Non-Humean accounts of the metaphysics of nature posit either laws or powers in order to account for natural necessity and world-order. We argue that such monistic views face fundamental problems. On the one hand, neo-Aristotelians cannot give unproblematic power-based accounts of the functional laws among quantities offered by physical theories, as well as of the place of conservation laws and symmetries in a lawless ontology; in order to capture these characteristics, commitment to governing laws is indispensable. On the other hand, (...) ontologies that entirely exclude some kind of power ascription to worldly entities face what we call the Governing Problem: such ontologies do not have the resources to give an adequate account of how laws play their governing role. We propose a novel dualist model, which, we argue, has the resources to solve the difficulties encountered by its two dominant competitors, without inheriting the problems of either view. According to the dualist model, both laws and powers are equally fundamental and irreducible to each other, and both are needed in order to give a satisfactory account of the nomological structure of the world. The dualist model constitutes thus a promising alternative to current monistic views in the metaphysics of science. (shrink)

The issue of interpersonal comparisons of utility is about the possibility (or not) of comparing the utility or welfare or the mental states in general, of different individuals. Embedded in the conceptual framework of utilitarianism, interpersonal comparisons were admissible in economics as part of the theoretical justification of welfare policies until the first decades of the twentieth century. Under the strong influence of the scientific philosophy of positivism as reflected in the works of early neoclassical economists and as epitomized by (...) Lionel Robbins, utility comparisons were subsequently rejected as a value judgement. Robbins’ methodological stance is still prevalent among mainstream economists. Despite the explicit rejection of comparability by the majority of economists, interpersonal comparisons are necessary for many key policy issues, such as progressive taxation, social welfare policies, GDP-based welfare comparisons, cost–benefit analysis, and public goods provision. In this paper, the case of interpersonal utility comparisons is discussed as an illustrative example of the usefulness of the study of the role of value judgements, and generally of the interrelationship between ethics and economics. It is argued that the current tension between theory and policy practice might be resolved through the efforts of prominent economists and philosophers to challenge positivism, and especially its problematic treatment of value judgements and of ethical assumptions in general. The discussion also provides more strength to the view that policy makers and their economic advisers cannot avoid ethical questions in their analysis of the workings of the economic system. (shrink)

Background:Previous research has linked missed nursing care to nurses’ work environment. Ethical climate is a part of work environment, but the relationship of missed care to different types of ethical climate is unknown.Research objectives:To describe the types of ethical climate in adult in-patient cancer care settings, and their relationship to missed nursing care.Research design:A descriptive correlation design was used. Data were collected using the Ethical Climate Questionnaire and the MISSCARE survey tool, and analyzed with descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation and analysis (...) of variance.Participants and research context:All nurses from relevant units in the Republic of Cyprus were invited to participate.Ethical considerations:The research protocol has been approved according to national legislation, all licenses have been obtained, and respondents participated voluntarily after they have received all necessary information.Findings:Response rate was 91.8%. Five types identified were as follows: caring ; law and code ; rules ; instrumental ; and independence. Reported overall missed care was M = 2.51, and this was positively related to instrumental and independence types and negatively related to caring, rules, and law and code.Discussion:The reported levels of missed care and the types of ethical climates present similarities and differences with the relevant literature. All types of ethical climate were related to the reported missed care.Conclusion:Efforts to reduce the influence of instrumental and independence types and fostering caring, law and code, and rules types might decrease missed nursing care. However, more robust evidence is needed. (shrink)

Recent work by Matthew Bedke and Max Hayward develops a new attack on metaethical non-naturalists: that they are committed to an immoral state of mind, because they must be willing to change their mind about the moral importance of certain actions given possible evidence about the layout of the non-natural realm. For example, they must be willing to decrease their credence that torturing babies is bad, if they ever get evidence that torturing babies is not in the extension of a (...) non-natural property. The present paper aims to both develop the strongest version of this argument and propose a response to it. The first section argues that the strongest version of this attack does not depend on whether accepting non-naturalism commits one to believing a certain kind of conditional proposition. Rather, it depends on whether accepting non-naturalism commits one to having a certain kind of conditional credences. Moreover, the moral criticism at hand does not hinge on the causal inertness of non-natural properties. And in so far as the argument does not depend on causal inertness, the people threatened by immorality are not just non-naturalists, but metaethicists in general (Sect. 2). This is because the worry hinges instead on particular relationships of epistemic dependence between our metaethical and some of our ethical views. But it is not clear that those relationships obtain; we could adopt metaethical methodologies that preclude morally problematic dependence of relevant first order views on evidence about our metaethical theories (Sect. 3). (shrink)

