In a powerful and original contribution to the history of ideas, Hannah Dawson explores the intense preoccupation with language in early-modern philosophy, and presents a groundbreaking analysis of John Locke's critique of words. By examining a broad sweep of pedagogical and philosophical material from antiquity to the late seventeenth century, Dr Dawson explains why language caused anxiety in writers such as Montaigne, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Gassendi, Nicole, Pufendorf, Boyle, Malebranche and Locke. Locke, Language and Early-Modern Philosophy demonstrates that (...) new developments in philosophy, in conjunction with weaknesses in linguistic theory, resulted in serious concerns about the capacity of words to refer to the world, the stability of meaning, and the duplicitous power of words themselves. Dr Dawson shows that language so fixated all manner of early-modern authors because it was seen as an obstacle to both knowledge and society. She thereby uncovers a novel story about the problem of language in philosophy, and in the process reshapes our understanding of early-modern epistemology, morality and politics. (shrink)

From ancient times to the present, the discovery and presentation of new proofs of previously established theorems has been a salient feature of mathematical practice. Why? What purposes are served by such endeavors? And how do mathematicians judge whether two proofs of the same theorem are essentially different? Consideration of such questions illuminates the roles that proofs play in the validation and communication of mathematical knowledge and raises issues that have yet to be resolved by mathematical logicians. The Appendix, in (...) which several proofs of the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic are compared, provides a miniature case study. (shrink)

According to the received view in the literature on homonymy and polysemy representation, there is a difference between how polysemes and homonyms are represented in our mental lexicons. More concretely, the received view holds that whereas the meanings associated with a homonymous expression are (mentally) represented in separate lexical entries, the meanings associated with a polysemous expression are represented together in a single lexical entry. It is usually argued that this is the picture that is supported by the growing body (...) of empirical evidence coming from psycholinguistics. Empirical studies of ambiguity processing and resolution consistently show that polysemous expressions enjoy various processing advantages compared to homonyms, and the received view is generally taken to be required in order to explain these results. The aim of this paper is not only to show that this is not the case but also, and more fundamentally, that the received view falls far short of explaining the available data to a sufficient degree. As a result, the received view is caught up in an explanatory dilemma that I dub the Continuum Puzzle. I then claim that the best way to escape this puzzle is to give up the received view’s core thesis in favor of an alternative view consistent with the empirical evidence. Reaching such an alternative will require rejecting the following pervasive but ill-motivated assumption: Differences in ambiguity processing and resolution can only be explained by there being some corresponding differences in the architecture of our mental lexicons. (shrink)

The paper explores whether the method of reflective equilibrium (RE) in ethics and political philosophy should be individual or public in character. I defend a modestly public conception of RE, in which public opinion is used specifically as a source of considered judgments about cases. Public opinion is superior to philosophical opinion in delivering judgments that are untainted by principled commitments. A case-based approach also mitigates the methodological problems that commonly confront efforts to integrate philosophy with the investigation of popular (...) attitudes. This conception of RE is situated in relation to alternative accounts, including those of Daniels, Rawls, and Wolff and de-Shalit. (shrink)

A crisis looms over the scientific enterprise. Not a day passes without news of retractions, failed replications, fraudulent peer reviews, or misinformed science-based policies. The social implications are enormous, yet this crisis has remained largely uncharted-until now. In Science on the Verge, luminaries in the field of post-normal science and scientific governance focus attention on worrying fault-lines in the use of science for policymaking, and the dramatic crisis within science itself. This provocative new volume in The Rightful Place of Science (...) also explores the concepts that need to be unlearned, and the skills that must be relearned and enhanced, if we are to restore the legitimacy and integrity of science. (shrink)

