear operators on Banach spaces, we study the rather general situation of partial homomorphisms between metric partial universal algebras. First, we develop a set of basic notions and results that reveal some of the delicate algebraic, topological and effective properties of partial algebras. Our main computability concepts (...) are based on numerations and include those of effective metric partial algebras and effective partial homomorphisms. We prove a general equivalence theorem that includes a version of the Pour-El and Richards Theorem, and has other applications. Finally, the Pour-El and Richards axioms for computable sequence structures on Banach spaces are generalised to computable partial sequence structures on metric algebras, and we prove their equivalence with our computability model based on numerations. (shrink)

We analyse the connection between the computability and continuity of functions in the case of homomorphisms between topological algebraic structures. Inspired by the Pour-El and Richards equivalence theorem between computability and boundedness for closed linear operators on Banach spaces, we study the rather general situation of partial homomorphisms between metric partial universal algebras. First, we develop a set of basic notions and results that reveal some of the delicate algebraic, topological and effective properties of partial algebras. Our main computability concepts (...) are based on numerations and include those of effective metric partial algebras and effective partial homomorphisms. We prove a general equivalence theorem that includes a version of the Pour-El and Richards Theorem, and has other applications. Finally, the Pour-El and Richards axioms for computable sequence structures on Banach spaces are generalised to computable partial sequence structures on metric algebras, and we prove their equivalence with our computability model based on numerations. (shrink)

An algebra is effective if its operations are computable under some numbering. When are two numberings of an effective partial algebra equivalent? For example, the computable real numbers form an effective field and two effective numberings of the field of computable reals are equivalent if the limit operator is assumed to be computable in the numberings . To answer the question for effective algebras in general, we give a general method based on an algebraic analysis of approximations by elements of (...) a finitely generated subalgebra. Commonly, the computable elements of a topological partial algebra are derived from such a finitely generated algebra and form a countable effective partial algebra. We apply the general results about partial algebras to the recursive reals, ultrametric algebras constructed by inverse limits, and to metric algebras in general. © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim. (shrink)

The period in the foundations of mathematics that started in 1879 with the publication of Frege's Begriffsschrift and ended in 1931 with Gödel's Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme I can reasonably be called the classical period. It saw the development of three major foundational programmes: the logicism of Frege, Russell and Whitehead, the intuitionism of Brouwer, and Hilbert's formalist and proof-theoretic programme. In this period, there were also lively exchanges between the various schools culminating in (...) the famous Hilbert-Brouwer controversy in the 1920s. -/- The purpose of this anthology is to review the programmes in the foundations of mathematics from the classical period and to assess their possible relevance for contemporary philosophy of mathematics. What can we say, in retrospect, about the various foundational programmes of the classical period and the disputes that took place between them? To what extent do the classical programmes of logicism, intuitionism and formalism represent options that are still alive today? These questions are addressed in this volume by leading mathematical logicians and philosophers of mathematics. (shrink)

During the past decades, research collaboration between researchers from different disciplines has become more frequent. However, there is a need to look into the generic modalities and challenges. The article explores a series of potential obstructions to cross-disciplinary collaboration of methodological and epistemological nature. Furthermore, a number of contextual, inhibiting factors are outlined. As means of overcoming the obstacles, the importance of mutual knowledge, allocation of adequate time and conducive research management is emphasised. New teams may benefit from tutoring by (...) facilitators, who can help to make problem areas explicit and negotiate solutions. Owing to the training background of the author, most of the examples are drawn from the interface between biomedicine/natural science and applied medical anthropology. However, the issues raised basically apply to all sorts of cross-disciplinary research collaboration in various combinations. (shrink)

This ambitious book presents a new interpretation of Chinese thought guided both by a philosopher's sense of mystery and by a sound philosophical theory of meaning. That dual goal, Hansen argues, requires a unified translation theory. It must provide a single coherent account of the issues that motivated both the recently untangled Chinese linguistic analysis and the familiar moral-political disputes. Hansen's unified approach uncovers a philosophical sophistication in Daoism that traditional accounts have overlooked. The Daoist theory treats the (...) imperious intuitionism that alienates critical thinkers as a feature of Confucianism alone. Freed from the view that Confucianism is the core of Chinese thought and from myopic Confucian interpretations, Chinese thinkers emerge as unmistakably philosophical. (shrink)

Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (TS) is a childhood neuropsychiatric disorder characterised by the presence of motor and vocal tics. Patients with malignant TS experience severe disease sequelae; risking morbidity and mortality due to tics, self-harm, psychiatric comorbidities and suicide. By definition, those cases termed ‘malignant’ are refractory to all conventional psychiatric and pharmacological regimens. In these instances, deep brain stimulation (DBS) may be efficacious. Current 2015 guidelines recommend a 6-month period absent of suicidal ideation before DBS is offered to (...) patients with TS. We therefore wondered whether it may be ethically justifiable to offer DBS to a minor with malignant TS. We begin with a discussion of non-maleficence and beneficence. New evidence suggests that suicide risk in young patients with TS has been underestimated. In turn, DBS may represent an invaluable opportunity for children with malignant TS to secure future safety, independence and fulfilment. Postponing treatment is associated with additional risks. Ultimately, we assert this unique risk-benefit calculus justifies offering DBS to paediatric patients with malignant TS. A multidisciplinary team of clinicians must determine whether DBS is in the best interest of their individual patients. We conclude with a suggestion for future TS-DBS guidelines regarding suicidal ideation. The importance of informed consent and assent is underscored. (shrink)

In recent decades there has been increasing demand for and considerable efforts to conduct cross-disciplinary research. However, assessment of research quality in such endeavours still is often based on mono-disciplinary criteria and not seldom carried out by reviewers without strong cross-disciplinary experience. The authors suggest a two-pronged approach to cross-disciplinary research evaluation. One part should comprise an individual review of all the disciplines involved based on their mono-disciplinary sets of criteria. The other part should be a separate evaluation of the (...) cross-disciplinary aspects based on the review of “problem formulation”, “integration and scope of the disciplines”, “parts and the whole”, “practical managerial aspects” and “the applied aspects”. The pros and cons of implementing this approach in a stepwise manner or simultaneously is discussed. It is suggested that funding agencies develop more fair sets of review procedures for cross-disciplinary research and show willingness to allocate extra funds and time to such forms of research that sometimes are regarded as relatively more “risky” than conventional mono-disciplinary types. (shrink)

Les auteurs du présent ouvrage nous proposent une manière originale de se réapproprier l'histoire de la philosophie. Par le dialogue, les philosophes de la tradition semblent revivre pour faire le point sur leur cheminement. Socrate, Kant, Marx, Arendt et bien d'autres répondent aux questions de Laure Becdelièvre, Laurence Hansen-Löve et Fabien Lamouche. Au fil de ces conversations imaginaires, nous découvrons comment l'esprit de résistance a pu s'incarner à travers les figures de penseurs aussi profonds que subtils et aussi novateurs (...) qu'insoumis."--Résumé de l'éditeur. (shrink)

A Reply P. Flensted-Jensen/M. H. Hansen: Pseudo-Skylax' Use of the Term Polis M. H. Hansen: City-Ethnics as Evidence for Polis Identity .

Christianity finds itself in a new situation, one that resembles its first‐century experience in that it will be shaped by a new dominant world culture. This culture is marked by three factors‐the economy, the multireligious situation, and science. The author's discussion deals with the issues that arise in this engagement with culture under three rubrics: dialogue between science and religion, globalization of the religious encounter, and interreligious dialogue in a globalized world. The major assertions are: (1) Science and religions must (...) avoid restrictive and expansionist relationships and work for reciprocal interaction. (2) Globalization is an unavoidable, but ambiguous, historical development; religions should reject responses of “ethnification” and “primitivism” and rather engage in strategies that encourage both productive encounter and critical distance. (3) Interreligious dialogue includes dialogues of life, of intellectual exchange, of religious experience, of common action, and of confrontation; this dialogue will seek to embrace truth (which involves science) and wisdom (which includes the various religious traditions) in the reciprocal interaction that is marked by love. (shrink)

