Over the past 15 years, since the publication of Walter Bodmer's report for the Royal Society, the public understanding of science (PUS) has become a positive industry in the UK. Initially intended by the natural scientists to foster public acceptance of science, it has gradually drawn on a longer and deeper academic tradition in Britain of the social studies of science. Some of that social science research predicted the recent “moral panic” over genetically modified (GM) crops and food, but both (...) natural scientists and governments have held social science in low esteem for many years, so it went unremarked at the time. The hypothesis of those who launched PUS was that the public was merely deficient in factual knowledge and that public acceptance of science could be improved simply by setting out “the facts”. Social studies of science had demonstrated the vacuity of this “deficit model”, both theoretically and empirically, long before the GM …. (shrink)

Surgical devices are often marketed before there is good evidence of their safety and effectiveness. Our paper discusses the ethical issues associated with the early marketing and use of new surgical devices from the perspectives of the six groups most concerned. Health Canada, which is responsible for licensing new surgical devices, should amend their requirements to include rigorous clinical trials that provide data on effectiveness and safety for each new product before it is marketed. Industry should comply with all Health (...) Canada requirements to obtain licenses for new products. Until Health Canada requires effectiveness and safety data, industry should cooperate with physicians in appropriate studies before releasing new products and should make balanced presentations of all the available evidence. Surgeons should, before using a new surgical device, assess the evidence on its effectiveness and safety and ensure they are properly trained and competent in using the device. Surgeons should provide their patients with an evaluation of the available evidence and inform them about possible complications and the surgeon's level of experience with the new device. Patients, who should be given an honest evaluation of the available evidence, possible complications, and the surgeon's experience, should be encouraged to evaluate the evidence and information to their own satisfaction to ensure that fully informed consent is given. Health institutions, responsible for regulating practice within their walls, should review new devices for safety, effectiveness, and economic impacts, before allowing their use. They should also limit the use of new surgical devices to surgeons trained and competent in the new technology. Professional societies should provide guidance on the early adoption of new surgical devices and technologies. We urge all those involved in the development, licensing, and use of new surgical devices to aim for higher ethical standards to protect the health and safety of patients requiring surgery. The lowest acceptable ethical standard would require device manufacturers to provide surgeons with accurate and timely information on the efficacy and safety of their products, allowing surgeons and patients to evaluate the evidence (and the significance of information not yet available) before surgery. (shrink)

Given a weakly o-minimal theory T, the T-height of an element of a model of T is defined as a means of classifying the order of magnitude of the element. If T satisfies some easily met technical conditions, then this classification is coarse enough for a Wilkie-type inequality: given a set of elements of a model of T, each of which has a different T-height, the cardinality of this set is at most 1 plus the minimum cardinality of a (...) set that generates the structure. (shrink)

A scholium in codex Vaticanus graecus 156 provides evidence that Cassius Dio's Roman History once contained an explicit reference to the ludi saeculares of a.d. 204, something that has been denied in recent scholarship.

Recoiling from the power that Athenian democracy placed in the hands of the poor, the founding fathers of the United States took Athens as primarily an anti-model, whereas nineteenth-century defenders of slavery found Athens a very congenial model indeed, seeming as it did to lend a mantle of legitimacy to an unspeakable practice. After a “honeymoon period” in which democracy was idealized as the only legitimate form of government, now at the outset of the twenty-first century the alliance of democracy (...) with a capitalism that often proves heartless to the less fortunate has raised some troubling questions about democracy itself. Despite its small size, classical Athens offers valuable guidance for tempering current difficulties in both the United States and elsewhere by adopting and adapting the selection of some officials by sortition, direct election by popular vote of elected officials, a rigorous system of accountability, and the fostering of civic and community values. (shrink)

In a time of increasing polarization, how can we address sensitive topics and ensure that university classrooms remain places of healthy discussions and ethical deliberations? This paper addresses this important question by drawing on unique qualitative data from our students’ accounts of their experience in an organizational ethics course. We developed the course using a novel pedagogical strategy centered around the creation of an artistic portfolio. We find that student engagement in an alternative individual space, such as the artistic portfolio, (...) supports them in developing (inter)personal skills in preparation for constructive participation in sensitive discussions and ethical deliberation in the classroom. Additionally, engagement with the artistic portfolio provides them with an alternative means for alleviating tension that arises from these discussions and a space for expressing their opinions. Our findings highlight the role of the portfolio as an individual safe haven that supports teachers in facilitating a positive classroom atmosphere and guides students through challenging discussions and deliberations intrinsic to responsible management education. Considering these new insights, we advocate for a shift from a collective to an individual perspective on safety in academia. This transition liberates the classroom from the constraints and limitations often associated with the establishment of collective safe spaces. (shrink)

