BackgroundCurrently, intensive care medicine strives to define a generally accepted way of dealing with end-of-life decisions, therapy limitation and therapy discontinuation.In 2006 a new advance directive legislation was enacted in Austria. Patients may now document their personal views regarding extension of treatment. The aim of this survey was to explore Austrian intensive care physicians' experiences with and their acceptance of the new advance directive legislation two years after enactment (2008).MethodsUnder the aegis of the OEGARI (Austrian Society of Anaesthesiology, Resuscitation and (...) Intensive Care) an anonymised questionnaire was sent to the medical directors of all intensive care units in Austria. The questions focused on the physicians' experiences regarding advance directives and their level of knowledge about the underlying legislation.ResultsThere were 241 questionnaires sent and 139 were turned, which was a response rate of 58%. About one third of the responders reported having had no experience with advance directives and only 9 directors of intensive care units had dealt with more than 10 advance directives in the previous two years. Life-supporting measures, resuscitation, and mechanical ventilation were the predominantly refused therapies, wishes were mainly expressed concerning pain therapy.ConclusionA response rate of almost 60% proves the great interest of intensive care professionals in making patient-oriented end-of-life decisions. However, as long as patients do not make use of their right of co-determination, the enactment of the new law can be considered only a first important step forward. (shrink)

"Ist der Patient ein Mensch?" is a collection of articles. Its central topic is the question if the object of modern medicine is still the human being or if just organs and tissues are treated by medical doctors? The drawing on the book cover shows a lung instead of a human patient lying in a hospital bed. The approaches to this topic are diverse and surprising. E.g. the surgeon Ankersmit argues that it is impossible for him to see the human (...) being in the body lying on the operation table because then he would be unable to perform his work professionally. Other texts stretch the topic of the book to the questions whether medical doctors are human beings or if the human being of today is a "patient" in the sense of a current crisis of anthropology. Also questions like patient autonomy and communication with patients are tackled. The book is edited by Helmut Hofbauer, Lukas Kaelin, Hendrik Jan Ankersmit & Walter Feigl. Authors are: Lukas Kaelin, Gabriele Baumann, Hendrik Jan Ankersmit, Renate Heinz, Claus G. Krenn, Alexander Lapin, Sigrid Pilz, Margot Ham-Rubisch, Petra Herzeg, Klaus Spiess, Lucie Strecker, Paul Ferstl, Helmut Hofbauer & Peter Kampits. (shrink)

After an elementary derivation of Bell's inequality, classical, quantum mechanical, and stronger-than-quantum correlation functions for 2-particle-systems are discussed. Special functions are investigated which give rise to an extreme violation of Bell's inequality by the value of 4. Referring to a specific quantum system it is shown that under certain conditions such an extreme violation would contradict basic laws of physics.

What is the status of a cat in a virtual reality environment? Is it a real object? Or part of a fiction? Virtual realism, as defended by D. J. Chalmers, takes it to be a virtual object that really exists, that has properties and is involved in real events. His preferred specification of virtual realism identifies the cat with a digital object. The project of this paper is to use a comparison between virtual reality environments and scientific computer simulations to (...) critically engage with Chalmers’s position. I first argue that, if it is sound, his virtual realism should also be applied to objects that figure in scientific computer simulations, e.g. to simulated galaxies. This leads to a slippery slope because it implies an unreasonable proliferation of digital objects. A philosophical analysis of scientific computer simulations suggests an alternative picture: The cat and the galaxies are parts of fictional models for which the computer provides model descriptions. This result motivates a deeper analysis of the way in which Chalmers builds up his realism. I argue that he buys realism too cheap. For instance, he does not really specify what virtual objects are supposed to be. As a result, rhetoric aside, his virtual realism isn’t far from a sort of fictionalism. (shrink)

Computer simulations and experiments share many important features. One way of explaining the similarities is to say that computer simulations just are experiments. This claim is quite popular in the literature. The aim of this paper is to argue against the claim and to develop an alternative explanation of why computer simulations resemble experiments. To this purpose, experiment is characterized in terms of an intervention on a system and of the observation of the reaction. Thus, if computer simulations are experiments, (...) either the computer hardware or the target system must be intervened on and observed. I argue against the first option using the non-observation argument, among others. The second option is excluded by e.g. the over-control argument, which stresses epistemological differences between experiments and simulations. To account for the similarities between experiments and computer simulations, I propose to say that computer simulations can model possible experiments and do in fact often do so. (shrink)

