In his paper ‘On what there’s not’, Joseph Melia disavows commitment to the existence of objects like average mothers, possibilities, numbers, etc. Since quantification over such objects is at times unavoidable, Melia tries to argue that we can deny the existence of such objects despite the fact that our (true) theories of the world quantify over them. Melia calls this ‘weaseling’. In this paper, I argue that these assumptions of Melia’s render his position incoherent.

A son retour d'Allemagne, Ortega fit face à deux grands défis philosophiques : (1) le culte de l'irrationnel dans le travail d'Unamuno et (2) les lacunes qu'il a constatées dans la philosophie husserlienne. Meditations on Quixote (1914) fut sa première réponse à l'un et l'autre. Ce premier travail était un préliminaire à des exposés ultérieurs de sa philosophie arrivée à maturité. Ces efforts atteignirent un point culminant notable dans ¿Qué es filosofía? (1929).

Yet, he also says that it is philosophically indeterminate which criterion for what exists is correct. Nominalism is the view that certain objects ( i.e ., abstract objects) do not exist, and not the view that it is philosophically indeterminate whether or not they do. I resolve the dilemma that Azzouni's claims pose: Azzouni is a non-factualist about what exists, but he is a factualist about which criterion for what exists our community of speakers has adopted. It is in the (...) latter sense only that Azzouni can call himself a nominalist. My thanks to Jody Azzouni and to an anonymous referee for helpful suggestions. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Ontological naturalism is the view that our best construal of what there is, is what science says there is. This paper argues that while such a doctrine is very appealing, unfortunately, determining what there is, is neither as simple, nor as straightforward, as ontological naturalism would have it seem. Determining what there is, it is claimed, involves three steps. First, one must decide which part of scientific discourse should be taken as true. One must then regiment that part of scientific (...) discourse, and finally, one has to apply a criterion for ontological commitment to that regimented discourse. This paper will concentrate on the first and third of these tasks. It is argued that resolving the tasks these steps put before us requires the employment of philosophical maneuvers, that is, maneuvers that neither originate within, nor are ratified by, the practice of science. But these are maneuvers that the ontological naturalist is not entitled to. Thus, ontological naturalism is not a feasible doctrine. (shrink)

This study aimed to identify the learning and business incubation processes and their impact on developing the performance of business incubators in Gaza Strip, and the study relied on the descriptive analytical approach, and the study population consisted of all employees working in business incubators in Gaza Strip in addition to experts and consultants in incubators where their total number reached (62) individuals, and the researchers used the questionnaire as a main tool to collect data through the comprehensive survey method, (...) where (55) questionnaires were retrieved with a recovery rate of (88.7%). The results of the study showed that there is a high approval of the variables of the study, where the dimension of incubation operations came with a relative weight (84.89%), followed by the learning dimension which got a relative weight (82.50%), while the performance level of the incubators got a relative weight (80.12%) and as the study results showed There is a positive relationship statistically between the two dimensions of learning and business incubation processes and performance development in business incubators, and the linear regression analysis model showed that the main effect in improving the performance of business incubators is "after business incubation operations" while it showed weak effect after learning. The study came out with several recommendations, the most important of which is that business incubators seek to reinforce the learning process and incubation processes for business, and the need to periodically evaluate their performance, and that a more effective mechanism be designed to follow up with companies after the end of the incubation period and monitor the progress of these companies. (shrink)

To augment the consumption of the ever growing production of processed foods, food companies are specifically targeting children with their advertisements. Advertising has even infiltrated the educational system in the form of corporate sponsored “educational materials.” This paper discusses the effects such aggressive forms of advertising have on the development of personal autonomy, or self-governance. I argue that the bad reasoning skills such advertisements promote undermine the development of the very abilities children need to become adults capable of making rational (...) choices. A detailed look at several types of food advertisements aimed at children supports this claim. (shrink)