Although written more than 2,500 years ago and within a radically different culture, the Tao Te Ching's concepts and teachings have become more influential in the West than ever before. Laozi, the Chinese sage and founder of Taoism, sets out a path (tao) that allows us to tune in to the nature of the universe. His axioms are intended to help us achieve transcendence and a life of integrity and balance: they explore the importance of male and female complementary qualities (...) while praising self-knowledge and criticizing rational understanding. Among his insights are the beliefs that flexibility and suppleness are superior to rigidity and strength, and that self-absorption and self-importance are vain and destructive. This illustrated edition of a classic work is an essential addition to any home library of the world's classic philosophical texts. (shrink)

In an introduction to tbe tbeology and moral pbilosopby of tbe Danisb tbinker, K. E. Legstrup, tbe starting point ist taken in bis on pbenomenological basis developed pbilosopby of creation. Tbe vibrant discussion in Denmark in tbe fifties between K. E. Legstrup an N. H. See conceming a specific cbristian etbics is evaluated and it is sbown bow Legstcups etbical tbinking developed in two directions. On tbe one band be expands bis pbilosopby of creation into metapbysical reflections in order to (...) substantiate bis solution to tbe problern of tbe foundations of etbics. On tbe otber band be anticipates a development towards applied etbics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.1 (2003) 57-62 [Access article in PDF] Listening to People Or Listening to Prozac?Another Consideration of Causal Classifications Jennifer Hansen Keywords causal classification, descriptivism, melancholia, neurasthenia, depression, cultural relativism. The shape and detail of depression have gone through a thousand cartwheels, and the treatment of depression has alternated between the ridiculous and the sublime, but the excessive sleeping, inadequate eating, suicidiality, withdrawal from social (...) interaction, and relentless despair are all as old as the hill tribes, if not as old as the hills. In the years since man achieved the capacity for self-reference, shame has come and gone; treatments for bodily complaints have alternated and crossed with treatments for spiritual ones; pleas to external gods have echoed pleas to internal demons. To understand the history of depression is to understand the invention of human being as we now know and are him. Our Prozac-popping, cognitively focused, semi-alienated postmodernity is only a stage in the ongoing understanding and control of mood and character. (Solomon 2001, 286) ALTHOUGH ANDREW SOLOMON clearly believes that "the shape and detail of depression have gone through a thousand cartwheels," Jennifer Radden gives us pause before assuming that depression is just another name for Dame Melancholy. Solomon's claim depends on a deeper metaphysical claim about the nature of depression and its causes. The current method of psychiatric nosology, descriptivism, does not necessarily support equating melancholia and depression. Furthermore, it appears that adopting descriptivism as the sole method of classifying mental disorders commits us to cultural relativist psychiatry. Below I reconsider whether we want to rule out causal classifications and suggest that embracing both descriptivism and causal classifications offer us greater possibilities in understanding human illness and culture.Although the occasion for Jennifer Radden's essay is to investigate whether or not melancholia and depression refer to the same thing, her essay detours into a consideration of extra-descriptivist models of psychiatric illness versus the descriptivism of current psychiatric nosology. This detour turns out to be warranted; her purely academic question yields to a timelier question concerning the proper methodology for classifying mental disorders. Whereas debates about psychiatric nosology are perennial, the recent success of the new generation of antidepressants [End Page 57] is reviving biological psychiatry and its search for the neurochemical origins of depression. Hence, embedded in Radden's question concerning whether or not melancholia is the same thing as clinical depression, is another important question concerning the causes of mental illness, particularly depression.Currently, with its descriptivist approach, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) does not classify mental illness, such as clinical depression, based on underlying causes. The cluster of symptoms and behavioral signs that lead a clinician to diagnose one as depressed that are contained in either the DSM or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) may be too fuzzy or elusive to give any clear distinction between major depression, mild depression, and the blues. For example, one group of epidemiologists points out that [t]he DSM-III, DSM-III-R, and DSM-IV acknowledge that depression, like many mental disorders, has no currently obvious natural classes... If natural classes of depression exist, then their nosology awaits the discovery of distinct and reliable genetic, biological, clinical, or other predictors of risk, severity, or clinical course. Clinicians have a tradition of separating depressions into subtypes; however, this subtyping has not yet led to clear-cut delineations of syndromes in populations. (Kaelber 1995, 4) The evidence is still insufficient to establish the biological or psychological origins of depression. Although many theories exist that explain why people become depressed, scientifically we are not yet in a position to determine which is the right theory. From a pragmatic perspective, however, whether or not we know what causes depression, we can nonetheless attempt to alleviate suffering from depression. And it is with this goal in mind that the DSM-IV and ICD-10 classify mental disorders.Now, given that our current methodology for psychiatric nosology does not establish causes, it is also insufficient for determining what... (shrink)