Cosmological questions (e.g., how far the world extends and how it all began) have occupied humans for ages and given rise to numerous conjectures, both within and outside philosophy. To put to rest fruitless speculation, Kant argued that these questions move beyond the limits of human knowledge. This article begins with Kant’s doubts about cosmology and shows that his arguments presuppose unreasonably high standards on knowledge and unwarranted assumptions about space-time. As an analysis of the foundations of twentieth-century cosmology reveals, (...) other worries about the discipline can be avoided too if the universe is modeled using Einstein’s general theory of relativity. There is now strong observational support for one particular model. However, due to underdetermination problems, the big cosmological questions cannot be fully answered using this model either. This opens the space for more speculative proposals again (e.g., that the universe is only part of a huge multiverse). (shrink)

The most promising accounts of ontic probability include the Spielraum conception of probabilities, which can be traced back to J. von Kries and H. Poincaré, and the best system account by D. Lewis. This paper aims at comparing both accounts and at combining them to obtain the best of both worlds. The extensions of both Spielraum and best system probabilities do not coincide because the former only apply to systems with a special dynamics. Conversely, Spielraum probabilities may not be part (...) of the best system, e.g. if a broad class of random devices is not often used. Spielraum probabilities have the potential to provide illuminating explanations of frequencies with which outcomes of trials on gambling devices arise. They ultimately fail to account for such frequencies though because they are compatible with frequencies that grossly differ from the values of the respective probabilities. I thus follow recent proposals by M. Strevens and M. Abrams and strengthen the definition of Spielraum probabilities by adding a further condition that restricts some actual frequencies. The resulting account remains limited in scope, but stands objections raised against it in the recent literature: it is neither circular nor based upon arbitrary choices of a measure or of physical variables. Nor does it lack any explanatory power. (shrink)

To claim that companies should not discriminate on the basis of race, gender or religion seems almost as trivial as stating that they should not use forced labor or dump radioactive waste into the local river. Among other things, non-discrimination seems to imply that companies recognize and respect a range of religious preferences, including allowing religious clothing, e.g., by allowing Muslim women to wear headscarves. However, many companies do not believe that employees generally should be allowed to wear the kind (...) of clothes they please. In this paper, we discuss the asymmetry between the status of religious and secular clothing. We conclude that religious exemptions to dress codes can discriminate wrongfully. To solve this problem, companies should not ban religious clothing. Instead, companies should liberalize their dress codes, so that employees would be allowed to wear secular and religious types of clothing on an equal footing. (shrink)

A central aspect of the relation between biosemiotics and biology is investigated by asking: Is a biological concept of function intrinsically related to a biosemiotic concept of sign action, and vice versa? A biological notion of function (as some process or part that serves some purpose in the context of maintenance and reproduction of the whole organism) is discussed in the light of the attempt to provide an understanding of life processes as being of a semiotic nature, i.e., constituted by (...) sign actions. Does signification and communication in biology (e.g., intracellular communication) always presuppose an organism with distinct semiotic or quasi-semiotic functions? And, symmetrically, is it the case that functional relations are simply not conceivable without living sign action? The present note is just an introduction to a project aiming at elucidating the relations between biofunction and biosemiosis. (shrink)

This chapter clarifies the concept of validation of computer simulations by comparing various definitions that have been proposed for the notion. While the definitions agree in taking validation to be an evaluationEvaluation, they differ on the following questions: What exactly is evaluated—results from a computer simulation, a model, a computer codeCode? What are the standardsStandard of evaluationEvaluation––truthTruth, accuracyAccuracy, and credibilityCredibility or also something else? What type of verdict does validation lead to––that the simulation is such and such good, or that (...) it passes a testTest defined by a certain threshold? How strong needs the case to be for the verdict? Does validation necessarily proceed by comparing simulation outputsOutput with measured dataData? Along with these questions, the chapter explains notions that figure prominently in them, e.g., the concepts of accuracy and credibility. It further discusses natural answers to the questions as well as arguments that speak in favor and against these answers. The aim is to obtain a better understandingUnderstanding of the options we have for defining validation and how they are related to each other. (shrink)

