The recent in vitro derivation of gamete‐like cells from mouse embryonic stem (mES) cells is a major breakthrough and lays down several challenges, both for the further scientific investigation and for the bioethical and biolegal discourse. We refer here to these cells as gamete‐like (sperm‐like or oocyte‐like, respectively), because at present there is still no evidence that these cells behave fully like bona fide sperm or oocytes, lacking the fundamental proof, i.e. combination with a normally derived gamete of the opposite (...) sex to yield a normal individual. However, the results published so far do show that these cells share some defining features of gametes. We discuss these results in the light of the bioethical and legal questions that are likely to arise would the same process become possible with human embryonic stem (hES) cells. (shrink)

A judgement analysis of people's social inferences of attitudes and ability was conducted. University students were asked to infer the liberalness ( N = 60; Study 1) or intelligence ( N = 40; Study 2) of targets seen in pictures. Multiple regression analyses revealed that attractiveness was the most important cue for predicting inferences of liberalness, while an ethnic cue (i.e., being Asian) was the most important cue for judgements about intelligence. Results also showed that a single-cue model was less (...) susceptible to overfitting, but significantly less accurate than a multiple-cue model in predicting participant's intelligence judgements. Although the multiple regression models suffered a degree of overfitting, cross validation showed that they continued to have significant predictive value when applied to new data. Furthermore, a “random partner” method (comparing each participant's own regression equation with that of another, randomly selected, participant) provided evidence of significant idiosyncratic variation in the way intelligence judgements were made. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s atomist picture, as embodied in his Tractatus, is initially very appealing. However, it faces the famous colour-exclusion problem. In this paper, I shall explain when the atomist picture can be defended in the face of that problem; and, in the light of this, why the atomist picture should be rejected. I outline the atomist picture in Section 1. In Section 2, I present a very simple necessary and sufficient condition for the tenability of the atomist picture. The condition is: (...) logical space is a power of two. In Sections 3 and 4, I outline the colour-exclusion problem, and then show how the cardinality-condition supplies a response to exclusion problems. In Section 5, I explain how this amounts to a distillation of a proposal due to Moss, which goes back to Carruthers. And in Section 6, I show how all this vindicates Wittgenstein’s ultimate rejection of the atomist picture. The brief reason is that we have no guarantee that there are any solutions to a given exclusion problem but, if there are any, then there are far too many. (shrink)

How do we ready ourselves to intervene responsively in the contingent situations that arise in co-designing to make change? How do we attune to group dynamics and respond ethically to unpredictable developments when working with 'community'? Participatory Design can contribute to social transitions, yet its focus is often tightly tuned to technique for designing ICT at the cost of participatory practice. We challenge PD conventions by addressing what happens as we step into a situation to alter it with others, (...) an aspect of practice that cannot be replicated or interchanged. We do so to argue that practices of readiness are constituted by personal histories, experiences, philosophies and culture. We demonstrate this political argument by giving reflexive accounts of our dimensions of preparation. The narratives here are distinct, yet reveal complementary theories and worldviews that shape PD ontologies. We have organized these around the qualities of punctuation and poise as a way to draw out some less easily articulated aspects of PD practice. (shrink)

BackgroundAs moral case deliberations (MCDs) have increasingly been implemented in health care institutions as a form of ethics support, it is relevant to know whether and how MCDs actually contribute to positive changes in care. Insight is needed on what actually happens in daily care practice following MCD sessions. This study aimed at investigating the impact of MCD and exploring how ‘impact of MCD’ should be conceptualized for future research.MethodsA multiple-case study was conducted in a care organization for people with (...) intellectual disabilities and/or acquired brain injury, by observing MCD sessions as ‘cases’, followed by interviews with health care professionals concerning the follow-up to these cases, and a focus group with involved MCD facilitators. A conceptual scheme concerning the possible impact formed the basis for analysis: (1) individual moral awareness; (2) the actions of health care professionals; (3) collaboration among health care professionals; (4) the concrete situation of the client; (5) the client’s quality of care and life; (6) the organizational and policy level.ResultsAccording to interviewees, their moral awareness and their collaboration, both among colleagues and with clients’ relatives, improved after MCD. Perceived impact on client situation, quality of care/life and the organizational level varied among interviewees or was difficult to define or link to MCD. Three aspects were added to the conceptual scheme concerning the impact of MCD: (a) preparations and expectations prior to the MCD session; (b) a translational step between the conclusions of the MCD session and practical events in the following period, and (c) collaboration with clients’ relatives. A negative impact of MCD was also found on misunderstandings among participants and disappointment about lack of follow-up.ConclusionsConcretizing and conceptualizing the ‘impact’ of MCD is complicated as many factors play a role either before or during the transition from MCD to practice. It is important to consider ‘impact’ in a broad sense and to relate it to the goals and context of the MCD in question. Future studies in this field should pay additional attention to the preparations, content and process involved in ethics support, including clients’ and relatives’ experiences. (shrink)

