This study elucidates and defends philosophical realism. The version I propose includes a realist understanding of the nature of reality, and a twofold realist view of truth. I hold that reality is cognition-independent. This means that the conceptual scheme of inquiry into a given subject matter does not constitute its nature. Using a different set of concepts to investigate a certain phenomenon will not change what it is. This is realism about reality: Reality is not contingent upon the concepts we (...) use in our attempts to understand it. ;I embrace, as well, a realist conception of truth, according to which, truth consists in agreement with reality. In addition, truth is not characterized as any sort of justification. What we say is true if, and only if, what we are talking about is as we claim it to be. Furthermore, the conditions under which a statement is true are not to be identified with the conditions which would make anyone justified in believing the statement: Truth conditions and justification conditions of statements are not identical. ;There are two major ways in which I defend realism. First, I specify exactly what the doctrine should be. This involves so characterizing realism that it is not committed to a number of undesirable theses; for example, foundationalism, physicalism, scientism, skepticism, and moral relativism. The realism I embrace allows for ontological and epistemological pluralism, according to which there are many kinds of things in the world, and many ways to describe them. Secondly, I respond to two of the most important recent attacks on realism, those of Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam. I examine their alternatives to realism, and find them lacking in merit. I formulate their strongest arguments against realism, and then respond on the realist's behalf. Realism emerges as a plausible, interrelated conception of the nature of knowledge, truth, and reality which stands up well against the attacks of its most prominent contemporary critics. (shrink)

As the expansion of the Internet and the digital formatting of all kinds of creative works move us further into the information age, intellectual property issues have become paramount. Computer programs costing thousands of research dollars are now copied in an instant. People who would recoil at the thought of stealing cars, computers, or VCRs regularly steal software or copy their favorite music from a friend's CD. Since the Web has no national boundaries, these issues are international concerns. The contributors-philosophers, (...) legal theorists, and business scholars, among others-address questions such as: Can abstract ideas be owned? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare to the violation of physical property rights? Can computer software and other digital information be protected? And how should legal systems accommodate the ownership of intellectual property in an information age? Intellectual Property is a lively examination of these and other issues, and an invaluable resource for librarians, lawyers, businesspeople, and scholars. (shrink)

The virtue approach to business ethics is a topic of increasing importance within the business world. Focusing on Aristotle's theory that the virtues of character, rather than actions, are central to ethics, Edwin M. Hartman introduces readers of this book to the value of applying Aristotle's virtue approach to business. Using numerous real-world examples, he argues that business leaders have good reason to take character seriously when explaining and evaluating individuals in organisations. He demonstrates how the virtue approach can (...) deepen our understanding of business ethics, and how it can contribute to contemporary discussions of character, rationality, corporate culture, ethics education and global ethics. Written by one of the foremost Aristotelian scholars working in the field today, this authoritative introduction to the role of virtue ethics in business is a valuable primer for graduate students and academic researchers in business ethics, applied ethics and philosophy. (shrink)

La metodología e-learning apuesta por un cambio a los modelos tradicionales, implementados en las instituciones de educación. Con el fin de poner a prueba y analizar los resultados de este nuevo modelo, se decidió implementar prácticas de laboratorio virtuales para el curso de conversión electromagnética del pregrado en ingeniería electrónica, una de estas prácticas tiene como título “circuito equivalente de un transformador”, con ella y junto a la consulta de los niveles de satisfacción de los estudiantes en sus resultados de (...) aprendizaje, construiremos las métricas necesarias para evaluar este método. (shrink)

Public conversation about biological contributors to mental disorder often centers on whether the problem is “biological or not.” In this paper, we propose moving beyond this bifurcation to a very different question:how exactlyare these problems understood to be biological? Specifically, we consider four issues around which different interpretations of the body’s relationship to mental disorder exist:1. The body’s relationship to day-to-day action; 2. The extent to which the body is changeable; 3. The body’s relationship to context; 4. The degree to (...) which states of the body directly cause mental disorder.Drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty and other phenomenologists, we examine different responses to these questions and associated implications for how mental health treatment and recovery come to be experienced. Finally, we consider broader questions these patterns raise, including why certain portrayals of the brain dominate public attention and how to foster more deliberation in this regard. (shrink)

