In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Possibility and Necessity in the Time of Peter Abelard by Irene BininiWolfgang LenzenIrene Binini. Possibility and Necessity in the Time of Peter Abelard. Investigating Medieval Philosophy Series. Leiden: Brill, 2021. Pp. xii + 326. Hardback, $166.00.This book is an impressive work written by a young Italian scholar who received her PhD only five years ago in Pisa. It is divided into three parts. Part 1 gives a survey (...) of "Early 12th-Century Debates on Modal Propositions"; part 2 is devoted to "Abelard's Modal Logic"; [End Page 327] part 3 deals with the views of "Abelard on the Metaphysics and Epistemology of Modalities." The author displays a profound knowledge of the relevant literature. The primary sources comprise twenty manuscripts preserved in various European libraries, plus forty-eight printed works (from Abelard to William of Sherwood). The list of secondary sources contains altogether 136 items from A (Astroh) to Z (Zagzebski), but, interestingly, it does not mention a monograph that, by its very title, claims to give an exposition of Abelard's logic, namely Maria Teresa Beonio-Brocchieri Fumagalli's La Logica di Abelardo (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1964).As far as I can judge (as a nonnative English-speaker), the linguistic quality of Binini's book is quite good. The explanations in the main text, including the translations from Latin sources, are easily comprehensible, and the many quotations (distributed over no less than 655 footnotes) are almost without any fault. Thus, the book rightly deserves inclusion in the prestigious series Investigating Medieval Philosophy. Yet, at least according to my taste, the book contains many redundancies. Again and again, the author first explains a certain issue at some length, then confirms the correctness of her interpretation by means of a longer (English) quotation, and finally reconfirms it by fully quoting the Latin text in the footnotes.As Binini explains in the book's concluding chapter, her aim is to present "an all-encompassing reflection on [Abelard's] works on modalities" and "a comparison between these works and the parallel reflections advanced by other masters and logicians in the early 12th century" (308). She undoubtedly achieves this goal. The comparison of Abelard's views on possibility and necessity with the views of other logicians is mainly carried out in chapters 1–3. Ancient and early medieval logicians such as, in particular, the Stoics and Boethius favored the basic idea that "something," p, is necessary if and only if p is always the case (or true). Accordingly, p is possible if and only if p is at least sometime the case. Abelard, however, was not willing to accept that each possibility has to become realized at some time. He instead offered a "nature-based characterization of possibility" that can "account for unrealized, past, counterfactual, and even unactualizable possibilities" (308). Abelard's idea is that something, x, is possibly a P if and only if the property of being P is compatible with the nature of x. Hence this view basically amounts to a de re conception of possibility that attributes modalities to things, while the temporal view attributes modal properties primarily to propositions (or states of affairs) and hence can be labeled de dicto (or de sensu).Let us now turn to Binini's twofold aim (as formulated on the back cover of her book) to present a "uniform and consistent" reassessment of Abelard's theory of modalities and of his modal logic. The former task is tackled in chapters 8–10. After summarizing, in chapter 8, Abelard's general views on "Nature and Modalities," chapter 9 is devoted to a detailed discussion of the "Many Senses of Possibility." In five consecutive sections, Binini investigates the conception of (1) possibility as "non-repugnancy with nature" (illustrated by the thesis that "any man can be a bishop" [235]); (2) unrealizable but "conceivable" possibilities (such as the existence of humans lacking the ability to laugh [240]); (3) determinate potencies (like that of an amputee who nevertheless "can walk" [248]); (4) past and counterfactual potencies (like that of a blind person who might be able to see); and (5) other puzzling de re possibilities (such as "irrational humans" [261]).The final... (shrink)

In their article, Crutchfield and Redinger (2024) outline the conditions that they have identified as situations in which it is ethically permissible to use chemical restraints, defined as medicati...

Originally published in 1936, this book presents the ancient Greek text of the paraphrases and quotations of Zeno's philosophical arguments, together with a facing-page English translation and editorial commentary. Detailed notes are incorporated throughout and a bibliography is also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Zeno and ancient philosophy.

Explores mind-body philosophy from an Asian perspective.