In this essay, I attempt to provide answers to the following four queries concerning the metaphysics of early human embryogenesis. (1) Following its first cellular fission, is it coherent to claim that one and only one of two “blastomeric” twins of a human zygote is identical with that zygote? (2) Following the fusion of two human pre-embryos, is it coherent to claim that one and only one pre-fusion pre-embryo is identical with that postfusion pre-embryo? (3) Does a live human being (...) come into existence only when its brain comes into existence? (4) At implantation, does a pre-embryo become a mere part of its mother? I argue that either if things have quidditative properties or if criterialism is false, then queries (1) and (2) can be answered in the affirmative; that in light of recent developments in theories of human death and in light of a more “functional” theory of brains, query (3) can be answered in the negative; and that plausible mereological principles require a negative answer to query (4). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On Franco-Ferraz, Theism and the Theatre of the Mind MiguelA. Badia-Cabrera In "Theatre andReligiousHypothesis,"1 MariaFranco-Ferraz offersan eloquent and reasoned argument in favour ofa fresh and different sort of hermeneutic approach to the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion as a suitable means to disentangle the web of proverbially difficult philosophical questions posed by Hume in that work. In order to arrive at a coherent understanding ofthe Dialogues as a whole and (...) perhaps also to calm the sense of bafflement which the confrontation with this enigmatical text always provokes, many Hume scholars have taken as a point of departure and clue for unravelling it either one or two of Hume's principal philosophical doctrines or a presumedly unitary view of Hume's philosophy in general. Equipped with one or both of these instruments, they proceed to dissect the arguments of the Dialogues with the intention of determining what Hume's position really is. This task also almost invariably ends by assigning the victory in the dialectical struggle and the representation of the author's 'true' opinions to the character (sometimes even more than one) in whom they are more or less able to find the purest expression ofwhat theyhave previously decided is the kernel oressence ofHume's philosophy. Franco-Ferraz has taken a very different route. For her the key point of the Dialogues lies in the fictional setting in which the theological discussion takes place. She goes on to show that the literary form of the Dialogues is intrinsically connected with its philosophical content so as to serve to elucidate the precise nature ofthe conclusion which is established at the end, in Part XII. In other words, the theatrical structure facilitates a more profound and detailed investigation ofthe problems dealing with the existence and nature of God. In fact, Hume offers no final solutions to these problems and thereby none ofthe characters ofthe Dialogues can properly be said to present the victorious point of view or the one counting with the complete authority ofthe author ofthe play: The most important aspect of this text is the interaction between the different characters' points of view, which, by being in confrontation with each other, undergo reciprocal transformations. (Franco-Ferraz, 228) Volume XVI Number 2 131 MIGUEL A. BADÍA-CABRERA With this one cannot but agree. In addition she clinches her case by 'ai-trull·/ and convincingly showing that there is a profound relation between this theatrical form and some substantive philosophical theses which Hume developed in the Treatise, the first Enquiry, and The Natural History ofReligion. In reality, the theatre metaphor clarifies the sense ofthose philosophical doctrines, which in turn throw light on and corroborate her main contention about the conclusion of the Dialogues. For according to her, any definitive solution to the problems ofnatural theology is not presented at the end by any ofthe characters on behalfofa God-like author (Dieu auteur), and furthermore this deus ex machina solution would conflict especially with Hume's conception of the mind as being une pièce sans théâtre, a drama without a stage (Franco-Ferraz, 234). Such is the substance ofher thesis, if I have succeeded in giving a fairrepresentationofit. I thinkthatherinterpretation providesa novel outlook and one fruitful means ofaccess to an adequate understanding of the Dialogues. But I am quite hesitant with some particular and important aspects ofher reading of that text for the 'inconveniences', in Philo's sense ofthe word, which seem to follow from it, and alsohave a few difficulties in assessing the exact import of one or two of her central claims due to the somewhat vague manner in which, I think, these are formulated. First, at the verybeginningofher paper, Franco-Ferraz quotes the followingpassagefromPartIIIoftheDialoguesin which Demeaobjects to Cleanthes' claim, defended by two very ingenious analogies, that an orderly world like a coherent, articulate speech will always be taken as a sign ofintelligent design: When I read a volume, I enter into the mind and intention of the author: I become him, in a manner, for the instant; and have an immediate feeling and conception of those ideas, which revolved in his imagination, while employed in that composition. (D 155-56) I take issue with... (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 253—278. A Sense of French Politics Politics itself is not the exercise of power or struggle for power. Politics is first of all the configuration of a space as political, the framing of a specific sphere of experience, the setting of objects posed as "common" and of subjects to whom the capacity is recognized to designate these objects and discuss about them.(1) On April 14, 2011, France implemented its controversial ban of the niqab and burqa , commonly (...) referred to as the Islamic veil, in public places. On the coattails of the 2004 prohibition of religious artifacts, including the less concealing hijab or Islamic headscarves, in schools, the veil ban sparked equal outrage across both political and theological spectra, and many on both sides of the debate were quick to inquire about enforcement. As Steven Erlanger reports, “The police do not have the authority under the law to remove full veils, only to fine or require citizenship lessons for those who violate the new law.”(2) While the legal and social implications of this interdiction are ripe for study, the reprisals for breaking the law, notably compulsory citizenship classes, illuminate the strategic governmentality underlying the French government's targeting of the Muslim community, particularly those elements it considers affiliated with fundamentalist factions and/or terrorist organizations, if only through fashion—an integral component of French citizenship. Indeed, in allowing the (fashion) police to mandate instructional courses in citizenship for offenders, France implies that any Muslim choosing to wear the niqab or burqa , perhaps even for those who are already citizens, must not be aware of the subtle nuances of dress indicative of the French citizenry within public space. Furthermore, the degree of instruction requisite to citizenship, which clearly can and must be updated as the state sees fit, cements the imagined relation between citizens and states within the discourses on the veil ban. As Sharma contends, “Concepts of citizenship are the ideological glue that bonds the nation to the state. Citizenship provides the legal framework through which the state performs its role as ruler for the nation.”(3) Speaking for/as the state, French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared in a 2009 presentation before members of the government and other citizens that the burqa “is not welcome on the territory of France.”(4) Although there is nothing unique, especially recently, about a nation-state taking extreme measures to guard itself against what it deems to be threats to its sovereignty, the way in which the ongoing discourses on hijab have (d)evolved, which coincide with recent pronouncements by governmental leaders in Germany, Britain, and France that policies of multiculturalism have “failed,”(5) points toward nationalist reterritorializations, which is also to say physical and ideological re-appropriations, of public space within democratic milieux, which remain predicated upon the mediation of spaces. As Panagia deduces from Rancière, “Democracy […] is not an institutional form of government […], but an appearance whose visibilities and audibilites arise out of the dissonant blur of the everyday.”(6) Ultimately, the veil ban represents a calculated move to regulate the every day, which is to say the micropolitics of, that which is visible and invisible within French society, which makes it nothing short of a struggle to manage (the sensation of) bodies. Re-situating the political within the context of sense, Rancière argues that the fundamental essence of politics lies within the distinction between consensus and dissensus , and whereas most consider politics proper as fundamentally concerned with the fluid operations of the state— consensus , Rancière actually locates the political within events that disrupt the normative sensory order of things— dissensus . He explains, “Politics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time.”(7) This reformulation of politics centers on agency and, albeit perhaps unintended, representationality and offers a useful formulation for spatializing the discourses surrounding the Islamic veil, which are mired within seemingly senseless policies and practices of objectification. Instituting a normative “regime of visibility,” the French veil ban encapsulates the political economy of agency, now both mediated and representational, under the rule of nationalist governmentalities in increasingly transnational contexts.(8) Adjudicating presence within public space signals a concern with the sensory aspects of agency itself—what Rancière terms the “distribution of the sensible,” which is “a matrix that defines a set of relations between sense and sense: that is, between a form of sensory experience and an interpretation which makes sense of it.”(9) To be concerned with sense is to focus upon the body, and this somatic repositioning of the (fashionable) citizen within the territory of the state augurs the resurgence of nationalist bio-politics within Europe, since, as Hage explicates, “Nationalism, before being an explicit practice or a mode of classification, is a state of the body. It is a way of imagining one's position within the nation and what one can aspire to as a national.”(10) The French government's attempt to make (bodily) sense of public space for its citizens by and through policies aimed against a burqa-clad Muslim minority, which might only apply to “less then 400 to fewer than 2,000” women(11), reveals the necessary, yet mercurial, transmutation of public space into national space through bio-political strategies of sense-making, which, as Hage observes, denotes that “nationalists perceive themselves as spatial managers.”(12) At the center of this concern over public space is the equally contentious dimension of governing female Islamic identity, which has become one of the main critiques levied against Islam from outsiders who view the veil in its various forms as a clear sign of the religion's actual and symbolic violence against women, even if such critiques remain ensconced within nationalist discourses. As Halim and Meyers argue, “Although Western news media may focus their coverage of Muslim women on the debate over whether and the extent to which the veil may by oppressive to the women who wear it, they have exhibited little interest in the physical oppression of violence against women in Islamic countries.”(13) While it falls outside of the scope of this analysis to arbitrate all of the dimensions of this debate, understanding some of the issues related to female identity and hijab within public space are crucial to this study. As these topics are extraordinarily complex, even and perhaps especially within the Muslim community, it is necessary to provide some context concerning the value, purpose, and meaning of the Islamic veil, which has a rich and arduous history. The Art of the Veil At present, there are only two countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia, that require women to wear hijab , which is a decidedly problematic term and concept whose locus is itself caught within a struggle of sensation. Noting the strategic reterritorialization of the term, Berger explains: The choice of the name, hijab , now widely adopted to designate the “Islamic veil,” it itself interesting, although the semantic shift it operates is not directly commented upon by its users. Although the design (both the cut and the symbolic function) of the hijab and the Iranian chador are indeed the same, as opposed, for instance, to the traditional Algerian haik , the word hijab has come to replace the term chador popularized by the Iranian revolution, as a properly Arabic (hence Koranic) designation. This discursive shift points to the successful reclaiming of the national revolution in Iran by a transnational pan-Islamic movement, whose language of reference can only be Koranic Arabic.(14) While the hijab is certainly a point of contention within various countries dealing with immigrant Islamic populations (of which France has the largest in Europe as part of its colonial legacy in Algeria), it is clear that the veil is a historically contextualized artifact of Muslim identity with a variety of manifestations, even as forces outside of and within Islam seek to codify its actual and symbolic value. Ultimately, the varieties of hijab , including the full-faced burqa and niqab , are complex assemblages of meaning that speak to the multitudinous flows of Islamic identities over time and space. As Gökariksel and McLarney observe, “Wearing a certain style of veil may simultaneously be a disciplinary practice crucial to the cultivation of piety (Mahmood 2005; Gokariksel 2009) and a gendered performance of social distinction in terms of class, taste, and urbanity (White 1999; Navaro-Yashin 2002; Gokariksel and Secor 2009) or of ethnicity and race (Dwyer 1999).”(15) The ideological marketplace from which the varieties of hijab ebb and flow serves both as a reflection of the ever-present materiality and dynamic functionality of spiritual economies, which are derivative of the equally ubiquitous flows of transnational capital driving agency and representationality within our historical moment. Keeping these dual, yet deeply interconnected, capital ecologies as the site of exploration for how the veil is represented within public space, one might begin to sense what lurks behind such veiled agendas. Examining the symbolic and representational nature of the Islamic “veil” in its various forms, this project situates the decidedly political contestations of public space at stake in the French ban alongside recent condemnations of multiculturalism as calculated efforts to re-distribute the sensible so as to valorize national identity within increasingly transnational and globalized socio-economic spaces, which collapse exchange values between distinct, yet interwoven, economies of (cultural/material/spiritual) capital. As the discourses on the veil rely upon representational imag(in)ings, it seems fitting to explore the political economy and art of the veil through the phenomenon of street art, which, much like hijab , is a complex assemblage of meaning of sensation mired in representationality and capital exchange. As street artists have taken up hijab in various forms, the movement offers a lens with which to situate critical responses to the veil debate across both spiritual and material economies. Situating this street art both aesthetically and historically, Lewisohn explains, “'Street art' is a sub-genre of graffiti writing and owes much to its predecessor. Though there is a good deal of crossover between the genres, they are distinct and separate in their own right.”(16) Evolving out of the graffiti explosion of the late 1970's and 1980's, street art broke the unspoken rules of the artistic underground by challenging and re-examining one's sensory experience of art in public space by experimenting with both content and form in ways that harken back to the Situationist International, which as a collective challenged one's experience of urban space through various media and experiential phenomena. Again, Lewisohn observes, “It's important to note street art's break with the tradition of the tag, and its focus on visual symbols that embrace a much wider range of media than graffiti writers would use.”(17) From stencils to prints and murals to one-liners, street artists developed a reputation for critical social and political commentary, and while it is certainly the case that not all street art is intentionally political, in challenging the normative “regime of visibility,” as Rancière puts it, of public space, street artists—even if unconsciously—call into question the common sensory experience of the politics underlying the formation of (nationalist) space.(18) Indeed, Rancière refers to the partisan sensory managers as “police,” who ultimately forge “the rules governing the circulation of appearances, of their visibility and audibility, and the proper distribution of bodies therein.”(19) As such, one can sense that street art's relationship with the police is tenous for a variety of reasons. Writing about his own experience as a street artist, Shepard Fairey observes, “With street art, there's no committee deciding whether I can put my work up on the street, there's no censorship, and I have total freedom of expression, and that concept of freedom is expressed just by using the street as a medium.”(20) As Fairey and other street artists demonstrate, the medium, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, is the most glaring aspect of street art's message, and even as it now finds itself in galleries and usurped by private collectors, the ethos of the movement remains relavent to politics as it is, first and foremost, concerned with the configuration and experience of space. Just as examining the punishments for breaking the veil ban can map the terrain of French politics, a representational genealogy of street artist's deployment of hijab and female Muslim identity can assist in mining the depths of public space as a site of bio-political control and contestation in light of recent events in France and the rising tide of anti-multiculturalist rhetoric across Europe, even though the Islamic presence there is radically heterogenous. Using the work of Shepard Fairey, Princess Hijab, br1, and Banksy, this paper sets out to answer a number of key questions concerning the deployment of hijab, and female Islamic identity in particular, within street art as a movement now integral to and critical of the economies of exchange underlying global capitalism, which as a force of influence cannot be underestimated as a driver in the resurgence of nationalist biopolitical governmentalities. Although there exists a litany of artists to choose from, the aforementioned quartet of designers integrate hijab into their work in a seminal and critical fashion, and all have been working with the veil in some way prior to the French ban, which grants some additional context to their usage of it as a symbol in regards to the breakdown of multiculturalism across Europe, even if unconsciously. Although each artist depicts various amalgamations of hijab in their respective corpus, they share common tropes that raise significant questions concerning the veil debate, namely: what are the conditions of possibility for hijab to become a marker of Islamic identity within public space? How can we make sense of the representational topologies within street art's utilization of the hijab and female Islamic identity in light of the French ban? How might these aesthetic imag(in)ings simultaneously inhabit and combat normative discourses concerning hijab , multiculturalism, female Islamic identity, and public space? With these considerations as a backdrop, it is first necessary to outline more fully the hijab as a representative marker of female Islamic identity. The (Veiled) Writing on the Wall

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 111 A Critical History of Western Philosophy. Edited by D. J. O'Connor. (Giencoe: The Free Press, 1964. Pp. x + 604. $9.95.) Professor O'Connor and his collaborators have, in their Critical History of Western Philosophy, produced a novel and, to my mind, unusually good textbook. The volume, which is designed primarily as a text for undergraduate philosophy students, is made up of twentynine essays, each one devoted (...) to a major philosopher in the Western tradition--or, in a few instances, to a philosophical movement. The essays (29) have been written by 25 persons and each includes a sho[t biography of the philosopher under discussion followed by a fairly lengthy presentation and critical analysis of his philosophical views, with particular attention to metaphysics and epistemology. The contributors to the volume are mostly British, although they include a sprinkling of Americans and one Norwegian. This reviewer was pleased to note several representatives from the new British universities among them. The philosophers selected for study in the book have, I believe, been well chosen. The standard greats, from Plato through Hegel, are all included. In going beyond this repertory, the editor has used good judgment in his selections. It is always possible to question individual choices, but this proves only that different editors would produce different books. In the present ease, it might be argued that in making his selections from the seco~td rank the editor showed some partiality in favor of the insular over the continental tradition. There is, however, a quite reasonable reply to such an objection: that the selection of philosophers was determined by the purpose for which the book was designed--namely, to serve as a text for students in British and American universities. One of the problems in a book of this type, containing essays by more than two dozen writers, is to maintain a measure of uniformity--of style, of method, of complexity, and so on. Once again, the result seems to me to be on the whole successful. The essays in general are clearly written; they approach their subjects at a level that avoids oversimplification on the one hand, yet should almost always be intelligible to the average, studious undergraduate on the other. One notes an occasional idiosyneracy of interpretation; however, because the essays are written by different people, such peculiarities do not repeat themselves long enough to become an annoyance. Indeed, if I have any criticism to make on this point, it would be that the editor has been too successful in achieving uniformity in his essays. The result is writing that strikes me as being somewhat on the bland side, as though each of the contributors had made a conscious effort to produce an essay indistinguishable in anything but its content from all the others. I shall not attempt in this review to discuss critically the separate essays contained in the book. That would be an endless task, of dubious value. Instead I should like to raise two quite general issues that seem pertinent to the book as a whole. The first concerns the editor's statement, in the Preface, of the purposes of the book: In his words: "The writers have tried to do two things: (1) to explain the principal philosophical concepts and theories in the order in which they were developed; and (2) to evaluate and criticize them in the light of contemporary knowledge and to bring out whatever may be in them that is of permanent philosophical interest." The first of these two aims raises no questions; the second, however, is a different matter. I am puzzled, specifically, by its first clause, that the essays will evaluate and criticize past philosophical theories in the light of contemporary knowledge. Is this really a meaningful task? If the book were a history of science rather than of philosophy, I could understand how the writers might go about criticizing earlier theories in the light of contemporary knowledge. In philosophy, however, the situation is quite different. On what contemporary knowledge can one base his criticisms? Most of us recognize the prodigious advances that have been made during our century in the accumulation of empirical knowledge. If by contemporary... (shrink)