One point that definitions of art experience disagree about is whether this kind of experience is qualitatively different from experiences related to ordinary objects and everyday contexts. Here, we follow an ecological approach assuming that art experience has its own specific quality that is, not least, determined by typical contexts of art presentation. Practically, we systematically observe typical phenomena of experiencing art in ecologically valid or real-world settings such as museum contexts. Based on evidences gained in this manner, we emulate (...) and implement essential properties of ecological contexts (e.g., free choice of viewing distance and time, large scale of artworks and exhibition-like context) in controlled laboratory experiments. We found, for instance, that for large scale paintings by Pollock and Rothko preferred viewing distances as well as distances inducing most intense art experiences including Aesthetic Aha insights were much larger than typical viewing distances realized in lab studies. Following Carbon’s (2019) terminology of measurement strategies of art experience, the combined use of “Path #1” (real-world context) and “Path #2” (mildly controlled, still ecologically valid settings and contexts), enables us to understand and investigate much closer what is really happening when people experience art. (shrink)

This paper discusses recent attempts to solve the problem of induction. Two broad strategies to escape Hume's fork can be distinguished. The first tries to localize the justification of specific inductions in uncontroversial empirical knowledge, e.g.mundane scientific knowledge (J. D. Norton) or perception (M. Lange). I argue that related attempts to (dis)solve the problem fail. The second strategy tries to put forward an argument in favor of induction. As a discussion of work by R. White shows, this argument can barely (...) prove that induction is reliable or at least not unreliable. But D. Steel, F. Huber and G. Schurz could show that enumerative induction is necessary and sufficient for a certain epistemic goal or optimal in a certain sense. These proofs, however, only solve the problem of induction if the goal or a certain standard has priority over the avoidance of error. This suggests that the difficulties to justify induction do not so much derive from Hume's fork, but rather from a plurality of sensible epistemic goals that can conflict with each other. (shrink)

Many questions about the fundamentals of some area take the form “What is …?” It does not come as a surprise then that, at the dawn of Western philosophy, Socrates asked the questions of what piety, courage, and justice are. Nor is it a wonder that the philosophical preoccupation with computer simulations centered, among other things, about the question of what computer simulations are. Very often, this question has been answered by stating that computer simulation is a species of a (...) well-known method, e.g., experimentation. Other answers claim at least a close relationship between computer simulation and another method. In any case, correct answers to the question of what a computer simulation is should help us to better understand what validation of simulations is. The aim of this chapter is to discuss the most important proposals to understand computer simulation in terms of another method and to trace consequences for validation. Although it has sometimes been claimed that computer simulations are experiments, there are strong reasons to reject this view. A more appropriate proposal is to say that computer simulations often model experiments. This implies that the simulation scientists should to some extent imitate the validation of an experiment. But the validation of computer simulations turns out to be more comprehensive. Computer simulations have also been conceptualized as thought experimentsThought experiment or close cousins of the latter. This seems true, but not very telling since thought experiments are not a standardStandard method and since it is controversial how they contribute to our acquisition of knowledge. I thus consider a specific view on thought experiments to make some progress on understanding simulations and their validation. There is finally a close connection between computer simulation and modeling, and it can be shown that the validation of a computer simulation is the validation of a specific model, which may either be thought to be mathematical or fictional. (shrink)

To provide an introduction to this book, we explain the motivation to publish this volume, state its main goal, characterize its intended readership, and give an overview of its content. To this purpose, we briefly summarize each chapter and put it in the context of the whole volume. We also take the opportunity to stress connections between the chapters. We conclude with a brief outlook.The main motivation to publish this volume was the diagnosis that the validation of computer simulation needs (...) more attention in practice and in theory. The aim of this volume is to improve our understanding of validation. To this purpose, computer scientists, mathematicians, working scientists from various fields, as well as philosophers of science join efforts. They explain basic notions and principles of validation, embed validation in philosophical frameworks such as Bayesian epistemology, detail the steps needed during validation, provide best practice examples, reflect upon challenges to validation, and put validation in a broader perspective. As we suggest in our outlook, the validation of computer simulations will remain an important research topic that needs cross- and interdisciplinary efforts. A key issue is whether, and if so, how very rigorous approaches to validation that have proven useful in, e.g., engineering can be extended to other disciplines. (shrink)