This dissertation focuses on the question of whether or not we can adjudicate between competing criteria for what exists. A criterion for what exists provides the necessary and sufficient conditions for what sorts of entities are real. It tells us which property, or which set of properties, an entity must possess to count as existing. Example: an entity exists if and only if it has causal powers. ;My thesis, in this project, is that we are not in a position to (...) adjudicate between competing criteria for what exists. A criterion for what exists is philosophical bedrock, and it isn't possible for us to slide any justification underneath it. ;The first chapters of the dissertation focus on four candidate criteria for what exists: the causal criterion , the criterion of causal explanation , the criterion of best explanation , and the criterion of indispensability . My purpose is not to defend any of these criteria, nor to work out what exactly falls under them, but to get a good statement of each criterion, so that we have a set of possible candidates to adjudicate between. ;I then move to defend my main thesis. To this end, I examine four groups of arguments that might be used to defend a criterion for what exists: arguments from Quine's criterion, epistemic arguments, inductive arguments, and metaphysical arguments. I then try to show that each type of argument has to fail. (shrink)

Terrorism, ethnocentrism, religious tension, competition over limited resources, war - these are just a few of the problems and challenges that have emerged in today's global economy. Globalization both implies and requires economic interdependence; and this should bring with it a heightened sense of the interconnectedness of the participating societies. But unfortunately, as recent events indicate, rather than our having formed a global community, today's society is more fragmented than ever. In light of this, education faces some formidable new challenges. (...) How do we prepare future citizens for the world they will live in? How do we teach future generations to embrace the paradox of accepting the value of multiculturalism despite the conflicts it has produced? How do we instill religious tolerance in a time when fundamentalism has become inextricably tied with terrorism? How do we promote economic growth in the face of overpopulation and its depletion of resources? The authors of this collection of essays explore these and related challenges, and they suggest some novel ways of dealing with them. (shrink)

Many philosophers regard scientific practice as the final arbiter in ontology. In this short paper, I argue that the very philosophers who profess to derive their ontological commitments from scientific practice impose certain views on the theories established by that practice that the practice itself does not support. This is not consistent with their view that science tells us what there is.

For Quine, the ontological commitments of a discourse are what fall under its (objectual) quantifiers. The recent literature, however, is beginning to move away from this picture. There are direct challenges to Quine's criterion, and there are also attempts to provide alternatives. Azzouni suggests that the ontological commitments of a discourse should be determined by an existence predicate instead. The availability of this alternative forces an adjudication between Qune's criterion and the predicate approach to ontological commitment. I argue that to (...) adjudicate between these criteria for ontological commitment, we need first to adjudicate between criteria for what exists. (shrink)

This paper focuses on an argument against the existence of mathematical objects called the “Makes No Difference Argument” (MND). Roughly, MND claims that whether or not mathematical objects exist makes no difference, and that therefore, we have no reason to believe in them. The paper analyzes four different versions of MND for their merits. It concludes that the defender of the existence of mathematical objects (the mathematical Platonist) does have some retorts to the first three versions of MND, but that (...) no adequate reply is possible to the fourth, and most crucial, version of MND. That version argues that mathematical objects make no difference to our epistemic processes: they play no role in the process of obtaining mathematical knowledge. (shrink)

Many philosophers (such as, for instance, Nancy Cartwright, Brian Ellis, and Hartry Field) regard scientific practice as the final arbiter in ontology. In this short paper, I argue that the very philosophers who profess to derive their ontological commitments from scientific practice impose certain views on the theories established by that practice that the practice itself does not support. This is not consistent with their view that science tells us what there is.

This paper argues that, contrary to the views of Nancy Cartwright and Brian Ellis, explanations are factive: if a statement is taken to be an explanation, it also has to be accepted as true. Taking explanations to be true, in turn, seems to imply that all the entities posited in explanations are real. But this is precisely what some philosophers, such as Cartwright and Ellis, want to deny. What these philosophers do not want to deny, however, is that such statements (...) do explain. As a result, they see themselves forced to reject the facticity of explanation, a strategy that is unacceptable in my view. In order to avoid the further conclusion that all of the entities explanations posit exist, I propose to separate truth from ontology: explanations can be true, but the truth of these explanations alone does not commit us to the entities that these explanations posit. To determine where the ontological commitments of our statements lie, we must instead start with a criterion (a necessary and sufficient condition) for what exists. For instance, if all and only entities with causal powers are real, then this tells us that the only entities our true statements are committed to are entities with causal powers. (shrink)