The understanding of decision-making systems has come together in recent years to form a unified theory of decision-making in the mammalian brain as arising from multiple, interacting systems (a planning system, a habit system, and a situation-recognition system). This unified decision-making system has multiple potential access points through which it can be driven to make maladaptive choices, particularly choices that entail seeking of certain drugs or behaviors. We identify 10 key vulnerabilities in the system: (1) moving away from homeostasis, (...) (2) changing allostatic set points, (3) euphorigenic signals, (4) overvaluation in the planning system, (5) incorrect search of situation-action-outcome relationships, (6) misclassification of situations, (7) overvaluation in the habit system, (8) a mismatch in the balance of the two decision systems, (9) over-fast discounting processes, and (10) changed learning rates. These vulnerabilities provide a taxonomy of potential problems with decision-making systems. Although each vulnerability can drive an agent to return to the addictive choice, each vulnerability also implies a characteristic symptomology. Different drugs, different behaviors, and different individuals are likely to access different vulnerabilities. This has implications for an individual's susceptibility to addiction and the transition to addiction, for the potential for relapse, and for the potential for treatment. (shrink)

Philosophy and model theory frequently meet one another. Philosophy and Model Theory aims to understand their interactions -/- Model theory is used in every ‘theoretical’ branch of analytic philosophy: in philosophy of mathematics, in philosophy of science, in philosophy of language, in philosophical logic, and in metaphysics. But these wide-ranging appeals to model theory have created a highly fragmented literature. On the one hand, many philosophically significant mathematical results are found only in mathematics textbooks: these are aimed squarely at mathematicians; (...) they typically presuppose that the reader has a significant background in mathematics; and little clue is given as to their philosophical significance. On the other hand, the philosophical applications of these results are then scattered across disconnected pockets of papers, separated by decades or more. -/- The first aim of Philosophy and Model Theory, then, is to consider the philosophical uses of model theory. On a technical level, we try to show how philosophically significant results connect to one another, and also to state the best version of a result for philosophical purposes. On a philosophical level, we show how similar dialectical situations arise repeatedly, across fragmented debates in varied philosophical areas. -/- The second aim of Philosophy and Model Theory, though, is to consider the philosophy of model theory. Model theory itself is rarely taken as the subject matter of philosophising (contrast this, say, with the philosophy of biology, or the philosophy of set theory). But model theory is a beautiful part of pure mathematics, and worthy of philosophical study in its own right. (shrink)

The understanding of decision-making systems has come together in recent years to form a unified theory of decision-making in the mammalian brain as arising from multiple, interacting systems (a planning system, a habit system, and a situation-recognition system). This unified decision-making system has multiple potential access points through which it can be driven to make maladaptive choices, particularly choices that entail seeking of certain drugs or behaviors. We identify 10 key vulnerabilities in the system: (1) moving away from homeostasis, (...) (2) changing allostatic set points, (3) euphorigenic signals, (4) overvaluation in the planning system, (5) incorrect search of situation-action-outcome relationships, (6) misclassification of situations, (7) overvaluation in the habit system, (8) a mismatch in the balance of the two decision systems, (9) over-fast discounting processes, and (10) changed learning rates. These vulnerabilities provide a taxonomy of potential problems with decision-making systems. Although each vulnerability can drive an agent to return to the addictive choice, each vulnerability also implies a characteristic symptomology. Different drugs, different behaviors, and different individuals are likely to access different vulnerabilities. This has implications for an individual's susceptibility to addiction and the transition to addiction, for the potential for relapse, and for the potential for treatment. (shrink)

Four studies measured or manipulated beliefs in free will to illuminate how such beliefs are linked to other aspects of personality. Study 1 showed that stronger belief in free will was correlated with more gratitude, greater life satisfaction, lower levels of perceived life stress, a greater sense of self-efficacy, greater perceived meaning in life, higher commitment in relationships, and more willingness to forgive relationship partners. Study 2 showed that the belief in free will was a stronger predictor of life satisfaction, (...) meaning in life, gratitude, and self-efficacy than either locus of control or implicit person theory. Study 3 showed that experimentally manipulating disbelief in free will caused a reduction in the perceived meaningfulness of life. Study 4 found that inducing a stronger belief in free will caused people to set more meaningful goals for themselves. The possible concern that believers in free will simply claim all manner of positive traits was contradicted by predicted null finding.. (shrink)

Standard Type Theory, STT, tells us that b^n(a^m) is well-formed iff n=m+1. However, Linnebo and Rayo have advocated the use of Cumulative Type Theory, CTT, has more relaxed type-restrictions: according to CTT, b^β(a^α) is well-formed iff β > α. In this paper, we set ourselves against CTT. We begin our case by arguing against Linnebo and Rayo’s claim that CTT sheds new philosophical light on set theory. We then argue that, while CTT ’s type-restrictions are unjustifiable, the type-restrictions imposed by (...) STT are justified by a Fregean semantics. What is more, this Fregean semantics provides us with a principled way to resist Linnebo and Rayo’s Semantic Argument for CTT. We end by examining an alternative approach to cumulative types due to Florio and Jones; we argue that their theory is best seen as a misleadingly formulated version of STT. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoric and AngerKenneth S. Zagacki and Patrick A. Boleyn-FitzgeraldSince most believe anger can be either good or bad, rhetors face a moral problem of determining when anger is appropriate and when it is not. They face a corresponding rhetorical problem in deciding when and how to express anger and determining the role that it might play in public discourse, with specific audiences and in particular rhetorical situations. Rhetorical (...) scholars have catalogued whole genres of angry rhetoric—apocalyptic genres, jeremiads, the demonizing rhetoric of religious and political leaders—wherein the rhetorical display of anger is explained in terms of situational conventions and cultural norms.1 Yet these scholars have not easily resolved the moral problems associated with angry rhetoric. Aristotle suggested the earliest and most obvious solutions to these problems. In the Nicomachean Ethics, he outlines a typology for discerning the moral limits of anger and, by implication, angry rhetoric. And in Book II of the Rhetoric he asserts that the orator needs to know the structure of emotions like anger and how to intensify and dissipate them. Or, in other words, the orator must know how to make it reasonable to be angry. Some contemporary philosophers have gone further, suggesting that a failure to feel and express anger in public betrays an insufficient concern for justice and self respect.In this essay, we follow Aristotle in arguing that anger is sometimes the emotion we expect people to feel or the rhetorical response we expect them to display and evoke in others. But we also challenge part of Aristotle's argument by asking: "Even when angry rhetoric would appear to be a reasonable, morally appropriate response, is there a way in which rhetors might manage anger in their public discourse in order to achieve ends which are both morally and pragmatically productive?" The answer, we propose, lies in what we call "non-angry" rhetoric, which involves transforming and reflecting upon anger in public discourse. Because such rhetoric often promotes noble ends such as reconciliation and forgiveness, it is at least morally permissible and more likely morally virtuous.2 In order to establish these claims, our analysis focuses on the case of Nelson Mandela and his "Address to the Interfaith Commissioning Service for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission."3 In this speech, Mandela, as our [End Page 290] analysis demonstrates, managed anger and turned it into an object of reflection, thereby illustrating what opportunities for reconciliation and democratic deliberation would look like during the difficult period attending the political transition in South Africa in general and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings in particular. His "Address" exemplified a unique moment when the rhetoric and the ethics of anger came together in a public performance. While acknowledging the understandable anger of blacks, Mandela (who may in fact have harbored considerable anger himself) simultaneously suggested that by engendering a less hostile social-political context, in which participants maintained their self-respect without necessarily sacrificing justice, a new democratic community could emerge. This would be a community where, as he described it, individuals began to reconcile with and no longer persecute one another. As Aristotle might explain, the purpose of Mandela's speech was to manage the anger of blacks, so that they would then be able to deliberate properly about the issues before the TRC and about the larger democratic transition. As the philosopher Eugene Garver says, the particular passions Aristotle chooses to explore in the Rhetoric serve a role necessary for the kind of public, political decision making he assigns to rhetoric. These emotions serve to integrate—or segregate, as the case may be—"distinct individuals into a deliberative or judging body, or demos" (1994, 131).What we are recommending, then, is that rhetoric encompasses both considerations of moral desert as well as broader moral concerns. While there are times when individuals seem to deserve our angry rhetoric, it may not be justified from a broader moral perspective, especially when the goal is the good of the state or the community—viz., if angry rhetoric leads to the violent dissolution of democratic community. Ultimately, we argue that the moral constitution of political, deliberative communities must be viewed in terms... (shrink)

Hume and Quine argue that human beings do not have access to general knowledge, that is, to general truths . The arguments of these two philosophers are premised on what Jaakko Hintikka has called the atomistic postulate. In the present work, it is shown that Hume and Quine in fact sanction an extreme version of this postulate, according to which even items of particular knowledge are not directly accessible in so far as they are relational. For according to their fully (...) realized systems, human beings do not initially perceive any relations, or similar epistemological elements that can associate or combine terms on which a relational or general knowledge claim may be based. Nor, likewise, do human beings perceive the relations or the associations themselves as separate entities. ;In Chapters 1 and 2, respectively, it is shown precisely why Hume and Quine deny that human beings initially perceive either such associative elements or associations in general. Concomitantly, it is made clear why Hume's and Quine's respective epistemologies preclude human beings from initially apprehending not only general knowledge, but particular relational knowledge as well. But this is not to say that Hume and Quine do not think we can eventually acquire such associative elements and correspondingly, knowledge. Rather, Hume and Quine do provide an account of knowledge, but one that holds all relational and connective elements to be constructed by the human mind. In Hume's case, they are constructed by the imagination. In Quine's case, we are never told quite how this construction occurs, although the evidence suggests that Quine implicitly relies on a faculty similar to Hume's imagination. ;In the final chapter of this thesis, it is argued that both Hume and Quine must be read as philosophers who justify knowledge by reducing its possibility to a psychological faculty of construction, as well as to a few concepts of intuitively grasped relations. By way of conclusion, it is shown that this makes Quine's naturalism the psychological heir to Carnap's Aufbau. (shrink)

As of January 1, 2008, over 98,000 people are waiting for organ transplants in the United States of America. Of those, nearly 75,000 are waiting for a kidney. In this calendar year, fewer than 15,000 will receive a kidney transplant from a deceased donor. The average waiting time for a deceased donor kidney now exceeds five years in virtually all metropolitan areas. Sadly, nearly as many people die waiting as there are deceased donors each year, despite monumental efforts by the (...) entire transplant community to increase both the number of organ donors and the number of organs recovered from each donor. The imbalance between demand and supply has led to considerable efforts to expand the criteria for what is considered an acceptable organ donor by the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network, thereby hoping somewhat to assuage the shortfall of donor organs. So-called Expanded Criteria Donors may be older than 50, have history of hypertension, or have died from intracerebral hemorrhage and/or have impaired renal function. ECDs now make up nearly 40% of the donor population. (shrink)

