The Knowability Paradox purports to show that the controversial but not patently absurd hypothesis that all truths are knowable entails the implausible conclusion that all truths are known. The notoriety of this argument owes to the negative light it appears to cast on the view that there can be no verification-transcendent truths. We argue that it is overly simplistic to formalize the views of contemporary verificationists like Dummett, Prawitz or Martin-Löf using the sort of propositional modal operators which are employed (...) in the original derivation of the Paradox. Instead we propose that the central tenet of verificationism is most accurately formulated as follows: if φ is true, then there exists a proof of φ Building on the work of Artemov (Bull Symb Log 7(1): 1-36, 2001), a system of explicit modal logic with proof quantifiers is introduced to reason about such statements. When the original reasoning of the Paradox is developed in this setting, we reach not a contradiction, but rather the conclusion that there must exist non-constructed proofs. This outcome is evaluated relative to the controversy between Dummett and Prawitz about proof existence and bivalence. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the study of minerals from the Renaissance to the early nineteenth century in the light of the work of Michel Foucault on the history of systems of thought. In spite of a certain number of theoretical problems, Foucault's enterprise opens up to the historian of science a vast terrain for exploration. But this is the place neither for a general exegesis nor for a general criticism of his position; our aim here is the more modest (...) one of taking certain points from Foucault's study,The order of things, and seeing how far they can be extended into an area not explicitly considered in that work. (shrink)

Privacy is defined within a symbolic interaction framework in terms of identity definition and maintenance processes. It is argued that defining privacy within a symbolic interaction framework both generates a number of hypotheses involving the concept of privacy and allows the theorist to draw together several social psychological concepts within the one conceptual schema.

In diesem Aufsatz soll versucht werden, die praktische Möglichkeit eines Verfahrens einer "externen" Sicht auf die Probleme der Wissenschaftstheorie zu demonstrieren. Da es sich um ein u. W. bisher unerprobtes Verfahren handelt, könnte es nur durch eine konkret ausgewiesene reductio ad absurdum eliminiert werden. Um jedoch den Anschein eines naiven Instrumentalismus zu vermeiden, seien zwei erläuternde Bemerkungen vorangeschickt. Es ist anzunehmen, daß die drei gesonderten Fachrichtungen bemüht sind, jenseits ihrer Grenzen von einem fachlich nicht spezialisierten Publikum rezipiert oder zumindest begriffen (...) zu werden. Das heißt, jede einzelne wendet sich an den allgemeingebildeten Leser, ohne sich bewußt zu sein, daß die beiden anderen das gleiche Ziel verfolgen. Dies impliziert die Möglichkeit, den unreflektierten Anspruch auf Gemeinverständlichkeit zu hinterfragen. Dementsprechend läßt sich vermuten, daß die wachsende Verschwommenheit des Gegenstandes der Wissenschaftsforschung die Kehrseite der erstrebten Gemeinverständlichkeit ist. Ein äußerliches Merkmal unseres Verfahrens manifestiert sich in der vielfachen Verwendung des der Alltagssprache entlehnten Wortes "Vokabular". Darin äußert sich lediglich ein sprachlicher Kunstgriff, um eine langwierige sprachanalytische Auseinandersetzung zu vermeiden. Worauf es ankommt, ist allein die Feststellung, daß den untersuchten Vokabularen strukturelle Regelmäßigkeiten anhaften, die innerhalb der konventionellen Wissenschaftsforschung nicht erklärt werden könne. Ähnlich ist auch die statistische Darstellungsweise nur ein vorläufiges Hilfsmittel zur Veranschaulichung dieser Beobachtungen: ein Gerüst, das, im Sinne Wittgensteins , nach dem Gebrauch nicht mehr benötigt wird. (shrink)

The aim of the study was to determine the acceptance and perception of Nigerian patients to medical photography. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed among Nigerian patients attending oral and maxillofacial surgery and plastic surgery clinics of 3 tertiary health institutions. Information requested included patients' opinion about consent process, capturing equipment, distribution and accessibility of medical photographs. The use of non-identifiable medical photographs was more acceptable than identifiable to respondents for all purposes (P = 0.003). Most respondents were favourably disposed to (...) photographs being taken for inclusion in the case note, but opposed to identifiable photographs being used for other purposes most especially in medical websites and medical journals. Female respondents preferred non-identifiable medical photographs to identifiable ones (P = 0.001). Most respondents (78%) indicated that their consent be sought for each of the outline needs for medical photography. Half of the respondents indicated that identifiable photographs may have a negative effect on their persons; and the most commonly mentioned effects were social stigmatization, bad publicity and emotional/psychological effects. Most of the respondents preferred the use of hospital-owned camera to personal camera/personal camera-phone for their medical photographs. Most respondents (67.8%) indicated that they would like to be informed about the use of their photographs on every occasion, and 74% indicated that they would like to be informed of the specific journal in which their medical photographs are to be published. In conclusion, non-identifiable rather than identifiable medical photography is acceptable to most patients in the studied Nigerian environment. The use of personal camera/personal camera-phone should be discouraged as its acceptance by respondents is very low. Judicious use of medical photography is therefore advocated to avoid breach of principle of privacy and confidentiality in medical practice. (shrink)

In this paper we present six criteria for assessing proposed solutions to environmental risk problems. To assess the final criterion-the criterion of ethical responsibility-we suggest another series of criteria. However, before these criteria can be used to address ethical problems, business persons must be wiIling to discuss the problem in ethical terms. Yet many decision makers are unwilling to do so. Drawing on research by James Waters and Frederick Bird, we discuss this “moral muteness”-the inability or unwillingness to use morallanguage (...) to solve moral problems-and suggest some underlying causes of moral muteness. (shrink)

The recent reemergence of theories that emphasize the semantic and conceptual aspects of emotions has also brought to attention questions about their rationality. There are essentially two standard senses in which emotions can be assessed for their rationality. First, emotions can be said to be categorically rational insofar as they presuppose our psychological capacities to be clearly conscious of distinctions, to engage and manipulate concepts, and hence to provide intentional descriptions as reasons for what we feel and are moved to (...) do. For this "cognitive" rationality we can apply the usual standards intrinsic to the processes of belief formation such as coherence, consistency, inferential validity, and appropriateness of evidence. Secondly, and derivatively of "rationality" as a teleological or strategic notion, emotions can be thought of as rational or irrational depending upon their function in fulfilling certain specified human purposes. While neither adhering to nor dismissing what these two mainstream perspectives afford, the following thesis is an alternative, yet complementary, project. Its aim is to "rationalize" emotions through insights obtained in programmatic examinations of their relationship to a number of critical features of being human: intentionality, expression and language, sense of self, responsibility, self-deception, and value cognition and moral agency. The idea is less to fit emotions within some formulaic description of rationality and more to let its potential definition emerge subsequently to these investigations. This reflects a conviction that rationality is not a unitary property of our minds but a complex stance towards the world. It also exhibits an awareness that, as evidenced by current debates, "rationality" is very much a contested notion. (shrink)

In this first lecture Quine argues for a physicalistic monism and examines how mentalistic discourse can be located in that framework. He defends the following standard: a mental event qualifies as physically genuine if it is specifiable strictly by physiological description, presumably neurological, without any appeal to mentalistic terms. He further characterizes the basic mentalistic level that his view can accept: the learning process involving perception, expectation, action and pleasure, which all have important neural analogues. It is from this starting (...) point that he further speculates how it is possible to move from such perceptual events to our knowledge of nature. Lastly, he reflects more generally on what epistemology looks like when it is placed within this physicalist framework with its focus on language. (shrink)