I TRY to do the following things in this paper. I. To show briefly how one might argue for the mutual dependence of our demonstrative and descriptive conventions as they now stand. II. To suggest that this duality of convention may be a dispensable, though in some ways desirable, aspect of language and that if one of these conventions is non-essential it is our descriptive conventions. III. To show something of the philosophical implications of such a ‘non-word’ language. Perhaps not (...) the least uninteresting among these implications is what may then be said about our demonstrative and descriptive conventions as they now stand and especially what this might mean for attempts to reduce our demonstrative to our descriptive conventions, which involves us again in section I. It might be said that, while section I offers some linguistic facts, sections II and III attempt to show the contingency of some of these linguistic facts. (shrink)

I THE CONCEPT OF ACTION Among the most basic of legal concepts of concern to the practitioners of law at all levels we find those of defence, culpability, ...

Rights have two properties which prima facie appear to be inconsistent. The first is that they are conditional in the sense that one some occasions it is always justifiable for someone to act in a way which appears to be inconsistent with someone else's rights, such as when the defence of necessity applies. The second is that rights are indefeasible in the sense that they are not subject to being defeated our outweighed by utilitarian or policy considerations. If we view (...) rules and the rights which they establish as being subject to a ceteris paribus clause, the form of which generates out the exceptions, the conditionality of rights becomes reconcilable with their nondefeasibility. Such a view of rules and rights would entail that the goals of the law and their orderings be considered as a part of the law. When so viewed, propositions about goals and their orderings become legitimate premises for legal reasoning, furnishing solutions to hard cases in the law of torts, without resort to balancing of interests or judicial discretion. (shrink)

The book analyzes how one might philosophize about some of the most difficult and controversial issues in ethics and politics without abandoning either the demands of rigor or the joys of clear vistas.

A clarification of ambiguities in the notion of free decision. Concentrating on ordinary English usage, Ofstad distinguishes six senses of free decision. One of these, freedom as power, is exhaustively treated. A skillful attempt is made to relate the analyses of free decision, which form the bulk of the book, to the concepts of duty, responsibility, and the author's own ethical position. One helpful appendix lists and indexes all propositions concerning freedom of decision as it is analysed throughout the book. (...) --E. S. C. (shrink)

This is an exceptionally clear study of the time-theories of Bergson, St. Augustine, Heidegger, Buber, Schelling and Franz v. Baader, as well as an attempt to show the relationship between time, freedom and consciousness. Following Schelling and v. Baader, Kümmel views past, present and future as "powers" which only freeze into explicitly temporal dimensions upon reflection. Kümmel agrees with Heidegger that our attitude toward time is a revelation of our being-in-the-world, but he puts more emphasis on our relation to the (...) past than Heidegger ever did.—E. S. C. (shrink)

This target article draws together two groups of experimental studies on the control of human movement through peripheral feedback and centrally generated signals of motor commands. First, during natural movement, feedback from muscle, joint, and cutaneous afferents changes; in human subjects these changes have reflex and kinesthetic consequences. Recent psychophysical and microneurographic evidence suggests that joint and even cutaneous afferents may have a proprioceptive role. Second, the role of centrally generated motor commands in the control of normal movements and movements (...) following acute and chronic deafferentation is reviewed. There is increasing evidence that subjects can perceive their motor commands under various conditions, but that this is inadequate for normal movement; deficits in motor performance arise when the reliance on proprioceptive feedback is abolished either experimentally or because of pathology. During natural movement, the CNS appears to have access to functionally useful input from a range of peripheral receptors as well as from internally generated command signals. The unanswered questions that remain suggest a number of avenues for further research. (shrink)