Raanan Gillon is a noted defender of the four principles approach to healthcare ethics. His general position has always been that these principles are to be considered to be both universal and prima facie in nature. In recent work, however, he has made two claims that seem to present difficulties for this view. His first claim is that one of these four principles, respect for autonomy, has a special position in relation to the others: he holds that it is first (...) among equals. We argue that this claim makes little sense if the principles are to retain their prima facie nature. His second claim is that cultural variation can play an independent normative role in the construction of our moral judgments. This, he argues, enables us to occupy a middle ground between what he sees as the twin pitfalls of moral relativism and moral imperialism. We argue that there is no such middle ground, and while Gillon ultimately seems committed to relativism, it is some form of moral imperialism that will provide the only satisfactory construal of the four principles as prima facie universal moral principles. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay is an attempt to examine the idea that a professional code of practice can entail ethical conduct. It is focused around two differing perspectives on ethics. It will be argued that the professions have, perhaps too hastily, adopted one theory without considering the merits, or the objections offered by the alternative account. This alternative, a ‘cognitivist’ theory, is sketched, and the possible advantages of such an approach are discussed. Such a perspective means adopting a radically different approach (...) to the nature of ethics and what it is to be a moral agent, and could have interesting consequences for professional practice. Even if a cognitivist account is ultimately unconvincing, it does provide a number of worrying arguments for those professionals who believe that ethical conduct is generated by following a code of practice, and these arguments need to be addressed. (shrink)

Recent policy in relation to clinical research proposals in the UK has distinguished between two types of review: scientific and ethical. This distinction has been formally enshrined in the recent changes to research ethics committee structure and operating procedures, introduced as the UK response to the EU Directive on clinical trials. Recent reviews and recommendations have confirmed the place of the distinction and the separate review processes. However, serious reservations can be mounted about the science/ethics distinction and the policy of (...) separate review that has been built upon it. We argue here that, first, the science/ethics distinction is incoherent, and, second, that RECs should not only be permitted to consider a study’s science, but that they have anobligation do so. (shrink)

The question of forgiveness in politics has attained a certain cachet. Indeed, in the fifty years since Arendt commented on the notable absence of forgiveness in the political tradition, a vast and multidisciplinary literature on the politics of apology, reparation, and reconciliation has emerged. To a novice scouring the relevant literatures, it might appear that the only discordant note in this new veritable symphony of writings on political forgiveness has been sounded by philosophers. There is a more-than-healthy cynicism directed at (...) what many philosophers see as an uncritical promotion of forgiveness, which – they fear – risks distorting and cheapening forgiveness as a moral ideal, on the one hand, and ignoring the moral and political values of justice, accountability and the cessation of harmful relationships, on the other. Are philosophical fears about the dangers of thinking about forgiveness in political terms warranted – or do they perhaps depend in part on conceptual conservatism regarding what exactly political forgiveness might be? I argue that most, if not all, standard objections to political forgiveness emerge from theoretical reliance on a picture of forgiveness I will call the Emotional Model. Once we make conceptual space for descriptions of forgiveness in performative and social terms, the concept is more easily adapted to a political account without at least some of the risks feared by philosophers. (shrink)

"Eros" bezeichnet zuerst ein von fast allen Menschen mehr oder weniger glücklich erfahrenes Phänomen namens Verliebtheit oder sexuelles Begehren. Es gibt aber auch einen höchst einflussreichen Begriff des Eros.

This article provides an English translation of a historic discussion on the foundations of mathematics, during which Kurt GÖdel first announced his incompleteness theorem to the mathematical world. The text of the discussion is preceded by brief background remarks and commentary.

Wider possibilities for moral thought -- Objectivity revisited: a lesson from the work of J.L. Austin -- Ethics, inheriting from Wittgenstein -- Moral thought beyond moral judgment: the case of literature -- Reclaiming moral judgment: the case of feminist thought -- Moralism as a central moral problem.

The obligations of organisations associated with policy formation and implementation of international mass public health programmes are explored. Lines of responsibility are considered to become unclear because of the large number of agencies associated with such programmes. A separation of the relevant obligations among the bodies responsible for the formulation and those responsible for the implementation of the policies is suggested. The continuing oral polio vaccine campaign against poliomyelitis in India is used to illustrate the general argument. Although the aim (...) of the programme is legitimate and laudable, unnecessary harm is currently being caused to some children as a result of elements of the policy and this should be rectified immediately. Such mass programmes should take care to ensure that people are not unnecessarily sacrificed in the drive to attain the desirable ends of the policy. (shrink)

