El desafío científico-político de coproducir y proveer "servicios climáticos" en el sudeste de Sudamérica / Cecilia Hidalgo -- Coproducción, ciencia y activismo : empoderamiento epistémico y retórico de activistas seropositivos en la Argentina / Emiliano Marello -- Coproducción en lactancia materna y alimentación del niño pequeño / Pablo Duran -- Coproducción de conocimientos entre especialistas y docentes mediados por una plataforma virtual gubernamental / Marisa Álvarez, Verónica Xhardez y Marcela Pologna -- Conocimiento científico, performatividad e interacción social: compromisos filosófico-sociológicos / (...) María de los A. Martini -- Aportes para un lenguaje de la coproducción / María Laura Martínez -- Ciencia, retórica y semiótica / Robert C. Marafioti -- La cuestión de la agencia en el discurso coproduccionista / Sergio Russo -- Aprendices de brujos : interludios y variaciones en la antropología de la ciencia / Adriana A. Stagnaro -- Una teoría sociológica del conocimiento humano / Florencia Rimoldi -- El conocimiento en la comunicación : aportes pragmatikstas apra la disoluciónd e la imagen clásica del conocimiento científico / Paula Rossi. (shrink)

Segundo Alasdair MacIntyre, existem três características problemáticas que perpassam grande parte das contendas morais e políticas contemporâneas e às quais não se têm dado atenção suficiente: a) existe uma incomensurabilidade conceitual dos argumentos adversários nos debates travados; b) as argumentações em curso se fazem passar por argumentações racionais impessoais; c) as premissas conceitualmente distintas dos argumentos usados têm uma grande diversidade de origens históricas. A partir dessas três colocações e das consequências delas advindas, vamos aplicar o raciocínio crítico de MacIntyre (...) a um conjunto específico de argumentos em conflito no terreno do multiculturalismo. Nosso intuito com isso é explorar as diferentes concepções e princípios que estão na base das posições vistas e também realizar um pequeno balanço acerca da justificação comunitarista para um modelo político multicultural. (shrink)

Il volume contiene i testi più significativi relativamente alla nascita e allo sviluppo della dottrina dell'analogia dell'essere. I passi sono riportati a fronte con traduzioni originali annotate e sono raccolti in due sezioni: quella di filosofia antica e tardoantica e quella di filosofia medievale araba e latina. La prima sezione comprende i principali testi aristotelici che della dottrina dell'analogia dell'essere hanno costituito l'origine, e i passi fra i più rilevanti della tradizione commentaristica antica e tardoantica, da Alessandro di Afrodisia (II-III (...) sec. d.C) a Simplicio di Cilicia (VI sec. d.C.), nei quali è possibile individuare le prime fasi dello sviluppo di tale dottrina. La sezione di filosofia medievale araba e latina comprende passi scelti dei filosofi che rappresentano le tappe essenziali dello sviluppo della dottrina dell'analogia dell'essere nel medioevo arabo e latino, da al-Fārābī (m. 950 c.) a Tommaso d'Aquino (XIII sec.) a Tommaso de Vio, il “Gaetano” (XV-XVI sec.)--Back cover. (shrink)

In mathematics, the deductive method reigns. Without proof, a claim remains unsolved, a mere conjecture, not something that can be simply assumed; when a proof is found, the problem is solved, it turns into a “result,” something that can be relied on. So mathematicians think. But is there more to mathematical justification than proof?The answer is an emphatic yes, as I explain in this chapter. I argue that non-deductive justification is in fact pervasive in mathematics, and that it is in (...) good epistemic standing. (shrink)

The 1981 Dahlem conference was a catalyst for contemporary evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-devo). This introductory chapter rehearses some of the details of the history surrounding the original conference and its associated edited volume, explicates the philosophical problem of conceptual change that provided the rationale for a workshop devoted to evaluating the epistemic revisions and transformations that occurred in the interim, explores conceptual change with respect to the concept of evolutionary novelty, and highlights some of the themes and patterns in the (...) different contributions to the present volume, Conceptual Change in Biology: Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives on Evolution and Development. (shrink)

