If p is false, it isn't evidence for anything. This view is central in one important response to a familiar sceptical argument. I consider and reject various motivations for refusing to accept this view – proposals arising from, e.g., our practice of providing rationalising explanations of people's beliefs, various locutions appearing to relativise evidence to persons, the significance of people's mental states for attributions of reasons to them, and the role of evidence in epistemic principles and requirements. I close by (...) considering responses to the ‘New Evil Demon Argument’. What emerges is an affirmation of the principle that p doesn't provide evidence unless it is true, a response to an important version of the Evil Demon argument for scepticism, and also a deeper interpretation of our epistemic practice. (shrink)

What should maximin egalitarians think about seniority privileges? We contrast a good-specific and an all-things-considered perspective. As to the former, inertia and erasing effects of a seniority-based allocation of benefits from employment are identified, allowing us to spot the categories of workers and job-seekers made involuntarily worse off by such a practice. What matters however is to find out whether abolishing seniority privileges will bring about a society in which the all-things-considered worst off people are better off than in the (...) seniority rule's presence. An assessment of the latter's cost-reduction potential is thus needed, enabling us to bridge a practice taking place within a firm with its impact on who the least well off members of society are likely to be. Three accounts of the profitability of seniority privileges are discussed: the “(firm specific) human capital”, the “deferred compensation” and the “knowledge transfer” ones. The respective relevance of “good-specific” and “all-things-considered” analysis is discussed. It turns out that under certain circumstances, a maximin egalitarian case for seniority privileges could be made. Senior: Do you know that they are planning layoffs? Of course, it is only fair that they lay-off the newcomers first! After all, I have been loyal to the company for many years. Junior: Did I choose to be a newcomer? Footnotes1 Many thanks to two anonymous referees, to P.-M. Boulanger, B. Cockx, C. Fabre, L. Jacquet, E. Lazear, I. Robeyns, G. Vallée, Y. Vanderborght, Ph. Van Parijs, V. Vansteenberghe and J. de Wispelaere for their help and critical comments. Earlier versions of this paper were presented in Louvain-la-Neuve, Ghent, Montevideo and London. I am very grateful to these audiences. Special thanks to G. Brennan for his extensive and extremely valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The usual disclaimers apply. (shrink)

Agronomic science or technoscience has an important role in contemporary times and is the focus of necessary philosophical investigations. The present study aimed to relate Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics with the Laudanian concept of philosophy of science, also applied to the philosophy of technology within the agronomic context. The central question to be answered is: can Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics apply to the understanding of agronomy? Given this, central references and commentators were selected, dividing the dialogue between the authors and the argumentation (...) into the following points: sciences, technologies, and Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics; agronomic traditions and their Laudanian progress; reaching the final possibility of intersections between Gadamer and Laudan, when reflecting on agronomy, especially on the theme of traditions. (shrink)

Doctors’ strikes are legally permissible in the UK, with the situation differing in other countries. But are they morally permissible? Doug McConnell and Darren Mann have systematically attempted to dismiss the arguments for the moral impermissibility of doctors’ strikes and creatively attempted to provide further moral justification for them. Unfortunately for striking doctors, they fail to achieve this. Meanwhile, junior doctors’ strikes have continued in the UK through 2023 and have now extended into 2024. In this response, which focuses on (...) the UK situation and specifically junior doctors’ strikes in the National Health Service (NHS) in England, I will demonstrate a central problem with their arguments—namely that they underplay the harms caused by prolonged doctors’ strikes by ignoring the harms to patients with cancer. This weakens their conclusion that strikes are morally permissible in terms of the conditions and thresholds they set. I then provide a psychological critique of their justification for strikes in terms of the interests of the public. It follows that invoking the controversial concept of supererogatory action is ungrounded but also absurd when you consider time-critical cancer care. If those representing striking doctors wish to maintain a modicum of moral respectability, they should mitigate for patients with cancer and negotiate reasonably and with urgency. (shrink)

In its original form Dirac's equations have been expressed by use of the γ-matrices γμ, μ=0, 1, 2, 3. They are elements of the matrix algebra M 4 (ℂ). As emphasized by Hestenes several times, the γ-matrices are merely a (faithful) matrix representation of an orthonormal basis of the orthogonal spaceℝ 1,3, generating the real Clifford algebra Cl 1,3 . This orthonormal basis is also denoted by γμ, μ=0, 1, 2, 3. The use of the matrix algebra M 4 (ℂ) (...) to represent Cl 1,3 has some unsatisfactory aspects. The γ-matrices contain imaginary numbers as entries whereas Cl 1,3 is real. Moreover, as a matrix algebra Cl 1,3 is M 2 (ℍ) but only a part of M 4 (ℂ). For that reason we investigate in this paper several forms of Dirac's equations in terms of M 2 (ℍ) instead of M 4 (ℂ). In Section1 we survey Dirac's equations describing the interaction of matter with electromagnetic, electroweak, and strong fields. Section2 deals with electromagnetic/weak interactions employing M 2 (ℍ). Finally, in Section3 we deal with Dirac's equations for strong interactions between quarks. In contrast to su(2) ⊕ u(1), the Lie algebra su(3) is not isomorphic to any subalgebra of Cl 1,3 . Therefore we do not give a description of strong interactions by use of M 2 (ℍ). Instead of such an approach we describe these interactions using the space of quadruples of bivector fields in Cl 1,3 . The thus obtained description has remarkable formal resemblance to the original Dirac equations using wave functions with values in the linear spaceℂ 4. (shrink)

Cicero's philosophical works are now exciting renewed interest, in part because he provides vital evidence of the views of the Greek philosophers of the Hellenistic age, and partly because of the light he casts on the intellectual life of first century Rome. This edition uses the 1997 Clarendon text by the acclaimed translator P.G. Walsh.

Starting from a connected, partially ordered set of events, it is shown that results of the measurement of time are elements of a partially ordered and filtering field, as used in a previous paper. Moreover, some relations between physical formulas and properties of the field are proved. Finally, some open problems and suggestions are pointed out. For the convenience of the reader not acquainted with elementary algebraic methods, proofs are given in detail.