This collection is about composing thought at the level of modernism and decomposing it at the postmodern level where many cocks might crow with African philosophy as a focal point. It has two parts: part one is titled 'The journey of reason in African philosophy', and part two is titled 'African philosophy and postmodern thinking'. There are seven chapters in both parts. Five of the essays are reprinted here as important selections while nine are completely new essays commissioned for this (...) book. As their titles suggest, in part one, African philosophy is unfolded in the manifestation of reason as embedded in modern thought while in part two, it draws the effect of reason as implicated in the postmodern orientation. The idea of the book is to open new vistas for the discipline of African philosophy. African philosophy is thus presented as a disagreement discourse. Without rivalry of thoughts, Africa will settle for far less. This gives postmodernism an important place, perhaps deservedly more important than history of philosophy allocates to it. It is that philosophical moment that says 'philosophers must cease speaking like gods in their hegemonic cultural shrines and begin to converse across borders with one another'. In this conversation, the goal for African philosophers must not be to find final answers but to sustain the conversation which alone can extend human reason to its furthermost reaches. (shrink)

In line with the tradition of the Conversational School of Philosophy, this essay provides a rare and unique space of discourse for the authors to converse about the place of the ‘ethno’ in African philosophy. This conversation is a revisit, a renewal of the key positions that have coloured the ethnophilosophy debate by the conversers who themselves are notable contributors to arguments for and against the importance of ethnophilosophy in the unfolding of African philosophy particularly in the last decade (...) or so. There are four key positions that have been argued for in the pages of this paper: ethnophilosophy is not African philosophy and it is useless and inimical to the growth of African philosophy and should thus be jettisoned – Matolino; ethnophilosophy is the foundation for African philosophy as it provides the raw materials for African philosophical discourse – Ogbonnaya and Agada; ethnophilosophy has some value for African philosophy but it is definitely not the foundation for genuine African philosophy the way criticism and rigours are – Attoe; and ethnophilosophy can be adequately conceived as African philosophy particularly in terms of its etymology as culture or race philosophy, dealing with a philosophical or critical reflections on, and exposition of, immanent principles in African thought – Mangena and Etieyibo. These conversers provide good arguments for the positions they hold, arguments that are of course, open for further interrogation. Two points can be concluded from the ethnophilosophy debate provided in this essay: the disparities in views among conversers it seems, stem ultimately from the understanding of ethnophilosophy that each converser holds, which varies from the notion of a method used at some point in the history of African philosophy, to an etymological understanding as culture philosophy; and the debate about ethnophilosophy in the spirit of any philosophical tradition remains a perennial one that is yet to be concluded. This essay certainly concretises what is on ground and paves the way for further discussions. Keywords: Ethno, African philosophy, Foundationalist, Universalist, Particularist, The common moral position, Ethnophilosophy. (shrink)

In 1845, John Henry Cardinal Newman wrote a treatise describing the development of Christian doctrine. Since then, his ideas have been challenged, in particular by Protestant theologians who have argued that the development of doctrine does not progress in either a smooth or linear path. In the philosophy of science, Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has challenged the idea that science is purely driven by objective and rational motives. In this paper, Kuhn's ideas are applied to the development (...) of Christian doctrine. Drawing from historical examples, it is shown that Kuhn's contextual approach to describe the progress of science aids in understanding the way doctrines themselves develop. Although this is not the first time that theology and Kuhn have conversed, the notion of doctrinal development being systematically and methodically shown to have parallels with Kuhn's ideas is novel. Ultimately, this work is another important step in building interdisciplinary links between science and theology. (shrink)

Edwin, a person contemplating a career in teaching, has a conversation with Phyllis, a teacher and amateur theorist, about reasons to become a teacher.