In mathematics, the deductive method reigns. Without proof, a claim remains unsolved, a mere conjecture, not something that can be simply assumed; when a proof is found, the problem is solved, it turns into a “result,” something that can be relied on. So mathematicians think. But is there more to mathematical justification than proof? -/- The answer is an emphatic yes, as I explain in this article. I argue that non-deductive justification is in fact pervasive in mathematics, and that it (...) is in good epistemic standing. (shrink)

The Compactness Theorem The compactness theorem is a fundamental theorem for the model theory of classical propositional and first-order logic. As well as having importance in several areas of mathematics, such as algebra and combinatorics, it also helps to pinpoint the strength of these logics, which are the standard ones used in mathematics and arguably … Continue reading Compactness →.

A traditional approach to teaching medical ethics aims to provide knowledge about ethics. This is in line with an epistemological view on ethics in which moral expertise is assumed to be located in theoretical knowledge and not in the moral experience of healthcare professionals. The aim of this paper is to present an alternative, contextual approach to teaching ethics, which is grounded in a pragmatic-hermeneutical and dialogical ethics. This approach is called moral case deliberation. Within moral case deliberation, healthcare professionals (...) bring in their actual moral questions during a structured dialogue. The ethicist facilitates the learning process by using various conversation methods in order to find answers to the case and to develop moral competencies. The case deliberations are not unique events, but are a structural part of the professional training on the work floor within healthcare institutions. This article presents the underlying theory on ethics and illustrates this approach with an example of a moral case deliberation project in a Dutch psychiatric hospital. The project was evaluated using the method of responsive evaluation. This method provided us with rich information about the implementation process and effects the research process itself also lent support to the process of implementation. (shrink)

Around 1716, the French astronomer and academician Joseph-Nicolas Delisle took up a new project: the twinned topics of Chinese chronology and astronomy. Unable to access Chinese sources and not knowing any fellow savants who shared this particular interest, Delisle methodically made extracts and compiled data from the existing European literature. Among Delisle's papers at the Observatoire de Paris still exist the results of this research, including a list of the books he found relevant. This paper develops a close reading of (...) Delisle's notes from this period to stage his journey into a recondite arena of technical and textual analysis, and to examine the scholarly practices and generic conventions through which early modern European savants confronted the Chinese astronomical tradition. (shrink)

Fragt man heute Vertreter verschiedener Disziplinen nach der Bedeutung des Hannoveraner Universalgelehrten Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, so hort man jeweils immer wieder: Leibniz hat Bedeutendes fur unser Fach geleistet. Leibniz beeindruckt nicht nur durch die Exzellenz seiner Leistung, sondern auch durch die Breite seiner Betatigungsfelder. Der aus einer Ringvorlesung an der Leibniz Universitat Hannover hervorgegangene Band fuhrt nun an die Vielfalt der von Leibniz ausgehenden der Leistungen und Anregungen heran. Insbesondere behandeln die Beitrage die Bedeutung von Leibniz fur die Geschichtswissenschaft, die (...) Theologie, die Philosophie, die Rechtswissenschaft und Juristerei, die Politikberatung, das Versicherungswesen, die Mathematik, die Ingenieurwissenschaften und die Sprachwissenschaft. Abgerundet wird der Band durch eine Einfuhrung von Werner Eisner und eine biographische Skizze aus der Feder von Eike Christian Hirsch. (shrink)

Scholars of epistemology have identified two conceptions of epistemic injustice: discriminatory epistemic injustice and distributive epistemic injustice. The former refers to wrongs to one’s capacity as a knower that are the result of identity prejudice. The latter refers to violations of one’s right to know what one is entitled to know. This essay advances a third conception, formative epistemic injustice, which refers to wrongs to one’s capacity as a knower that are the result of or result in malformation—the undue restriction (...) of one’s formative capacities. The author argues that formative epistemic injustice is a distinctly educational wrong and that it brings to light important epistemic injustices that standard accounts of epistemic injustice either downplay or are unable to capture. This third conception of epistemic injustice is an important analytic tool for theorizing both epistemic injustice and educational justice. (shrink)