Bayesian epistemologyEpistemology offers a powerful framework for characterizing scientific inference. Its basic idea is that rational belief comes in degrees that can be measured in terms of probabilities. The axioms of the probability calculus and a rule for updatingUpdating emerge as constraints on the formation of rational belief. Bayesian epistemologyEpistemology has led to useful explications of notions such asConfirmation confirmation. It thus is natural to ask whether Bayesian epistemologyEpistemology offers a useful framework for thinking about the inferences implicit in the (...) validation of computer simulations. The aim of this chapter is to answer this question. Bayesian epistemologyEpistemology is briefly summarized and then applied to validation. UpdatingUpdating is shown to form a viable method for data-driven validation. Bayesians can also express how a simulation obtains prior credibilityCredibility because the underlying conceptual modelConceptual model is credible. But the impact of this prior credibilityCredibility is indirect since simulations at best provide partial and approximate solutions to theConceptual model conceptual model. Fortunately, this gap between the simulations and the conceptual model can be addressed using what we call Bayesian verification. The final part of the chapter systematically evaluates the use of Bayesian epistemologyEpistemology in validation, e.g., by comparing it to a falsificationist approach. It is argued that Bayesian epistemologyEpistemology goes beyond mere calibrationCalibration and that it can provide the foundations for a sound evaluationEvaluation of computer simulations. (shrink)

To claim that companies should not discriminate on the basis of race, gender or religion seems almost as trivial as stating that they should not use forced labor or dump radioactive waste into the local river. Among other things, non-discrimination seems to imply that companies recognize and respect a range of religious preferences, including allowing religious clothing, e.g., by allowing Muslim women to wear headscarves. However, many companies do not believe that employees generally should be allowed to wear the kind (...) of clothes they please. In this paper, we discuss the asymmetry between the status of religious and secular clothing. We conclude that religious exemptions to dress codes can discriminate wrongfully. To solve this problem, companies should not ban religious clothing. Instead, companies should liberalize their dress codes, so that employees would be allowed to wear secular and religious types of clothing on an equal footing. (shrink)

Karl Friedrich Christian Krause’s concept of penal law, though little noticed in Germany, can be regarded as almost revolutionary for its time, as it assumes that public law is not only – negatively – intended to delimit and guarantee the citizens’ spheres of freedom. Rather, the law should also promote the welfare of the citizenry. As a result, Krause’s considerations of penal law do not focus on law enforcement alone, but just as much on the resocialization of both the offender (...) and the victim. In contrast to utilitarian positions, the perpetrator must not be instrumentalized for the benefit of society, e. g. for preventative purposes; rather, the offender has a subjective right to be rehabilitated. Correspondingly, the victim has a right to compensation on the part of the state inasmuch as the offender’s means prove insufficient. (shrink)

Nahezu jedem, der sich mit der Philosophie J. G. Fichtes eingehender befaßt hat, ist der Name des Fichteschülers K.C.F. Krause geläufig: von ihm stammt die heute gebräuchlichste Nachschrift zur WL nova methodo. Und mancher weiß zudem, dass es sich bei Krause um einen Denker handelt, dessen Philosophie im gesamten spanischsprachigen Raum, insbesondere in Südamerika, unter dem Titel »Krausismo« weite Verbreitung fand. Doch hierzulande ist - abgesehen von Vorurteilen - über Krauses Lehre so gut wie nichts bekannt. Dieser Aufsatz will jener (...) Unkenntnis anhand eines kleinen Segments der Krauseschen Philosophie - seiner Kritik der Philosophie Fichtes - entgegenwirken. (shrink)