The Report of the Ad Hoc Adivisory Group on the Operation of NHS Research Ethics Committees has resulted in a strange mixture of the timid, the revolutionary, and the bizarre.The Report of the Ad Hoc Advisory Group on the Operation of NHS Research Ethics Committees is a curious document.1 The remit of the review was focused on the workings and effectiveness of NHS research ethics committees and the multicentre committees ). The Group was primarily set up in response to a (...) series of complaints from medical researchers about the new research governance regime in the UK as a result of the Clinical Trials Directive2 and the Governance Arrangements for NHS Research Ethics Committees.3 The opportunity was also taken to consider the role of research ethics committees in a wider context, and take account of recent developments in relation to the ethics review of social care research,4 student projects,5 as well as recent legislation such as the Human Tissue Act,6 and the Mental Capacity Act.7 However, the resulting report is a strange mixture of the timid, the revolutionary, and the bizarre.A good example of the report’s timidity is its reluctance to propose fundamental change to the process of review or seriously limit the type of research that requires REC review. To its credit AHAG does suggest that some research ‘especially surveys and many studies on NHS staff, could normally be conducted safely without a requirement for REC review’ .1 This is, of course, to be welcomed. However, the report ultimately seems dismissive of the general complaint from researchers that the current process is inappropriately uniform. For example, in section 3.2, it is argued that the ‘common perception that the NHS REC system is dominated …. (shrink)

As initially envisioned, Gödel's Collected Works were to include transcriptions of material from his mathematical workbooks. In the end that material, as well as some other manuscript items from Gödel's Nachlass, had to be left out. This note describes some of the unpublished items in the Nachlass that are likely to attract the notice of scholars and surveys the extent of shorthand transcription efforts undertaken hitherto. Some examples of sources outside Gödel's Nachlass that may be of interest to Gödel scholars (...) are also indicated. (shrink)

Though regarded today as one of the most important results in logic, the compactness theorem was largely ignored until nearly two decades after its discovery. This paper describes the vicissitudes of its evolution and transformation during the period 1930-1970, with special attention to the roles of Kurt Gödel, A. I. Maltsev, Leon Henkin, Abraham Robinson, and Alfred Tarski.

This text offers major re-evaluation of Wittgenstein's thinking. It is a collection of essays that presents a significantly different portrait of Wittgenstein. The essays clarify Wittgenstein's modes of philosophical criticism and shed light on the relation between his thought and different philosophical traditions and areas of human concern. With essays by Stanley Cavell, James Conant, Cora Diamond, Peter Winch and Hilary Putnam, we see the emergence of a new way of understanding Wittgenstein's thought. This is a controversial collection, with essays (...) by highly regarded Wittgenstein scholars that may change the way we look at Wittgenstein's body of work. (shrink)

This paper argues that qualitative research is both useful and necessary, as it provides an essential means of gaining a richer understanding of patients' perceptions, social processes and meanings. In their paper in this edition of Clinical Ethics, Hallowell and Lawton raise many issues relating to the way that qualitative research is treated by RECs in the UK. In this paper I discuss just three key topics stimulated by their paper: the way that methodology relates to ethics, the experience and (...) character of the researcher, and the normative/descriptive distinction. I strongly support Hallowell and Lawton's appeal for greater communication between qualitative researchers and RECs. In other respects, I would argue that they do not go far enough. The recent review of research ethics structures and the review process provides an opportunity to move away from the present 'one size fits all' approach to ethical review. I would argue that this change could only benefit qualitative research and researchers. (shrink)

The pipeline framework for identifying ethical issues in machine learning healthcare applications outlined by Char et al. is a very useful starting point for the systematic consideration...