Cosmological arguments for the existence of God face a gap problem. This is the problem of convincingly arguing that their intermediate conclusions that some first cause or necessary being exists provide evidence for their main conclusion that God exists. This paper develops a simple and innovative approach to solving this problem, applicable to many cosmological arguments. According to the proposal, the best explanation for why the necessary being is found to have necessary existence is that it is a perfect being. (...) Since a perfect being would be God, the intermediate conclusions of the relevant cosmological arguments provide abductive evidence for their main conclusions. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of the philosophy of interdisciplinarity, set forth in the work of the same name by J.K. Schmidt. The main goal the author sets for himself is to define the inner meaning of the concepts and goals of interdisciplinarity. In accordance with this, the tasks performed by the respective fields of work, divided into intrascientific and extrascientific. The first ones are related to fundamental research, rethinking the forms of scientific knowledge, methodologies, the relationship between man (...) and nature. The latter, embedded in social reality, are related to analysis of the problems of technoscience, knowledge production and science policy. Prof. Schmidt considers two approaches to interdisciplinarity: instrumental or strategic and critical-reflexive or communicative. The first of them is presented as a limited tool for solving actual problems of interdisciplinarity due to its proximity to soluchionism and its predominant focus on organizational and managerial problems of science. The critical-reflexive approach is, on the contrary, associated with a fundamental rethinking of the concept of knowledge. Interdisciplinarity is characteristic of the field of scientific research, while transdisciplinarity and its particular forms – object- and problem-oriented approaches – are associated with solving problems of the real world. The author conducts a comprehensive analysis of the problem of interdisciplinarity, analyzing the historical roots of technoscientific issues, assesses the current state of science, and proposes a paradigmatic ProTA program related to the realization of the predictive potential of the critical-reflexive approach to interdisciplinarity. (shrink)

This book defends a comprehensive new vision of what addiction is and how people with addictions should be treated. The author argues that, in addition to physical and intellectual disabilities, there are volitional disabilities – disabilities of the will – and that addiction is best understood as a species of volitional disability. -/- This theory serves to illuminate long-standing philosophical and psychological perplexities about addiction and addictive motivation. It articulates a normative framework within which to understand prohibition, harm reduction, and (...) other strategies that aim to address addiction. The argument of this book is that these should ultimately be evaluated in terms of reasonable accommodations for addicted people and that the priority of addiction policy should be the provision of such accommodations. What makes this book distinctive is that it understands addiction as a fundamentally political problem, an understanding that is suggested by standard legal approaches to addiction, but which has not received a sustained defense in the previous philosophical or psychological literature. -/- This text marks a significant advance in the theory of addiction, one which should reshape our understanding of addiction policy and its proper aims. (shrink)

Proposes and defends a novel account of the mechanics of divine foreknowledge and providence, arguing that this account is consistent with libertarian freedom.

Explores mind-body philosophy from an Asian perspective.

This paper continues a recent exchange in this journal concerning explanationist accounts of epistemic justification. In the first paper in this exchange, Byerly argues that explanationist views judge that certain beliefs about the future are unjustified when in fact they are justified. In the second paper, McCain defends a version of explanationism which he argues escapes Byerly’s criticism. Here we contribute to this exchange in two ways. In the first section, we argue that McCain’s defense of explanationism against Byerly’s objection (...) is unsuccessful. Then, in the second section, we develop an independent objection to explanationism from a different direction. If our arguments in each section are sound, then not only do explanationist accounts of epistemic justification judge beliefs that are justified to be unjustified, but they judge beliefs that are unjustified to be justified. Explanationism faces problems on both sides. (shrink)

Many pantheists have claimed that their view of the divine is motivated by a kind of spiritual experience. In this paper, I articulate a novel argument, inspired by recent work on moral exemplarism, that gives voice to this kind of motivation for pantheism. The argument is based on two claims about the emotion of awe, each of which is defended primarily via critical engagement with empirical research on the emotion. I also illustrate how this pathway to pantheism offers pantheists distinctive (...) resources for responding to persistent objections to their view, and how it might lead to more exotic views incorporating pantheistic elements. (shrink)

Logical Forms explains both the detailed problems involved in finding logical forms and also the theoretical underpinnings of philosophical logic. In this revised edition, exercises are integrated throughout the book. The result is a genuinely interactive introduction which engages the reader in developing the argument. Each chapter concludes with updated notes to guide further reading.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 225 Seiten: 1-18.