Logical monism is the claim that there is a single correct logic, the 'one true logic' of our title. The view has evident appeal, as it reflects assumptions made in ordinary reasoning as well as in mathematics, the sciences, and the law. In all these spheres, we tend to believe that there aredeterminate facts about the validity of arguments. Despite its evident appeal, however, logical monism must meet two challenges. The first is the challenge from logical pluralism, according to which (...) there is more than one correct logic. The second challenge is to determine which form of logicalmonism is the correct one. One True Logic is the first monograph to explicitly articulate a version of logical monism and defend it against the first challenge. It provides a critical overview of the monism vs pluralism debate and argues for the former. It also responds to the second challenge by defending a particularmonism, based on a highly infinitary logic. It breaks new ground on a number of fronts and unifies disparate discussions in the philosophical and logical literature. In particular, it generalises the Tarski-Sher criterion of logicality, provides a novel defence of this generalisation, offers a clearnew argument for the logicality of infinitary logic and replies to recent pluralist arguments. (shrink)

In the light of increasing public mistrust, there is an urgent need to clarify the moral status of the medical profession and of the relationship of the clinician to his/her patients. In addressing this question, I first establish the coherence, within moral philosophy generally, of the concept of supererogation . I adopt the notion of an act of “unqualified” supererogation as one that is non-derivatively good, praiseworthy, and freely undertaken for others' benefit at the risk of some cost to the (...) agent. I then argue that committing oneself to the profession of clinical medicine is an act of this kind. This is the case, not because the aim of medicine is to help patients, but because of the open ended commitment of time and the vulnerability to the consequences of failure that the clinician must accept. (shrink)

This paper notes how Jim influenced my own use of Foucault and also focuses on two of James Marshall's New Zealand oriented texts. In the first, Discipline and Punishment in New Zealand Education he provides a Foucauldian genealogy of New Zealand approaches to both punishment and discipline, in particular corporal punishment. The second, his 1996 book co‐written with Michael Peters, Individualism and Community: Education and Social Policy in the Postmodern Condition, analyses political philosophy and social and educational policy as New (...) Zealand changed from being a welfare state since the 1930s to a neoliberal one since the mid 1980s. Foucauldian understandings about power, bio‐power, governmentality, autonomy and subjectivity are brought to bear in their analysis. (shrink)

In this paper I shall use terms such as “intrinsically good” which may be deemed old fashioned by many readers and which certainly to my own mind presuppose an objective non-naturalistic theory of ethics. I still hold such a theory and I have not mastered the new jargon by which a sort of higher synthesis between that and other theories is supposed to have been effected, but I do not think that such a view as mine of ethics in general (...) is necessarily presupposed if one is to understand or even agree with the contentions of my article. These relate to a specific problem as to certain ethical actions, which will arise on any view that admits the possibility of giving any sort of legitimate reasons for ethical judgments, as we all do in practice. After all a naturalist can easily translate “intrinsically good” into his own terms, say, valued for its own sake by most people who experience it, and there will still be a question as to what is intrinsically and what is merely instrumentally good and other questions as to what is the logical nature of certain arguments in ethics. (shrink)

The aim of the study was to develop a new comprehensive reading assessment battery for multi-ethnic and multilingual learners in Malaysia. Using this assessment battery, we examined the reliability, validity, and dimensionality of the factors associated with reading difficulties/disabilities in the Malay language, a highly transparent alphabetic orthography. In order to further evaluate the reading assessment battery, we compared results from the assessment battery with those obtained from the Malaysian national screening instrument. In the study, 866 Grade 1 children from (...) multi-ethnic and multilingual backgrounds from 11 government primary schools participated. The reading assessment battery comprised 13 assessments, namely, reading comprehension, spelling, listening comprehension, letter name knowledge, letter name fluency, rapid automatized naming, word reading accuracy, word reading efficiency, oral reading fluency, expressive vocabulary, receptive vocabulary, elision, and phonological memory. High reliability and validity were found for the assessments. An exploratory factor analysis yielded three main constructs: phonological-decoding, sublexical-fluency, and vocabulary-memory. Phonological-decoding was found to be the most reliable construct that distinguished between at-risk and non-at-risk children. Identifying these underlying factors will be useful for detecting children at-risk for developing reading difficulties in the Malay language. In addition, these results highlight the importance of including a range of reading and reading-related measures for the early diagnosis of reading difficulties in this highly transparent orthography. (shrink)

