“How social norms change” is not only a theoretical question but also an empirical one. Many organizations have implemented programs to abandon harmful social norms. These programs are standardly monitored and evaluated with a set of empirical tools. While monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of changes in objective outcomes and behaviors is well developed, we will argue that M&E of changes in the wide range of beliefs and preferences important to social norms is still problematic. In this paper, we first present (...) a theoretical framework and then show how it should guide social norms measurement. As a case study, we focus on the harmful practice of child marriage. We show how an operational theory of social norms can guide the design of surveys, experiments and vignettes. We use examples from existing research to illustrate how to study social norms change. (shrink)

Notes on the life of Adolf Lindenbaum, a complete bibliography of his published works, and selected references to his unpublished results.

Should Marxists support universal basic income (UBI), i.e., a regular cash income paid to all without a means test or work requirement? This paper considers one important argument that they should, namely that UBI would be instrumentally effective in helping to bring about communism. It argues that previous answers to this question have paid insufficient attention to a logically prior question: what is Marx’s account of communism? In reply, it distinguishes two different accounts: a left-libertarian version that associates communism with (...) the freedom to live and work how one wants, and a perfectionist version that associates communism with the overcoming of alienated labour and self-realisation in work. It argues that UBI would make steps towards the left-libertarian account but not the perfectionist account. Ultimately, then, the question “should Marxists support basic income?” is shown to partly depend on which account of communism Marxists want to bring about. (shrink)

According to an influential view by Elizabeth Harman, moral ignorance, as opposed to factual ignorance, never excuses one from blame. In defense of this view, Harman appeals to the following considerations: that moral ignorance always implies a lack of good will, and that moral truth is always accessible. In this paper, I clearly distinguish these considerations, and present challenges to both. If my arguments are successful, sometimes moral ignorance excuses.

This chapter starts with the Socratic definition — loving knowing that you do not know — and explains what it would be to make loving anything a way of life. It examines what is Alcibiades in love with? What is the moral beauty that overwhelms Alcibiades? To encounter philosophy is first to discover that we are not what we thought we were: that what we think most important has little to do with our true nature. The chapter relates that moral (...) beauty is the paradoxical combination of vulnerability and integrity, a clarity and directness of vision, a limpid honesty that results when the skill is exercised. What makes that beauty possible is the same analytic and discriminatory expertise that we cultivate in attempts to determine how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. That expertise is at the heart of the elenkhos, which we still must practice. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to highlight a selected few of Alfred Tarski's career achievements. The choice of these achievements is subjective. Section 1 is a general sketch of his life and work, emphasizing his role as researcher, teacher, organizer and founder of a scientific school. Section 2 discusses his contributions to set theory. Section 3 discusses his contributions to the foundations of geometry and to measure theory. Section 4 looks at his metamathematical work, and especially the decision problem (...) for formalized theories. Section 5 is a selected bibliography to illustrate Sects. 1–4. (shrink)

Madhyamaka philosophy has been frequently characterized as nihilism, not just by its Buddhist and non-Buddhist opponents, but also by some contemporary Buddhologists. This characterization might well strike us as surprising. First, nihilism appears to be straightforwardly inconsistent. It would be curious if a philosophical school holding such an obviously deficient view would have acquired the kind of importance Madhyamaka has acquired in the Asian intellectual landscape over the last two millenia. Second, Madhyamaka by its very name proclaims to tread the (...) “middle way”, and what if anything would count as an extreme position but the view that there is nothing? This essay addresses both the systematic status of nihilist theories as well as the historical contexts in which Madhyamaka has been characterized as nihilistic, aiming to throw some light on plausible and implausible ways of understanding the Madhyamaka intellectual enterprise. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the key points of Nāgārjuna’s discussion of problems relating to the philosophy of language. We will focus on two works from Nāgārjuna’s yukti-corpus that address these matters most explicitly, the Vigrahavyāvartanī and the Vaidalyaprakaraṇa. The discussion will concentrate on four topics: Nāgārjuna’s views on semantics, the problem of empty names, the relation between language and momentariness, and the implications of Madhyamaka views on parts and wholes for the existence of language.