A central aspect of the relation between biosemiotics and biology is investigated by asking: Is a biological concept of function intrinsically related to a biosemiotic concept of sign action, and vice versa? A biological notion of function (as some process or part that serves some purpose in the context of maintenance and reproduction of the whole organism) is discussed in the light of the attempt to provide an understanding of life processes as being of a semiotic nature, i.e., constituted by (...) sign actions. Does signification and communication in biology (e.g., intracellular communication) always presuppose an organism with distinct semiotic or quasi-semiotic functions? And, symmetrically, is it the case that functional relations are simply not conceivable without living sign action? The present note is just an introduction to a project aiming at elucidating the relations between biofunction and biosemiosis. (shrink)

We show that an infinite field is interpretable in a stable torsion-free nilpotent groupG of classk, k>1. Furthermore we prove thatG/Z k-1 (G) must be divisible. By generalising methods of Belegradek we classify some stable torsion-free nilpotent groups modulo isomorphism and elementary equivalence.

The present paper discusses a topic often neglected by contemporary philosophy of biology: The relation between metaphorical notions of living organisms as information processing systems, the attempts to model such systems by computational means (e.g., Artificial Life research), and the idea that life itself is a computational phenomenon. This question has ramifications in theoretical biology and thedefinition of Iife, in theoretical computer science and the concept of computation, and in semiotics (the study of signs in the most general sense, including (...) information, signification, and meaning), and the concept of the interpreter. It is argued, that the theory of autopoietic systems known from theoretical biology should be integrated with a biosemiotic reflection on the natural history of signs. (shrink)

Nahezu jedem, der sich mit der Philosophie J. G. Fichtes eingehender befaßt hat, ist der Name des Fichteschülers K.C.F. Krause geläufig: von ihm stammt die heute gebräuchlichste Nachschrift zur WL nova methodo. Und mancher weiß zudem, dass es sich bei Krause um einen Denker handelt, dessen Philosophie im gesamten spanischsprachigen Raum, insbesondere in Südamerika, unter dem Titel »Krausismo« weite Verbreitung fand. Doch hierzulande ist - abgesehen von Vorurteilen - über Krauses Lehre so gut wie nichts bekannt. Dieser Aufsatz will jener (...) Unkenntnis anhand eines kleinen Segments der Krauseschen Philosophie - seiner Kritik der Philosophie Fichtes - entgegenwirken. (shrink)

F. P. Ramsey pointed out in Theories that the observational content of a theory expressed partly in non-observational terms is retained in the sentence resulting from existentially generalizing the conjunction of all sentences of the theory with respect to all nonobservational terms. Such terms are thus avoidable in principle, but only at the cost of forming a single "monolithic" sentence. This paper suggests that communication may be thought of as occurring not only by sentence but by clause, a sentential formula (...) closed except for a special kind of variable. Understanding such clauses requires incorporating them within the scope of one's own Ramsey sentence. Many concepts of deductive and inductive logic carry over without great change. But the concepts of truth and designation are extendible to clauses only in the sense that assertions involving them must, to be understood, in turn be construed as clauses and incorporated into the Ramsey sentence. The behavior of these extended concepts of truth and designation suggests an explication of coherence truth within a correspondence-truth framework. (shrink)

Philosophers and logicians have long debated how best to understand conditional or hypothetical sentences. William G. Lycan has a distinctive approach to this debate, attending not just to the semantics of such sentences, but equally to their syntax. He shows how insights from linguistic theory help to illuminate problems about the meaning and function of conditionals. For instance, philosophers and logicians have had problems analysing the locutions 'only if', 'unless', and 'even if'. Lycan sets out a general semantic theory of (...) conditionals which works for all such sentences; he assigns meanings to them in a way that explains how and why those meanings depend upon features of utterance context. According to Lycan's theory the 'if'-clauses refer to items called 'events', 'circumstances', or 'conditions'.Real Conditionals gives at last the definitive presentation of this original approach to a topic at the intersection of philosophy, logic, and linguistics. Lycan's characteristically lively and witty expository style ensures that it can be enjoyed by readers from all three disciplines. (shrink)