In this benchmark five-volume study, originally published between 1922 and 1955, Surendranath Dasgupta examines the principal schools of thought that define Indian philosophy. A unifying force greater than art, literature, religion, or science, Professor Dasgupta describes philosophy as the most important achievement of Indian thought, arguing that an understanding of its history is necessary to appreciate the significance and potentialities of India's complex culture. Volume I offers an examination of the Vedas and the Brahmanas, the earlier Upanisads, and the six (...) systems of Indian philosophy. (shrink)

Our best scientific theories explain a wide range of empirical phenomena, make accurate predictions, and are widely believed. Since many of these theories make ample use of mathematics, it is natural to see them as confirming its truth. Perhaps the use of mathematics in science even gives us reason to believe in the existence of abstract mathematical objects such as numbers and sets. These issues lie at the heart of the Indispensability Argument, to which this Element is devoted. The Element's (...) first half traces the evolution of the Indispensability Argument from its origins in Quine and Putnam's works, taking in naturalism, confirmational holism, Field's program, and the use of idealisations in science along the way. Its second half examines the explanatory version of the Indispensability Argument, and focuses on several more recent versions of easy-road and hard-road fictionalism respectively. (shrink)

The idea that sentences can be closer or further apart in meaning is highly intuitive. Not only that, it is also a pillar of logic, semantic theory and the philosophy of science, and follows from other commitments about similarity. The present paper proposes a novel way of comparing the ‘distance’ between two pairs of propositions. We define ‘\ is closer in meaning to \ than \ is to \’ and thereby give a precise account of comparative propositional similarity facts. Notably, (...) our definition eschews metric assumptions, which are unrealistic in most applications of interest. (shrink)

This article must open with a Warning. In face of the positive information which the sciences supply, the philosophical contribution to this problem will seem disappointingly negative, or at least mine will do so. For I shall insist, and I think we can only rightly insist, that the philosopher is not yet in a position to produce a satisfactory positive theory of the relation between mind and body. And I shall annoy many of you further by insisting that the old-fashioned (...) “dualism” has not really been disproved. However, even if you do not agree with me, it is at any rate a good general piece of advice that, when we are confronted with a philosophical view which has maintained its ground for a very long time but seems to ourselves or to our generation very unreasonable, we should look specially carefully to find the positive grounds which have made so apparently unplausible a doctrine seem true to so many competent thinkers. (shrink)

Nobody interested in philosophy need be deterred by Kant's reputation for difficulty from familiarizing himself with his ethics. While the Critique of Pure Reason and his other non-ethical works are very hard to follow, the first two chapters of the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals at least are clear and straightforward and presuppose little previous acquaintance with philosophy. The third chapter is not about ethics as such but about the metaphysical problem of freedom and should be omitted by (...) anyone who is not familiar with Kant's general philosophy, but the first two. (shrink)

Number theory abounds with conjectures asserting that every natural number has some arithmetic property. An example is Goldbach’s Conjecture, which states that every even number greater than 2 is the sum of two primes. Enumerative inductive evidence for such conjectures usually consists of small cases. In the absence of supporting reasons, mathematicians mistrust such evidence for arithmetical generalisations, more so than most other forms of non-deductive evidence. Some philosophers have also expressed scepticism about the value of enumerative inductive evidence in (...) arithmetic. But why? Perhaps the best argument is that known instances of an arithmetical conjecture are almost always small: they appear at the start of the natural number sequence. Evidence of this kind consequently suffers from size bias. My essay shows that this sort of scepticism comes in many different flavours, raises some challenges for them all, and explores their respective responses. (shrink)