Potentialists think that the concept of set is importantly modal. Using tensed language as an heuristic, the following bar-bones story introduces the idea of a potential hierarchy of sets: 'Always: for any sets that existed, there is a set whose members are exactly those sets; there are no other sets.' Surprisingly, this story already guarantees well-foundedness and persistence. Moreover, if we assume that time is linear, the ensuing modal set theory is almost definitionally equivalent with non-modal set theories; specifically, with (...) Level Theory, as developed in Part 1. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Bridge From Analysis to Action:Psychodynamic Analyses of Religion and Michael S. Hogue's American ImmanenceAJ Turner (bio)I. IntroductionThe purpose of this essay is to work constructively with Michael S. Hogue's groundbreaking American Immanence: Democracy for an Uncertain World to demonstrate how psychodynamic analyses of religion are essential theoretical allies in the fight for resilient democracy. The "revolution in mind"1 that psychodynamic approaches contribute, especially in their analyses of religion, (...) both complements and complicates socio-political theory as a whole. In the improvisational spirit of "yes-and," the goal here is not to identify and decry the failures and shortcomings of Hogue's theopolitical vision but rather to inspire the recovery of a sibling discourse—a kind of "rebirth of a forgotten alternative"2—that also draws deeply from the American immanental tradition in order to add psychodynamic depth to Hogue's timely and important analysis. Psychodynamic theories of religion shed light on how symbolic identifications, including and especially ultimate concerns, structure personal and collective experience. By engaging religion and theology sympathetically, constructively, and creatively, theorists such as Rollo May, Gordon Allport, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, and Ernest Becker departed from the skepticism, reductionism, and dismissal that characterized psychoanalytic analyses of religion in the wake of Freud.3 Each of these figures, and especially Becker whose work will be a focus in this essay, are noteworthy interlocutors for extending Hogue's theopolitical theorizing of resilient democracy, particularly in how they drew unique inspiration from the American immanental tradition [End Page 44] in their social analyses. In this respect, they provide a more robust theorization of the psychosocial conditions of the associational ethos needed to connect Hogue's conception of resilient democracy with forms of agonistic organization and democratic activism. Briefly stated, psychodynamic approaches are a helpful bridge for connecting these proposals to strategies of organization, their impediments, and collective action.In this way, both psychodynamic analyses of religion and Hogue's theopolitical innovation insist that no revolutionary political change is possible, and certainly not of the kind or scale needed to counter our wickedly entangled global crises, without a deep engagement with theological imaginaries. They differ, however, in their theoretical aims. Whereas Hogue compellingly argues for the political upshot of a theology deriving from the American immanental tradition, psychodynamic analysts of religion focus on the function of ultimate concerns in individual and collective life. In other words, American Immanence rests on a methodology of analyzing the philosophical and theological assumptions that have contributed to our climate crises and then presenting clear and compelling articulation of an alternative paradigm meant to open up new ways of being. In contrast psychodynamic analyses leverage conceptual clarity of psychic reality for the fundamentally therapeutic aim of transformation. At their best, both approaches share what could be called an etiological orientation to ontological questions in order to provide liberative alternatives through rational understanding and clarification, but the terrain, and thus the problems they hope to mitigate in their analyses are focused differently. Extending the visual metaphor, they are different lenses highlighting different areas of the same landscape. Furthermore, it must be said that neither are sufficient in themselves, but the psychodynamic theorists of religion to be highlighted in this essay share deeply with Hogue's heading in American Immanence.II. A Problematic AssumptionIn emphasizing and attempting to explain4 the role of non-rational processes in the both individual and social processes of perception and organization of experience, psychodynamic theories confound a widely held and problematic assumption that the triumph of rational analysis is the hallmark for building the society to which we should aspire. Political theory in general, [End Page 45] especially as it has taken its cues from a rationalist legacy about the inherently liberating force of Reason, has been weighted toward an assumption that its task of exposing the mystifications of power would suffice in inspiring more "rational" and therefore necessarily equitable social organization. This speaks to the longstanding socio-political interest in "consciousness raising" tactics, which are often meant to dispel "false consciousness." It even comes across in the emphases of Deweyan pragmatists on education. Psychologists of all stripes point out that this approach... (shrink)

Wilkinson’s discussion of the individual and family consent to organ and tissue donation is to be welcomed because it draws attention to the “incoherent hybrid” of the current position.1 I wish to highlight some areas of his discussion and propose that, in a situation of posthumous organ and tissue donation, the cadaver has no individual rights and family rights should under no circumstances automatically outweigh the potential transplant recipients’ right to a life-saving treatment.Transplant immunobiology and clinical transplantation is a (...) revolutionary area of medicine and has saved thousands of lives. In the UK, between 1 April 2004 and 31 March 2005, organs from 752 people who died were used to save or dramatically improve many people’s lives through 2242 transplants.2 In the US, 23 506 transplants were performed between January and October 2005 from 12 084 donors.3 Information from available databases shows that demand for organs, cells and tissues has outstripped the supply. As of 18 January 2006, 6553 people are still waiting for transplants in the UK and there are 90 636 waiting list transplant candidates in the US.2,3 As of 01 January 2006, there are 15 977 people active on the Eurotransplant waiting list.4 It is likely that non-compulsory posthumous donation of organs has resulted in the loss of many thousands, possibly many …. (shrink)

[Edited from Conclusion section:] We have looked at various challenging issues to do with getting connectionism to cope with high-level cognitive activities such a reasoning and natural language understanding. The issues are to do with various facets of generalization that are not commonly noted. We have been concerned in particular with the special forms these issues take in the arena of propositional attitude processing. The main problems we have looked at are: (1) The need to construct explicit representations of generalizations, (...) not just generalize correctly to individual cases; (2) The need to be able to match two or more complex short-term information structures, to enable rapid generalization from recent examples rather than from long-term memories; (3) The need to represent and reason with anomalous combinations of concepts; (4) The need to perform embedded reasoning. This presents special problems for systems using non-concatenative representations (as in mainstream connectionist approaches). We also touched on vague quantification in attitude report complements. Neither this topic nor that of analogies between short-term structures (point 2) has been adequately addressed in the symbolic framework, let alone in connectionism. -/- The opportunities and problems covered are put forward as things worth being optimistic about or pessimistic about, respectively. They are not put forward as decisive arguments for or against connectionism. The hope is that this chapter contributes to a greater understanding of the connectionist/symbolist gap by presenting some unusual issues and by throwing new light on some well known ones. (shrink)

In some cases people judge it morally acceptable to sacrifice one person’s life in order to save several other lives, while in other similar cases they make the opposite judgment. Researchers have identified two general factors that may explain this phenomenon at the stimulus level: (1) the agent’s intention (i.e. whether the harmful event is intended as a means or merely foreseen as a side-effect) and (2) whether the agent harms the victim in a manner that is relatively “direct” or (...) “personal”. Here we integrate these two classes of findings. Two experiments examine a novel personalness/directness factor that we call personal force, present when the force that directly impacts the victim is generated by the agent’s muscles (e.g., in pushing). Experiments 1a and b demonstrate the influence of personal force on moral judgment, distinguishing it from physical contact and spatial proximity. Experiments 2a and b demonstrate an interaction between personal force and intention, whereby the effect of personal force depends entirely on intention. These studies also introduce a method for controlling for people’s real-world expectations in decisions involving potentially unrealistic hypothetical dilemmas. (shrink)

In the early-to-mid 1930s, Wittgenstein investigated solipsism via the philosophy of language. In this paper, I want to reopen Wittgenstein's ‘grammatical’ examination of solipsism.Wittgenstein begins by considering the thesis that only I can feel my pains. Whilst this thesis may tempt us towards solipsism, Wittgenstein points out that this temptation rests on a grammatical confusion concerning the phrase ‘my pains’. In Section 1, I unpack and vindicate his thinking. After discussing ‘my pains’, Wittgenstein makes his now famous suggestion that the (...) word ‘I’ has two distinct uses: a subject-use and an object-use. The purpose of Wittgenstein's suggestion has, however, been widely misunderstood. I unpack it in Section 2, explaining how the subject-use connects with a phenomenological language, and so again tempts us into solipsism. In Sections 3–4, I consider various stages of Wittgenstein's engagement with this kind of solipsism, culminating in a rejection of solipsism via reflections on private languages. (shrink)

In section 96 of Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit offers his now familiar tripartite distinction among candidates for ‘what matters’: (1) Relation R with its normal cause; (2) R with any reliable cause; (3) R with any cause. He defends option (3). This paper tries to show that there is important ambiguity in this distinction and in Parfit's defence of his position. There is something strange about Parfit's way of dividing up the territory: I argue that those who have followed (...) him in viewing the choice among (1)–(3) as the (or an) important question in thinking about ‘what matters’ are mistaken, and that they bypass what seems to be a more important, even crucial, set of options and considerations. I am less concerned with what he does say than with what he ought to say, given his intuitions and arguments, and the general framework within which he is working. And I am particularly concerned to show that whether or not I am correct about what he is doing with his tripartite distinction, it is a distinction with which we should not be particularly concerned in the analysis either of what matters or of psychological continuity. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present a four component model of ethical behavior that integrates literature in moral psychology, computing ethics, and virtue ethics as informed by research on moral exemplars in computing. This is part 2 of a two part contribution, part 1 having appeared in Vol. 6 No. 3.Design/methodology/approachThis psychologically based and philosophically informed model argues that moral action is grounded in relatively stable personality characteristics, guided by integration of morality into the self‐system, shaped by the (...) context of the surrounding moral ecology, and facilitated by morally relevant skills and knowledge.FindingsThe model seeks to explain the daily successful (and unsuccessful) performance of moral action by computing professionals and to provide groundwork for a pedagogy that emphasizes ethically effective performance.Practical implicationsThe model has significant implications for how ethical action to computer professionals and other design professionals might be taught. It also makes recommendations about what need to be measured to construct a complete picture of sustained ethical action in a profession.Originality/valueMost accepted models of ethical behavior are unidimensional, emphasizing either principled reasoning or a simplistic model of integrity/character. This model brings together a variety of disparate literatures in the light of its emphasis on sustained moral action in the profession. It thereby provides researchers and educators with a picture of what is needed to construct a complete understanding of moral action in the profession. (shrink)

Subjects classified visible 2-digit numbers as larger or smaller than 55. Target numbers were preceded by masked 2-digit primes that were either congruent (same relation to 55) or incongruent. Experiments 1 and 2 showed prime congruency effects for stimuli never included in the set of classified visible targets, indicating subliminal priming based on long-term semantic memory. Experiments 2 and 3 went further to demonstrate paradoxical unconscious priming effects resulting from task context. For example, after repeated practice classifying 73 as (...) larger than 55, the novel masked prime 37 paradoxically facilitated the “larger” response. In these experiments task context could induce subjects to unconsciously process only the leftmost masked prime digit, only the rightmost digit, or both independently. Across 3 experiments, subliminal priming was governed by both task context and long-term semantic memory. (shrink)

1. The Situation in Cognition 2. Situated Cognition: A Potted Recent History 3. Extensions in Biology, Computation, and Cognition 4. Articulating the Idea of Cognitive Extension 5. Are Some Resources Intrinsically Non-Cognitive? 6. Is Cognition Extended or Only Embedded? 7. Letting Nature Take Its Course.

In this thesis, Semantics, Meta-Semantics, and Ontology, I provide a critique of the method of truth in metaphysics. Davidson has suggested that we can determine the metaphysical nature and structure of reality through semantic investigations. By contrast, I argue that it is not semantics, but meta-semantics, which reveals the metaphysically necessary and sufficient truth conditions of our claims. As a consequence I reject the Quinean criterion of ontological commitment. In Part I, chapter 1, I argue that the metaphysically primary truth (...) bearers are not propositions, but rather concrete representations, either beliefs or sentences. I show, in chapter 2, that we can give sense to a truth predicate applying to sentences, given a truth operator and quantification into sentence position. I argue that this strategy does not commit us to the existence of propositions serving as truth bearers. In Part II I argue that although we must assign semantic values to sentences and/or predicates, the meaningfulness of these expressions is not thereby explained. In chapter 3 I articulate Davidson’s problem of predication and his solution, but argue that he was wrong to attribute this solution to Tarski. In chapter 4 I examine the semantics of modal languages; I conclude that although they require semantic values for predicates and/or sentences we should be instrumentalists about these theories. In Part III I consider the relationship between truth and existence. In chapter 5, I defend Pluralism about truth: in some domains of discourse, I claim, semantic reference plays a merely instrumental role in explaining truth. In chapter 6, I show that Hume’s Principle, which is committed by the Quinean criterion to the existence of numbers, can be true even though numbers do not exist. In doing so, I appeal to meta-semantic and diachronic considerations. In the conclusion I compare my views on ontology and commitment to Jody Azzouni’s; and in the appendix I suggest how one might pursue diachronic linguistics. (shrink)

