Though it is often claimed that some general terms are rigid designators, it has turned out to be difficult to give a satisfying definition that avoids making all general terms rigid, and even if a non-rigid reading is available, makes that non-rigid reading matter. Several authors have attempted to develop examples that meet the trivialization challenge, with Martí and Martínez-Fernández providing what is, perhaps, the most convincing strategy. I show that the type of example Martí and Martínez-Fernández offer nevertheless fails (...) to meet the trivialization challenge and, accordingly, that we should still have serious doubts about whether continuing the search for a non-trivial definition of general term rigidity would be fruitful. (shrink)

The actually-operator, understood as a rigidifier, has been employed for a range of purposes in natural language semantics. In this article I argue that the properties of the operator do not correspond to any feature of natural language or feature natural language users have access to. Nor is it needed to provide a formal representation of natural language sentences—the examples usually provided to illustrate the indispensability of the operator are much more plausibly interpreted using plural quantifiers. This lack of connection (...) to natural language is a serious worry for accounts that appeal to rigidifying operations to explain natural language phenomena, as well as a challenge to theories that appeal to the operator to capture the difference between different kinds of necessity expressed in natural language. (shrink)

According to possibilism, or non-actualism, fictional characters are possible individuals. Possibilist accounts of fiction do not only assign the intuitively correct truth-conditions to sentences in a fiction, but has the potential to provide powerful explanatory models for a wide range of phenomena associated with fiction (though these two aspects of possibilism are, I argue, crucially distinct). Apart from the classic defense by David Lewis the idea of modeling fiction in terms of possible worlds have been widely criticized. In this article, (...) I provide a defense of a possibilist account against some lines of criticism. To do so, I assume that names for fictional characters are directly referential and a possible-worlds model that accommodates transworld identity. On this background, I argue, it is possible to construct an elegant model of fictional discourse using familiar models of information exchange in ordinary discourse, and I sketch how this model can be used to i) make a natural distinction between fictional and counterfactual discourse, ii) account for creativity, and iii) sustain a natural definition of truth-in-fiction that avoids certain familiar objections to possibilism. Though I set aside questions about the metaphysical commitments of a possible-world interpretation here, there is accordingly reason to think that the battle over possibilist treatments of fiction will have to be fought over metaphysical foundations rather than technical shortcomings. (shrink)

Although it is common to claim that certain general terms or kind terms are rigid designators and that their rigidity helps explain their behavior in modal contexts, it has turned out to be surprisingly difficult to define an adequate notion of rigidity for general terms. Such definitions tend, as argued in particular by Scott Soames, to lead to a type of overgeneralization that leaves the purported rigidity of general terms explanatorily inert. In recent years, several attempts have been made to (...) circumvent the problem, and the present article focuses on a particular and potentially powerful strategy developed by Joseph LaPorte in his recent book Rigid Designation and Theoretical Identities for blocking one of the core inferences in Soames’s case against general term rigidity. I argue that the type of response LaPorte promotes is bound to fail; though it might initially appear to circumvent the threat of trivialization described by Soames, it is susceptible to a different and arguably even worse kind of trivialization challenge. In conclusion, Soames’s arguments remain a significant obstacle to identifying a non-trivializing definition of kind term rigidity, and we have good reasons to think that an explanation for the modal status of theoretical identity statements must be sought elsewhere. (shrink)

It is often thought that a notion of general term rigidity could help explain the particular behavior of natural kind terms in modal contexts. An influential strategy for developing a non-trivial account of general term rigidity appeals to essential properties of the things to which such terms apply. I show that essentialism cannot underpin a notion of rigidity that can play the expected explanatory roles. Essentialists are committed to presuppositions that themselves play those roles without implying essentialism.