‘PROOFS of God’ are under a cloud today, and whether the cloud can be dissipated or not, I am not going to try to dissipate it in this article. Modern thinkers have created a mental climate very unfavourable to metaphysics, but they have certainly not succeeded in disproving on principle the possibility of valid and fruitful metaphysical arguments even in the old transcendent sense of ‘metaphysics’. However, I must admit that in my opinion the best that can be said of (...) arguments for the existence of God is that they give some intellectual support to the belief, not that they are really decisive. If this is so, it becomes of very special importance to consider whether those may be right who maintain that we can come to knowledge of or at least justified belief in God otherwise than by inference. I am not considering the views of those who base the belief solely on authority: argument would be required to decide whether we ought to accept an authority, and if so which. What I am referring to is the claim that there are certain 'mystical' and other religious experiences which can without argument adequately and rationally assure one of God's existence. Obviously from the nature of the case a man who makes this claim for himself cannot prove to others that he is right, but can any good reason be given to support the view that he is wrong? If not, the possibility remains that those who dispute with him are in a similar position to that of a tonedeaf man disagreeing with Beethoven about the value of music. (shrink)

The most important question under this heading is the question whether states are subject to the moral law. That they are has sometimes been denied even in theory, and there are no doubt still countries in which it would be highly desirable to publish an article combating this denial. But, thank goodness, England is not one of these countries, and it will suffice to say briefly that I can find no even plausible argument for the contrary view. This view has (...) often been associated with the doctrine that the State is a sort of super-person over and above the individual citizens, to whom the latter can appropriately be sacrificed as beings of little worth, as we sacrifice to our own welfare, if we can, without any compunction the myriad germs inhabiting our bodies. I cannot see any reason whatever for holding this view either, but I should have thought that, if it were adopted, the analogy of the individual thus applied to the State would suggest the contrary conclusion that the State should find its true good not in its own unscrupulous aggrandizement but in co-operation with other States. We have been taught the analogous doctrine in regard to the individual from the beginning of the Christian era or earlier, and we can look on it as generally accepted in regard to the individual by reflective people in theory, although not, of course, by any means always in practice. If we regard the State as just a group of individuals, there is still less excuse for making it out to be subject to no moral law. In that case actions of the State will always be actions by individual persons, differing only from other such actions because they are performed on behalf of certain groups of persons. (shrink)

Nobody who reads this article is likely to need convincing that there are bad political arguments. But, however many of them are bad, unless there are also some good ones, we can do nothing by reason in politics, there is no possibility of settling disputes rationally or in any other way except by fighting and there could be no ground either why we fight for any one cause rather than any other or why we should fight rather than make peace (...) or vice versa. But surprisingly little has been said by philosophers about this important type of argument. However, this omission is less surprising and less harmful than it might appear at first sight because all thoroughgoing political arguments are, I think, at bottom arguments as to what ought to be done and therefore ethical arguments in a wide sense of the word, and philosophers have certainly said a good deal about ethical arguments. However, it is well worth while treating political arguments separately, especially in these very political days, and considering their particular character. By political arguments I mean, not the abstract arguments of books on political philosophy, but the everyday concrete political arguments of the platform, the press and the meal-time conversation. What is their logical nature in so far as they are not mere fallacies or unsupported assertions, and can the philosopher qua philosopher say anything that will help in such discussions and contribute towards the replacement of bad arguments by good, a most desirable consummation and one the achievement of which in all countries would certainly have prevented the present war? (shrink)

The author discusses the claim that owing to the lack of reference to ordinary experience by which religious assertions could be tested, there is nothing in the mind of the person who makes such religious assertions which could conceivably be objectively true. the author maintains that such a view of religious assertions is groundless, and that, if true, it would leave little of value in religion. (staff).

Some modern thinkers have supposed that “cause” is an outworn notion, or at least that it is one of which modern science has no need. This is due mainly to the discovery that, while the scientist can give us general laws as to what in fact happens, he cannot help us to discern the reason for the laws or the inward nature of the forces on which they depend. He can tell us the “that” but not the “why”; he cannot (...) show us in a single case that the effect follows necessarily a priori from the nature of the cause, that any other effect than the one which actually takes place would be logically impossible. He has studied the law of gravitation, but this law does not enable him to see why material bodies should attract each other in this fashion; it is only a generalized statement of the fact that they do. He knows that certain substances, if absorbed by eating, will nourish and others destroy our tissues; but he cannot say why they should do so. He can no doubt analyse them further and discover that, for example, meat is nourishing because it contains a large proportion of nitrogenous matter, but he could not tell a priori whether this nitrogenous matter would be likely to nourish or to poison us. Only where mathematics can be applied do we see necessity in such a way that any alternative becomes inconceivable to us; but mathematics alone can never establish from a quantity present here and now what quantity there will be at a later time or in another part of space. Mathematics can show, e.g. , that, if there is 2 + 2 here and now, there must be 4 here and now, not that, if there is 2 + 2 here and now, there will be 4 in an hour's time or a mile away; and therefore it cannot be made the sole basis of any causal law whatever. (shrink)