Machine generated contents note: PART ONE: TOWARD A SOCIOLOGY OF HISTORY -- SECTION I: THE SOCIOLOGICAL -- FOUNDATIONS OF HISTORY -- I. The Sources of Culture Change -- 2. Sociology as a Science -- 3. Sociology and the Theory of Progress -- 4. Civilization and Morals -- 5. Progress and Decay in Ancient and Modern Civilization -- 6. Art and Society -- 7. Vitality or Standardization in Culture -- 8. Cultural Polarity and Religious Schism -- 9. Prevision in Religion -- (...) Io. T. S. Eliot on the Meaning of Culture -- SECTION II: THE MOVEMENT OF WORLD HISTORY -- I. Religion and the Life of Civilization -- 2. The Warrior Peoples and the Decline -- of the Archaic Civilization -- 3. The Origins of Classical Civilization -- 4. The Patriarchal Family in History -- 5. Stages in Mankind's Religious Experience -- SECTION III: URBANISM AND THE ORGANIC -- NATURE OF CULTURE -- I. The Evolution of the Modern City -- 2. Catholicism and the Bourgeois Mind -- 3. The World Crisis and the English Tradition -- 4. Bolshevism and the Bourgeoisie -- PART TWO: CONCEPTIONS OF WORLD HISTORY -- SECTION IV: CHRISTIANITY AND THE -- MEANING OF HISTORY -- I. The Christian View of History -- 2. History and the Christian Revelation -- 3. Christianity and Contradiction in History -- 4. The Kingdom of God and History -- SECTION II: THE VISION OF THE HISTORIAN -- I. The Problem of Metahistory -- 2. St. Augustine and the City of God -- 3. Edward Gibbon and the Fall of Rome -- 4. Karl Marx and the Dialectic of History -- 5. H. G. Wells and the Outline of History -- 6. Oswald Spengler and the Life of Civilizations -- 7. Arnold Toynbee and the Study of History -- 8. Europe in Eclipse -- Afterword by John J. Mulloy: Continuity and Development -- in Christopher Dawson's Thought -- Sources -- Notes -- Index. (shrink)

We question the role given to depiction in Clark and Fischer's account of interaction with social robots. Specifically, we argue that positing a unique cognitive process for handling depiction is evolutionarily implausible and empirically redundant because the phenomena it is intended to explain are not limited to depictive contexts and are better explained by reference to more general cognitive processes.

Typically, the imagination in thought experiments has been taken to consist in mental images; we visualize the state of affairs described. A recent alternative from Fiora Salis and Roman Frigg main...

Is there a role for aesthetic judgements in science? One aspect of scientific practice, the use of thought experiments, has a clear aesthetic dimension. Thought experiments are creatively produced artefacts that are designed to engage the imagination. Comparisons have been made between scientific (and philosophical) thought experiments and other aesthetically appreciated objects. In particular, thought experiments are said to share qualities with literary fiction as they invite us to imagine a fictional scenario and often have a narrative form (Elgin 2014). (...) But philosophical discussions of aesthetics in science have focused mainly on the epistemic role of beauty and elegance when it comes to theories and mathematical proofs, and thought experiments have been widely overlooked. My aim in this chapter is to address how the aesthetic choices scientists make in the design of a thought experiment contribute to its function: to communicate, convince, or explain a theory or phenomenon. A key issue is whether any aesthetic features in science provide anything beyond catching our attention, or are at best, a mere heuristic aid. I respond to accounts that argue this way and show how formulation is important in scientific thought experiments and, similarly to literary fictions, there is more than one way of interpreting a thought experiment scenario. I end by considering which literary examples are most appropriate when making comparisons with thought experiments. As a result, the difference between representations in art and science raised in current discussions is not as stark as it has been made out to be, and science is a more heterogeneous practice than has been allowed. Part of the value of thought experiments in scientific practice includes the qualities they share with literary works. (shrink)

Those who wish to defend the role of aesthetic values in science face a dilemma: Either aesthetic language is used metaphorically for what are ultimately epistemic features, or aesthetic language is used literally but it is difficult to see the importance of such values in science. I introduce a new account that gets around this problem by looking to an overlooked source of aesthetic value in science: the relation between form and content. I argue that a fit between the content (...) of a thought experiment, and the way in which that content is formulated, can have important epistemic pay offs through contributing to scientific understanding. (shrink)

It will be argued that Wittgenstein did not outright reject the law of excluded middle for mathematics or the proof-techniques that constructivists reject in connection with the law of excluded middle. Wittgenstein can be seen to be critical of the dogmatic claims of Brouwer and Weyl concerning how proofs should be constructed. Rather than himself laying down a requirement concerning what is and is not a proof, Wittgenstein can be read as exploring the differences between constructive and non-constructive proofs. I (...) will read Wittgenstein as arguing that Brouwer’s rejection of excluded middle is based upon an over-extension from examples that Wittgenstein reads as special cases. Wittgenstein is certainly interested in the difference between constructive and non-constructive proof but only for the purposes of exploring the easily-missed differences between the two, not in order to reject non-constructive approaches. (shrink)