Even though the measurement of fear of crime in criminological research commenced a few decades ago, specific populations, such as social activists, remain undocumented. This article is an attempt to address this gap. A study was conducted among 153 social activists involved in exposing corruption and irregularities that take place in the government system in India. This article explores the gap between the fear of crime and actual victimization among the specific social activists in India. The results indicate activists expressed (...) moderate fear of any one form of victimization including verbal and emotional, physical, and sexual victimization. It was also found that one-third of them have reported facing some form of abuse. The research implications are discussed. (shrink)

Philosophers have long held that epistemic self-reliance has a special value. But, this view has recently been challenged by prominent epistemologist Linda Zagzebski. Zagzebski argues that potential sources of support for the claim that epistemic self-reliance has a special value fail. Here I provide a novel defense of the special value of epistemic self-reliance. Self-reliance has a special value because it is required for attaining certain valuable cognitive achievements. Further, practicing self-reliance may be all-things-considered worthwhile even when doing so is (...) a less reliable way of getting to the truth than relying on others and even when doing so is flatly unreliable in getting to the truth. (shrink)

Introductory-level undergraduate classes in Logic or Critical Thinking are a staple in the portfolio of many Philosophy programs. A standard approach to these classes is to include teaching and learning activities focused on formal deductive and inductive logic, sometimes accompanied by teaching and learning activities focused on informal fallacies or argument construction. In this article, I discuss a proposal to include an additional element within these classes—namely, teaching and learning activities focused on intellectual virtues. After clarifying the proposal, I identify (...) three reasons in favor of implementing it and I discuss how to implement it, focusing on questions about pedagogical strategies and pedagogical resources. (shrink)

If the work carried out to gain a detailed understanding of the process of photosynthesis, and probably other types of bioenergetic conversions as well, fulfills the criteria of a molecular biology, and if the groups funding this research and those who worked in the laboratory regarded it as such, why has it been necessary for me to argue here that bioenergetics should always have been counted as part of - indeed, may have been in the forefront in establishing — the (...) molecular biology tradition? Why have the investigators themselves not insisted on correcting the historical record that has emerged thus far? I would like to offer two reasons: one institutional, the other scientific. (shrink)

Since the introduction and widespread adoption of chemical herbicides, “weed management” has become almost synonymous with “herbicide management.” Over-reliance on herbicides and herbicide-resistant crops has given rise to herbicide resistant weeds. Integrated weed management (IWM) identifies three strategies for weed management— biological-cultural, chemical-technological, mechanical-physical—and recommends combining all three to mitigate herbicide resistance. However, adoption of IWM has stalled, and research to understand the adoption of IWM practices has focused on single stakeholder groups, especially farmers. In contrast, decisions about weed management (...) often occur within a social ecosystem where multiple stakeholder groups co-create knowledge and practices. To more holistically investigate perceptions and decision-making related to herbicide resistant weed management, we conducted 23 in-depth interviews in combination with Q methodology with farmers and public-/private-sector agricultural professionals in the state of Georgia (U.S.). Our investigation focused on the management of an increasingly herbicide resistant weed, Palmer amaranth, which enabled broader conversations about agricultural systems, farmer livelihoods, and sustainability. Factor and thematic analyses allowed us to identify and characterize two distinct typologies: one primarily valued agronomic efficiency and relied upon chemical-technological management practices, while the other valued diversifying weed management strategies as the pathway to agronomic and economic success. Typologies diverged substantially in attitudes toward the three weed management strategies, the role of technology, and systems management generally. These two viewpoints have implications for how we understand underlying stakeholder motivations and choices around weed management strategies, both of which are crucial in promoting and supporting farmer use of diverse, ecologically-sound, weed management strategies. (shrink)