In psychiatry, pharmacological research has played a crucial role in the formulation, revision, and refinement of neurobiological theories of psychopathology. Besides being utilized as potential treatments for various mental disorders, pharmacological drugs play an important epistemic role as experimental instruments that help scientists uncover the neurobiological underpinnings of mental disorders (Tsou, 2012). Interventions with psychiatric patients using pharmacological drugs provide researchers with information about the neurobiological causes of mental disorders that cannot be obtained in other ways. This important source of (...) evidence for the biological causes of mental disorder is often overlooked in philosophical analyses of psychiatry, especially in skeptical analyses that debase the biological aspects of psychopathology (e.g., Szasz, 1960; Scheff, 1963; Laing, 1967). In discussing pharmacological interventions as a form of evidence for the physical basis of mental disorders, this paper aims to clarify the nature, reliability, and limitations of this evidence. In addition, it illustrates the central role that pharmacological findings in applied clinical contexts play in the acquisition of neurobiological knowledge in research contexts. (shrink)

This paper analyzes what may have been a mistake by pianist Thelonious Monk playing a jazz solo in 1958. Even in a Monk composition designed for patterned mayhem, a note can sound out of pattern. We reframe the question of whether the note was a mistake and ask instead about how Monk handles the problem. Amazingly, he replays the note into a new pattern that resituates its jarring effect in retrospect. The mistake, or better, the mis-take , was “saved” by (...) subsequent notes. Our analysis, supported by reflections from jazz musicians and the philosopher John Dewey, encourages a reformulation of plans, takes, and mis-takes as categories for the interpretation of contingency, surprise, and repair in all human activities. A final section suggests that mistakes are essential to the practical plying and playing of knowledge into performances, particularly those that highlight learning. (shrink)

Jonathan Y. Tsou examines and defends positions on central issues in philosophy of psychiatry. The positions defended assume a naturalistic and realist perspective and are framed against skeptical perspectives on biological psychiatry. Issues addressed include the reality of mental disorders; mechanistic and disease explanations of abnormal behavior; definitions of mental disorder; natural and artificial kinds in psychiatry; biological essentialism and the projectability of psychiatric categories; looping effects and the stability of mental disorders; psychiatric classification; and the validity of the DSM's (...) diagnostic categories. The main argument defended by Tsou is that genuine mental disorders are biological kinds with harmful effects. This argument opposes the dogma that mental disorders are necessarily diseases that result from biological dysfunction. Tsou contends that the broader ideal of biological kinds offers a more promising and empirically ascertainable naturalistic standard for assessing the reality of mental disorders and the validity of psychiatric categories. (shrink)

Purpose. The dynamics and pace of social and economic transformations that are characteristic of modern society, lead to an increase in tension and the destruction of habitual stereotypes – ideals, values, norms, patterns of behaviour that unite people. These moments encourage us to rethink the understanding of "security" essence, in particular, psychological, which emphasizes the urgency of its study in the philosophical and sociocultural coordinates. Theoretical basis of the research is based on the philosophical methodology of K. Jaspers, E. Fromm (...) and the A. Maslow’s psychological approach to understanding of a person. Originality. Psychological security is considered at different levels: first and foremost, society is a characteristic of social security, that is an analysis of how today’s social technologies, social changes affect the quality of life of the country’s population; secondly, the social environment – the family, the immediate environment, reference groups, training teams; thirdly, a person is an experience of his own security-insecurity, when it is possible to talk about the manifestations of psychological violence, when certain behavioral acts contribute to the violation of the security of the other or to self-destruction. It is found out that the knowledge of psychological security is closely connected with the socio-historical conditions of being, with the level of development of material and spiritual culture, with the interests and values prevailing in society, which determines its ontological, epistemological and axiological features. The presented issue is considered in the correlation of psychological security with types of scientific rationality – classical, nonclassical and post-nonclassical approaches, within the framework of which various perspectives, aspects, forms and types of psychological security are studied. Conclusions. The concept of security requires a systematic description of its manifestations, types, levels, concepts: security as the absence of dangers ; security as a certain activity to ensure or to prevent any threats or dangers ; security as a conscious necessity, the value of the individual. The study systematizes various ideas about psychological security in accordance with the logic of scientific knowledge: in the mainstream of classical, non-classical and post-nonclassical approaches. (shrink)

