This chapter contrasts the recent emphasis on operationalism as the route to reliability in psychiatry with arguments for an ineliminable role for tacit knowledge. Although Michael Polanyi popularized the idea of tacit dimension, the chapter argues that two clues he offers as to its nature-that we know more than we can tell and that knowledge is an active comprehension of things known-are better interpreted through regress arguments set out by Ryle and Wittgenstein. Those arguments, however, suggest that tacit knowledge is (...) not inexpressible but merely inexpressible in context-free terms. The chapter suggests instead that tacit knowledge is best understood to be context-dependent practical knowledge. So understood, the regress arguments suggest that the operational approach to psychiatric diagnosis can never free itself from a tacit dimension. Given that claim, then Parnas' opposing view of diagnosis can be seen as a way to embrace, rather than deny, the importance of tacit knowledge and skilled clinical judgment for psychiatry. (shrink)

Climate change has obvious practical implications. It will kill millions of people, wipe out thousands of species, and so on. My question in this paper is much narrower. How might climate change impact on moral theory – and especially on the debate between utilitarians and their non-utilitarian rivals? I argue that climate change creates serious theoretical difficulties for non-utilitarian moral theories – especially those that based morality or justice on any contract or bargain for reciprocal advantage. Climate change thus tips (...) the dialectical balance in favour of utilitarianism. However, I also argue that, because it upsets assumptions that lie behind the most plausible forms of modern utilitarianism, climate change may also push utilitarianism in a more austere and demanding direction. (shrink)

Dimensions of the ethical work climate, as conceptualized by Victor and Cullen (1988), are potentially important influences on individual ethical decision-making in the organizational context. The present study examined the direct and indirect effects of individuals' perceptions of work climate on their ethical judgments and behavioral intentions regarding an ethical dilemma. A national sample of marketers was surveyed in a scenario-based research study. The results indicated that, although perceived climate dimensions did not have a direct effect on behavioral intentions, there (...) were significant moderating effects. Climates perceived as emphasizing social responsibility and rules/codes moderated the individual ethical judgment-behavioral intentions relationship such that individuals were less likely to say that they would engage in a questionable selling practice even when they themselves did not believe the practice to be unethical. Respondents were somewhat more likely to form intentions consistent with their judgment that the questionable practice was morally acceptable when the ethical climate was characterized by an emphasis on team/friendship. (shrink)

This paper sketches a taxonomy of forms of substantivalism and relationism concerning space and time, and of the traditional arguments for these positions. Several natural sorts of relationism are able to account for Newton's bucket experiment. Conversely, appropriately constructed substantivalism can survive Leibniz's critique, a fact which has been obscured by the conflation of two of Leibniz's arguments. The form of relationism appropriate to the Special Theory of Relativity is also able to evade the problems raised by Field. I survey (...) the effect of the General Theory of Relativity and of plenism on these considerations. (shrink)

Employees perception of the existence of a covenantal relationship between themselves and their employer indicates that they believe there is a mutual commitment to shared values and the welfare of the other party in the relationship. Research suggests that these types of employment relationships have positive benefits for both employees and employers. There has been little research, however, on the factors that determine whether such relationships will develop and thrive.In this paper, we suggest that the organizations ethical work climate may (...) be an important factor affecting employees perceptions about the nature of the relational contract between themselves and their employer. Specifically, we argue that work climates emphasizing benevolence and principle will be associated with covenantal relationships. Conversely, we believe that work climates emphasizing egoism will make it less likely that covenantal relationships will develop between an employer and employee. (shrink)

Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry is a concise introduction to the growing field of philosophy of psychiatry. Divided into three main aspects of psychiatric clinical judgement, values, meanings and facts, it examines the key debates about mental health care, and the philosophical ideas and tools needed to assess those debates, in six chapters. In addition to outlining the state of play, Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry presents a coherent and unified approach across the different debates, characterized by a rejection of reductionism and (...) an emphasis on the ineliminability of uncodified skilled judgement. The first part, Values, outlines the debate about whether diagnosis of mental illness is essentially value-laden and argues that the prospects for reducing illness or disease to plainly factual matters are poor. It also explains the important role of skilled contextual judgement, rather than a principles-based deduction, in ethical judgement. The second part, Meanings, examines the central role of understanding and a shared first person perspective, both against attempts to reduce meaning to basic information-processing mechanisms and to explain away the difficulties of understanding psychopathology in recent models of delusion. The third part, Facts, shows the importance of uncodified clinical judgements, both in assessing the validity of psychiatric taxonomy and in the application of Evidence Based Medicine. Despite advances in the codifaction of practice and operationalism of diagnosis, an element of judgement remains in the assessment both of what, at one level, is good evidence for diagnosis and treatment and what, at a higher level, is good evidence for the validity of classification overall. (shrink)

This book defends and outlines the key issues surrounding the philosophy of content as demonstrated in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. The text shows how Wittgenstein's critical arguments concerning mind and meaning are destructive of much recent work in the philosophy of thought and language, including the representationalist orthodoxy. These issues are related to the work of Davidson, Rorty and McDowell among others.