Combining all four distinct volumes in the series, this compilation explores the philosophical reasons behind the existence of humanity. The first volume investigates the concept of relations, revealing that unique, complex relationships come into being simultaneously and exponentially through the combination of multiple elements. The second volume focuses on intellect, probing the most obscure corners of comprehension and conducting a fascinating tour of the human psyche. The third volume addresses volition, analyzing the extent to which human judgment, decisions, and actions (...) impact future prospects for mankind and deflect the course of nature. The fourth and final volume delves into affections, dispassionately highlighting the merits and shortcomings of man’s most ethereal faculties. (shrink)

In this essay I will examine the various ways in which the concept of decision emerges in the writings of Kierkegaard focusing mainly on the Philosophical Fragments and the Postscript. This prepares the way for revisiting Kierkegaard’s concept of decision. Doing so indicates the radical way in which Kierkegaard connects the concept of decision to an aporia. The crucial existential concept of decision not only concerns the difficulty, or even the impasse, pertaining to knowledge, but also relates to the question (...) of how the singular finds his or her own way through existence. (shrink)

Restrictions on research on therapeutic cloning are questionable as they inhibit the development of a technique which holds promise for succesful application of pluripotent stem cells in clinical treatment of severe diseases. It is argued in this article that the ethical concerns are less problematic using therapeutic cloning compared with using fertilised eggs as the source for stem cells. The moral status of an enucleated egg cell transplanted with a somatic cell nucleus is found to be more clearly not equivalent (...) to that of a human being. Based on ethical considerations alone, research into therapeutic cloning should be encouraged in order to develop therapeutic applications of stem cells. (shrink)

Since USA constitutional precedent established in 1976, adolescents have increasingly been afforded the right to access contraception without first obtaining parental consent or authorisation. There is general agreement this ethically permissible. However, long-acting reversible contraception methods have only recently been prescribed to the adolescent population. They are currently the most effective forms of contraception available and have high compliance and satisfaction rates. Yet unlike other contraceptives, LARCs are associated with special procedural risks because they must be inserted and removed by (...) trained healthcare providers. It is unclear whether the unique invasive nature of LARC changes the traditional ethical calculus of permitting adolescent decision-making in the realm of contraception. To answer this question, we review the risk–benefit profile of adolescent LARC use. Traditional justifications for permitting adolescent contraception decision-making authority are then considered in the context of LARCs. Finally, analogous reasoning is used to evaluate potential differences between permitting adolescents to consent for LARC procedures versus for emergency and pregnancy termination procedures. Ultimately, we argue that the invasive nature of LARCs does not override adolescents’ unique and compelling need for safe and effective forms of contraception. In fact, LARCs may oftentimes be in the best interest of adolescent patients who wish to prevent unintended pregnancy. We advocate for the specific enumeration of adolescents’ ability to consent to both LARC insertion and removal procedures within state policies. Given the provider-dependent nature of LARCs and the stigma regarding adolescent sexuality, special political and procedural safeguards to protect adolescent autonomy are warranted. (shrink)