The ontic structural realist stance is motivated by a desire to do philosophical justice to the success of science, whilst withstanding the metaphysical undermining generated by the various species of ontological underdetermination. We are, however, as yet in want of general principles to provide a scaffold for the explicit construction of structural ontologies. Here we will attempt to bridge this gap by utilizing the formal procedure of quantization as a guide to ontic structure of modern physical theory. The example of (...) non-relativistic particle mechanics will be considered and, for that case, it will be shown that a viable candidate for an ontic structural realism framework can be constituted in terms of the combination of a state-space with Poisson bracket structure, and a set of observables, with Lie algebra structure. 1 Introduction2 Formulation Underdetermination and Structural Ontologies3 Quantization and Structural Ontologies4 The Case of Non-relativistic Particle Mechanics4.1 Formulation underdetermination4.2 The classical ontology4.3 Quantum theory and the generalized structural ontology4.4 Interpretation of results5 Conclusion and Prospects. (shrink)

Cheating is a serious issue among business students worldwide. However, research investigating the social factors that may help prevent cheating in Chinese higher education is rare. The present study examined two key social relationship factors of perceived teacher-student relationships and peer relationships by the students. It attempted to build a model which addressed the effects of two variables on Chinese business students’ cheating behaviour: the teacher’s approachability and the relationship goal of the students. Two important social influence factors were also (...) tested as mediators: neutralizing attitudes and perceived cheating norms of the students. A student survey was conducted with 1329 questionnaires collected. The results showed the negative effects of both social relationship variables on cheating, and that their effects were fully mediated by neutralizing attitudes. Moreover, perceived cheating norms fully mediated the effect of the teacher’s approachability, but not so for the relationship goal of the students. This study provided novel insights and recommendations for promoting academic integrity in Chinese business schools and universities. (shrink)