Epistemic responsibility involves at least two central ideas. (V) To be epistemically responsible is to display the virtue(s) epistemic internalists take to be central to justification (e.g., coherence, having good reasons, fitting the evidence). (C) In normal (non-skeptical)circumstances and in thelong run, epistemic responsibility is strongly positively correlated with reliability. Sections 1 and 2 review evidence showing that for a wide range of real-world problems, the most reliable, tractable reasoning strategies audaciously flout the internalist''s epistemic virtues. In Section 3, I (...) argue that these results force us to give up either (V), our current conception of what it is to be epistemically responsible, or (C) the responsibility-reliability connection. I will argue that we should relinquish (V). This is likely to reshape our epistemic practices. It will force us to alter our epistemic judgments about certain instances of reasoning, to endorse some counterintuitive epistemic prescriptions, and to rethink what it is for cognitive agents to be epistemically responsible. (shrink)

Initial evidence suggests that suppressing a thought prior to sleep results in subsequent dreaming of that thought. The present research examined the influence of cognitive load on dreaming following suppression. In Experiment 1, 100 participants received either a suppression instruction or no instruction for an intrusive thought prior to sleep, and subsequently completed a dream diary. Participants instructed to suppress reported dreaming about the target thought more than controls; dream rebound was predicted by poorer performance on a working memory (...) task. In Experiment 2, 126 participants received either a suppression instruction or no instruction for an intrusive thought prior to sleep, and half of participants also had cognitive load of learning a 9-digit number. Participants receiving the suppression instruction under cognitive load reported greater dream rebound than other participants. These findings indicate that thought suppression prior to sleep leads to dream rebound, and this effect is enhanced by cognitive load. (shrink)

This paper is a response to the opening of new lines of research on CSR and SMEs (Thompson & Smith, 1991; Spence, 1999; Moore & Smith, 2006; Spence, 2007). It seeks to explore the business case for CSR in this corporate segment. The paper, which is based on four case studies of medium-sized firms in the automotive sector, took the distinctive approach of trying to understand the nature of CSR-like activities developed not by best-in-class CSR-driven companies but by purely competitiveness-driven (...) firms. The case studies provide explicit evidence that the CSR activities of SMEs and the notion of social capital are interrelated, turning social capital into a powerful instrument to better explain what academic literature has called silent CSR practices . The analysis that follows questions some of the basic tenets that underpin the branch of business ethics that deals with the nature of SMEs' approach to CSR. Four basic concerns, which take the form of propositions for further research, serve as the basis for this analysis: a) A definition of CSR that includes most of the actions taken by all companies in the territory contributes no academic value to the discipline b) Any study of the motivation behind these CSR actions must reflect their essentially pragmatic nature. Actions are linked to social values but also, more importantly, to the nature of the competitive environment c) Business ethics must seek common ground with other more sociological disciplines if it is to explain the reasons behind this type of action d) Any study of this kind of practice requires a dual approach: a) normative when using tools developed by CSR; and b) descriptive and instrumental using the notion of social capital. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scientia propter quid nobis—The Epistemic Independence of Metaphysics and Theology in the Quaestio de cognitione Dei attributed to Duns Scotus by Wouter GorisClaus A. AndersenGORIS, Wouter. Scientia propter quid nobis—The Epistemic Independence of Metaphysics and Theology in the Quaestio de cognitione Dei attributed to Duns Scotus. Münster: Aschendorff, 2022. viii + 296 pp. Paper, € 49.00The central claim of Wouter Goris's new book is that the Quaestio de (...) cognitione Dei traditionally (both in one late medieval manuscript and in some modern scholarship) attributed to John Duns Scotus not only is inauthentic but in fact represents an early reaction against Scotus's teaching on the scientific nature of metaphysics. The Quaestio in particular explores Scotus's distinction between a science "in itself" and one "for us" and, going beyond Scotus's own doctrine, shows how this distinction is applicable to metaphysics.The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 offers a critical edition of the Quaestio de cognitione Dei, which has hitherto been available in a plain transcription published by C. R. S. Harris in 1927. Harris's text was based on a single manuscript from the fifteenth century (Oxford, Merton College, Ms. 90); Goris bases his edition on a manuscript from the early fourteenth century (Assisi, Biblioteca Comunale, Ms. 172), one that does not attribute the text to Scotus. Goris highlights that the text has significant parallels in the prologue of John of Reading's Scriptum on the first book of the Sentences; there is presently not sufficient evidence for claiming that Reading is the author of the De cognitione Dei, but it does seem clear that either Reading or some other Franciscan friar relying on Reading's Scriptum authored the text between 1316 and 1325. The Quaestio itself consists of two articles. Two appendices to the edition document longer passages from Reading's Scriptum.Part 2 investigates the use of the distinction between a science in itself and one for us in Duns Scotus and some of the early Scotists. Scotus's doctrine developed over time. At Oxford Scotus taught that theology in se is about the divine essence in its particularity; theology for us is about the most perfect concept of God attainable for human beings by natural means, that is, the concept "infinite being." It falls to metaphysics to prove that there is such a kind of being. At Paris Scotus rather taught that both theology in se and theology for us are about the divine essence in its [End Page 549] particularity. The implication is that a strictly demonstrative science about God is possible for human beings in this present life, a knowledge of God that is completely independent of metaphysics. Goris argues that this shift in the view of theology explains the absence of Scotus's famous "twin doctrines" of the univocal concept of being and of being as the first adequate object of the intellect from his theological epistemology of the Parisian period. Not too surprisingly, in the wake of Scotus we find several authors grappling with the relationship between theology and metaphysics. The positions investigated by Goris vary considerably. Richard of Conington distinguishes between human metaphysical knowledge of being and God's own metaphysical knowledge of being; the latter represents a more perfect knowledge of both God himself and creatures as included under the concept of being. Francis of Marchia employs a distinction between a general metaphysics (about being as being) and a special metaphysics (about divine being), but on the level of science for us the special part of metaphysics is subordinated to the general one. Nicolas Bonetus, by contrast, advocates a sharp distinction between metaphysical knowledge of being and natural theology; he structures his metaphysics as a purely ontological discipline and treats natural theology as a separate science; Goris sees this reorganization as Bonetus's most decisive contribution to the history of metaphysics.Part 3 analyzes the fundamental doctrines defended in the Quaestio de cognitione Dei and compares them with those of Scotus and John of Reading. The first article of the Quaestio introduces two important distinctions, the first of which is between metaphysics in itself and metaphysics for us; these two... (shrink)

We construct the set of the title, answering a question of Cholak, Jockusch, and Slaman [1], and discuss its connections with the study of the proof-theoretic strength and effective content of versions of Ramsey's Theorem. In particular, our result implies that every ω-model of RCA 0 + SRT 2 2 must contain a nonlow set.

In recent years there has been a notable increase in the use of phenomenology as a research method, particularly in educational research. With the rise of phenomenology as a research method, confusion has also arisen concerning what counts as phenomenology, and how best to practice phenomenological research in non-philosophical contexts. Consequently, this article will be concerned with three issues: firstly, to contextualise the debate, I provide a brief overview of three popular and influential approaches to phenomenology as a research method: (...) (1) Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological method; (2) van Manen’s hermeneutic phenomenology; and, (3) Smith’s interpretative phenomenological analysis; secondly, for the sake of conceptual clarity, I then turn my attention to a critical discussion of these approaches and argue that these approaches tend to converge phenomenology into either a descriptive or interpretative focus that essentially transforms phenomenology into a kind of solipsist subjectivism; and, lastly, to progress the debate forward, I argue that it makes sense to look beyond the qualitative or educational research literature to successful applications of phenomenology in non-philosophical contexts because there are plenty of relevant resources that can offer significant theoretical and methodological support to researchers. (shrink)

Filosofii︠a︡ Gegeli︠a︡ kak uchenie o konkretnosti Boga i cheloveka. t. 1. Uchenie o boge -- t. 2. Uchenie o cheloveke.

Contextualist theories of knowledge offer a semantic hypothesis to explain the observed contextual variation in what people say they know, and the difficulty people have resolving skeptical paradoxes. Subject or speaker relative versions make the truth conditions of “S knows that p” depend on the standards of either the knower’s context (Hawthorne and Stanley) or those of the speaker’s context (Cohen and DeRose). Speaker contextualism avoids objections to subject contextualism, but is implausible in light of evidence that “know” does (...) not behave like an indexical. I deepen and extend these criticisms in light of recent defenses by contextualists (including Ludlow). Another difficulty is that whether certain standards are salient or intended does not entail that they are the proper standards. A normative form of contextualism on which the truth of a knowledge claim depends on the proper standards for the context is more promising, but still unsatisfactory whether the view is speaker or subject relative. I defend alternative explanations for the observed linguistic and psychological data: a pragmatic account for some cases and a cognitive account for others. 1. (shrink)