Because of the importance of Puritanism in its history, one of the forms taken by religious Angst at the end of the 19th century in New England was uneasiness about the psychological nature and validity of the conversion experience. Apart from William James and G. Stanley Hall, the leading psychologists who investigated this phenomenon were Edwin Starbuck and James Leuba. Each had a different personal stance with regard to the plausibility of religious belief. In practice their differences of opinion (...) over the psychology of conversion pivoted round the role of sexuality. In the first part of the 20th century their conflicting views brought to the fore themes that were eventually given full expression 40 years later in Paul Ricoeur’s account of the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’. (shrink)

In the early 1950s, astronomer Allan Sandage inherited from Edwin Hubble the task of determining whether expansion was real. In the succeeding forty years, Sandage “established the discipline of observational cosmology” (Overbye 1991, 188). At the same time, he encountered the limits of science to address the full mystery of existence. In seeking an answer to the question of purpose, in particular, Sandage came to the “abyss of reason” and made the “leap of faith.” This conversion, however, involved, and (...) continues to involve, an ongoing process of balancing two avenues to the truth, drawing upon resources from both scientific and religious traditions. Reason and faith seem reconcilable in life lived as an experiment and in “bowing before the mystery” (Sandage 1990). Ultimately, Sandage suggests that religious conversion comes not so much through reasoned pursuit as in the realization of being pursued. (shrink)

This paper extends the theory of situated inference from Mares to treat two weak relevant logics, B and DJ. These logics are interesting because they can be used as bases for consistent naïve theories, such as naïve set theory. The concepts of a situation and of information that are employed by the theory of situated inference are used to justify various aspects of these logics and to give an interpretation of the notion of set that is represented in the naïve (...) set theories that are based on them. (shrink)

In recent years many influential philosophers have advocated that philosophy is an a priori science. Yet very few epistemology textbooks discuss a priori knowledge at any length, focusing instead on empirical knowledge and empirical justification. As a priori knowledge has moved centre stage, the literature remains either too technical or too out of date to make up a reasonable component of an undergraduate course. Edwin Mares book aims to rectify this. This book seeks to make accessible to students the (...) standard topics and current debates within a priori knowledge, including necessity and certainty, rationalism, empiricism and analyticity, Quine's attack on the a priori, Kantianism, Aristotelianism, mathematical knowledge, moral knowledge, logical knowledge and philosophical knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper, I set out a semantics for identity in relevant logic that is based on an analogy between the biconditional and identity. This analogy supports the semantics that Priest has set out for identity in basic relevant logic and it motivates a version of the Routley–Meyer semantics in which identities can be viewed as constraints on the ternary relation that is used to treat implication.

This book introduces the reader to relevant logic and provides the subject with a philosophical interpretation. The defining feature of relevant logic is that it forces the premises of an argument to be really used in deriving its conclusion. The logic is placed in the context of possible world semantics and situation semantics, which are then applied to provide an understanding of the various logical particles and natural language conditionals. The book ends by examining various applications of relevant logic and (...) presenting some interesting open problems. It will be of interest to a range of readers including advanced students of logic, philosophical and mathematical logicians, and computer scientists. (shrink)

This paper begins with a discussion of C. I. Lewis’s theory of meaning in his book, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (1946) and his pragmatic theory of analyticity and necessity. I bring this theories together with some remarks that he makes in an appendix to the second edition of Symbolic Logic to construct an algebraic semantics for his logics S2 and S3. These logics and their semantics are compared and evaluated with regard to how well they implement Lewis’s theories (...) of meaning and analyticity. (shrink)

In response to the dozen essays published here, which relate my 1964 paper on “The Nature of Belief Systems in the Mass Publics” to normative requirements of democratic theory, I note, inter alia, a major misinterpretation of my old argument, as well as needed revisions of that argument in the light of intervening data. Then I address the degree to which there may be some long‐term secular change in the parameters that I originally laid out. In the final section, I (...) provide a case study of public understanding of factual trends in federal tax policy in recent decades which seems commendably veridical on average. The preferences of the public thereon add up to a remarkably clear popular mandate. But this mandate seems to disappear rather magically in the voting booth, probably due to a combination of limited contextual information on the public side, and considerable skill on the elite side in manipulating apparent political realities. (shrink)

This paper sets out a philosophical interpretation of the model theory of Mares and Goldblatt (The Journal of Symbolic Logic 71, 2006). This interpretation distinguishes between truth conditions and information conditions. Whereas the usual Tarskian truth condition holds for universally quantified statements, their information condition is quite different. The information condition utilizes general propositions . The present paper gives a philosophical explanation of general propositions and argues that these are needed to give an adequate theory of general information.

In this article, I shall argue that being a lie disqualifies something from being a literary work. If something is a lie then it is not a literary work of any kind, and if something is a literary work of any kind then it is not a lie. Being a literary work, and being a lie, are mutually exclusive categories.

