In his presidential address (American Philosophical Association, Western Division), William Frankena sets himself against the relativist and irrationalist drift of our time in asserting that ?It is of the essence of a normative judgment to claim that it is justified, rational or valid?, and that fully informed men of reason will ultimately agree about value questions. Applauding the return to reason, this note finds a need for further clarification on the definition of normative terms, the justification of normative judgments, the (...) basis of obligation to be rational, and on the promise of agreement among men of reason in axiology. (shrink)

Part One. In our strife to express the meanings of moral terms, we have neglected the one transparently built?in meaning: ?A man ought to keep his promises? could mean ?A man owes it to other men to keep his promises. Such is his debt and duty ? just what is due or owed?. This proposal is supported by the evidence of major languages of the world, ancient and modern, in all of which identical or closely related words serve to express (...) both the idea of material debt and that of moral obligation. But on study the revealing model and analogue of ?moral debt? is found, not in debts of exchange, the simplest and most obvious class of debts, but in debts of shared responsibility. Working from such models we conclude that ?A ought to do X? means X is part of A's share in the cost of the good community, the common cause and stake of all mankind? (shrink)

This study identifies and explores evolving concepts of trust and privacy in the context of user-generated health data. We define “user-generated health data” as data captured through devices or software and used outside of traditional clinical settings for tracking personal health data. The investigators conducted qualitative research through semistructured interviews with researchers, health technology start-up companies, and members of the general public to inquire why and how they interact with and understand the value of user-generated health data. We found significant (...) results concerning new attitudes toward trust, privacy, and sharing of health data outside of clinical settings that conflict with regulations governing health data within clinical settings. Members of the general public expressed little concern about sharing health data with the companies that sold the devices or apps they used, and indicated that they rarely read the “terms and conditions” detailing how their data may be exploited by the company or third-party affiliates before consenting to them. In contrast, interviews with researchers revealed significant resistance among potential research participants to sharing their user-generated health data for purposes of scientific study. The widespread rhetoric of personalization and social sharing in “user-generated culture” appears to facilitate an understanding of user-generated health data that deemphasizes the risk of exploitation in favor of loosely defined benefits to individual and social well-being. We recommend clarification and greater transparency of regulations governing data sharing related to health. (shrink)

This paper represents an attempt to indicate the idea of a logic slightly more general than sentential calculus, which is applicable to many philosophical issues. In particular, I shall use this generalized calculus to discuss a variation of the logic of imperatives. In part I, certain general considerations about indicative calculi provide the basis, as well as indicate the need, for the more formal construction of part II. Part III illustrates the analytical power of the tool constructed, and tries to (...) show its relevance for philosophy. (shrink)

As everyone who has looked into almost any philosophical journal within the last year is aware, Charles Morris has written a book on signs. More precisely, he has elaborated a strain of thought found in his very earliest writings. A first, partial culmination of these ideas is his monograph Foundations of the Theory of Signs. Since the publication of FTS, Morris has conducted experiments relative to human sign behavior. SLB, I believe, is a revision and expansion of FTS to take (...) into account new material supplied by these experiments and increased insight into the nature of behavior psychology. For Morris now asserts explicitly, what before he only hinted: that “Semiotic thus becomes a part of the empirical science of behavior, and can utilize whatever principles and predictions the general theory of behavior has attained or can attain.”. (shrink)

This paper explores the tension in Kierkegaard’s Christian discourses between Kierkegaard’s overt emphasis on Scriptural authority and Kierkegaard’s imaginative Scriptural use, through an analysis of the discourse series, “Thoughts That Wound from Behind—for Upbuilding.” The paper argues that Kierkegaard employs Scriptural language both imaginatively to create distanciation and directly to create confrontation, without differentiating how Scriptural authority functions in these two uses. The paper concludes that when Kierkegaard emphasizes Scriptural authority, he is really emphasizing the authority of “Christian concepts” stabilized (...) in Christian tradition, and that he utilizes Scripture freely and imaginatively to challenge readers with those authoritative concepts. (shrink)

In his reexamination of the relationship between quality and quantity, Professor Plochmann has avoided the method of linguistic analysis in favor of a more traditional method of philosophizing. Since I agree with him that in general quality and quantity are irreducible one to the other, but may both be reducible to some category more fundamental than either, my comments are to be considered supplementary to his. In particular, I should like to see what clarifications, if any, arise if one considers (...) qualities and quantities from the purely linguistic point of view. (shrink)

The Wittgensteinian thesis that “the result of philosophy is not a number of ‘philosophical propositions,’ but to make propositions clear” has been given various interpretations by subsequent philosophers. Thus, for example, certain British philosophers have confined themselves to the analysis of colloquial language and have developed great skill in sophistical demonstrations intended to show that there is no such thing as a philosophical problem. Another group of philosophers considers language solely as a phenomenon of human behavior and attempts to clarify (...) confusions and misunderstandings within language by utilizing the statistical techniques of contemporary behavior psychology. Still other philosophers, under the impact of logical positivism, have maintained that the clarification of propositions entails the construction of a language with precise rules of formation, transformation, and reference into which one could translate all the non-contradictory portions of ordinary spoken language. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a third way in debates over the scope of phenomenal consciousness, in the form of a novel synthesis of liberal and conservative introspective observations. My primary claim i...

Part Two, Area A. Resuming the investigation set afoot in Part 1,1 we there proposed that subliminally people do commonly sense moral obligation as a kind of debt (chreos) of shared responsibility ? every person's share in the cost of a good community which is the common cause of all. Testing this ?common understanding? by the facts of human nature and community, this article examines the substratum of my good, good of others, idea of good community, of common cause in (...) it, of shared responsibility for it, of consequent debt of all to whole, and of human freedom and capacity to estimate and pay on a basis to be examined in Area B projected. ?Elementary freedom? depends on capacity for truthful purpose and for independent judgment, ?ultimate freedom? on a determined truthful purpose coupled with adequacy of ideas for interpretation of entire experience. Every human is free in the elementary sense, and accordingly responsible. Ultimate freedom has to be won, and actively affirmed. (shrink)

Religious communities often tend to distinguish themselves from otherreligious communities – especially from diverging communities rooting in their own tradition. Social stigmata are brought forward to describe these deviant socalledsects: They were immoral, their adherents sexually deviant and havingstrange, improper acquaintances. Calling themselves religion is said to be a trickto fool the simple ones out of their money. These topoi can be found in heresiographies,guidebooks on sects and in public discourse throughout the centuries.They are not even restricted to religious groups, (...) but are part on the polemicalliterature against secularist groups (as the German Monist League). By this continuity in terms and motives, debates on sects are a superb object toreconstruct borders of tolerance and constructions of “the other” historically.The paper restricts itself to sources from the German Early Modern Period andModernity to strengthen the arguments; but the thesis can be held in general.With this temporal and local focus, we encounter a sphere of cultural continuityas well as cultural change, seeing the structural continuities as well as assimilationsand thus internal developments. (shrink)