Christoph Jäger (2004) argues that Dretske's information theory of knowledge raises a serious problem for his denial of closure of knowledge under known entailment: Information is closed under known entailment (even under entailment simpliciter); given that Dretske explains the concept of knowledge in terms of "information", it is hard to stick with his denial of closure for knowledge. Thus, one of the two basic claims of Dretske would have to go. Since giving up the denial of closure would commit Dretske (...) to skepticism, it would most probably be better to rather give up the information-theoretic account of knowledge. But that means that one of the best externalist views of knowledge has to be given up. I argue here that Jäger is mistaken and that there is no problem for Dretske. There is a rather easy way out of Jäger’s problem. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sacramental Wisdom:Humilitatio, Eruditio, Exercitatio in the Scholastics and TodaySr. Albert Marie Surmanski O.P.IntroductionThe relationship between human nature and the sacraments is often characterized in a way that takes away from the beauty and power of the sacraments. Sacraments are sometimes viewed today as something basically irrelevant to human life, an interesting spiritual "option" for those who find comfort in ritual. This view leads to a sacramental practice that is (...) occasional, irregular, or nonexistent. Many young people who fail to grasp religion as important to their reality implicitly embrace this perspective. The difficulty parishes have had in the past few years in convincing parishioners to return to liturgical prayer after each wave of the coronavirus pandemic demonstrates this viewpoint.In another perspective, the sacraments might be viewed precisely as expressions of what it means to be human, or one might say, to be human in a world in which God reveals himself at all times.1 In this view, the sacraments [End Page 1391] are our own graced self-expression as a community. They merely make thematic what already happens each moment. Alternatively, they celebrate who we are, and perhaps can be radically updated to reflect changing categories of social identity. 2Both of these viewpoints overlook the fallen state of human nature that cries out for healing from God. The first view does not preclude knowledge of human violence and fragility, but fails to recognize the sacraments as a medicine needed for the remedy of human ills. The second viewpoint, while professing a need for Christ, looks to the human person or community for healing rituals. This approach risks being enmeshed with human nature in a disordered state in such a way that it celebrates human disorder instead of healing it. Alternatively, the viewpoint may lead to the abandonment eschatological hope and wither into inanity.There are profound metaphysical and anthropological issues that play out in these two opposite but strangely united viewpoints. Rather than directly analyze these errors, this paper would like to propose the recovery of a medieval viewpoint that offers another perspective. This is Hugh of St. Victor's explanation that the sacraments fit and heal human nature through offering humanity humility, instruction, and exercise. 3 This paper will briefly survey Hugh's contribution, analyze its reception by several of the thirteenth-century Scholastics, shows its deep rootedness in biblical wisdom, and then show how it fruitfully opposes current-day challenges.Hugh of St. VictorHugh of St. Victor was a twelfth-century canon of the Parisian Abbey of St. Victor. The most influential writer of the Victorine school, his work is characterized by an Augustinian concern for the re-formation of the image of God in man, a sense of the wise ordering of salvation history, and an emphasis on both virtue and liturgical practice. In his masterwork, De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei, Hugh of St. Victor divides the works of God into two main periods: the work of creation and the work of restoration. Within the [End Page 1392] work of restoration, there are three periods: the period of the natural law, that of the Mosaic or written law, and that of grace, inaugurated by Christ.4 His book's division into two parts cuts across these distinctions: Part 1 of Hugh's text covers creation, the restoration in general, faith, sacraments in general, as well as particulars of the sacraments of the periods of the natural and written law. Part 2 includes the Incarnation, the Church, various Christian rituals, and the final restoration of Christ's return.Hugh is writing around the time when theologians began to list the number of the sacraments of the Church as seven. Emerging from the wider use of the term, Hugh uses the word "sacrament" in a wide sense, but distinguishes several categories of sacraments. Following Dominique Poirel, scholars recognize that Hugh uses the word sacramentum in five main ways.5 The first is a general definition: (1) any sign of anything sacred. The second through fourth are more specific usages, to which we do not commonly give the term "sacrament" today: (2) Scripture, which signifies sacred realities both through its text and the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Full Collection of Personal NarrativesZohar Lederman, Ola Ziara, Rachel Coghlan, Oksana Sulaieva, Anna Shcherbakova, Oleksandr Dudin, Vladyslava Kachkovska, Iryna Dudchenko, Anna Kovchun, Lyudmyla Prystupa, Yuliya Nogovitsyna, Ghaiath Hussein, Kathryn Fausch, P. P. Kyaw, Ayesha Ahmad, Richard W Sams II, Handreen Mohammed Saeed, Artem Riga, Ryan C. Maves, Elizabeth Dotsenko, Irina Deyneka, Eva V. Regel, and Vita Voloshchuk• An Unsettling Affair• How We Keep Caring While Walking Through Our Pain• (...) Adjusting Laboratory Practices to the Challenges of Wartime• Why We Stay• A Semi-Personal Story from a Ukrainian NGO Professional (or a Semi-Professional Story from a Ukrainian Person) Living through the War• When Ethics Survives Where People Do Not: A Story From Darfur• Burma’s Healthcare Under Fire: My Experience as an Exiled Medical Professional• When a Conflict Collapses on a Child: An (Aborted) Medical Evacuation of a Hazara Toddler During the Kabul Airport Blast and the Taliban Takeover• The Vagaries and Vicissitudes of War• Providing Care to a Potential Aggressor: An Ethical Dilemma• One Surgeon’s Experience During Armed Conflict in Ukraine• The Limits of Our Obligations• A Liberating Breath• Soldiers of the Invisible Front: How Ukrainian Therapists Are Fighting for the Mental Health of the Nation Under Fire• Stories of Families with Chronically Ill Pediatric Patients during the War in UkraineCopyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Being formed through learning a practice is best understood within a constitutive theory of meaning as articulated by Charles Taylor. Disengaged views of the person cannot account for the formative changes in a person’s identity and capacities upon learning a professional practice. Representational or correspondence theories of meaning cannot account for formation. Formation occurs over time because students actively seek and take up new concerns and learn new knowledge and skills. Engaged situated reasoning about underdetermined practice situations requires well-formed skillful (...) clinicians caring for particular patients in particular situations. (shrink)

It is shown, assuming the linear case of Schinzel's Hypothesis, that the first-order theory of the structure $\langle \omega; +, P\rangle$ , where P is the set of primes, is undecidable and, in fact, that multiplication of natural numbers is first-order definable in this structure. In the other direction, it is shown, from the same hypothesis, that the monadic second-order theory of $\langle\omega; S, P\rangle$ is decidable, where S is the successor function. The latter result is proved using a general (...) result of A. L. Semenov on decidability of monadic theories, and a proof of Semenov's result is presented. (shrink)