Existing research on the formation of employee ethical climate perceptions focuses mainly on organization characteristics as antecedents, and although other constructs have been considered, these constructs have typically been studied in isolation. Thus, our understanding of the context in which ethical climate perceptions develop is incomplete. To address this limitation, we build upon the work of Rupp to develop and test a multi-experience model of ethical climate which links aspects of the corporate social responsibility, ethics, justice, and trust literatures and (...) helps to explain how employees’ ethical climate perceptions form. We argue that in forming ethical climate perceptions, employees consider the actions or characteristics of a complex web of actors. Specifically, we propose that employees look outward at how communities are impacted by their organization’s actions, upward to make inferences about the ethicality of leaders in their organizations, and inward at their own propensity to trust others as they form their perceptions. Using a multiple-wave field study conducted at a privately held US corporation, we find substantial evidence in support of our model. (shrink)

This essay aims to outline in what ways Kierkegaard’s thinking of existence not only brings into view a concept of existence, but, more fundamentally, enables one to locate an opening to questioning anew the relation of thinking and existence. This thinking of existence does not seek to dissolve existence into knowledge but aims at intensifying the question of a thinking grounded not in the conclusion made in “an external relation between a knower and a non-knower” of which non-knowledge is the (...) negative determination of knowledge, but rather of a thinking grounded in existence. (shrink)

Decision-makers frequently struggle to base their choices on an exhaustive evaluation of all options at stake. This is particularly so when the choice problem at hand is complex, because the available alternatives are hard to compare. Rather than striving to choose the most valuable alternative, in such situations decision-makers often settle for the choice of an alternative which is not inferior to any other available alternative instead. In this paper, we extend two established models of boundedly rational choice, the categorize (...) then choose heuristic and the rational shortlist method, to incorporate this kind of “indecisive” choice behavior. We study some properties of these extensions and provide full behavioral characterizations. (shrink)

In this article we refine the design of context shifting experiments, which play a central role in contextualist debates, and we subject a large number of scenarios involving different types of expressions of interest to contextualists, including ‘know’ and color adjectives like ‘green’, to experimental investigation. Our experiment (i) reveals an effect of changing contexts on the evaluation of uses of the sentences that we examine, thereby overturning the absence of results reported in previous experimental studies (so‐called null results), (ii) (...) uncovers evidence for a ‘truth bias' in favor of positive over negative sentences, and (iii) reveals previously unnoticed distinctions between the strength of the contextual effects displayed by scenarios involving knowledge ascriptions and scenarios concerning color and other miscellaneous scenarios. (shrink)

Judges and jurors must make decisions in an environment of ignoranceand uncertainty for example by hearing statements of possibly unreliable ordishonest witnesses, assessing possibly doubtful or irrelevantevidence, and enduring attempts by the opponents to manipulate thejudge''s and the jurors'' perceptions and feelings. Three importantaspects of decision making in this environment are the quantificationof sufficient proof, the weighing of pieces of evidence, and therelevancy of evidence. This paper proposes a mathematical frameworkfor dealing with the two first aspects, namely the quantification ofproof (...) and weighing of evidence. Our approach is based on subjectivelogic, which is an extension of standard logic and probability theory,in which the notion of probability is extended by including degrees ofuncertainty. Subjective Logic is a framework for modelling humanreasoning and we show how it can be applied to legalreasoning. (shrink)

Social network analysis (SNA) is an increasingly popular approach that provides researchers with highly developed tools to map and analyze complexes of social relations. Although a number of network scholars have explicated the assumptions that underpin SNA, the approach has yet to be discussed in relation to established philosophies of science. This article argues that there is a tension between applied and methods-oriented SNA studies, on the one hand, and those addressing the social-theoretical nature and implications of networks, on the (...) other. The former, in many cases, exhibits positivist tendencies, whereas the latter incorporate a number of assumptions that are directly compatible with core critical realist views on the nature of social reality and knowledge. This article suggests that SNA may be detached from positivist social science and come to constitute a valuable instrument in the critical realist toolbox. (shrink)