The editor suggested my writing an article on the question whether it was possible to provide an ethics based upon principles which would be agreed to by all enlightened men, and he further suggested that I should begin the article by stating clearly what morality is. That is a somewhat difficult task, because while “morality” might be defined as “living as one ought,” it is a very disputable question whether and how this “ought” is itself to be defined, and I (...) could not undertake to deal with this question by the way as an introduction to an article on something else. It is, however, clear that there is another sense of “ought” besides the strictly moral sense. We do use the term in cases where it does not entail that a man is neglecting his moral duty if he does not do what he “ought.” For instance we say: “You ought to have seen that film,” “You ought not to have made that move,” “You ought to have seen through that argument,” even “Hitler ought to have invaded England after Dunkirk” where we should have regarded it as the reverse of a good thing if he had done what we say he ought. In none of these cases are we asserting a moral obligation. For we do not ordinarily regard people as under a moral obligation to seek their own pleasure, nor to make certain moves in a game, and while we should say that in matters of serious concern a person is morally obliged to do his best to form a true view as to the merits of a relevant argument, we should not say that he was morally obliged actually to form a true view, for this does not depend solely on his will. And in the fourth instance the action is one which we should think morally wrong rather than morally obligatory. What is there in common between “ought” as used in these cases and the moral “ought”? It is that in each case the action fits the situation, either wholly, or with certain limitations, as in the last instance where we presumably mean that to invade England would have fitted in better with Hitler's ends in the given environment than did the policy Hitler actually adopted. (shrink)

The bearing of certain psychological doctrines upon ethical theory is important, and has been made use of especially by those who espouse empiricism in Ethics. It is the purpose of this paper to examine some of these leading doctrines and the ethical theory which has been connected with them. In doing so, it is appropriate to select for examination the views of Professor W. McDougall, as expressed principally in his Social Psychology and Outline of Psychology ; and this for two (...) reasons. One is, that these views are significant of much more than the opinions of one man. They may be taken quite fairly as representative, in the main, of a definite body of doctrine concerning the nature and development of moral experience. (shrink)

Papineau has suggested that the Principle of Non-Contradiction is a logical law that ?verificationists? are not entitled to claim as a prioritrue. The Principle, like that of Excluded Middle, is not sufficiently grounded in the ?miserly? epistemology of verificationism to be proven in ?verificationist logic?. We examine who might be challenged by this claim: who are the ?verificationists?? We defend our candidates against Papineau's criticisms and other attacks, but this leaves the verificationist open to a different criticism.

Two decades of research on euthanasia in the Netherlands have resulted into clear insights in the frequency and characteristics of euthanasia and other medical end-of-life decisions in the Netherlands. These empirical studies have contributed to the quality of the public debate, and to the regulating and public control of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. No slippery slope seems to have occurred. Physicians seem to adhere to the criteria for due care in the large majority of cases. Further, it has been shown (...) that the majority of physicians think that the euthanasia Act has improved their legal certainty and contributes to the carefulness of life-terminating acts. In 2005, eighty percent of the euthanasia cases were reported to the review committees. Thus, the transparency envisaged by the Act still does not extend to all cases. Unreported cases almost all involve the use of opioids, and are not considered to be euthanasia by physicians. More education and debate is needed to disentangle in these situations which acts should be regarded as euthanasia and which should not. Medical end-of-life decision-making is a crucial part of end-of-life care. It should therefore be given continuous attention in health care policy and medical training. Systematic periodic research is crucial for enhancing our understanding of end-of-life care in modern medicine, in which the pursuit of a good quality of dying is nowadays widely recognized as an important goal, in addition to the traditional goals such as curing diseases and prolonging life. (shrink)