Ideal for students with little or no background in philosophy, Ethical Choices: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy with Cases provides a concise, balanced, and highly accessible introduction to ethics. Featuring an especially lucid and engaging writing style, the text surveys a wide range of ethical theories and perspectives including consequentialist ethics, deontological ethics, natural and virtue ethics, the ethics of care, and ethics and religion.Each chapter of Ethical Choices also includes compelling case studies that are carefully matched with the theoretical (...) material. Many of these cases address issues that students can relate directly to their own lives: the drinking age, student credit card debt, zero tolerance policies, grade inflation, and video games. Other cases discuss current topics like living wills, obesity, human trafficking, torture "lite," universal health care, and just-war theory. The cases provide students with practice in addressing real-life moral choices, as well as opportunities to evaluate the usefulness and applicability of each ethical theory. Every case study concludes with a set of Thought Questions to guide students as they reflect upon the issues raised by that case.Ethical Choices is enhanced by several pedagogical features. These include summaries at the end of each section, lists of key terms, questions For Reflection and Discussion at the end of each chapter, Guidelines for a Case Study Analysis, and suggestions For Further Reading that include Internet sources. Starred sections indicate more advanced material that may be included at the instructor's discretion. A companion website at www.oup.com/us/burnor contains additional resources for both students and instructors: chapter outlines, flashcards of key terms, sets of Helpful Hints to further aid students in mastering the material, and an additional chapter on our Moral Obligations Towards the Future. (shrink)

Using the corpus of JSTOR articles, we investigate the role of gender in collaboration patterns across the scholarly landscape by analyzing gender-based homophily--the tendency for researchers to co-author with individuals of the same gender. For a nuanced analysis of gender homophily, we develop methodology necessitated by the fact that the data comprises heterogeneous sub-disciplines and that not all authorships are exchangeable. In particular, we distinguish three components of gender homophily in collaborations: a structural component that is due to demographics and (...) non-gendered authorship norms of a scholarly community, a compositional component which is driven by varying gender representation across sub-disciplines, and a behavioral component which we define as the remainder of observed homophily after its structural and compositional components have been taken into account. Using minimal modeling assumptions, we measure and test for behavioral homophily. We find that significant behavioral homophily can be detected across the JSTOR corpus and show that this finding is robust to missing gender indicators in our data. In a secondary analysis, we show that the proportion of female representation in a field is positively associated with significant behavioral homophily. (shrink)

Planteamiento de la naturaleza, de la filosof a y de su raz n hist rica, al contemplar panor micamente la totalidad de su pasado e intentar reconstruir el dram tico suceso de su origen.

Using William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the play-within-the play, The Murder of Gonzago, as a case study, this essay argues that theatrical utterances constitute a special case of language usage not previously elucidated: the utterance of a statement with propositional content in theatre functions as an event. In short, the propositional content of a particular p (e.g. p1, p2, p3 …), whether or not it is true, is only understood—and understood to be true—if p1 is uttered in a particular time, place, (...) and situation (i.e. during a theatrical event); otherwise, the propositional content in those theatrical utterances can either be false or contingently true. (shrink)

The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

In this text presented here, it has been tried to Show the difference between Heidegger’s first and second era understanding of language. In his first era, to manifest Heidegger’s understanding of language, outlines of Being and Time has been discussed and concerned chapter is read carefully. To manifest his understanding of language in second era, the work of On the Way to the Language has been taken as a base. With this comparative study, it has been tried to shown the (...) change that “language” has undergone in Heidegger philosophy. (shrink)

In 1996 Varela established the neurophenomenology research programme. This project was not designed to solve what Chalmers has defined as the hard problem, but rather to offer a methodological remedy for this problem. The NRP seeks to bridge the explanatory gap by creating a reciprocal dialogue between the firstperson perspective on the one hand and third-person perspective on the other. Yet, twenty years after Varela's NRP kicked off, it seems that the explanatory gap is still very much alive. This paper (...) argues that as long as subjective experience remains at least somewhat inaccessible, we will not be able to bridge this gap. (shrink)

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015. When reasoning about knowledge of procedures under imperfect information, the explicit representation of epistemic possibilities blows up the S5like models of standard epistemic logic. To overcome this drawback, in this paper, we propose a new logical framework based on compact models without epistemic accessibility relations for reasoning about knowledge of procedures. Inspired by the 3-valued abstraction method in model checking, we introduce hyper models which encode the imperfect procedural information. We give a highly non-trivial 2-valued (...) semantics of epistemic dynamic logic on such models while validating all the usual S5 axioms. Our approach is suitable for applications where procedural information is ‘learned’ incrementally, as demonstrated by various examples. (shrink)