Vraagt onze samenleving om een nieuwe politieke formule, om met Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) te spreken? Op het eerste gezicht niet. De democratie is stevig verankerd in de Grondwet en verdragen en is ingebed in de rechtsstaat, en zowel democratie als rechtsstaat maken deel uit van ons collectieve bewustzijn. Toch is er wat aan de hand in de verhouding tussen overheid, samenleving en individu, zoals de inmiddels structurele onvrede met het publieke domein laat zien. Dat vraagt om een richtinggevende doordenking (...) van de vooronderstellingen van ons democratisch bestel en de fundamenten waarop het berust. Dat is wat dit boek zich ten doel stelt. Het biedt toekomstgerichte ideeën voor ons publieke domein aan de hand van kernbegrippen als legitimiteit, staat, politiek, instituties, identiteit, burgerschap, kerk en theologie. Het gedachtegoed van Tocqueville, die geldt als een van de grootste en meest interessante denkers over de moderne democratie, de democratische samenleving en de democratische mens, vormt daarvoor de inspiratiebron. (shrink)

Handbook of Compliance & Integrity Management' provides a scientific underpinning for the practice of compliance. The compliance discipline in companies and financial institutions has grown exponentially in recent years. In spite of a plethora of works on compliance, the academic discipline on compliance is still in its infancy. This book, which is the result of the researches conducted by the Post-Doctoral Education in Compliance and Integrity Management of the VU University Amsterdam, examines the subject from such crucial and varied perspectives (...) as ethics, behavioural science, risk management, accounting, and European and international law. Much more than a critical approach to the existing practice of supervision, it provides a wealth of information, guidance, and valuable insights into the day-to-day work of compliance officers. (shrink)

Unlike its predecessors, this systematic survey of the law of Athens is based on explicit discussion of how the subject might be studies, incorporating topics such as the democratic political system and social structure. Technical and legal terms are explained in a comprehensive glossary.

This paper summarizes the longstanding debate over psychology's fragmentation by illustrating two principal impediments to the fostering of consensus and unity. The paper then discusses the important benefits of past dialogue concerning these issues, suggesting that some progress has been made in dealing with problems of disunity and fragmentation, particularly at the metatheoretical and philosophical levels. This general discussion then forms the backdrop for the following articles, which together form a single argument in favor of a hermeneutic approach to the (...) problem of fragmentation. (shrink)

Objectives: This study aimed to determine attitudinal and self reported behavioural variations between medical students in different years to scenarios involving academic misconduct.Design: A cross-sectional study where students were given an anonymous questionnaire that asked about their attitudes to 14 scenarios describing a fictitious student engaging in acts of academic misconduct and asked them to report their own potential behaviour.Setting: Dundee Medical School.Participants: Undergraduate medical students from all five years of the course.Method: Questionnaire survey.Main measurements: Differences in medical students’ attitudes (...) to the 14 scenarios and their reported potential behaviour with regards to the scenarios in each of the years.Results: For most of the scenarios there was no significant difference in the response between the years. Significant differences in the responses were found for some of the scenarios across the years, where a larger proportion of year one students regarded the scenario as wrong and would not engage in the behaviour, compared to other years. These scenarios included forging signatures, resubmitting work already completed for another part of the course, and falsifying patient information.Conclusion: Observed differences between the years for some scenarios may reflect a change in students’ attitudes and behaviour as they progress though the course. The results may be influenced by the educational experience of the students, both in terms of the learning environment and assessment methods used. These differences may draw attention to the potential but unintentional pressures placed on medical students to engage in academic misconduct. The importance of developing strategies to engender appropriate attitudes and behaviours at the undergraduate level must be recognised. (shrink)

Despite the fact that the nature of the properties of causation is rarely discussed within the mental causation debate, the implicit assumption is that they are universals as opposed to tropes. However, in recent literature on the problem of mental causation, a new solution has emerged which aims to address the problem by appealing to tropes. It is argued that if the properties of causation are tropes rather than universals, then a psychophysical reductionism can be advanced which does not face (...) the problem of multiple realizability. However, the 'trope solution' rests upon the assumption that one can combine a trope monism with a type dualism. I argue that such a combination cannot be allowed. Given a plausible interpretation of types within a trope ontology, trope monism in fact entails type monism. Consequently, if one identifies mental tropes with physical tropes, one must also identify mental and physical types and in doing so face a modified version of the multiple realizability argument. (shrink)