Belnap–Dunn’s relevance logic, \(\textsf{BD}\), was designed seeking a suitable logical device for dealing with multiple information sources which sometimes may provide inconsistent and/or incomplete pieces of information. \(\textsf{BD}\) is a four-valued logic which is both paraconsistent and paracomplete. On the other hand, De and Omori, while investigating what classical negation amounts to in a paracomplete and paraconsistent four-valued setting, proposed the expansion \(\textsf{BD2}\) of the four valued Belnap–Dunn logic by a classical negation. In this paper, we introduce a four-valued expansion (...) of BD called \({\textsf{BD}^\copyright }\), obtained by adding an unary connective \({\copyright }\,\ \) which is a consistency operator (in the sense of the Logics of Formal Inconsistency, _LFI_s). In addition, this operator is the unique one with the following features: it extends to \(\textsf{BD}\) the consistency operator of LFI1, a well-known three-valued _LFI_, still satisfying axiom _ciw_ (which states that any sentence is either consistent or contradictory), and allowing to define an undeterminedness operator (in the sense of Logic of Formal Undeterminedness, _LFU_s). Moreover, \({\textsf{BD}^\copyright }\) is maximal w.r.t. LFI1, and it is proved to be equivalent to BD2, up to signature. After presenting a natural Hilbert-style characterization of \({\textsf{BD}^\copyright }\) obtained by means of twist-structures semantics, we propose a first-order version of \({\textsf{BD}^\copyright }\) called \({\textsf{QBD}^\copyright }\), with semantics based on an appropriate notion of four-valued Tarskian-like structures called \(\textbf{4}\) -structures. We show that in \({\textsf{QBD}^\copyright }\), the existential and universal quantifiers are interdefinable in terms of the paracomplete and paraconsistent negation, and not by means of the classical negation. Finally, a Hilbert-style calculus for \({\textsf{QBD}^\copyright }\) is presented, proving the corresponding soundness and completeness theorems. (shrink)

Reporting peers’ counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) is important for maintaining an ethical organization, but is a significant and potentially risky action. In Bandura’s Theory of Moral Thought and Action (Bandura, 1991) he states that such acts require significant moral agency, which is generated when an individual possesses adequate moral self-regulatory capacities to address the issue and is in a context that activates and reinforces those capacities. Guided by this theory, we assess moral potency (i.e., moral courage, moral efficacy, and moral (...) ownership) as key capacities predicting peer reporting intentions and assess three contextual factors influencing the generation and effects of moral potency: whether a potential informant (1) works for an ethical leader, (2) is embedded in a psychologically safe climate promoting interpersonal risk-taking, and (3) operates in a more normal or extreme context. We assess the proposed model across three field studies entailing both normal and extreme (i.e., firefighting units) contexts. Results show that ethical leaders raise employees’ moral potency, promoting greater willingness to report their peers’ CWBs. In normal work contexts, psychological safety positively moderated both the relationship between ethical leadership and moral potency and between moral potency and peer reporting intentions. However, psychological safety had the opposite effects in more extreme work contexts. Whereas psychological safety strengthens the positive association between moral potency and peer reporting intentions in normal work contexts, in contexts where individuals are more frequently exposed to extreme events, psychological safety weakens this relationship, thus highlighting the unforeseen downsides of psychological safety in extreme contexts. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is significant motivation for contemporary ethicists to affirm a view I call “moral property eliminativism.” On this eliminativist view, there are no moral properties, but there are moral truths that are made true by only nonmoral entities. Moral property eliminativism parallels eliminativist views defended in other domains of philosophical inquiry, but has gone nearly entirely overlooked by contemporary ethicists. I argue that moral property eliminativism is motivated by the claim that there cannot be differences in (...) moral truths without differences in nonmoral ontology—a claim widely endorsed by contemporary ethicists. Engaging with a variety of ways whereby one might resist the motivation I cite for moral property eliminativism, I argue that alternative contemporary metaethical views tend to purchase moral properties at the price of unnecessary theoretical complexity. (shrink)

This collection of essays addresses some of the central issues in modern social and political thought, such as: the revival of Marxism and its relevance to the social sciences; the analysis of social and political structures and social movements; and the future of advanced capitalist societies.

Ted Warfield has argued that if Ockhamism and Molinism offer different responses to the problems of foreknowledge and prophecy, it is the Molinist who is in trouble. I show here that this is not so -indeed, things may be quite the reverse.