The characteristic property of definite descriptions in natural language is commonly assumed to be their uniqueness requirement, although there is disagreement with respect to how occurrences should be interpreted, for instance with regard to the well-known restriction problem. I offer a novel argument against characterizing definite expressions in terms of uniqueness. If a singular definite description ?the F? implies that its denotation is the unique satisfier of ?F? (relative to a context) then there are real-life states of affairs that can (...) be described in simple first-order languages, but which we are simply unable to describe accurately in natural language. I argue, first, that there is no way to describe these states of affairs properly without using definite descriptions. Second, if definite descriptions imply uniqueness we will systematically get the wrong truth conditions, regardless of whatever semantic or pragmatic resources the defender of the uniqueness-implying approach invokes. Hence, the Russellian idea of characterizing definite descriptions in terms of uniqueness must be given up. In the final section I explain what an adequate account of definite expressions must achieve?primarily coordinating elements brought to salience by context or previous discourse?and sketch a way of accomplishing this by using a liberal version of familiarity theory. Although there may be other accounts that can do the job, the account I sketch (based on an approach that has largely been overlooked) shows promise and can easily deal with the inexpressibility problem. (shrink)

It is often thought that some general terms or kind terms, in particular natural kind terms, are rigid designators, and that a properly extended notion of singular-term rigidity can help explain the behaviour of such general terms. In this article, I argue that the only legitimate notion of general-term rigidity is a trivial one and identify some crucial asymmetries between a posteriori necessary truths involving names and a posteriori necessary truths involving general terms. If we pay attention to these asymmetries, (...) it becomes clear that attempts to draw a non-trivial rigid/non-rigid distinction for general terms are bound to fail to offer the explanations we expected. As opposed to singular terms, what is interesting about the behaviour of natural kind terms, even in modal contexts, cannot be accounted for by modal distinctions like rigidity/non-rigidity but must rather track non-modal features. (shrink)

Non-actualist theories promise straightforward accounts of meaning, truth and reference of fictional discourse but are ostensibly saddled with a Selection Problem, that multiple possible candidates satisfy the role-descriptions associated with names used in fictions and no principled way to distinguish between them; yet if names are referential, there can only be one referent. The problem is often taken to be a serious—even decisive—obstacle for non-actualism, and the aim of this article is to show that the challenge can be met. I (...) suggest that storytellers and authors fix the referents of referential terms they use by arbitrary selecting referents through simple acts of stipulation, and then determine which of the worlds containing the relevant individuals serve as truth-makers for the story by adding properties to the characters. The resulting view of reference is consistent with reasonable, foundational requirements on reference, such as a causal-historical theory, and can moreover be used to support plausible theories of truth in fiction and facilitate elegant models of fiction as a type of discourse. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrgang: 13 Heft: 2 Seiten: 116-127.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) uses the conceptualization of psychopathology to make psychiatric diagnoses operational. The use of explicit operational criteria appears to be based on an implicit neo-positivist epistemology. Operationalism involves an excessive focus on quantitative descriptions of behavior manifestations, contesting that psychopathology is understood as a deviation from the normal or the average in a given population. Consequently, the normal and the psychopathological become homogeneous. Our analysis investigates if this neo-positivist epistemology narrows (...) psychopathology conceptualization and endanger integration with the hybrid biopsychosocial model of psychiatry. Based on Georges Canguilhem’s theorization of a qualitative approach to the individual organism who is in a state of morbidity, we show that the (psychiatric) pathology also contains differences in quality. Moreover, that humans are norm-producing organisms that actively respond to changes in their internal and external environment. In this regard, the operationalization of mental disorders could include the normativity in humans, i.e., the ability to produce norms. We argue this will mitigate the one-sided psychopathology conceptualization and strengthen the relationship between psychiatric nosology and psychiatry’s hybrid biopsychosocial model. (shrink)