In 2019, several US states passed “heartbeat” bills. Should such bills go into effect, they would outlaw abortion once an embryonic heartbeat can be detected, thereby severely limiting an individual’s access to abortion. Many states allow health care professionals to refuse to provide an abortion for reasons of conscience. Yet heartbeat bills do not include a positive conscience clause that would allow health care professionals to provide an abortion for reasons of conscience. I argue that this asymmetry is unjustified. The (...) same criteria that justify protecting conscientious refusals to provide abortion also justify protecting positive conscientious appeals regarding abortion. Thus, if the law provides legal exemptions for health care professionals who, as a matter of conscience, refuse to provide abortions where it is legal, it should also provide exemptions for health care professionals who, as a matter of conscience, feel obligated to provide abortions where it is illegal. (shrink)

The author has constructed a concept of conditionals by synthetizing and developing unconnected insights scattered through the literature. The result is incorporated in a formal deductive system, based on a series of "paradox-free" systems initiated by Alonzo Church and interpreted according to principles suggested chiefly by Everett Nelson and by Anderson and Belnap. The basic concept is the sufficiency relation holding between clauses of a conditional, or rather between the relevant states of affairs asserted by the clauses. The logic of (...) sufficiency is developed by using a phenomenological method, much like that of the ordinary-language linguists, to place restrictions on truth-functional logic. For example, conjunction is replaced by adjunction [ = df. ~ ] and this concept is used to modify modus ponens and simplification. Relevance requirements avoid the paradoxes of material implication. These principles, together with a number of physical modalities and some modifications of the concept of induction, are used to attack Goodman's paradox and the paradoxes of confirmation, and to form a concept of cause. The formal system incorporates the principles judged desirable by the analysis of how conditionals are used in discourse. Mr. Barker is modest in his claims, emphasizing that his material is not original and saying only that some of the famous paradoxes "show signs of yielding." Interested students will be grateful for this monograph. It is a valuable compendium of widely scattered work of a difficult and complicated subject, and should be both helpful and stimulating. Moreover, it is particularly clear and readable.--L. G. (shrink)

nec iuvenis sororis suae mortem tam miseram et quae minime par erat inlatam aequo tolerare quivit animo, sed … exin flagrantissimis febribus ardebat, ut ipsi quoque iam medela videretur esse necessaria. This is the text of the passage describing the reaction of the young man at the news that his beloved sister has been murdered flagris and titione candenti inter media femina detruso as it is transmitted by the Florentine MS. With the few exceptions which I discuss below, the vast (...) majority of editors accept the text of F, betraying resignation before a paradosis that can hardly seem genuine, since it can be maintained only by forcing both word order and syntax. Editors either refer quae to mortem, assuming an ellipsis of ei in the relative clause and taking par as ‘fitting’, or refer quae to soror, assuming an ellipsis of in eam and taking par as equivalent to digna. (shrink)

IN a discussion of the reading in Lucan i. 231, Richard Bentley dismissed Grotius's suggestion Ariminon: ignes on the correct grounds that, like Virgil, Lucan avoids starting a new sentence or clause at the beginning of the sixth foot of the hexameter, except with a pair of monosyllables or with a word emphasized either by repetition or by a strong contrast.

Legal texts are often given interpretations that deviate from their literal meanings. While legal concerns often motivate these interpretations, others can be traced to linguistic phenomena. This paper argues that systematicities of language usage, captured by certain theories of conversational implicature, can sometimes explain why the meanings given to legal texts by judges differ from the literal meanings of the texts. Paul Grice's account of conversational implicature is controversial, and scholars have offered a variety of ways to conceptualize implicatures and (...) Grice's maxims of conversation. Approaches that emphasize the systematic nature of implicatures can provide explanatory accounts of the gap between literal meaning and the meaning communicated in the text. For example, a theory of scalar implicature, a type of generalized conversational implicature, can account for the application of the interpretive principle known as ejusdem generis, which narrows the scope of “catch-all” clauses located at the end of lists of items. Despite the availability of such theories, some scholars have argued that conversational implicatures are not applicable to legislation. The arguments, based primarily on the uniqueness of the legislative context and its noncooperative nature, though, do not establish the inapplicability of conversational implicatures to legislation. (shrink)