Interest in the study of Marx’s thought has shown a revival in recent years, with a number of newly established academic societies, conferences, and journals dedicated to discussing his thought. This book brings together distinguished and up-and-coming scholars to provide a major re-evaluation of historical issues in Marx scholarship and to connect Marx’s ideas with fresh debates in contemporary Anglo-American social and political philosophy. Among the topics discussed are Marx’s relationship to his philosophical predecessors—including Hegel, the young Hegelians, and the (...) utopian socialists—his concept of recognition, his critique of liberalism, and his views on the good life. This book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students interested in Marx, Hegel, the history of political thought, and social and political philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the philosophical side of Karl Marx's thought as well as some of the major debates about it in the secondary literature. It first examines Marx's early writings, focusing, in particular, on his views on religion, the limitations of political emancipation and the dehumanizing conditions of work under capitalism. Marx and Engels considered the theory of history to be one of Marx's most important theoretical achievements. In an autobiographical note Marx described it as the “guiding thread of his (...) studies,” and in a speech delivered at Marx's graveside Engels compared Marx's discovery of “the law of development of human history” with Darwin's discovery of the law of nature. The chapter examines Marx's materialist theory of history, the view that history is characterized by the development of productive power to free people from material scarcity. It also examines the problematic area of Marx's ethics. (shrink)

This paper presents the life and work of Alfred Tarski, one of the most distinguished and influential logicians in the entire history.

Should you reduce your energy consumption? Tragically enough, it may be better for you, and for everyone involved, to refrain from doing so even if you care about the climate. Given this tragedy, why cooperate? This paper defends the view that not cooperating is morally problematic because it is not universalizable (in a Kantian sense). That is, I will argue that we have universalizability-based reasons to cooperate as long as we have a preference for ‘collective success’ (e.g. a sustainable planet). (...) The problem is that defectors let others fix the problem for them, and in this way make an unfair exception of themselves. Moreover, even when selected agents might not share this preference, they still have to cooperate for the sake of others. (shrink)

This paper investigates the basis arguments of so-called legal logic and their relation to logic in its standard meaning. There is no doubt that legal arguments belong to logic in the wide sense (sensu largo), but their reduction to schemes of formal logic (logica sensu stricto) is a controversial issue. It can be demonstrated that only some legal arguments fall under explicit rules of formal logic, that is, having a deductive character. Most such reasoning is fallible, and its correctness depends (...) on appealing to extra-logical principles taken from legal norms. For instance, if we say, “If it is permitted more, then it is permitted less” (argumentum a maiori ad minus), we assume that the concepts expressed by the words “more” and “less” are already defined. (shrink)

This paper provides an interpretation of Father Bocheński’s saying “Beyond logic there is only nonsense.” He considered the battle against superstitions of various kinds as one of the most important intellectual and social duties. The phrase in itself suggests that logic is a weapon in the mentioned battle. Logic is understood broadly, that is, as semantics, formal logic and the methodology of science, and was considered by Bocheński as the main instrument of rational philosophy. Hence, the formula under discussion has (...) an explicit metaphilosophical significance, although Bochenski’s understanding of the concept of differs from that of the Vienna Circle. (shrink)

This paper briefly discusses the relations between logic and metalogic in history. Metalogic is understood as a reflection on logic in its various senses, particularly sensu stricto (formal, mathematical) and sensu largo (formal logic plus semantic plus methodology of science). It is shown that metalogic in its contemporary understanding arose after mathematical logic had become a mature discipline. Special passage is devoted to metalogic in Poland. The last part of the paper discussed so-called logocentric predicament.

Der Band enthält Beiträge von Juristen, Medizinern und Philosophen aus Australien, Estland, Polen, Rußland, Tschechien, den U.S.A. und Deutschland zu Themen der Ethik und Wissenschaftstheorie der Medizin. Die Mehrzahl der Beiträge sind von Nachwuchswissenschaftlern des College for Advanced Central European Studies an der Europa-Universität Viadrina erarbeitet worden. Sie wurden im Rahmen der Jahrestagung des Arbeitskreises für Ethik und Wissenschaftstheorie der Medizin in Ostmitteleuropa neben weiteren Beiträgen, die hier zum Abdruck kommen, zur Diskussion gestellt. Der Arbeitskreis beruht auf einer Kooperationsvereinbarung des (...) Interdisziplinären Zentrums für Ethik der Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) und des Instituts für Geschichte und Ethik der Medizin der Universität Halle-Wittenberg. Die Beiträge befassen sich u. a. mit der Gesundheitsreform in Polen, mit ethischen und rechtlichen Problemen bei der künstlichen Befruchtung, der Abtreibung, medizinischen Experimenten an Menschen, der Gentechnik, der Patientenautonomie, Außenseitermethoden in der Medizin, dem Patiententestament, dem Todesbegriff, Drogenkonsum, der Sterbehilfe und der Gentechnik. (shrink)

