Life-science phenomena are often explained by specifying the mechanisms that bring them about. The new mechanistic philosophers have done much to substantiate this claim and to provide us with a better understanding of what mechanisms are and how they explain. Although there is disagreement among current mechanists on various issues, they share a common core position and a seeming commitment to some form of scientific realism. But is such a commitment necessary? Is it the best way to go about mechanistic (...) explanation? In this article, we propose an alternative antirealist account that also fits explanatory practice in the life sciences. We pay special attention to mechanistic models, i.e. scientific models that involve a mechanism, and to the role of coherence considerations in building such models. To illustrate our points, we consider the mechanism for the action potential. 1 Introduction2 Some Core Features of Mechanistic Explanation3 Scientific Realism and Mechanistic Explanation4 Antirealist Mechanistic Explanation: The Case of the Action Potential5 Some Outstanding Issues for the Antirealist Mechanist6 Two Problems for the Realist Mechanist7 Conclusions. (shrink)

The article puts into question the idea that the nucleus of religion - the God-talk - is peaceful , whereas all aggression should be located on the side of humankind, through differentiating a conceptual model of relating war to the concept of God in the Jewish-Christian tradition. He urges a more complex model of connecting God to issues of war and peace.

This article discusses the question of the possibility of moral and ethical grounds for the justification of the use of violence in modern times international conflicts. And specifically, how does the tradition of just war fit into this discussion? For this, a closer look at what just war thinking means is necessary. In this respect we would describe just war thinking more as a just war tradition than a just war theory, as there is no encompassing theory on just war. (...) In history you see a development from the justification of war to a more problematic relation to the possibility of the use of military force. This can be illustrated by the more recent shift from just war thinking towards just peace thinking. This leads to the question: what kind of peace? We argue in this article that peace and justice are connected, and that you cannot have true peace without true justice. (shrink)

For a writer who forces his readers to plunge fast and deeply into a wealth of material and experience, Hegel nonetheless spends an inordinate amount of time and effort in prefaces and introductions in order to prepare the reader for the explorations to be undertaken. Hegel clearly seems to think that how one begins philosophical investigation is crucial. Yet, ironically, he commits us to beginning everywhere and all at once. The tension of this irony may be localized as we consider (...) the “beginning” of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit with sense certainty and the “beginning” of the Logic with Being. The very possibility of beginning in such radically different ways, as well as the relationship between them, will be the subject of our essay. We must follow the remarks of the introductory materials to both works in order to address these questions. More specifically, for each work we will investigate what Hegel understands by “beginning” and by the “resolve” to begin as a means for establishing some sense of the relationship between, and development of, the Phenomenology and the Logic. (shrink)

Surveys carried out among palliative care physicians have shown that most participants do not support euthanasia and assisted suicide. Belgium, however, is one of the few countries in the world in which voluntary euthanasia is allowed by law. The potential influence of this legal dimension thus warranted a study of the attitudes of Belgian palliative care physicians toward euthanasia and assisted suicide. To this end, an anonymous self-administered questionnaire in Dutch was sent to all physicians working in Flemish palliative care. (...) 99 physicians responded .A majority of the physicians who responded are of the opinion that voluntary euthanasia can be ethically justified . Most physicians believe, nonetheless, that non-voluntary euthanasia is always unethical . More than three quarters of the respondents favour the inclusion of a ‘palliative filter’ in the law on euthanasia. Using a traditional cluster algorithm, the following three clusters were obtained: staunch advocates of euthanasia , opponents of euthanasia , and an intermediate group . There were no significant differences between the clusters on the level of gender, age, and years of experience in palliative care. A statistically significant association exists, however, between the euthanasia clusters and the religious or ideological clusters we had obtained in an earlier study. Church attending respondents are least likely to be staunch advocates of euthanasia. The majority of the physicians favour legalisation on assisted suicide. There is no significant association between the euthanasia clusters and attitudes toward assisted suicide.We conclude that although most Flemish palliative care physicians agree that there may be circumstances in which a euthanasia request is justified, they also strongly believe in the effects of good palliative care and want the ‘palliative filter’ to be included in the law on euthanasia. Religion and worldview are an important factor determining attitudes towards euthanasia. (shrink)

The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy comprises over fifty specially commissioned essays by experts on the philosophy of this period. Starting in the late eighth century, with the renewal of learning some centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, a sequence of chapters takes the reader through developments in many and varied fields, including logic and language, natural philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, and theology. Close attention is paid to the context of medieval philosophy, with discussions of the rise of the (...) universities and developments in the cultural and linguistic spheres. A striking feature is the continuous coverage of Islamic, Jewish, and Christian material. There are useful biographies of the philosophers, and a comprehensive bibliography. The volumes illuminate a rich and remarkable period in the history of philosophy and will be the authoritative source on medieval philosophy for the next generation of scholars and students alike. (shrink)