This essay discusses the changes promoted in European universities by the ‘Bologna Process’ and the ‘European Higher Education Area’. Through an analysis of the main policy documents and mechanisms, the paper demonstrates that the European Higher Education Area is designed to dismantle academic autonomy across the continent. Before setting out to examine this transnational policy process, the paper specifies in its first part the meaning of academic autonomy – a particular European creation, as it argues – through an overview of (...) the historical material. (shrink)

Background:In the face of scarcity, nurses may inevitably delay or omit some nursing interventions and give priority to others. This increases the risk of adverse patient outcomes and threatens safety, quality, and dignity in care. However, it is not clear if there is an ethical element in nursing care rationing and how nurses experience the phenomenon in its ethical perspective.Objectives:The purpose was to synthesize studies that relate care rationing with the ethical perspectives of nursing, and find the deeper, moral meaning (...) of this phenomenon.Research design:A systematic review and thematic synthesis of qualitative studies was used. Searching was based on guidelines suggested by Joana Brigs Institute, while the synthesis has drawn from the methodology described. Primary studies were sought from nine electronic databases and manual searches. The explicitness of reporting was assed using consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research. Nine studies involving 167 nurse participants were included. Synthesis resulted in 35 preliminary themes, 14 descriptive themes, and four analytical themes. Discussion of relationships between themes revealed a new thematic framework.Ethical consideration:Every effort has been taken, for the thoroughness in searching and retrieving the primary studies of this synthesis, and in order for them to be treated accurately, fairly and honestly and without intentional misinterpretations of their findings.Discussion:Within limitations of scarcity, nurses face moral challenges and their decisions may jeopardize professional values, leading to role conflict, feelings of guilt, distress and difficulty in fulfilling a morally acceptable role. However, more research is needed to support certain relationships.Conclusions:Related literature is limited. The few studies found highlighted the essence of justice, equality in care and in values when prioritizing care—with little support to the ethical effects of rationing on nurses. Further research on ethical dimension of care rationing may illuminate other important aspects of this phenomenon. (shrink)

How do non-Humean laws govern regularities in nature? According to the Inference Problem, non-Humean accounts of governing face a central problem: it is not clear how such laws do perform their governing function. Recently, Jonathan Schaffer has argued that the introduction of a law-to-regularity axiom is sufficient to solve the Inference Problem. The authors argue that Schaffer’s solution faces a devastating dilemma: either the required axiom cannot, on its own, differentiate the non-Humean account from a Humean account of laws or, (...) if more content is added to the primitive governing posit, it should be shown how and why the ‘outfitted’ posit obtains in the world. Furthermore, the authors show that those cases that Schaffer presents to motivate his approach are not analogous to the case of lawhood and so they cannot provide justification for his axiomatic solution. (shrink)

Most scholars have focused on The Second Sex and Simone de Beauvoir’s fiction, concentrating on gender issues but ignoring her broader emancipatory vision. Though Beauvoir’s political thinking is not as closely studied as her feminist works, it underpinned her activism and helped her navigate the dilemmas raised by revolutionary thought in the postwar period. In Emancipatory Thinking Elaine Stavro brings together Beauvoir’s philosophy and her political interventions to produce complex ideas on emancipation. Drawing from a range of work, including novels, (...) essays, autobiographical writings, and philosophic texts, Stavro explains that for Beauvoir freedom is a movement that requires both personal and collective transformation. Freedom is not guaranteed by world historical systems, material structures, wilful action, or discursive practices, but requires engaged subjects who are able to take creative risks as well as synchronize with existing forces to work towards collective change. Beauvoir, Stavro asserts, resisted the trend of anti-humanism that has dominated French thinking since the 1960s and also managed to avoid the pitfalls of voluntarism and individualism. In fact, Stavro argues, Beauvoir appreciated the impact of material, socio-economic, institutional forces, without forgoing the capacity to initiate. Applying Beauvoir’s existential insights and understanding of embodied and situated subjectivity to recent debates within gender, literary, sociological, cultural, and political studies, Emancipatory Thinking provides a lens to explore the current political and theoretical landscape. (shrink)

Based on earlier studies of J. C. R. Licklider, this article translocates the context of symbiosis between man and the machine into the built environment, and more specifically into contemporary methods for the design of domestic/residential spaces. According to this, a discussion is made concerning the implementation of media and sensor technologies within the architectural DNA that initiate the emergence of psychotropic spaces of Ballardian Architecture; structures that are capable of becoming extensions of the inhabitant’s mood, emotion and psyche. Furthermore, (...) this article presents Plinthos Pavilion, a collaborative artwork that confronts issues of transparency, ubiquity and invisibility; an example of synergy between the primary notions of architectural and media design, which blend with the use of electronic and digital technology, transforming a physical structure to an organism that breathes, reacts and communicates. (shrink)