Der Band enthält Beiträge von Medizinern, Juristen, Philosophen und Naturwissenschaftlern aus Estland, Polen, den Niederlanden und Deutschland zu Themen der Ethik und Wissenschaftstheorie der Medizin. Diese Beiträge sind im Rahmen des «Arbeitskreises für Ethik und Wissenschaftstheorie der Medizin in Ostmitteleuropa» entstanden, der auf einer Kooperationsvereinbarung des Interdisziplinären Zentrums für Ethik der Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) und des Instituts für Geschichte und Ethik der Medizin der Universität Halle-Wittenberg beruht. Sie befassen sich u. a. mit der Gesundheitsreform in Polen, Tschechien und Ungarn, (...) mit ethischen Problemen bei Abtreibung, HIV-Infektion, Drogenkonsum, Sterbehilfe und Gentechnik sowie dem Theorie-Praxis-Verhältnis in der Medizin. (shrink)

Does willful ignorance mitigate blameworthiness? In many legal systems, willfully ignorant wrongdoers are considered as blameworthy as knowing wrongdoers. This is called the ‘equal culpability thesis’. Given that legal practice depends on it, the issue has obvious importance. Interestingly enough, however, there exists hardly any philosophical reflection on ECT. A recent exception is Alexander Sarch, who defends a restricted version of ECT. On Sarch’s view, ECT is true whenever willfully ignorant agents incur additional blameworthiness for their ignorance. In this paper, (...) I defend an alternative view, according to which ECT is true whenever the motives of willfully ignorant and knowing wrongdoers are equally bad. (shrink)

This volume brings together a group of researchers from different European countries and disciplines who are involved in Clinical Ethics Consultation. The work provides a discussion on the theories and methods underlying CEC and on the issues of implementation and evaluation.

Wayfinding is generally understood as the process of purposefully navigating to distant and non-visible destinations. Within this broad framework, uninformed searching entails finding one’s way to a target destination, in an unfamiliar environment, with no knowledge of its location. Although a variety of search strategies have been previously reported, this research was largely conducted in the laboratory or virtual environments using simplistic and often non-realistic situations, raising questions about its ecological validity. In this study, we explored how extant findings on (...) searching translate to a real-world environment, using a phenomenologically informed experiment. Our findings demonstrate a previously undescribed complex and dynamic interplay of different search strategies. Importantly, our results reveal that: (i) the presence of other people is importantly entangled with the process of searching; and (ii) people frequently probe and switch between search strategies based on local environmental characteristics. Together, our results reveal that search behaviour is critically dependent on environmental features and that searching in complex real-world settings should not be conceptualised as depending on a simple singular strategy. This raises questions about the dominance of laboratory-based experiments and their narrow cognitivist framework, highlighting the value of studying wayfinding in the real world. (shrink)

This paper presents life and work in logic of Jerzy Słupecki, a distinguished Polish logician.

English summary: In this volume, Jan-Hendryk de Boer investigates the upheaval in the world of scholars in the Roman-German Empire at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. He shows how during this time hegemonic humanism developed as a new discursive formation. This re-organised the humanistic movement as well as its relationship to scholasticism and ultimately the place of humanism in the scholarly world as a whole. After humanistic ideas were initially taken on board as being (...) relatively unproblematic, the representatives of hegemonic humanism, such as poets, grammarians and philologists, claimed that they alone were in possession of useful skills and relevant knowledge. In a cultural transfer of the corresponding developments in Italy, a scholastic-humanist antagonism was generated that is still reflected in today's research. German description: Jan-Hendryk de Boer untersucht in dieser Studie den Umbruch in der Gelehrtenwelt des romisch-deutschen Reichs am Ende des 15. und zu Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts. Er zeigt, wie sich in diesem Zeitraum der hegemoniale Humanismus als eine neue diskursive Formation ausbildete. Diese organisierte die humanistische Bewegung wie auch deren Verhaltnis zur Scholastik und schliesslich den Ort des Humanismus in der Gelehrtenwelt insgesamt um. Nachdem humanistische Ideen zunachst relativ problemlos Aufnahme gefunden hatten, beanspruchten die Vertreter des hegemonialen Humanismus als Dichter, Grammatiker und Philologen fur sich allein, uber nutzliche Fertigkeiten und relevantes Wissen zu verfugen. In einem Kulturtransfer der entsprechenden italienischen Entwicklungen wurde so ein scholastisch-humanistischer Antagonismus erzeugt, der bis in die heutige Forschung nachwirkt. (shrink)