In 1992, the United States Supreme Court, in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, upheld the ruling in Roe v. Wade, namely that women have a right “to choose to have an abortion before viability and to obtain it without undue interference from the State.”1 However, since this ruling, some states have imposed regulations that greatly limit this right by restricting access. Texas is a recent example of this. Two proposed restrictions in House Bill 2, which will be discussed (...) in detail below, will force all but eight clinics that are located in metropolitan areas to shut down. The U.S. Supreme Court put the proposed restrictions on hold in October 2014, allowing several clinics to remain open while the restrictions are being appealed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. If the restrictions are passed, however, those clinics will be forced to shut down and, as a result, many women in Texas will be required to travel more than 100 miles in order to access a safe and legal abortion. Much of the focus of these restrictions has been on women and rightly so. However, I want to turn the attention to physicians. The requirements exacerbate unfair treatment of abortion providers compared with other physicians. Abortion providers face threats from the public—some of which turn into violent attacks—and they are often ostracized by their fellow medical practitioners. There are so few abortion providers to begin with and the proposed requirements limit these physicians’ opportunities to practice the branch of medicine of their choosing. Although the HB 2 requirements may not result in an unconstitutional undue burden on physicians, the challenges created by the bill limit physicians’ abilities to provide abortions. As a result of these limits, HB 2 creates an unconstitutional undue burden for women seeking abortions by creating barriers directed at abortion providers and clinic staff who are willing and able to provide abortions. The first of the two controversial HB 2 requirements is the admitting privileges requirement: “A physician performing or inducing an abortion must, on the date the abortion is performed or induced, have active admitting privileges at a hospital that is located not further than 30 miles from the location at which the abortion is performed or induced.”2 The second requirement is the ambulatory surgical center requirement: “The minimum standards for an abortion facility must be equivalent to the minimum standards adopted under [Texas Health & Safety Code] [...] for ambulatory surgical centres.”3 In order to meet these state-mandated obligations, some abortion clinics would have to spend more than $1 million in upgrades if they wish to remain open. The District Court decided that the ambulatory surgical center requirement places an unconstitutional undue burden on women, and that the two requirements together place an undue burden on women in Texas and especially in the Rio Grande Valley where the nearest clinic is a couple hundred miles away.4 Later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the District Court’s decision and argued, “the admitting privileges requirement is constitutional on its face.”5 While the regulations are being appealed, the Supreme Court granted a stay of injunction, allowing about twelve abortion clinics to reopen until a final decision regarding the regulations is made. The District Court ruled that the purpose of the two regulations was to create a substantial obstacle for women seeking abortions in Texas. While the defendants argued that the regulations were designed to make abortions safer and reduce risk, the Court decided that this was not the case. An abortion, especially a first-term abortion, is a very safe procedure and is safer than many other routine surgical procedures. As stated in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, “Unnecessary health regulations that have the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion impose an undue burden on the right.”6 The undue burden in this case is imposed, not through restricting women’s access directly, but by restricting physicians’ freedom to perform abortions. The admitting privileges requirement has reduced the number of physicians who can perform abortions and the ambulatory surgical center requirement has reduced the number of clinics where abortions can be performed. The American Medical Association states, “[t]he Principles of Medical Ethics of the AMA do not prohibit a physician from performing an abortion in accordance with good medical practice and under circumstances that do not violate the law.”7 This means that physicians are not required to perform abortions, except in emergency situations, but can as long as the procedure is done safely and does not violate the law. The new Texas regulations, however, are so restrictive that few abortion providers, limited to only four urban areas, can legally perform abortions. Physicians do not have an absolute right to perform abortions as opposed to women who have an absolute right to have access to an abortion. Physicians do face many challenges that other professionals face in terms of obtaining qualifications and finding work. Abortion providers, however, face challenges that most other physicians do not. The restrictions imposed by these regulations exacerbate unfair treatment toward abortion providers and place further obstacles in their path in terms of providing the service they want and are qualified to provide. Both abortion clinics and abortion providers are being treated differently from other medical clinics and physicians. For instance, “grandfathering of existing facilities and the granting of waivers from specific requirements is prohibited for abortion providers, although other types of ambulatory surgical facilities are frequently granted waivers or are grandfathered.”8 Many abortion clinics cannot afford the necessary upgrades. Furthermore, it is extremely expensive to open a brand new clinic that complies with the ambulatory surgical center requirements. Being grandfathered in would be the only option available to abortion clinics that cannot afford the upgrade. However, unfair treatment of abortion clinics and providers is preventing those clinics from being grandfathered into the new system. As a result, many abortion clinics may be forced to close. Admitting privileges are proving difficult or impossible for physicians both to obtain and, for those who have already been granted privileges, to keep. Dr. Sherwood Lynn, an obstetrician-gynecologist who has performed abortions for decades, describes the process of obtaining admitting privileges and the difficulties abortion providers face. After sending in an application a physician must wait for the hospital to send them the required materials, “but if the address of the practice on the application is of an abortion provider or clinic, [the hospital] won’t send [them] the package of materials required. [They] simply can’t apply.”9 Dr. Lynn and several other physicians have surmised that hospitals are only withholding privileges from qualified physicians who perform abortions and that other physicians do not face this discriminatory treatment. Hospitals have also revoked privileges granted to physicians after learning that the physicians perform abortions. For instance, in Texas two doctors, “received notices [...] informing them that their admitting privileges to the University General Hospital of Dallas have been revoked, with the hospital’s CEO claiming the hospital was unaware they were providing abortion care and that the hospital believed such care would damage its reputation.”10 What is curious about this revocation is that, “federal and state laws [...] forbid hospitals from discriminating against doctors who perform abortions,” and yet hospitals are clearly doing just that.11 Dr. Pamela Richter, another abortion provider in Texas, had her temporary admitting privileges revoked with no explanation and because of this, the clinic where she performed abortions, Reproductive Services, can no longer provide abortions at all.12 As the hospital gave no reason for the revocation, it not clear Dr. Richter’s privileges were revoked because she performs abortions. Dr. Richter, however, has performed over 17,000 abortions and her privileges were revoked soon after HB 2 was introduced.13 According to the Texas Hospital Association, giving admitting privileges to doctors who do not work for the hospital is expensive and time-consuming but this does not account for the fact that hospitals are revoking previously granted privileges from physicians whom they learn are providing abortion services.14 As mentioned previously, the District Court found that the admitting privileges requirement and the ambulatory surgical center requirement do not further ensure the health and safety of women undergoing an abortion. Several physicians have testified to this fact. Dr. Lynn stated in an interview: The admitting privileges requirements are [...] absolutely unnecessary. If you have a number of patients waiting for procedures, and something happens and a patient needs to be transferred to a hospital, you’re not going to leave everyone else and go to the hospital. That makes no sense. You’re going to refer that person to a gynecologist at the hospital. There is no safety issue involved here. If a patient shows up with an emergency, every hospital is required to admit that patient. They have to by law.15 It is rare that complications will arise from an abortion performed in a clinic. Dr. Richter, for example, has performed more than 17,000 abortions and not once had to send a patient to a hospital because of complications resulting from the procedure. According to Dr. Lynn even if abortion providers were granted privileges to hospitals, it is unlikely that they will exercise them. In essence, having admitting privileges at a hospital does nothing to further ensure the safety of an already safe procedure. The only result of the admitting privileges requirement is to limit certain physicians’ ability to perform legal abortions. Not only do the HB 2 requirements fail to further ensure the health and safety of women, the HB 2 requirements may actually create more health risks to women who cannot access the eight remaining clinics. The first risk is that the remaining clinics would have an influx of patients that they may not be able to handle, forcing women to wait longer for an appointment. As stated by the District Court, “[e]ven assuming every woman in Texas who wants an abortion [...] could travel to one of the four metropolitan areas where abortions will still be available, the cumulative results of HB 2 are that, at most, eight providers would have to handle the abortion demand of the entire state.”16 Furthermore, “[t]hat the State suggests that these seven or eight providers could meet the demand of the entire state stretches credulity.”17 Abortion is a time sensitive procedure. It is safest when performed early in a pregnancy. The increase in patients to these remaining clinics, assuming all women in Texas can access them, will increase wait times and may force women to have abortions later in pregnancy. In the worst-case scenario, a woman would not see an abortion provider at all before viability. Such instances may be rare, but they are possible. In such cases, women’s access to legal abortions becomes impossible and thereby violate the ruling in Roe. Clinics may be able to avoid the aforementioned problems if they hire more physicians. However, there are two barriers to hiring more physicians. First, as mentioned previously, admitting privileges to Texas hospitals are difficult, if not impossible, for abortion providers to obtain. Second, given the negative treatment of abortion providers by anti-abortion groups, many physicians are not willing to perform abortions. The harassment abortion providers face is unique to those physicians and many physicians will not perform abortions for that reason. In an article published in the Austin Chronicle, anti- abortion activist Abby Johnson, “discusses how her group investigated appraisal district records to find the new location of where an Austin abortion physician plans to work.”18 Johnson states, “These abortionists are feeling the pressure from the pro-life movement in Texas. I think they feel like they’re on the run. And that’s how we want to keep it.”19 If the HB 2 requirements are passed and there remain at most eight abortion providers in Texas, these activists will concentrate on those clinics and, “the dangerous impact of their intimidation tactics will be exacerbated.”20 Even if the number of physicians needed to meet the demand in Texas can obtain admitting privileges and work at one of the remaining clinics, they may choose not to do such work because they are putting themselves at risk. The harm abortion providers face from such anti-abortion groups is not unique to Texas. There are stories from all over the country and from other countries where abortion is legal of physicians receiving death threats. Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider in Kansas, was killed outside his church and had received numerous death threats prior to this. The HB 2 requirements are making it so that abortion providers either cannot provide their services any longer or will face increased threats and increased danger to themselves. Physicians are allowed to conscientiously object to providing medical interventions in certain circumstances for moral and religious reasons. However, there are limits on this right. According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “[w]hen conscientious refusals conflict with moral obligations that are central to the ethical practice of medicine, ethical care requires that the physician provide care despite reservations or that there be resources in place to allow the patient to gain access to care in the presence of conscientious refusal.”21 I would argue fear for one’s safety in the face of immediate threats is perhaps a stronger ground on which to refuse to provide care than a personal belief that abortion is immoral or against one’s religion. ACOG also states, “[p]roviders with moral or religious objections should either practice in proximity to individuals who do not share their views or ensure that referral processes are in place so that patients have access to the service that the physician does not wish to provide.”22 This responsibility has been largely disputed by the medical community but in cases of rape, incest, and health risks to women, referrals must be made without exception. However, under the requirements of HB 2, working in proximity to an abortion provider may not be possible because they are so geographically limited. Referrals are supposed to be made within reason. Some areas of Texas, such as the Rio Grande Valley, are up to 200 miles away from the nearest clinic that would remain open if HB 2 is passed. Referrals may simply not be feasible given the geographical distances and the decreasing number of available physicians. As mentioned above, there are two risks to the health and safety of women as a result of HB 2. The second of these is that if a woman cannot access one of the remaining clinics, she may seek out a more convenient but illegal and unsafe abortion, which is far more likely to result in a dangerous complication. Dr. Lynn states, “[b]ecause of the restrictions lawmakers impose, women will seek abortions illegally, and we’re going to see a rise in septic abortions.”23 Some areas of Texas might effectively revert back to a pre-Roe era where abortions were performed in unsanitary conditions by unqualified people resulting in dangerous medical complications far more often than legal abortion procedures do now. Physicians like Dr. Lynn who want to prevent this from happening generally cannot do so without facing legal sanction. Physicians have a duty to provide safe medical care and if they cannot obtain admitting privileges, they cannot exercise this duty. ACOG released a statement expressing their objections to the new requirements. They state that HB 2 is, “plainly intended to restrict the reproductive rights of women in Texas through a series of requirements that improperly regulate medical practice and interfere with the patient-physician relationship.”24 Executive Vice-President of ACOG, Hal C. Lawrence III stated: The Texas bills set a dangerous precedent of a legislature telling doctors how to practice medicine and how to care for individual patients. ACOG opposes legislative interference, and strongly believes that decisions about medical care must be based on scientific evidence and made by licensed medical professionals, not the state or federal government.25 Abortion is one of only a few areas of medicine where the legislature imposes so many regulations restricting particular physicians’ ability to practice medicine. Not only are abortions providers being regulated by the state, they are also facing clear discrimination from others within the medical community. The state is closing down clinics that do not meet the ambulatory surgical center requirements and hospitals are denying physicians admitting privileges because they perform abortions. In summary, abortion providers are being discriminated against both by the legislature and other members of the medical community. Other physicians who do not perform abortions are not denied admitting privileges on discriminatory grounds. Clinics that cannot afford upgrades to become an ambulatory surgical center are being grandfathered in, while abortion clinics are being forced to close down. Ob-Gyns who conscientiously object to performing abortions and who are not located in close proximity to at least one abortion provider cannot effectively fulfill their duty to refer patients. Lastly, given the barriers these regulations will create, there will likely be a rise in complications resulting from abortions provided under grossly unsafe conditions. Physicians, whose duty it is to provide safe and effective medical care, are being denied the right to exercise this duty. While this denial may not be unconstitutional, it is certainly unjust and discriminatory and creates obstacles that other physicians do not face. Most importantly, these obstacles are creating an undue burden for women. The HB 2 requirements do not increase the health and safety of abortions; all they do is create substantial obstacles for women. In light of these observations, the requirements seem to me to be in clear violation of Casey, in which it was decided that, “[u]nnecessary health regulations that have the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion impose an undue burden on that right.”26 These regulations do just what Casey was meant to prohibit and this is accomplished through limiting physicians’ ability to practice safe abortions across the state of Texas. Therefore, the HB 2 requirements may not impose an undue burden on doctors but they do impose an undue burden on women. PDF available: Rachel Hill, "Texas HB 2," Voices in Bioethics. References: 1 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, pg. 2. 2 Whole Women’s Health v. Lakey, pg. 2. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., 4. 5 Ibid., 2. 6 Planned Parenthood v. Casey, pg. 16 7 AMA Code of Medical Ethics, “Opinion 2.01 – Abortion,” American Medical Association. 8 Whole Women’s Health v. Lakey, pg. 10. 9 Dr. Sherwood Lynn, “A Texas Ob-Gyn Details the Horrific Consequences of Abortion Restrictions,” Cosmopolitan. 10 Feminist Newswire, “Texas Hospitals Revoke Admitting Privileges to Abortion Providers,” Feminist Majority Foundation Blog. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Glenn Hegar, “Texas Hospital Association’s Statement of Opposition to Section 2 of the Committee Substitute for Senate Bill 5,” Texas Hospital Association. 15 Dr. Lynn, “A Texas Ob-Gyn.” 16 Whole Women’s Health v. Lakey, pg. 10. 17 Ibid. 18 Mary Tuma, “Undercover Audio Reveals Anti-Abortion Tactics: Anti-abortion activists monitor and track providers, patients,” Austin Chronicle. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Committee on Ethics, “The Limits of Conscientious Refusal in Reproductive Medicine,” The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. 22 Ibid. 23 Dr. Lynn, “A Texas Ob-Gyn.” 24 “Ob-Gyns Denounce Texas Abortion Legislation: Senate Bill 1 and House Bill 2 Set Dangerous Precedent,” The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. 25 Ibid. 26 Planned Parenthood v. Casey, pg. 16. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 57-74 [Access article in PDF] An American Novelist in the Philosopher King's Court Thomas P. Crocker I MORAL PHILOSOPHY has languished long within the confines of something like the following purported dilemma: either moral discourse is the discourse of principles and rules rationally grounded, or moral discourse is the discourse of passions and personal preferences, clothed in the garments of rational justification. Alasdair (...) MacIntyre's disquieting suggestion—that our language of moral debate is nothing more than the "simulacra of morality"—provides a grim outlook for moral philosophy. 1 Indeed, when moral inquiry is conducted in terms of ethical theory, without independent grounds upon which competing arguments can meet, philosophical discourse, embedded in competing theories, seems to be only so much cacophonous clamor, rationally convincing no one except those who already accept the terms employed by their own theory. One way to avoid this philosophical effluvium produced by moral philosophy is to follow Ludwig Wittgenstein in rejecting the very terms upon which it is made (the distinction between the particular perspective and the universal standpoint), recognizing that moral inquiry begins from where we already are—the everyday world in which we find ourselves.Towards the end of avoidance here, I wish to add to this simmering background of ethical discord Mark Twain's story of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 2 Twain's controversial voice provides a place for moral thinking unavailable through strictly theoretical discourse. 3 And reading Huck and Jim's story through the philosophical avoidance of Wittgenstein's latent ethical thought provides the transformative possibility of seeing the domain of the ethical in a new light. 4 [End Page 57]Although Twain boldly states at the beginning of his novel that "persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished," 5 he does show us without the need of theory or dogma how a change in one's way of seeing is intertwined with a change in one's way of living; this connection between ways of seeing and ways of living makes possible a kind of moral transformation that characterizes the change in Huck's perception of Jim, from that of a slave to that of a friend. This moral conversion is much like the perceptual transformations that Ludwig Wittgenstein considers in his discussions of "noticing an aspect," 6 in which a shift in what one sees is connected to the background against which the perceptual object is seen and to the ways in which one is prepared to respond to it. When confronting perceptual ambiguity, as in the case of Jastrow's ambiguous duck/rabbit figure, one looks to the context and background to clarify what one sees, just as one does with semantic ambiguity. In coming to see in one way or the other, nothing is explicitly stated, nothing is put into argumentative form. And in Twain's narrative, we are not given arguments for why we should see Jim as human, nor does the narrative recount Huck's confrontations with moral arguments; rather, through his interactions with Jim, Huck is shown Jim's humanity, his friendship, and we, the readers, are shown the possibility of a moral transformation that is not determined by or grounded in rules or philosophical arguments.The moral realist might agree that such a transformation could be motivated in ways other than rational arguments, but to be legitimate, it must be possible to reconstruct the transformation according to rational considerations. The ability to "get behind" the transformation in some justificatory way is what I am denying here (as is Wittgenstein); for what one finds when one "gets behind" is another situated language game that is itself not open to question (though it could be if we direct our attention towards it). There is no final "getting behind" the things we do and the situations in which we do them, and hence there is no final justificatory argument one can give—as Wittgenstein famously says, "If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am... (shrink)