The reimagined Battlestar Galactica series (2003–2009) and its prequel series Caprica (2009–2010) provoked viewers to consider anew perennial philosophical questions regarding, among others, the nature of personhood and the role of religion in culture and politics. While no single philosophical viewpoint encapsulates the creators’ vision as a whole, the theory of biopolitics, as formulated by Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and others, is a fruitful lens through which various points of story and character development may be analyzed. Two noteworthy areas of (...) attention are, first, whether a race of intelligent, self-aware beings, who have been artificially created, should be considered “persons” with attendant moral and legal status, and second, whether the purported ontological division between the “biological” and the “artificial” has moral import concerning the degree of control one class of beings may legitimately exercise over another. (shrink)

One of the predominant debates in AI Ethics is the worry and necessity to create fair, transparent and accountable algorithms that do not perpetuate current social inequities. I offer a critical analysis of Reuben Binns’s argument in which he suggests using public reason to address the potential bias of the outcomes of machine learning algorithms. In contrast to him, I argue that ultimately what is needed is not public reason per se, but an audit of the implicit moral assumptions of (...) societies within which algorithms are built and applied. Public justification is appealing since it offers us the possibility to align the decision-making outcomes of the algorithm with the core moral values of stakeholders within a constitutional democratic society. My concern is that the common moral principles that form the foundation of public reason are not necessarily neutral, as they still express specific moral ideals and normative standards even if there is moral agreement by society as a whole, or among different stakeholders within society. Appealing to such normative standards may thus still lead to algorithmic outcomes being biased as common moral values may very well still be discriminatory even though they are formed from a consensus, and even if public reason is applied as a kind of filter for potential algorithmic outcomes. Hence, I argue that these implicit moral norms within society that we take as a given in public reasoning, need to be audited from generation to generation in order to effectively mitigate potential algorithmic bias. (shrink)

The decision whether to have a realist or an anti-realist attitude towards scientific hypotheses is interpreted in this paper as a choice that scientists themselves have to face in their work as scientists, rather than as a ‘philosophical’ problem. Scientists’ choices between realism and instrumentalism (or other types of anti-realism) are interpreted in this paper with the help of two different conceptual tools: a deflationary semantics grounded in the inferentialist approach to linguistic practices developed by some authors (e.g., Sellars, Brandom), (...) and an epistemic utility function that tries to represent the cognitive preferences of scientists. The first tool is applied to two different questions traditionally related to the problem of scientific realism: the non-miracle argument, and the continuity of reference. The second one is applied to the problem of unconceived alternatives, and to the distinction between realist and instrumentalist attitudes towards scientific hypotheses. (shrink)

Glowacki defines peace as harmonious relationships between groups maintained without the threat of violence, where groups can be anything from families to nation states. However, defining such contentious concepts like “peace” and “groups” is a difficult task, and we discuss the implications of Glowacki's definitions for understanding intergroup relationships and their evolutionary history.

Attitudes towards active voluntary euthanasia (AVE) and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) among 1,238 doctors on the medical register of New South Wales varied significantly with self-identified religious affiliation. More doctors without formal religious affiliation ('non-theists') were sympathetic to AVE, and acknowledged that they had practised AVE, than were doctors who gave any religious affiliation ('theists'). Of those identifying with a religion, those who reported a Protestant affiliation were intermediate in their attitudes and practices between the agnostic/atheist and the Catholic groups. Catholics (...) recorded attitudes most opposed to AVE, but even so, 18 per cent of Catholic medical respondents who had been so requested, recorded that they had taken active steps to bring about the death of patients. (shrink)

The scientist’s decision of accepting a given proposition is assumed to be dependent on two factors: the scientist’s ‘private’ information about the value of that statement and the proportion of colleagues who also accept it. This interdependence is modelled in an economic fashion, and it is shown that it may lead to multiple equilibria. The main conclusions are that the evolution of scientific knowledge can be path-dependent, that scientific revolutions can be due to very small changes in the empirical evidence, (...) and that not all possible equilibria are necessarily efficient, neither in the economic nor in the epistemic sense. These inefficiencies, however, can be eliminated if scientists can form coalitions. (shrink)