Suzanne Uniacke, Permissible Killing: The Self?Defense Justification of Homicide Cambridge University Press, 1994, 231 pp.

The principal task of the book series Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities is to promote those developments in philosophy that respect the tradition of great philosophical ideas, on the one hand, and the manner of philosophical thinking introduced by analytical philosophy, on the other. The aim is to contribute to practicing philosophy as deep as Marxism and as caring about justification as positivism.

Two more or less standard methods exist for the systematic, logical construction of classical mathematics, the so-called theory of types, due in the main to Russell, and the Zermelo axiomatic set theory. In systems based upon either of these, the connective of membership, “ε”, plays a fundamental role. Usually although not always it figures as a primitive or undefined symbol.Following the familiar simplification of Russell's theory, let us mean by alogical typein the strict sense any one of the following: (i) (...) the totality consisting exclusively of individuals, (ii) the totality consisting exclusively of classes whose members are exclusively individuals, (iii) the totality consisting exclusively of classes whose members are exclusively classes whose members in turn are exclusively individuals, and so on. Any entity from (ii) is said to beone type higherthan any entity from (i), any entity from (iii), one type higher than any entity from (ii), and so on. In systems based upon this simplified theory of types, the only significant atomic formulae involving “ε” are those asserting the membership of an entity in an entity one type higher. Thus any expression of the form “(x∈y)” is meaningless except where “y” denotes an entity of just one type higher than the type of the entity denoted by “x” It is by means of general type restrictions of this kind that the Russell and other paradoxes are avoided. (shrink)

It became obvious in classroom case discussions in a required MBA course, Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics, that subjective opinion often prohibited complete and thorough case analyses. Over a two-year period an attempt was made to identify the parameters of situations involving corporate social responsibility in order to develop a methodology which would facilitate classroom learning. The model described in the following manuscript is the result of these efforts.

In this article, we address the problem of how technoscience knowledge and practices are translated when they are relocated during the highly organized, international encounters between cultures, often called “development.” We examine efforts to build a “model” Australian dairy and instantiate Australian dairy practices in East Timor following East Timor’s recent emergence as a nation-state. Through this ethnography of development’s construction of a heterogeneous sociotechnical assemblage, we show how knowledge and power inform the practices that enable Western models of production (...) and exchange to be reassembled in postcolonial spaces. In aiming to conduct a symmetrical anthropology of development based in the actor-network approach, we follow development’s actors and actants as well as its epistemic divisions—nature and culture, human and nonhuman, us and them—into East Timor, arguing that the politics and agency of technology transfer is distributed among discourse, epistemology, and human and nonhuman actors. (shrink)

Ontological perspectives in higher education and particularly in professional education and development have focused attention on the question of the learner’s being and becoming rather than on the epistemological concern of what and how they know. This study considers the formation of the professional self in the light of the requirements for professional practice. It raises the question of agency in relation to this formational process and considers the implications of the autonomy paradox which arises from the simultaneous influence of (...) the sovereign self and the external authority of the profession on the formation of the professional self. This study considers a structural perspective on both of these matters and concludes with implications for professional education and development derived from constructive developmental theory and the notion of subject–object transformation. (shrink)

Richard Martin's aim in this paper is to present a critical method of making ethical decisions in a medical context. He feels that such a reflective method provides the best means of making the appropriate decisions in given situations. It is based on Dr Martin's experience in applying ethical theory while collaborating with physicians in the daily course of clinical practice. Through his giving of a functional definition of medical ethics, his descriptions of an analytical model, the significance (...) of values for clinical decision-making and the advocacy role of medical ethicists and their relationships with clinicians, Richard Martin sets out his own value-intention as regards an ideal decision process. He stresses that his argument is of particular importance to his fellow ethicists who should continuously and vigorously examine the creative interaction of faith and fact in their own inquiry and action. Dr Martin concludes by stating that physicians and ethicists can work together to accomplish their common aim, which is, of course, the health and well-being of the patient. (shrink)

The method of Ramsey sentences has been proposed for handling theoretical constructs within a scientific system. Essentially it consists of constructing a certain "monolithic" sentence for an entire theory. In this present paper several improvements are suggested which help to overcome some of the awkward features of the method. In particular we have here many Ramsey sentences rather than just one, each erstwhile primitive theoretical term giving rise to a Ramsey sentence. Such a sentence in effect defines what we call (...) a Ramsey constant. Using Ramsey constants, we attempt to improve the method in important logical and semantical respects. It is suggested also that such constants are of interest for the philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