The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy comprises over fifty specially commissioned essays by experts on the philosophy of this period. Starting in the late eighth century, with the renewal of learning some centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, a sequence of chapters takes the reader through developments in many and varied fields, including logic and language, natural philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, and theology. Close attention is paid to the context of medieval philosophy, with discussions of the rise of the (...) universities and developments in the cultural and linguistic spheres. A striking feature is the continuous coverage of Islamic, Jewish, and Christian material. There are useful biographies of the philosophers, and a comprehensive bibliography. The volumes illuminate a rich and remarkable period in the history of philosophy and will be the authoritative source on medieval philosophy for the next generation of scholars and students alike. (shrink)

In pragmatics, the theory of language use, it is standard to assume that communication is a cooperative affair. Recently, this standard view has come under attack by Ducrot and Merin, and it has been proposed that an argumentative view on natural language use is more appropriate. In this paper I discuss to what extent this attack is justified and whether the alternative view can provide a more adequate analysis of ‘pragmatic meaning’, i.e., implicatures.

The early history of string theory is marked by a shift from strong interaction physics to quantum gravity. The first string models and associated theoretical framework were formulated in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the context of the S-matrix program for the strong interactions. In the mid-1970s, the models were reinterpreted as a potential theory unifying the four fundamental forces. This paper provides a historical analysis of how string theory was developed out of S-matrix physics, aiming to clarify (...) how modern string theory, as a theory detached from experimental data, grew out of an S-matrix program that was strongly dependent upon observable quantities. Surprisingly, the theoretical practice of physicists already turned away from experiment before string theory was recast as a potential unified quantum gravity theory. With the formulation of dual resonance models (the “hadronic string theory”), physicists were able to determine almost all of the models' parameters on the basis of theoretical reasoning. It was this commitment to “non-arbitrariness”, i.e., a lack of free parameters in the theory, that initially drove string theorists away from experimental input, and not the practical inaccessibility of experimental data in the context of quantum gravity physics. This is an important observation when assessing the role of experimental data in string theory. (shrink)

Palliative sedation is an option of last resort to control refractory suffering. In order to better understand palliative-care nurses’ attitudes to palliative sedation, an anonymous questionnaire was sent to all nurses (589) employed in palliative care in Flanders (Belgium). In all, 70.5% of the nurses (n = 415) responded. A large majority did not agree that euthanasia is preferable to palliative sedation, were against non-voluntary euthanasia in the case of a deeply and continuously sedated patient and considered it generally better (...) not to administer artificial floods or fluids to such a patient. Two clusters were found: 58.5% belonged to the cluster of advocates of deep and continuous sedation and 41.5% belonged to the cluster of nurses restricting the application of deep and continuous sedation. These differences notwithstanding, overall the attitudes of the nurses are in accordance with the practice and policy of palliative sedation in Flemish palliative-care units. (shrink)

I en række afhandlinger beskrives den hollandske ISAF styrkes indsats i Afghanisatn fra 2001-2010. I en fireårig periode fra 2006-2010 var det hollandske kontingent indsat i den afghanske provins Uruzgan og opnåede bemærkelsesværdige resultater. Sikkerhedssituationen blev forbedret, den økonomiske udvikling blev stabiliseret ligesom den offentlige administration, uddannelsen af børn og sundhedsplejen m.v. blev forbedret. Efter 2010 er provinsen overtaget af amerikanske og australske tropper.

In this paper it will be shown how conditional presuppositions can be strengthened to unconditional ones if we assume that the antecedent and consequent of a conditional presupposition are independent of one another. Our notion of independence is very weak, and based on Lewis' notion of orthogonality of questions. It will be argued that our way of strengthening these presuppositions does not give rise to some wrong predictions Geurts argued other proposed strengthening accounts do.

In this paper we study language use and language organisation by making use of Lewisean signalling games. Standard game theoretical approaches are contrasted with evolutionary ones to analyze conventional meaning and conversational interpretation strategies. It is argued that analyzing successful communication in terms of standard game theory requires agents to be very rational and fully informed. The main goal of the paper is to show that in terms of evolutionary game theory we can motivate the emergence and self-sustaining force of (...) (i) conventional meaning and (ii) some conversational interpretation strategies in terms of weaker and, perhaps, more plausible assumptions. (shrink)

Reading Charles Taylor's Hegel, one is quite struck by his view that Hegel's Logic offers us an ontology. To some degree this is an obvious observation in that the Logic certainly pretends to speak regarding “all that is”. Within the optic of Taylor's suggestion, it is possible to explore the primacy of the ontological claim for Hegel's work, the possibility of nihilism consequent upon its collapse, and an access to a post-Hegelian and post-nihilistic future for human thought and activity.