Excerpt from The New Realism: Coöperative Studies in Philosophy On July 21, 1910, we published a brief article entitled 'The Program and First Platform of Six Realists,' in which we indicated the direction philosophical inquiry ought to take. We there asserted that advance would be facilitated by cooperative investigations; and the drafting of the platform was a first attempt to confirm this belief. The present volume continues, on a larger scale, the work there inaugurated; and we hope it will be (...) followed by other collections of studies. The introductory essay voices our common opinions. The other essays do so only in part. It has seemed best to publish them without laboring for complete unanimity, inasmuch as their agreements quite overshadow their differences. They have been written after prolonged conferences. A few important debatable topics are briefly discussed by dissenting members in the Appendix. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Since its inception, experimental social psychology has arguably been of two minds about the nature and role of theory. Contemporary social psychology's experimental approach has been strongly informed by the “nomological-deductive” approach of Carl Hempel in tandem with the “hypothetico-deducive” approach of Karl Popper. Social psychology's commitment to this hybrid model of science has produced at least two serious obstacles to more fruitful theorizing about human experience: the problem of situational specificity, and the manifest impossibility of formulating meaningful general laws (...) of human social behavior. It is argued that a social psychology based on the search for this kind of lawfulness, under the auspices of either a strict or loose interpretation of the largely Hempelian model, is ultimately unworkable. An alternative approach to social psychology that is attentive both to the need for understanding individual situations and behaviors and to the need for generalized understanding of actual human behaviors is offered. This approach is grounded in the hermeneutic tradition. (shrink)

Bede's Ecclesiastical History is the most important single source for early medieval English history. Without it, we would be able to say very little about the conversion of the English to Christianity, or the nature of England before the Viking Age. Bede wrote for his contemporaries, not for a later audience, and it is only by an examination of the work itself that we can assess how best to approach it as a historical source. N.J. Higham shows, through a close (...) reading of the text, what light the Ecclesiastical History throws on the history of the period and especially on those characters from seventh- and early eighth-century England whom Bede either heroized, such as his own bishop, Acca, and kings Oswald and Edwin, or villainized, most obviously the British king Cædwalla but also Oswiu, Oswald's brother. In (Re-)Reading Bede, N.J. Higham offers a fresh approach to how we should engage with this great work of history. He focuses particularly on Bede's purposes in writing it, its internal structure, the political and social context in which it was composed and the cultural values it betrays, remembering always that our own approach to Bede has been influenced to a very great extent by the various ways in which he has been both used, as a source, and commemorated, as man and saint, across the last 1,300 years. (shrink)

This paper uses an "admissible set semantics" to treat quantification in quantified modal logics. The truth condition for the universal quantifier states that a universally quantified statement (x)A(x) is true at a world w if and only if there is some proposition true at that world that entails every instance of A(x). It is shown that, for any canonical propositional modal logic the corresponding admissible set semantics characterises the quantified version of that modal logic.

Bioethics today has become a subject of wide public concern. Almost every one of its tenets is being seriously questioned and likely to be reformulated. Moreover, the pressure on bioethics continues to mount as the number of moral conflicts that buffet our society increases. What, then, will bioethics look like a decade from now? In the variety of approaches that have been employed in the practice of bioethics, one has dominated in the United States in the last decade and a (...) half. That approach is "principlism", the use of moral principles to address theoretical issues and to resolve conflicts at the bedside. Recently, however, bioethicists and others increasingly have realized the limitations of principlism and are calling for the development of alternative approaches such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, narrative ethics, casuistry, and virtue ethics. This book maps the debate over principlism and the future direction of U.S. bioethics. Part One consists of a sociological description of U.S. bioethics at the beginning of the 1990s, along with a defense of principlism by one of its major proponents. Part Two maps cross-cultural critiques of principlism, while Part Three covers five alternatives to it. Three essays in Part Four - by a bioethicist, a physician, and a theologian - reflect on the future of U.S. bioethics, principlism, and its alternatives. The Afterword emphasizes the place of religion and theological discourse in the alternative approaches and in the future of bioethics. (shrink)

The Logic R4 is obtained by adding the axiom □ → to the modal relevant logic NR. We produce a model theory for this logic and show completeness. We also show that there is a natural embedding of a Kripke model for S4 in each R4 model structure.