Organizational ethics—defined as the alignment of an institution’s practices with its mission, vision, and values—is a growing field in health care not well characterized in empirical literature. To capture the scope and context of organizational ethics work in United States healthcare institutions, we conducted a nationwide convenience survey of ethicists regarding the scope of organizational ethics work, common challenges faced, and the organizational context in which this work is done. In this article, we report substantial variability in the structure of (...) organizational ethics programs and the settings in which it is conducted. Notable findings included disagreement about the activities that comprise organizational ethics and a lack of common metrics used to assess organizational ethics activities. A frequently cited barrier to full engagement in these activities was poor institution-wide understanding about the role and function of organizational ethics resources. These data suggest a tension in the trajectory of organizational ethics’ professionalization: while some variability is appropriate to the field’s relative youth, inadequate attention to definitions of organizational ethics practice and metrics for success can impede discussions about appropriate institutional support, leadership context, and training for practitioners. (shrink)

Science is our best way of finding out about the natural world, and philosophers who write about that world ought to be sensitive to the claims of our best science. There are obstacles, however, to outsiders using science well. We think philosophers are prone to misuse science: to give undue weight to results that are untested; to highlight favorable and ignore unfavorable data; to give illegitimate weight to the authority of science; to leap from scientific premises to philosophical conclusions without (...) spelling out their relevance; to treat mere resonance between a scientific theory and a philosophical view as empirical evidence for the philosophical view. This article identifies and illustrates some of the ways in which philosophers misuse science, explains why these pitfalls are easy to fall into, and concludes with suggestions for avoiding them. (shrink)

Truth and Paradox largely consists of three connected technical projects together with a more general account of the nature of truth. The first project is the most familiar: providing an account of how logically complex sentences get assigned truth values on the basis of the truth values assigned to the logically atomic sentences. The second is construction of valid, syntactically specifiable inference rules for a language that includes the familiar logical connectives and the truth predicate. The third is an account (...) of the normative rules governing the assertion of sentences. Let me sketch these in order. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Limits for Uncommunicative Partners How Much Does a Particle Need to Know? Evaluation of Results Simulators Does Nature Simulate?

Our everyday notions of responsibility are often driven by our need to justify ourselves to specific others – especially those we harm, wrong, or otherwise affect. One challenge for contemporary ethics is to extend this interpersonal urgency to our relations with those future people who are harmed or affected by our actions. In this article, I explore our responsibility for climate change by imagining a possible ‘broken future’, damaged by the carbon emissions of previous generations, and then asking what its (...) inhabitants might think of our current behaviour, our moral thinking, and our excuses. In particular, I will focus on a simplified scenario where present people can only avoid a broken future by sacrificing Rawlsian favourable conditions. Suppose we refuse to avoid a broken future, on the grounds that we cannot be expected to make such great sacrifices. If the broken future lacks favourable conditions, will its inhabitants accept our excuses? Will they hold us responsible for things we regard as excusable? If so, should we be guided by their judgements or by our own? (shrink)

Is it generally rational to defer to official stories? On the affirmative view exemplified by Neil Levy, grounds for scepticism cannot outweigh the epistemic authority of the experts presumed to generate them. Yet sociological studies of how expertise is mediated into official communications reveal the epistemic potential of citizens’ collaboratives. These may include, or advocate hearing, dissident experts. Such groups’ epistemic position is arguably analogous to that of the ‘other institutions of civil society’ that Levy sees as underwriting the authority (...) of official stories. An added advantage is that they are able to adhere to deliberative methods of inquiry. By contrast, an official story presupposes that deliberations have concluded, and what remains is to promote the agreed story. This is achieved by strategic communication, which can involve extensive coordination by organisations committed primarily to persuasion rather than truth-seeking. Sometimes it includes blocking dissidents’ deliberative challenges. A case study highlights how even an organisation of indisputable epistemic authority can be politically influenced to block the testimony of its own scientific experts, while uncritical support for its official story is maintained by other institutions of civil society. Hence, an appropriate attitude towards official stories is critical receptiveness rather than automatic deference. (shrink)