Rani Lill Anjum and Stephen Mumford have recently defended a new kind of modality, which they call ‘dispositional modality’. The key reason to adopt dispositional modality, according to them, is that causes never necessitate their effects. Anjum and Mumford’s chief argument against causal necessitation makes use of what they call the ‘antecedent-strengthening test’ : C causally necessitates E iff C & φ causes E, for any possible φ. This test, they claim, fails in all cases of alleged causal necessitation. In (...) this paper we argue that the AS-test is not the mark of causal necessitation. First, we show that if the AS-test is taken as the mark of causal necessitation it leads to either an absurdity or to circularity. Second, we argue that, given the Mill/Mackie framework of causes as INUS conditions, apparent counterexamples to causal necessitation fail. (shrink)

In this re-reading of The Second Sex, the author argues that Beauvoir transgressively employs Sartre’s universal binary categories of Being and Nothingnessin her effort to account for the economic, political, cultural and psychological conditions of women’s situation. In doing so, she challenges Sartre’s theory of radical ontological freedom and concretizes his abstract philosophic voice, thereby avoiding their rationalist and voluntarist implications. Contesting Beauvoir’s feminist critics, who saw her as emotionally and philosophically dependent on Sartre and her work as an amalgam (...) of Sartrean existentialism and feminist insights, the author maintains that Beauvoir had her own independent project – to transform Sartrean existentialism to make it contextually sensitive. Distancing herself from Sartre’s theory of freedom and its valorization of masculine experience and disembodied consciousnesses, Beauvoir’s theory of situational freedom and embodied subjectivity draws her closer to the existentialism of Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

This paper advances the thesis of methodological mechanism, the claim that to be committed to mechanism is to adopt a certain methodological postulate, i.e. to look for causal pathways for the phenomena of interest. We argue that methodological mechanism incorporates a minimal account of understanding mechanisms, according to which a mechanism just is a causal pathway described in the language of theory. In order to argue for this position we discuss a central example of a biological mechanism, the mechanism of (...) cell death, known as apoptosis. We argue that this example shows that our philosophically deflationary account is sufficient in order to have an illuminating account of mechanisms as the concept is used in biology. (shrink)

You are what you eat: thinking food otherwise -- Georges Bataille's pornographic food -- Samuel Beckett's alimentary Cogito -- Food, the fall, and the detective: the case of Paul Auster -- Food in Margaret Atwood's Dystopias -- Modernism, postmodernism, and the otherwise of eating.

In recent years what has come to be called the 'New Mechanism' has emerged as a framework for thinking about the philosophical assumptions underlying many areas of science, especially in sciences such as biology, neuroscience, and psychology. This book offers a fresh look at the role of mechanisms, by situating novel analyses of central philosophical issues related to mechanisms within a rich historical perspective of the concept of mechanism as well as detailed case studies of biological mechanisms. It develops a (...) new position, Methodological Mechanism, according to which mechanisms are to be viewed as causal pathways that are theoretically described and are underpinned by networks of difference-making relations. In contrast to metaphysically inflated accounts, this study characterises mechanism as a concept-in-use in science that is deflationary and metaphysically neutral, but still methodologically useful and central to scientific practice. (shrink)

Alcmaeon, a philosopher-cum-doctor from Croton, offers the earliest known definition of health and disease. The aim of this paper is to examine the formulation of his medical theory in terms of political organization, namely the polarity between one-man rule and egalitarianism , by taking into account contemporary philosophical and medical texts, as well as the historical context. The paper is divided into four sections. I first overview the compendium in which this medical theory is reported, trace the doxographical layers, and (...) analyse the terminology employed . I then focus on the key aspects of this medical theory, including the constitution of the body, the interaction of opposites, and the aetiology of disease . I suggest that Alcmaeon's notion of equality can be understood in various ways, and discuss the possible interpretations in the light of early Greek philosophy and medicine. The most likely interpretations are that there exists a kind of equilibrium between pairs .. (shrink)

For many years poststructuralist feminists have denounced Simone de Beauvoir as a `universal humanist' who denies sexual difference and inscribes woman in a masculine discourse. Returning to the original exchanges between de Beauvoir and the French feminists of difference, where this dismissive attitude began, it is seen that de Beauvoir circulates in their discourse as representative of a bygone eraan embodiment of all that has been surpassed. Their criticisms of de Beauvoir prove for the most part, glib and disingenuous and (...) not grounded in a careful reading of The Second Sex. In this article the author defends de Beauvoir from their charges of universalism, phallocentrism and being a dupe of Sartre. Her particular form of universal humanism is not `indifferent to difference', but produces historically and socially nuanced insights. De Beauvoir does not valorize a Sartrean rational masculine subject as a model for feminist struggles, rather she theorizes an embodied, relational, situated subject. Furthermore, her theory of Otherness is able to accommodate the psychic register of subjectivity without psychologizing the socioeconomic or political world, a shortcoming of her French poststructuralist opponents. (shrink)