According to an influential view, ‘the amount of blame people deserve varies with the extent of their indifference’. That is, the more wrongdoers act from a lack of moral concern, the more they would be blameworthy. This paper argues for the exact opposite claim: the more wrongdoers act from indifference, the less they are blameworthy – that is, in a properly interpersonal way.

The aim of this text is to elucidate certain aspects of the use of expressions such as “is true” and “it is true that” (henceforth “truth-expressions”) and, through this, some features of the concept of truth. It focuses on addressing the question of whether truth-expressions play the role of a predicate or an operator. The investigations pursued are intended to be grammatical—in Wittgenstein’s sense of the term. I begin with a short presentation of a widely held view about the role (...) played by truth-expressions. I then contrast the Wittgensteinian conception of grammar with that of linguistics. I sketch Frege’s, Wittgenstein’s, Prior’s and Brandom’s central ideas regarding the issue under consideration. As a further step, I investigate the role of truth-expressions by examining several sentences in which they occur, and discuss objections to the proposed analysis. On my approach, truth expressions play the role of a predicate only when applied to sentences, and in all other cases function as operators. One advantage of such a position is that it enables a dissolution of the problem of truth-bearers: where truth-expressions are operators, the issue simply does not arise, and where they are predicates, it is sentences that are the truth-bearers. (shrink)

Translators' Preface to three texts on Henri Bergson by Jan Patočka: "Review of 'Bergson' by Vladimir Jankélévitch"; "Preface to Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion"; "Bergson" (encyclopedia entry).

This paper presents and discusses Henri Poincaré’s view on the logical non-derivability of imperatives from indicatives. Firstly, his point of view is compared with David Hume’s. Then Poincaré’s thesis is shown to have been implicitly or explicitly essential to attempts to build a logic of imperatives (norms) as a special linguistic category as well as a deontic logic. The paper shows deontic logic enables us to formulate general principles concerning the logical separability of deonticals (sentences with deontic operators) and non-deontic (...) sentences. Finally, the paper includes remarks on the reception of Poincaré’s discussed ideas in later logical and philosophical literature with the second issue illustrated by legal philosophy. (shrink)