Pediatricians provided expert testimony that, in the case of Baby K, provision of ventilator support goes beyond accepted standards of care for anencephalic infants and so is medically futile. This argument, however reasonable, does not persuade those who believe in the absolute value of even a fraction of human life. In Baby K, court records indicate that Ms. H, Baby K's mother, persistently adheres to the sanctity-of-life principle on religious grounds.While I think that quality-of-life considerations have a role in medical (...) decision making, those who reject such considerations must be respected. This article makes the following claims, on behalf of religious dissenters: the Baby K case should be interpreted in light of the freedom of religion guaranteed in the First Amendment ; religious beliefs should not be trivialized in clinical ethics, even if reason, not belief, is the language of the public forum; the time-honored free exercise clause is essential to the American experiment in liberty and should not be overridden in the name of a concept as vague as futility; and free exercise of religion deserves serious discussion in the futility debate, and significant religious accommodation must be included in any hospital or societal futility policies. In the concluding section, issues are raised regarding the balance between religious consideration and resource allocation. (shrink)

In A.J.P. XXXIII., pp. 426–435, Mr. A. C. Pearson attempted to prove that ὅТαѵ ‘not infrequently bears a causal signification … and that in such cases the temporal meaning is more or less evanescent, and sometimes entirely disappears.’ The use of ὅТαѵ where the verb refers to future time is not discussed, the purpose being ‘to establish that the classification which sums up the other occurrences of the construction as necessarily expressing “indefinite frequency” is incomplete; and that a rigorous insistence (...) on its universal applicability has vitiated the interpretation of numerous passages.’ In the question of ‘causal implication’ I am not particularly interested. It is useless to attempt to deny that our English since is a satisfactory translation of ὅТαѵ in many instances, though it is not, perhaps, an easy matter to state what is the exact force of since in such cases. As to ‘causal implication’ I shall merely point out that a cause, strictly speaking, precedes in time that of which it is the cause, whereas a ὅТε-clause properly defines a situation that is of the same time as the principal clause. The question I wish to raise is whether the implication of ‘indefinite frequency’ has disappeared so completely in certain passages as Mr. Pearson thinks it has. Some of his examples are very interesting. It is not easy to see repeated action in them, and we may admit that critics have not ‘seriously pondered the results which flow from their adherence to established convention.’ But has Mr. Pearson seriously pondered the results which flow from his own conclusions?' So far as I can see, he makes no distinction at all between cases of ὅТαѵ with the subjunctive, ‘where no other relation than that of causality appears to exist between the subordinate and principal clauses’ and cases of ‘causal’ ὅТε with the indicative. (shrink)

This paper examines the case of Lawrence v. Texas to bring out the philosophical commitments of Justices Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia. It is proposed that Justices Kennedy and Scalia, while both Catholics, represent fundamentally different visions of the “ends and reasons” of democratic law. A close reading of the Justices’ opinions in Lawrence indicates that Justice Scalia belongs to the tradition of the “ancients” and Justice Kennedy to the tradition of the “moderns.” The paper focuses in particular on the (...) Justices’ interpretations of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It is claimed that the interpretation of this clause turns on a philosophical commitment regarding the ends and reasons that the Constitution should be understood to serve, and thus that justices cannot help acting as “philosopher kings” here. Which of the two Justices is more consistent with the Catholic tradition is proposed as a question for another day. (shrink)

It is claimed that 'Do x!' means 'Then you will do x'. Answering a "Why?" question concerning the former may take either of two forms, viz., 'Because --' or 'If you wish to --'. The second answer completes the truncated hypothetical. "Ought" sentences are treated as a species of imperatives involving universality in the "if" clause ('If anyone wished to --'). Moral "ought" sentences involve a double universality, viz., the one mentioned above and universality connecting the action with social harmony (...) (e.g., "If everyone were to do x, then there would be social harmony'). (shrink)