Autobiography and phenomenology: Preface for Germans (1934).--Phenomenology and theory of knowledge: Sensation, construction, and intuition (1913). On the concept of sensation (1913). Consciousness, the object, and its three distances (1916).--Phenomenology and esthetics: An essay in esthetics by way of a preface (1914). Esthetics on the streetcar (1916).--An esthetics of historical reason: The idea of theater: an abbreviated view (1946). Reviving the paintings (Velázquez, chapter I) (1946).

Let ≤r and ≤sbe two binary relations on 2ℕ which are meant as reducibilities. Let both relations be closed under finite variation and consider the uniform distribution on 2ℕ, which is obtained by choosing elements of 2ℕ by independent tosses of a fair coin.Then we might ask for the probability that the lower ≤r-cone of a randomly chosen set X, that is, the class of all sets A with A ≤rX, differs from the lower ≤s-cone of X. By c osure (...) under finite variation, the Kolmogorov 0-1 aw yields immediately that this probability is either 0 or 1; in case it is 1, the relations are said to be separable by random oracles.Again by closure under finite variation, for every given set A, the probability that a randomly chosen set X is in the upper ≤r-cone of A is either 0 or 1; let Almostr be the class of sets for which the upper ≤r-cone has measure 1. In the following, results about separations by random oracles and about Almost classes are obtained in the context of generalized reducibilities, that is, for binary relations on 2ℕ which can be defined by a countable set of total continuous functionals on 2ℕ in the same way as the usual resource-bounded reducibilities are defined by an enumeration of appropriate oracle Turing machines. The concept of generalized reducibility comprises a natura resource-bounded reducibilities, but is more general; in particular, it does not involve any kind of specific machine model or even effectivity. The results on generalized reducibilities yield corollaries about specific resource-bounded reducibilities, including several results which have been shown previously in the setting of time or space bounded Turing machine computations. (shrink)

In his 1936 paper,On the Concept of Logical Consequence, Tarski introduced the celebrated definition oflogical consequence: “The sentenceσfollows logicallyfrom the sentences of the class Γ if and only if every model of the class Γ is also a model of the sentenceσ.” [55, p. 417] This definition, Tarski said, is based on two very basic intuitions, “essential for the proper concept of consequence” [55, p. 415] and reflecting common linguistic usage: “Consider any class Γ of sentences and a sentence which (...) follows from the sentences of this class. From an intuitive standpoint it can never happen that both the class Γ consists only of true sentences and the sentenceσis false. Moreover, … we are concerned here with the concept of logical, i.e.,formal, consequence.” [55, p. 414] Tarski believed his definition of logical consequence captured the intuitive notion: “It seems to me that everyone who understands the content of the above definition must admit that it agrees quite well with common usage. … In particular, it can be proved, on the basis of this definition, that every consequence of true sentences must be true.” [55, p. 417] The formality of Tarskian consequences can also be proven. Tarski's definition of logical consequence had a key role in the development of the model-theoretic semantics of modern logic and has stayed at its center ever since. (shrink)

The renowned Sri Lankan scholar Y. Karunadasa examines the Abhidhamma perspective on the nature of phenomenal existence. He begins with a discussion of dhamma theory, which provides the ontological foundation for Abhidhamma philosophy. (The dhamma theory is an Abhidhammic innovation that gives an overview of the bare phenomenon that form this world; it's a theory of real existents.) He then explains the category of "the conceptual" as the Abhidhamma's answer to the objects of common-sense realism. Among the other topics discussed (...) are the theory of double truth (ultimate and conceptual truth), the analysis of mind, the theory of cognition, the analysis of matter, the nature of time and space, the theory of momentary being, and conditional relations. The volume concludes with an appendix that examines why the Theravāda came to be known as Vibhajjavāda, "the doctrine of analysis." Not limiting himself to abstract analysis, Karunadasa draws out the Abhidhamma's underlying premises and purposes--the Abhidhamma provides a detailed description of reality in order to identify all sources of suffering and thereby point to a complete cure for the problem of suffering. (shrink)