In this paper, I reflect on the assumptions implicit in the psychophysical explanatory gap metaphor. There are clearly gaps in our current understanding of the psycho-physical link, but how great are they? Are they different in kind from other gaps in our understanding of the world that cause us less metaphysical and epistemological distress? Further, why are we supposed to regard the gaps in our psychological understanding differently? Rather than assess such theories of why a special gap exists, I want (...) to take a somewhat skeptical look at the underlying assumption that the gap is all that special. (shrink)

I begin with a basic account of teleo-pragmatic functionalism and its main features. I then discuss what that view implies about the nature of cognition, theories and understanding and thus about the limits on our ability to explain the mental and its relation to the non-mental. I show that teleo-pragmatic functionalism leads naturally to a version of non-reductive physicalism that combines theoretical pluralism with a strongly contextualist and pragmatic view of theories and models. Though non-reductionist at the theoretical and conceptual (...) level, the view is nonetheless thoroughly and robustly physicalist in its ontology. (shrink)

Deze studie wil de wijsgerig-ethische stromingen van de 19e en 20e eeuw op een overzichtelijke wijze presenteren. Zij biedt veel en ongetwijfeld kan zij dienst doen als een eerste oriëntatie. De continentale filosofie komt goed aan de orde, zij het dat de auteurs de aandacht voor de bibliografische notities vaak laten gaan ten koste van de toch al summiere inhoudelijke inleidingen. De auteurs beschrijven en beoordelen - dikwijls in moraliserende termen - maar gaan niet in dialoog noch met de behandelde (...) auteur noch met de lezer. De angelsaksische wereld komt nauwelijks aan de orde (29 blz.). De betekenis van de analytische ethiek voor de normatieve ethiek wordt niet gezien. Het boek stopt ook te vlug. De recente ontwikkelingen komen niet aan de orde. Over narratieve ethiek wordt niet gesproken. Maar evenmin over de hernieuwde aandacht voor de deugden-ethiek. Deze studie laat duidelijk zien dat de gigantische onderneming om een goede inleiding in de wijsbegeerte en de ethiek van de 19e en 20e eeuw te schrijven, niet door een of twee personen kan worden voltooid. (Biblion recensie, Prof. dr. F.J. Heggen.). (shrink)

We say that a sentence A is a permissive consequence of a set X of premises whenever, if all the premises of X hold up to some standard, then A holds to some weaker standard. In this paper, we focus on a three-valued version of this notion, which we call strict-to-tolerant consequence, and discuss its fruitfulness toward a unified treatment of the paradoxes of vagueness and self-referential truth. For vagueness, st-consequence supports the principle of tolerance; for truth, it supports the (...) requisite of transparency. Permissive consequence is non-transitive, however, but this feature is argued to be an essential component to the understanding of paradoxical reasoning in cases involving vagueness or self-reference. (shrink)

"Entitlement theories of justice: From Nozick to Roemer and beyond", Economics and philosophy 1/1 : 69-81.

We say that a sentence A is a permissive consequence of a set X of premises whenever, if all the premises of X hold up to some standard, then A holds to some weaker standard. In this paper, we focus on a three-valued version of this notion, which we call strict-to-tolerant consequence, and discuss its fruitfulness toward a unified treatment of the paradoxes of vagueness and self-referential truth. For vagueness, st-consequence supports the principle of tolerance; for truth, it supports the (...) requisite of transparency. Permissive consequence is non-transitive, however, but this feature is argued to be an essential component to the understanding of paradoxical reasoning in cases involving vagueness or self-reference. (shrink)

California is a landmark setting for studying produce recovery efforts and policy implications because of its global relevance in agricultural production, its complex network of food recovery organizations, and its environmental and public health regulations. Through a series of focus groups with organizations involved in produce recovery (gleaning organizations) and emergency food operations (food banks, food pantries), this study aimed to deepen our understanding of the current produce recovery system and determine the major challenges and opportunities related to the produce (...) recovery system. Operational and systematic barriers to produce recovery were highlighted by both gleaning and emergency food operations. Operational barriers, such as the lack of appropriate infrastructure and limited logistical support were found to be a challenge across groups and were directly tied to inadequate funding for these organizations. Systematic barriers, such as regulations related to food safety or reducing food loss and waste, were also found to impact both gleaning and emergency food organizations, but differences were observed in how each type of regulation impacted each stakeholder group. To support the expansion of food recovery efforts, participants expressed need for better coordination within and across food recovery networks and more positive and transparent engagement from regulators to increase understanding of the specifics of their unique operational constraints. The focus group participants also provided critiques on how emergency food assistance and food recovery are inscribed within the current food system and for longer term goals of reducing food insecurity and food loss and waste a systematic change will be required. (shrink)

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