. Besides a philosophical exposition of the tenets of a form of Śaiva Siddhānta, the Dharma Pātañjala contains a long presentation of the yoga system that apparently follows the first three chapters of Patañjal’s Yogasūtra , either interweaving Sanskrit excerpts from an untraced versified version of the latter text with an Old Javanese commentary, or directly rendering into Old Javanese what appears to be an original Sanskrit commentary. Although the Old Javanese prose often bears a strong resemblance with the (...) arrangement and formulation of the topics treated in the Yogasūtrabhāṣya , it diverges from that commentary in several respects. The Dharma Pātañjala often presents specific doctrinal details that are found in other (sub)commentaries or in the Arabic rendering of the sūtra s-cum-commentary composed by al-Bīrūnī before 1030 AD , or adds original elements that are unattested elsewhere. The testimony of the Dharma Pātañjala turns out to be useful in order to solve some of the dilemmas posed by the selected sūtra s. It may also help us to better understand the textual cultural transmission and cultural reception of Patañjali’s work in both South and Southeast Asia, for its author, rather than freely borrowing from different Sanskrit commentaries, appear to have drawn upon an as yet unidentified, and possibly lost, ‘common source’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 61-72 [Access article in PDF] From Personal to Social Transaction:A Model of Aesthetic Reading in the Classroom Mark A. Pike This article seeks to define more precisely the nature of the individual transaction that occurs between reader and text and the potential for aesthetic reading in literature classrooms by relating knowledge of the way pupils engage in literary transactions to theoretical perspectives (...) that address the issue. The validity of Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory of the literary work, expounded in Literature as Exploration and The Reader, The Text, The Poem, and its relevance for contemporary educators, particularly in the field of English education, has recently been reasserted by Jeanne Connell in her timely and cogent article in this journal. 1 The present article, however, seeks to refocus debate by problematizing and subsequently developing some aspects of key theories such as Rosenblatt's while examining the individual and social nature of reading in schools. Rosenblatt's view that aesthetic experiences can have both social origin and effect certainly deserves further theorizing if aesthetic experience in school communities and classrooms is to flourish.The influence of John Dewey's Art as Experience upon Rosenblatt is evident as this seminal text conceives of our primary task as the restoration of "continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and everyday events." 2 Such continuity with experience is vital because, for Dewey, "experience is the fulfillment of an organism in its struggles and achievements in a world of things, it is art in germ." 3 Applying such a notion to education in schools, Rosenblatt saw the aim of literature lessons as the growth of experience rather than the acquisition of knowledge. Yet, despite such progress, in the United Kingdom, teachers of English are in the unenviable position of having to deliver an extensive body of knowledge prescribed by the National Curriculum and also to focus explicitly upon the features of certain types of text as they teach the National Literacy Strategy. 4 In Rosenblatt's work the emphasis on our experience of [End Page 61] literary works provides a much needed alternative to positions such as that adopted by New Criticism where "it is never what a poem says which matters, but what it is" because we acknowledge we can only ever gain access to what a poem says as "the sentence that seems to need no interpretation is already the product of one." 5 Clearly, understanding the reader's transaction with texts is where we must begin if we wish to foster aesthetic reading in our classrooms.Transactional theory also appears to be closely related to Martin Heidegger's thought in Being and Time where Dasein (givenness, existence, being) is seen as a distinctive characteristic of the human being as our consciousness projects things of the world and is also subjected to the things of the world which belong to us, in some sense, only as long as our consciousness is projecting them. 6 The validity of Dewey's view, where experience is not separated from art, can be seen when we acknowledge that we can "never adopt an attitude of detached contemplation, looking down on the world as if from a mountain top" for we are "inevitably merged with the very object of our consciousness." 7Such a view reflects Hans-Georg Gadamer's position in Truth and Method in which Heidegger's explanation of situation is applied to literary theory because, for Gadamer, the literary work cannot appear as a packaged and completed artefact in which meaning is neatly wrapped because it is influenced by a particular reader's actions at a particular moment. 8 Rosenblatt's realistic conception that "each reading involves a particular person at a particular time and place" is developed in this article as it seems that, even now, many reader response critics and curriculum designers "write as though people read literature in a vacuum or in a generalized kind of academic setting" which often does not apply... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 61-72 [Access article in PDF] From Personal to Social Transaction:A Model of Aesthetic Reading in the Classroom Mark A. Pike This article seeks to define more precisely the nature of the individual transaction that occurs between reader and text and the potential for aesthetic reading in literature classrooms by relating knowledge of the way pupils engage in literary transactions to theoretical perspectives (...) that address the issue. The validity of Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory of the literary work, expounded in Literature as Exploration and The Reader, The Text, The Poem, and its relevance for contemporary educators, particularly in the field of English education, has recently been reasserted by Jeanne Connell in her timely and cogent article in this journal. 1 The present article, however, seeks to refocus debate by problematizing and subsequently developing some aspects of key theories such as Rosenblatt's while examining the individual and social nature of reading in schools. Rosenblatt's view that aesthetic experiences can have both social origin and effect certainly deserves further theorizing if aesthetic experience in school communities and classrooms is to flourish.The influence of John Dewey's Art as Experience upon Rosenblatt is evident as this seminal text conceives of our primary task as the restoration of "continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and everyday events." 2 Such continuity with experience is vital because, for Dewey, "experience is the fulfillment of an organism in its struggles and achievements in a world of things, it is art in germ." 3 Applying such a notion to education in schools, Rosenblatt saw the aim of literature lessons as the growth of experience rather than the acquisition of knowledge. Yet, despite such progress, in the United Kingdom, teachers of English are in the unenviable position of having to deliver an extensive body of knowledge prescribed by the National Curriculum and also to focus explicitly upon the features of certain types of text as they teach the National Literacy Strategy. 4 In Rosenblatt's work the emphasis on our experience of [End Page 61] literary works provides a much needed alternative to positions such as that adopted by New Criticism where "it is never what a poem says which matters, but what it is" because we acknowledge we can only ever gain access to what a poem says as "the sentence that seems to need no interpretation is already the product of one." 5 Clearly, understanding the reader's transaction with texts is where we must begin if we wish to foster aesthetic reading in our classrooms.Transactional theory also appears to be closely related to Martin Heidegger's thought in Being and Time where Dasein (givenness, existence, being) is seen as a distinctive characteristic of the human being as our consciousness projects things of the world and is also subjected to the things of the world which belong to us, in some sense, only as long as our consciousness is projecting them. 6 The validity of Dewey's view, where experience is not separated from art, can be seen when we acknowledge that we can "never adopt an attitude of detached contemplation, looking down on the world as if from a mountain top" for we are "inevitably merged with the very object of our consciousness." 7Such a view reflects Hans-Georg Gadamer's position in Truth and Method in which Heidegger's explanation of situation is applied to literary theory because, for Gadamer, the literary work cannot appear as a packaged and completed artefact in which meaning is neatly wrapped because it is influenced by a particular reader's actions at a particular moment. 8 Rosenblatt's realistic conception that "each reading involves a particular person at a particular time and place" is developed in this article as it seems that, even now, many reader response critics and curriculum designers "write as though people read literature in a vacuum or in a generalized kind of academic setting" which often does not apply... (shrink)

Experiments using a preferential looking method, a perceptual judgment method, and a predictive judgment method investigated the development, from 7 months to 6 years of age, of sensitivity to the effects of gravity and inertia on inanimate object motion. The experiments focused on a situation in which a ball rolled off a flat surface and either continued in linear motion (contrary to gravity), turned abruptly and moved downward (contrary to inertia), or underwent natural, parabolic motion. When children viewed (...) the three fully visible motions, both the preferential looking method and the perceptual judgment method provided evidence that sensitivity to inertia developed between 7 months and 2 years, and that sensitivity to gravity began to develop after 3 years. When children predicted the future location of the object without viewing the motions, the predictive judgment method provided evidence that sensitivity to gravity had developed by 2 years, whereas sensitivity to inertia began to develop only at 5±6 years. These findings suggest that knowledge of object motion develops slowly over childhood, in a piecemeal fashion. Moreover, the same system of knowledge appears to be tapped both in preferential looking tasks and in judgment tasks when children view fully visible events, but a different system may underlie children's inferences about unseen object motions. (shrink)