Several experimental studies on moral judgment and moral decision-making show that in virtual reality people tend to make more “characteristically utilitarian” decisions than when responding to standard questionnaires. An explanation of this phenomenon that has been considered by many authors states that the feature of VR studies that is responsible for this effect is the visual salience of the harmful consequences of “deontological” decisions. The present paper makes three points, the first of which is theoretical: we argue that this explanation, (...) which draws from Cushman’s dual-process account of moral judgment, is in fact not coherent with this account’s predictions with respect to behavior in VR. The second point is that this explanation does not sufficiently explain the existing empirical findings concerning the footbridge dilemma because these studies differ in important aspects of experimental design from studies on the switch dilemma. The third point is empirical: we present two original VR studies that were designed to check the robustness of the increased “utilitarian” tendency and directly test the explanation that is based on the visual salience of harmful consequences. The results of the experiments provide evidence that the effect is quite robust but the proposed explanation is inadequate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Far-Future Paleontology: The Baffling Case of Brunaspis enigmaticaAnne-Sophie Milon (bio) and Jan Zalasiewicz (bio)Paleontologists, for more than two centuries, have studied and debated the petrified remains of plants and animals that have evolved over the past three billion years on Earth. They have argued over the grand concepts that they reveal, such as biological evolution and climate change, and also the many specific questions thrown up by these (...) relics: was such-and-such a shell, a mollusk, or an arthropod? Did this fossil fish live high up in the water, among the plankton, or grub in the mud on the sea floor?These studies have for many paleontologists been a blessedly human-free zone, detached from the busy realities of our everyday lives. The science of paleontology, though, is simply one obscure part of a burgeoning and rapidly evolving technosphere that underpins our lives, and that is now evolving millions of new kinds of fossils—technofossils—far more rapidly than ever happened in biological evolution. Many of these objects will, quite certainly, become part of Earth’s future fossil record.If such an endeavor as paleontology were ever to arise again, in a distant post-human future, how would its practitioners deal with these bizarre relics?We provide a preview, on the following pages, of just one such enigma, and how it may be resolved (or not) by our puzzled disciplinary descendants. [End Page 31] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 32] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 33] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 34] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 35] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 36] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 37] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 38] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 39] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 40] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 41] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 42] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 43] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 44]Anne-Sophie Milon Anne-Sophie Milon is an artist-researcher who applies her illustration skills (HEAR, Strasbourg, France, 2010) and 2D traditional animation (UWE, Bristol, UK, 2012) to political arts (SPEAP, Sciences Po, 2015) and science and technology studies (HSTS, EHESS, 2022). For the past ten years, she has translated geological narratives–and ordinary ones for Earth sciences–into extraordinary plots for the uninitiated, including the humanities. She is currently working with Jan Zalasiewicz on a play, The Petrified Museum (2024), based on the British Geological Survey (Keyworth, UK), and on a PhD project in science and technology studies looking at limestones’ agencies in extractive industry practices (2025). She regularly collaborates with researchers from the Anthropocene Working Group: The Cosmic Oasis (Oxford University Press, 2022), “The Victims of Carbon Dioxide are Starting to Appear” in Feral Atlas (2021), and The Epochs of Nature (University of Chicago Press, 2016).Jan Zalasiewicz Jan Zalasiewicz is Emeritus Professor of Paleobiology at the University of Leicester. He was formerly a field geologist and paleontologist with the British Geological Survey, involved in the geological mapping of eastern England and central Wales. His interests include Early Paleozoic fossils, notably the graptolites (a kind of extinct zooplankton), mud and mudrocks, the Quaternary Ice Ages, the nature of geological time, and the geology made by humans. In recent years, he has helped develop the concept of an Anthropocene epoch. He enjoys writing popular science articles and books, and being involved in art/science projects.Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and SubStance, Inc... (shrink)

In Tibetan monasteries depictions of eight Indian Buddhist philosophers collectively referred to as the “six ornaments and two supreme ones” are often found. These “six ornaments” are Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva, Asaṅga, Vasubandhu, Dignāga, and Dharmakīrti. These paintings are usually grouped around a central representation of Buddha Śākyamuni. This iconographic set gives a straightforward way of dividing Indian Buddhist philosophical thought into four intellectual streams: Abhidharma, Madhyamaka, Yogācāra and what is often referred to as the epistemological‐logical school of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. Each (...) of these four schools constitutes a philosophical system of considerable complexity dealing with questions in metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of logic and language, ethics, and so forth. (shrink)

When considering the introduction of a new intervention in a budget constrained healthcare system, priority setting based on fair principles is fundamental. In many jurisdictions, a multi-criteria approach with several different considerations is employed, including severity and cost-effectiveness. Such multi-criteria approaches raise questions about how to balance different considerations against each other, and how to understand the logical or normative relations between them. For example, some jurisdictions make explicit reference to a large patient benefit as such a consideration. However, since (...) patient benefit is part of a cost-effectiveness assessment it is not clear how to balance considerations of greater patient benefit against considerations of severity and cost-effectiveness. The aim of this paper is to explore the role of a large patient benefit as an independent criterion for priority setting in a healthcare system also considering severity and cost-effectiveness. By taking the opportunity cost of new interventions (i.e., the health forgone in patients already receiving treatment) into account, we argue that patient benefit has a complex relationship to priority setting. More specifically, it cannot be reasonably concluded that large patient benefits should be given priority if severity, cost-effectiveness, and opportunity costs are held constant. Since we cannot find general support for taking patient benefit into account as an independent criterion from any of the most discussed theories about distributive justice: utilitarianism, prioritarianism, telic egalitarianism and sufficientarianism, it is reasonable to avoid doing so. Hence, given the complexity of the role of patient benefit, we conclude that in priority practice, a large patient benefit should not be considered as an independent criterion, on top of considerations of severity and cost-effectiveness. (shrink)