Current evolutionary and cognitive theories of religion posit that supernatural agent concepts emerge from cognitive systems such as theory of mind and social cognition. Some argue that these concepts evolved to maintain social order by minimizing antisocial behavior. If these theories are correct, then people should process information about supernatural agents’ socially strategic knowledge more quickly than non-strategic knowledge. Furthermore, agents’ knowledge of immoral and uncooperative social behaviors should be especially accessible to people. To examine these hypotheses, we measured response-times (...) to questions about the knowledge attributed to four different agents—God, Santa Claus, a fictional surveillance government, and omniscient but non-interfering aliens—that vary in their omniscience, moral concern, ability to punish, and how supernatural they are. As anticipated, participants respond more quickly to questions about agents’ socially strategic knowledge than non-strategic knowledge, but only when agents are able to punish. (shrink)

Studies have suggested that metaphors (Lawyers are sharks) and similes (Lawyers are like sharks) have distinct representations: metaphors engender more figurative and abstract properties, whereas similes engender more literal properties. We investigated to what extent access to such representations occurs automatically, during on-line reading. In particular, we examined whether similes convey a more literal meaning by following the metaphors and similes with explanations that expressed either a figurative (dangerous) or a literal property (fish) of the vehicle. In a self-paced reading (...) with a moving window paradigm, we presented participants with negated simile and metaphor main clauses (Lawyers are not (like) sharks) followed by explanations that also negated either a figurative (because lawyers are not dangerous) or a literal property of the vehicle (because lawyers are not fish). We found that vehicles (sharks) in metaphors were read significantly faster than those in similes. In addition, explanations negating a figurative property were read faster after metaphors, whereas explanations negating a literal property were read faster after similes. These results support the hypothesis that metaphors and similes rely on different interpretive processes, suggesting that similes access literal representations while metaphor access figurative ones in real time. (shrink)

Contemporary moral philosophers generally claim that there is both a moral and a nonmoral sense of such key terms as "ought" and "right." Professor Wertheimer attempts to disprove this claim as well as the significance of contemporary metaethical investigations by establishing that such terms, especially the modal auxiliary verb "ought," are univocal, and, as a result, that a proper understanding of them will reveal nothing about the nature of morality. Wertheimer defines "n ought to v" as a conjunction of the (...) following clauses: 1) There exists an adequate relevant System y; 2) there exists a property F such that "Fn" is true; and 3) according to y, F is such that if "Fn" is true, and C obtains then "nv" is true. A crucial point about this definition is that the truth of "ought" statements is always defended by an implicit reference to the existence of an adequate relevant system; "ought" statements in science are based on an adequate scientific system, moral "ought" statements on an adequate moral system. Thus, a decision about the truth of such statements is not a semantic issue, but one of assessing the adequacy of the system appealed to. This view of "ought" statements along with a similar one of other moral terms is the basis of Wertheimer’s provocative contention that metaethics, which has received the major share of moral philosophers’ attention in the twentieth century, is bound to be unproductive. (shrink)

This paper argues that if a person's beliefs are idealized as a set of sentences (theoretical, observational, and mixed) then the device of Ramsey sentences provides a treatment, of the mind-brain problem, that has at least four noteworthy characteristics. First, sentences asserting correlations between one's own brain state and one's own "private" experiences are, on such treatment, reconstrued as neither causal, coreferential, nor as meaning postulates, but as clauses in an overall hypothesis (Ramsey sentence) whose only nonlogical constants have "private" (...) meanings. Second, sentences asserting psycho-physical correlations in general, or in other individuals, remain theoretical and susceptible to scientific reduction, though not prejudged to be so. Third, communication between persons having mutually exclusive, "private," observational vocabularies can be made intelligible. Fourth, it becomes possible in principle (though not necessary) that the world could ultimately be given a total description in a scientific language, $L_{\varnothing}$ , without mental primitives. However, such a language would be susceptible to interpretation by a given individual using a metalanguage whose primitives (not among those of $L_{\varnothing}$ ) were privately observational to that individual. His procedure in accomplishing such an interpretation would be to construct a Tarskian truth definition in a metalanguage $ML_{\varnothing}$ and then to incorporate it, by Ramsifying its descriptive terms, in his own overall Ramsey sentence. The physical language, $L_{\varnothing}$ , while not containing a person's primitives, would, of course, be able to define their physical correlates, thus providing a certain sort of mutual mirroring, and a certain sort of relativity. (shrink)