Peacemaking is especially challenging in situations of intractable conflict. Collective narratives in this context contribute to coping with challenges societies face, but also fuel conflict continuation. We introduce the Informative Process Model, proposing that informing individuals about the socio-psychological processes through which conflict-supporting narratives develop, and suggesting that they can change via comparison to similar conflicts resolved peacefully, can facilitate unfreezing and change in attitudes. Study 1 established associations between awareness of conflict costs and conflict-supporting narratives, belief in the possibility (...) of resolving the conflict peacefully and support for pursuing peace among Israeli-Jews and Palestinians. Studies 2 and 3 found that exposure to IPM-based original videos led Israeli-Jews to deliberation of the information presented, predicting acceptance of the IPM-based message, which, in turn, predicted support for negotiations. Study 3 also found similar effects across IPM-based messages focusing on different conflict-supporting themes. We discuss the implications to attitude change in intractable conflicts. (shrink)

Among the corpus of extant Greek works attributed to Gregory the Wonder-worker is a little treatise about the soul addressed to a certain Tatian. A fragment of the same work, which is missing its introductory preface, appears among the works of Maximus the Confessor. In addition, there are two manuscripts of a Syriac translation that also lack the introductory preface. One of these Syriac manuscripts was found at St. Catherine’s at Mt. Sinai and dates from the seventh century, which indicates (...) that the attribution of the work to such a late figure as Maximus the Confessor is incorrect. Yet the work, which I shall call De animafor the purpose of this inquiry, does not exhibit many obvious linguistic parallels with the admittedly quite small extant corpus of Greek works that are securely attributed to Gregory. Moreover, no early external evidence confirms that Gregory indeed wrote a treatise on the soul. In several of the Greek manuscripts as well as in the Syriac manuscripts the work remains unattributed to any author. In this paper I shall argue that: 1. earlier arguments that De anima depends on Nemenius of Emesa’s De natura hominis are dubious 2. the work displays some linguistic parallels with the extant works of Justin Martyr, which may suggest that it was directed at Justin’s student, Tatian the Syrian, either by Justin himself or by another student of Justin. (shrink)

1.Summary The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Sunyata’. Nagarjuna is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna denying (...) the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. This is the heart of Nagarjuna’s ideas. In the 19th century a more or less unknown Italian philosopher, Vincenzo Goberti, spoke about relations as the mean and as bonds between things. Later, in quantum physics and in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead we are talking about interactions and entanglements. These ideas of relatedness or connections or entanglements in Eastern and Western modes of thought are the main idea of this essay. Not all entanglements are known. Just two examples: the nature of quantum entanglements is not known. Quantum entanglements should be faster than light. That's why Albert Einstein had some doubts. A second example: the completely unknown connections between the mind and the brain. Other examples are mysterious like the connections between birds in a flock. Some are a little known like gravitational forces. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realized that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna, we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalization. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalization might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. (Plato 424 – 348 Befor Current Era) The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. 5. Key terms: Quantum Physics. Why quantum physics? European modes of thought had no idea of the space between two this. They were bound to the ideas of substance or subject, two main metaphysical traditions of European philosophical history, two main principles. These substances and these subjects are two immaterial bodies which were considered by traditional European metaphysics as lying, as a sort of core, inside the objects or underlying the empirical reality of our world. The first European scientist who saw with his inner eye the forces between two things had been Michael Faraday (1791-1867). Faraday was an English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism. Later physicists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and others followed his view in modern physics. This is a fifth point of my work. I compare Nagarjuna with European scientific modes of thought for a better understanding of Asia. I do not compare Nagarjuna with European philosophers like Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein. The principles and metaphysical foundations of physical sciences are more representative for European modes of thought than the ideas of Hegel, Heidegger and Wittgenstein and they are more precise. And slowly we are beginning to understand these principles. Let me take as an example the interpretation of quantum entanglement by the British mathematician Roger Penrose. Penrose discusses in the year of 2000 the experiences of quantum entanglement where light is separated over a distance of 100 kilometers and still remains connected in an unknown way. These are well known experiments in the last 30 years. Very strange for European modes of thought. The light should be either separated or connected. That is the expectation most European modes of thought tell us. Aristotle had been the first. Aristotle (384 - 322 Before Current Era) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He told us the following principle as a metaphysical foundation: Either a situation exists or not. There is not a third possibility. Now listen to Roger Penrose: “Quantum entanglement is a very strange type of thing. It is somewhere between objects being separate and being in communication with each other” (Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Cambridge University Press. 2000 page 66). This sentence of Roger Penrose is a first step of a philosophical generalization in a Whiteheadian sense. 6. Key terms: ‘The metaphysical foundations of modern science’ had been examined particularly by three European and American philosophers: E. A. Burtt, A.N. Whitehead and Hans-Georg Gadamer, by Gadamer eminently in his late writings on Heraclitus and Parmenides. I try to follow the approaches of these philosophers of relational views and of anti-substantialism. By ‘metaphysical foundations’ Edwin Arthur Burtt does not understand transcendental ideas but simply the principles that are underlying sciences. -/- 7. Key terms: ‘Complementarity’, ‘interactions’, ‘entanglements’. Since 1927 quantum physics has three key terms which give an indication to the fundamental physical reality: Complementarity, interactions and entanglement. These three notions are akin to Nagarjuna’s relational view of reality. They are akin and they are very precise, so that Buddhism might learn something from these descriptions and quantum physicists might learn from Nagarjuna’s examples and views of reality. They might learn to do a first step in a philosophical generalisation of quantum physical experiments. All of us we might learn how objects are entangled or going arm in arm. [The end of the summary.] -/- « Wenn du gerade das, wodurch auch immer du gefesselt bist, erkennst, wirst du zur Freiheit gelangen. Wenn du diesen speziellen Pfad verwirklichst, gelangst du in einem Leben zur Buddhaschaft. Deswegen verhält es sich folgendermaßen : Wenn plötzlich die Geistesregung « Begierde » enststeht, dann betrachte, ohne ihr zu folgen, direkt ihre Essenz und verweile in dieser Betrachtung, ohne Ablenkungen zuzulassen. Auf diese Weise reinigt Begierde sich selbst, ohne aufgegeben zu werden, da sie ohne Grundlage und Ursprung entsteht. Das wird « Befreiung in sich selbst », « unterscheidende ursprüngliche Weisheit » oder Buddha Amitabha » genannt ». Jigden Sumgön, Licht, das die Dunkelheit durchbricht, Otter Verlag, München 2006, Seite 47, 48 . (shrink)

Recent work has shown that memory for various types of information associated with social targets (impressions based on behaviours and political ideology) influences decisions to approach or avoid those same targets. The current study was intended to better understand the extent that memory for other types of details associated with targets (beliefs and behaviours) affects subsequent approach/avoidance decisions. In this investigation, participants formed impressions of social targets represented by a picture and a sentence (a belief in Experiment 1; either (...) a belief or behaviour in Experiment 2). Later, memory for the impressions and sentences associated with each target was tested. Finally, participants decided whether they would want to approach or avoid each target. Results demonstrated that accurate memory strongly influenced approach/avoidance decisions for targets associated with different types of information (beliefs; behaviours), although there was no difference in the effect of memory between beliefs and behaviours. Overall, results suggest an important role of memory in decisions to approach or avoid others. (shrink)

With this study of the phenomenological idealism of Husserl, in all of its dimensions and phases, Giorgio Baratta places himself within the ranks of a new type of student of Husserlian phenomenology. Representatives of this type are R. Boehm, I. Kern, and L. Kelkel among others. They do not feel the need to apologize for Husserl’s conceptual awkwardness, an awkwardness that reflects growth; nor are they overafflicted by Husserl’s sin of idealism, nor embarrassed by his recourse to the bewildering realm (...) of the transcendental. They do not need to profit from claims of close discipleship, or from iconoclastic feats; thus they are able to show us a Husserl who lived in constant struggle with the conceptual issues of his time, and who created perhaps the broadest matrix for the reconciliation of these issues. In Baratta’s work we are told of Husserl’s nationalistic speeches to the troops during World War I; of his search for the identity of Germany during the Weimar years; of his idealistic desires to influence, if only remotely and indirectly, education and politics ; of his preoccupation with the issue of the decline of the West widely discussed after the publication of Spengler’s popular work; of his personal eclipse, with many of his disciples turning away, as a consequence of his idealistic confession; and finally of the ostracism in which he lived during the Nazi years. Against this background, certainly not larger than life, we are given clear view of the major thrusts of Husserl’s effort to preserve human subjectivity and its values by placing it under the influence of classical German idealism. The Scylla and Charybdis of Husserl’s position were: 1) the propensity of his scientific objectivism to become either Platonism or psychologism; 2) the propensity of his philosophical foundation of subjectivity to turn into subjective idealism. The response to these dangers within Husserl’s own system was, on the one hand, an objective idealism in the tradition of Plato and Leibniz and, on the other hand, an honest effort to rescue creative intuition from the realm of the mundane. This surprisingly eclectic response exposed Husserl to attacks from all sides, from positivistic psychologism, from neo-Kantian operationalism and from the more extreme forms of idealism and materialism. Also, because of the vulnerability of this response, the core of Husserl’s eclecticism broke easily down into the Platonic descriptivism of the advocates of Ideenschau and the mundane ontology of the early Heidegger. In two concluding essays, which are as effortlessly insightful as the initial two, transcendental phenomenology is presented by Baratta in the context of the historical justification that Husserl gave it in his mature years. As this historical justification receives further support from an overlapping philosophy of history, phenomenology takes on some bright ideological colors. Husserl’s pages in the Crisis open up a wide panorama of philosophical responsibility: science urgently needs the influence of human goals, and humanity itself cannot remain entrapped in worldly goals without gradually reducing the life of the common man to a state of complete reification. Baratta’s work owes much to Boehm, and Kern and Kelkel, nevertheless it is a work of maturity, surely in possession of the thematic undercurrents of Husserl’s thought which themselves underlie, because of their eclecticism, all the major themes of the main schools of thought today. This work should be read as a contribution to the study of phenomenology and as a further step in our understanding of the predicament of contemporary thought.—A. M. (shrink)

This paper presents students’ views about honest and dishonest actions within the pharmacy and medical learning environments. Students also offered their views on solutions to ameliorating dishonest action. Three research questions were posed in this paper: (1) what reasons would students articulate in reference to engaging in dishonest behaviours? (2) What reasons would students articulate in reference to maintaining high levels of integrity? (3) What strategies would students suggest to decrease engagement in dishonest behaviours and/or promote honest behaviours? The design (...) of the study incorporated an initial descriptive analysis to interpret students’ responses to an 18-item questionnaire about justifications for dishonest action. This was followed by a qualitative analysis of students’ commentaries in reference to why students would engage in either honest or dishonest action. Finally a qualitative analysis was conducted on students’ views regarding solutions to dishonest action. The quantitative results showed that students were more likely to use time management and seriousness justifications for dishonest actions. The qualitative findings found that students’ actions (honest or dishonest) were guided by family and friends, the need to do well, issues of morality and institutional guidelines. Students suggested that dishonest action could be ameliorated by external agencies and polarised views between punitive and rewards-based mechanisms were offered. These results suggest that these students engaged in dishonest action for various reasons and solutions addressing dishonest action need to consider diverse mechanisms that likely extend beyond the educational institution. (shrink)

In three studies, we examined food as an elicitor of nostalgia. Study 1 participants visualised eating either a nostalgic or regularly consumed food. Study 2 participants visualised consuming 12 foods. Study 3 participants consumed 12 flavour samples. Following their food experiences, all participants responded to questions regarding the profile of food-evoked nostalgia (i.e. autobiographical relevance, arousal, familiarity, positive and negative emotions) and several psychological functions (i.e. positive affect, self-esteem, social connectedness, meaning in life). Study 2 and 3 participants also (...) reported their state nostalgia. Results revealed that food is a powerful elicitor of nostalgia. Food-evoked nostalgia has a similar contextual profile to previously examined elicitors, but is a predominantly positive emotional experience. Food-evoked nostalgia served multiple psychological functions and predicted greater state nostalgia. (shrink)