Summary The aim of this paper is three-fold. Firstly, to briefly set out how strategic choices made about theorising about intentionality or content have actions at a distance for accounting for delusion. Secondly, to investigate how successfully a general difficulty facing a broadly interpretative approach to delusions might be eased by the application of any of three Wittgensteinian interpretative tools. Thirdly, to draw a general moral about how the later Wittgenstein gives more reason to be pessimistic than optimistic about the (...) prospects of a philosophical psychopathology aimed at empathic understanding of delusions. (shrink)

This essay is born of a misunderstanding. When Barry Loewer mentioned to me that he might be interested in an essay on David Bohm’s version or interpretation of quantum theory, he happened also to mention the work of Wilfrid Sellars, which coincidentally was on his mind. I mistakenly understood that what was wanted was an essay connecting Bohm and Sellars. This directed my thoughts down pathways they would not otherwise have taken, and sent me back to some works of Sellars (...) which had lain neglected on my shelves. What follows is the result of this fortuitous juxtaposition of ideas. (shrink)

In part because “imagination” is a slippery notion, its exact role in the production of scientific knowledge remains unclear. There is, however, one often explicit and deliberate use of imagination by scientists that can be (and has been) studied intensively by epistemologists and historians of science: thought experiments. The main goal of this article is to document the varieties of thought experimentation, not so much in terms of the different sciences in which they occur but rather in terms of the (...) different functions they fulfil. I argue that thought experimentation (and hence imagination) plays a role not only in theory choice but in singular causal analysis and scientific discovery as well. I pinpoint, moreover, some of the rules governing the use of thought experiments in theory choice and in singular causal analysis, that is, some of the criteria they should meet in order to fulfil those functions successfully. (shrink)

Pogge’s proposal for a Global Resources Dividend (GRD) has been criticized because its likely effects would be less predictable than Pogge supposes and could even be counterproductive to the main aim of relieving poverty. The GRD might also achieve little with respect to its secondary aim of promoting environmental protection. This article traces the problems to Pogge’s inadequate conception of natural resources. It proposes instead to conceive of natural resources in terms of ‘ecological space’. Using this conception, redistributive principles follow (...) with a more definite logic from Pogge’s own supporting moral argument. The proposed alternative approach also promises a more direct contribution to Pogge’s secondary aim of resource conservation and environmental protection. I conclude that if any redistributive resource-based tax should be levied on nations, then there are at least four decisive reasons to favour levying a tax related to a nation’s per capita utilization of ecological space rather than the GRD. (shrink)

The World Psychiatric Association has emphasised the importance of idiographic understanding as a distinct component of comprehensive assessment but in introductions to the idea it is often assimilated to the notion of narrative judgement. This paper aims to distinguish between supposed idiographic and narrative judgement. Taking the former to mean a kind of individualised judgement, I argue that it has no place in psychiatry in part because it threatens psychiatric validity. Narrative judgement, by contrast, is a genuinely distinct complement to (...) criteriological diagnosis but it is, nevertheless, a special kind of general judgement and thus can possess validity. To argue this I first examine the origin of the distinction between idiographic and nomothetic in Windelband’s 1894 rectorial address. I argue that none of three ways of understanding that distinction is tenable. Windelband’s description of historical methods, as a practical example, does not articulate a genuine form of understanding. A metaphysical distinction between particulars and general kinds is guilty of subscribing to the Myth of the Given. A distinction based on an abstraction of essentially combined aspects of empirical judgement cannot underpin a distinct empirical method. Furthermore, idiographic elements understood as individualised judgements threaten the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. In the final part I briefly describe some aspects of the logic of narrative judgements and argue that in the call for comprehensive diagnosis, narrative rather than idiographic elements have an important role. Importantly, however, whilst directed towards individual subjects, narratives are framed in intrinsically general concepts and thus can aspire to validity. (shrink)

Infinitism, in contrast to foundationalism and coherentism, claims that justification in any proposition requires the availability of an infinite chain of propositional reasons, each providing a justificatory reason for its successor in the chain. Both infinitists and some critics of the theory have at times noted the possibility that the theory may have sceptical consequences for doxastic justification. It is argued here that, for reasons that appear not to have been previously appreciated, sceptical results very definitely do follow from infinitism. (...) On one construal of infinitism, this constitutes a reductio of the theory. On an alternative construal, infinitists may embrace the sceptical conclusion, but in doing so, will take on all the problems that scepticism faces. (shrink)