Two more or less standard methods exist for the systematic, logical construction of classical mathematics, the so-called theory of types, due in the main to Russell, and the Zermelo axiomatic set theory. In systems based upon either of these, the connective of membership, “ε”, plays a fundamental role. Usually although not always it figures as a primitive or undefined symbol.Following the familiar simplification of Russell's theory, let us mean by alogical typein the strict sense any one of the following: (i) (...) the totality consisting exclusively of individuals, (ii) the totality consisting exclusively of classes whose members are exclusively individuals, (iii) the totality consisting exclusively of classes whose members are exclusively classes whose members in turn are exclusively individuals, and so on. Any entity from (ii) is said to beone type higherthan any entity from (i), any entity from (iii), one type higher than any entity from (ii), and so on. In systems based upon this simplified theory of types, the only significant atomic formulae involving “ε” are those asserting the membership of an entity in an entity one type higher. Thus any expression of the form “(x∈y)” is meaningless except where “y” denotes an entity of just one type higher than the type of the entity denoted by “x” It is by means of general type restrictions of this kind that the Russell and other paradoxes are avoided. (shrink)

The sixth chapter of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species is called “Difficulties of the Theory.” In that part of his work, Darwin reveals some possible objections to his theory and attempts to provide an answer to all of them. Such a chapter was part of the first edition of the Origin of Species; therefore, the difficulties described were not reactions derived from the publication of the book. Instead, friends like Charles Lyell have probably presented some of them. Others can be (...) found in works published before Darwin’s work, such as Natural Theology by William Paley, which argued for creationism and introduced arguments against any natural explanation of the origin of species. Many other problems dealt with in the sixth chapter were born, however, from Darwin’s own internal dialogue, his own initial doubts concerning the theory, and his anticipation of criticism, as one can gather from his manuscripts. This paper describes the main difficulties shown in the sixth chapter of the Origin of Species, providing a more detailed exposition of a few topics, and analyzing Darwin’s defense, in those cases. It also discusses some of the weak points in Darwin’s line of reasoning from a diachronic point of view. (shrink)

In his latest book about art Arthur Danto claims that aesthetic appearance-visuality in the visual arts-has become more and more irrelevant for most of contemporary art. This essay first immanently critiques the distinction between the aesthetic and artistic properties underlying this claim. Danto's claim about the irrelevance of the aesthetic is not compatible with the spirit of his own writings: what Danto denies in After the End of Art has been a cornerstone of his theoretical work since The Transfiguration of (...) the Commonplace, namely, that the aesthetic is indeed both an elementary and a defining property of art. Examples ranging from Duchamp's Fountain to a recent installation by the Art & Language group are discussed to support this critique. Second, the essay defends Danto's contention that developing a "definition of art" is a sensible enterprise. But it turns out that Danto's "essentialism" concerning art has no essentialist implications in any specific sense. (shrink)

The philosophical papers comprising this volume range from process metaphysics and theology, through the phenomenological study of intentionality, to the foundations of geometry and of the system of real numbers. New light, it is thought, is shed on all these topics, some of them being of the highest interest and under intensive investigation in contemporary philosophical discussion. Metaphysi cians, process theologians, semanticists, theorists of knowledge, phenomenologists, and philosophers of mathematics will thus find in this book, it is hoped, helpful materials (...) and methods. The categoreal scheme of Whitehead's Process and Reality is discussed rather fully from a logical point of view in the first paper [I] in the light of the author's previous work on the logico-metaphysical theory of events. The clarification that results is thought to provide a new depth and precision to the problem of interpreting one of the most difficult books in the recent history of metaphysics and cosmol ogy. A detailed examination of some aspects of Hartshorne's recent Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method is given in II. This book is perhaps the most significant work on process philosophy since Process and Reality itself, and its logical underpinnings thus merit a full critical discussion. (shrink)

The issue on which I intend to focus is whether there is anything else, anything more than ontological economy, which, in Russell's mature account of the constituents of propositions, is gained by his rejection of denoting concepts. I will argue that in order to answer this question, it is necessary to appreciate that by the time of "On Denoting," Russell was not merely advancing a claim of philosophical logic or a theory of the logical form of the descriptive phrases of (...) English. (edited). (shrink)

Much speculation on the sources of Duhem's historical interests fails to account for the major shifts in these interests: neither his belief in the continuous development of physics nor his Catholicism, when his Church was encouraging the study of generally Aristotelian scholastic thought, led to any interest in mediaeval science before 1904. Equally, his own claim that he was merely testing his views on the nature of physical theory is easily squared only with earlier work with no trace of mediaeval (...) science. Behind this discontinuity lies a major crisis. Though not a positivist, Duhem had based all his work on assumptions acceptable to positivists. One of these, the sterility of the Middle Ages, was refuted by his chance discovery of evidence of genuine mediaeval science in the autumn of 1903, but that left the doctrine of scholastic sterility intact. (shrink)