The literature on ‘academic capitalism’ and the ‘entrepreneurial university’ has paid little attention to the role and function of bureaucracy or has considered it something different from the New Public Management (NPM) that has accompanied neoliberal reforms in higher education over the last decades. Following a brief account of the theory and history of bureaucracy, the article examines the institutional, intellectual, pedagogic, and psychic repercussions of the NPM that was introduced in Danish universities in 2003, and turned them into what (...) has been often called ‘knowledge companies’ (vidensvirksomheder). As a result of these reforms, the paper shows, academicians have been transformed into competitive entrepreneurial clerks, striving for assignments and resources, bound by contracts, thoroughly surveilled for their productivity and performance through special software, and entangled in a web of bureaucratic relations which has removed all spaces of logos that distinguish a university, according to its European tradition. (shrink)

In this chapter we examine the relation between mechanisms and laws/counterfactuals by revisiting the main notions of mechanism found in the literature. We distinguish between two different conceptions of ‘mechanism’: mechanisms-of underlie or constitute a causal process; mechanisms-for are complex systems that function so as to produce a certain behavior. According to some mechanists, a mechanism fulfills both of these roles simultaneously. The main argument of the chapter is that there is an asymmetrical dependence between both kinds of mechanisms and (...) laws/counterfactuals: while some laws and counterfactuals must be taken as primitive (non-mechanistic) facts of the world, all mechanisms depend on laws/counterfactuals. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 18, Issue 4, Page 63-79, December 2013.

Introduction -- General clarification of philosophical-scientific concepts -- Science and philosophy -- The analytic and synthetic methods -- The knowledge myth -- Observation and justification -- The soul as mystery -- The knowledge myth in psychology -- Conclusion -- Psychological experience -- Reality in science and philosophy -- Reality of psychological experience -- Conclusion -- Toward a science of the soul -- Verification -- Psychology and the body -- Psychology and the mind -- Psychology and the soul -- Conclusion -- (...) Meaning in psychological experience -- Observation -- Interpretation and formulation -- Conclusion -- Addenda : excerpts from notebooks and letters. (shrink)

In this study we examine the information in the sources concerning the Byzantine family of Opoi in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. According to the sources, the Opoi were an important family in that period. Although they did not belong to the major aristocratic families, many of them were distinguished in the military administration of the Empire, such as Constantine Opos during the reign of Romanos III Argyros and Michael IV Paphlagon , the homonymous officer of Alexios I Komnenos , (...) the megas hetaireiarches Opos under John II Komnenos and Constantine Opos under Manuel I Komnenos. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the new evidence concerning the conception of cosmic justice in Greek thought offered by the Derveni papyrus. Beginning with a Heraclitean dictum about the regularity of the sun cited in column IV, I attempt to understand it in the context of Heraclitus’ cosmology. Accordingly, I turn to the Derveni author’s exegesis of the Orphic theogony and suggest that the prominent role of Zeus in the Derveni cosmogony and the allegorical interpretation of him as air and Mind (...) implies that the Derveni author adopts a distinct conception of cosmic justice intermingled with theological elements. Zeus, air, and Mind are the supplementary aspects of the cosmic god who directs the cosmogonic process and maintains the current configuration of the cosmos. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzscheforschung Jahrgang: 24 Heft: 1 Seiten: 123-144.

Evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-Devo) is a new and rapidly developing field of biology which focuses on questions in the intersection of evolution and development and has been seen by many as a potential synthesis of these two fields. This synthesis is the topic of the books reviewed here. Integrating Evolution and Development (edited by Roger Sansom and Robert Brandon), is a collection of papers on conceptual issues in Evo-Devo, while From Embryology to Evo-Devo (edited by Manfred Laubichler and Jane Maienschein) (...) is a history of the problem of the relations between ontogeny and phylogeny. (shrink)

The paradoxes of globalization and the efforts toward the establishment of a consolidated healthcare ministry have caused tensions while affording the possibility for true ecumenical dialogue. As today's societies become more pluralistic, Orthodox Christian healthcare ministry finds itself amongst these paradoxes and tensions. The content of Orthodox healthcare chaplaincy, which is centered in its Eucharistic expression, maintains a sense of catholicity and unity. This though differs from a “psychological” understanding of pastoral care, which has developed. Therefore, there is a question (...) of the chaplain's identity, a crisis of theology and ecclesiology, which must be faced so that true unity can be attained. This article explains the content of Orthodox healthcare chaplaincy and addresses the issues of pastoral identity, theology and psychology, together with the crisis of ecclesiology. It is written with a true agony for unity. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzscheforschung Jahrgang: 21 Heft: 1 Seiten: 221-230.