Idiographic understanding has been proposed as a response to concern that criteriological diagnosis cannot capture the nature of human individuality. It can seem that understanding individuals requires, instead, a distinct form of ‘individualised’ judgement and this claim receives endorsement by the inventor of the term ‘idiographic’, Wilhelm Windelband. I argue, however, that none of the options for specifying a model of individualised judgement, to explain what idiographic judgement might be, will work. I suggest, at the end, that narrative, rather than (...) idiographic, understanding is a more promising response to the limitations of criteriological diagnosis. (shrink)

First published in 1997, this book discusses the interplaying factors environmental issues have on justice and property and other social problems. Endeavouring create a discourse on what sustainability means in implementation, each of the contributors to this book approaches this via different theoretical viewpoints.

In On Liberty, Mill says that ‘the same causes which make … [a person] a Churchman in London, would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin’. Despite Mill's not having drawn it out, there is an argument implicit in his comments that is germane to both externalist and internalist understandings of the epistemic justification of religious beliefs, even though some of these understandings would not wish to use the term ‘epistemic justification’ to refer to whatever it is (...) that they suggest must be added to true belief for it to count as knowledge. In this paper, we shall articulate this argument; examine how it challenges those religious believers who would wish to claim their religious beliefs as knowledge; and consider what they may do to meet this challenge. (shrink)

Deze tekst vertrekt vanuit een van de meest invloedrijke denkers in de metafysica, namelijk Aristoteles. We lezen hem via de interpretatie van Giorgio Agamben in het artikel On potentiality. 4 Agamben werpt in die tekst een nieuw licht op het onderscheid tussen potentialiteit en act. De Westerse metafysica heeft vaak de act geprivilegieerd boven de potentialiteit. Enkel actuele entiteiten zouden bestaan, terwijl mogelijkheden behoren tot het domein van de verbeelding. Aristoteles ondermijnt deze stelling volgens Agamben. De mens als redelijk dier (...) is een potentieel wezen. De verwerkelijking van zijn essentie is het cultiveren van de rede als potentialiteit. In de mens zijn act en potentialiteit één. Daarom moeten wij begrijpen in welke zin potentialiteiten bestaan en hoe zij zich verhouden tot de act. Het antwoord vinden wij in de verwerkelijking van impotentialiteit, of het vermogen om dingen niet te doen. De mens kan niet enkel x doen, maar ook actief x niet-doen. Bijvoorbeeld in de vasten kan men van niet-eten een project maken. Agambens studie van impotentialiteit verduidelijkt daarmee wat de termen ‘act’ en ‘potentialiteit’ precies betekenen. Agamben stelt voor om elke actualisering te begrijpen als de opschorting van een impotentialiteit. De vaster die begint te eten, schort zijn project tot niet-eten op. Los van deze of gene actualisering is de wereld eerst de verzamelnaam voor alle mogelijke actualiseringen en die mogelijkheden zijn nooit uitgeput in eender welke actualisering van de wereld. De mens is dan het wezen dat, dankzij zijn impotentialiteit, inziet dat de wereld steeds meer is dan enkel wat het geval is. (shrink)

Ethical implications of the concept of ecological space can be drawn from the focus it brings to issues arising from the finitude and vulnerability of habitats. An evident ethical concern is that each person should have sufficient access to support at least a minimally decent life. The demands placed by the world’s human population on its ecological space, however, are such that some members do not have enough of it for their health and well-being. One aspect of this problem is (...) the finitude of the earth’s aggregate biophysical capacity; another is that some humans make vastly more use of the planet’s ecological space than others do. In relation to the normative assessment and regulation of human activities, I recommend differentiating between using, occupying, and commanding ecological space. It is in relation to these activities that deontic categories—of prescription, proscription and permission—can be applied. (shrink)

Realism criticizes the idea, central to what may be called ‘the priority view’, that philosophy has the task of imposing from the outside general norms of morality or standards of reasonableness on politics understood as the domain of power. According to realism, political philosophy must reveal the specific standards internal to the political practice of handling power appropriately and as it develops in actual circumstances. Framed in those terms, the debate evokes the idea that political power itself is lacking normativity (...) until such time as norms are devised that govern its use. In contrast, this essay identifies a normative dimension internal to power. Power depends on recognition and support in the form of belief. This dependence explains how an interest in power introduces a responsiveness to normative considerations into the domain of politics. (shrink)