Lakoff (1993) argued that basic level conceptual metaphors are grounded in human experience, and are therefore likely to be found widely across different languages and cultures. However, other mappings may not be shared. It is well documented that many metaphorical expressions vary across languages, and a number of researchers have argued cultural motivations for this. Possible reasons for cross-linguistic differences in metaphor are that different cultures hold different attitudes to metaphor vehicles, or that the source domain entities and events are (...) more salient in one culture than another. However, the corpus data discussed here suggest that rather than being a synchronic reflection of culture, metaphorical expressions are to some extent a cultural reliquary, and an incomplete one. (shrink)

El artículo, tras validar la importancia de las organizaciones de derechos humanos y las de familiares de las víctimas en Chile, y del realce de este tema en los gobiernos de la Concertación, se centra en analizar el rol de las universidades frente a este tema, argumentando la necesidad de que estas desempeñen la noble tarea de formar profesionales ciudadanos, es decir personas con una formación basada en los derechos humanos. Para ello se focaliza en los objetivos y contenidos transversales (...) y postula un nuevo método pedagógico. (shrink)

In September of 2002, without fanfare, Ivor Grattan-Guinness retired from the faculty of Middlesex University. His scholarly activity, however, has continued unabated, his time now no longer fetter...

The thesis of this article is that engagement and suffering are essential aspects of responsible caregiving. The sense of medical responsibility engendered by engaged caregiving is referred to herein as clinical phronesis, i.e. practical wisdom in health care, or, simply, practical health care wisdom. The idea of clinical phronesis calls to mind a relational or communicative sense of medical responsibility which can best be understood as a kind of virtue ethics, yet one that is informed by the exigencies of moral (...) discourse and dialogue, as well as by the technical rigors of formal reasoning. The ideal of clinical phronesis is not (necessarily) contrary to the more common understandings of medical responsibility as either beneficence or patient autonomy — except, of course, when these notions are taken in their disengaged form (reflecting the malaise of modern medicine). Clinical phronesis, which gives rise to a deeper, broader, and richer, yet also to a more complex, sense than these other notions connote, holds the promise both of expanding, correcting, and perhaps completing what it currently means to be a fully responsible health care provider. In engaged caregiving, providers appropriately suffer with the patient, that is, they suffer the exigencies of the patient's affliction (though not his or her actual loss) by consenting to its inescapability. In disengaged caregiving — that ruse Katz has described as the silent world of doctor and patient — provides may deny or refuse any given connection with the patient, especially the inevitability of the patient's affliction and suffering (and, by parody of reasoning, the inevitability of their own. When, however, responsibility is construed qualitatively as an evaluative feature of medical rationality, rather than quantitatively as a form of calculative reasoning only, responsibility can be viewed more broadly as not only a matter of science and will, but of language and communication as well — in particular, as the task of responsibly narrating and interpreting the patient's story of illness. In summary, the question is not whether phronesis can save the life of medical ethics — only responsible humans can do that! Instead, the question should be whether phronesis, as an ethical requirement of health care delivery, can prevent the death of medical ethics. (shrink)

While the influence of emotion on individuals'' ethical decisions has been identified by numerous researchers, little is known about how emotions influence individuals'' ethical decision process. Thus, it is not clear whether different emotions promote and/or discourage ethical decision-making in the workplace. To address this gap, this paper develops a model that illustrates how emotion affects the components of individuals'' ethical decision-making process. The model is developed by integrating research findings that consider the two dimensions of emotion, arousal and feeling (...) state, into an applied cognitive-developmental perspective on the process of ethical decision-making. The model demonstrates that certain emotional states influence the individual''s propensity to identify ethical dilemmas, facilitate the formation of the individual''s prescriptive judgments at sophisticated levels of moral development, lead to ethical decision choices that are consistent with the individual''s prescriptive judgements, and promote the individual''s compliance with his or her ethical decision choices. In particular, the model suggests that individuals experiencing arousal and positive affect resolve ethical dilemmas in a manner consistent with more sophisticated cognitive moral structures. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Ecovillages have become a phenomenon as communities focused on shared goals of sustainable living and ecological engagement grew worldwide. Within ecovillages sustainability is not meant just in material terms, but also as a specific way of interacting with nature, involving an ethics of closeness and care. The natural environment is considered as an active agent of intimate emotions. On this basis, this article focuses on the connection between multispecies ethnography and the human/non-human encounter that takes places within these communities, pointing (...) out how it contributes to the production of new relational subjectivities. (shrink)