In this theoretical and explorative essay, two issues are discussed, which are based on personal experiences of teaching ethics. The first is what educational purpose does it serve to challenge students as ethical subjects while teaching a class? This issue is mainly discussed through an analysis of Gert Biesta’s works. He argues that an essential purpose for teachers is to enable students to appear as subjects. For this to happen, the teacher must “interrupt” the students by presenting that which challenges (...) his or her basic ethical preconceptions, which in turn forces the student to choose as a subject. However, if the teacher gives priority to such interruptions, s/he risks a conflict with his or her students. That gives rise to the second issue raised in the essay, whether the teacher should express his or her ethical perspectives while teaching ethics. The issue is discussed by analyzing Bruno Latour’s political philosophy. He argues that conflict is an essential feature in any democratic society where everyone’s concerns are presented. For that reason, he argues for the need of public “diplomats,” whose function is to enable an endeavor for peace. As diplomats, both their ethical agency and ability to judge what is worth highlighting is recognized. Thus, the essay concludes that a diplomatic teacher is someone who has the judgement to decide whether his or her ethical perspectives should be highlighted while teaching a class, or if it would disrupt an endeavor for peace. (shrink)

In this article I aim at developing a phenomenology ofillness through a critical interpretation of the worksof Sigmund Freud and Martin Heidegger. The phenomenonof ``Unheimlichkeit'' – uncanniness and unhomelikeness– is demonstrated not only to play a key role in thetheories of Freud and Heidegger, but also toconstitute the essence of the experience of illness.Two different modes of unhomelikeness – ``The minduncanny'' and ``The world uncanny'' – are in thisconnection explored as constitutive parts of thephenomenon of illness. The consequence I draw (...) fromthis analysis is that the mission of health careprofessionals must be not only to cure diseases, butactually, through devoting attention to thebeing-in-the-world of the patient, also to open uppossible paths back to homelikeness. This mission canonly be carried out if medicine acknowledges the basicimportance of the meaning-realm of the patient's life– his or her life-world characteristics. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to analyse the experience of embodiment in illness. Drawing upon Heidegger' sphenomenology and the suggestion that illness can be understood as unhomelike being-in-the-world, I try to show how the way we live our own bodies in illness is experienced precisely as unhomelike. The body is alien, yet, at the same time, myself. It involves biological processes beyond my control, but these processes still belong to me as lived by me. This a priori otherness of the (...) body presents itself in illness in an uncanny and merciless way. The unhomelike breakdown of our everyday being-in-the-world suffered in illness is explored through Heidegger's notion of the world being a “totality of relevance”, a pattern of meaning played out between different “tools”. The lived body is compared to a broken tool that alters and obstruct sour way of being “thrown” and “projecting” ourselves in the meaning patterns of the world through feelings,thoughts and actions. The similarities and differences between this unhomelikeness of illness and the specific unhomelikeness of authentic understanding,reached according to Heidegger in existential anxiety,are discussed. In order to illustrate how the lived body can present itself as “broken” and “other” to its owner, and in what way this unhomelike experience calls for help from health-care professionals, I make use of a clinical example of a severe and common disease: stroke. (shrink)

Reviews work on moral judgment motivational internalism from the last two decades.

This article offers a new account of the moral substance of shame. Through careful reflection on the motives and intentional structure of shame, I defend the claim that shame is an egocentric and morally blind emotion. I argue that shame is rooted in our desire for social affirmation and constituted by our ability to sense how we appear to others. What makes shame egocentric is that in shame we are essentially concerned about our own social worth and pained by the (...) perception of our self as socially worthless. In itself, shame entails no morally pertinent concern about others or understanding of what is morally significant. I contrast shame with the possibility of relating to others—and to oneself—with love and care. Indeed, I propose that love is essential for moral understanding and motivation. The argument of the article unfolds through critical appraisals of the main strategies for defending the moral value of shame. First, against the claim that shame entails respect for others, I argue that shame's sensitivity to the opinions of others is motivated by egocentric self-concern. Second, against the view that shame over failures to live up to moral values is morally valuable, I argue that regardless of whether the values guiding our shame are moral or not, the perspective of shame is oblivious to their moral meaning. Third, against the claim that shame is crucial for self-understanding, I argue that the desire for affirmation that drives shame is a powerful source of self-deception. (shrink)

Contributors to this volume focus on the character of Socrates as the embodiment of philosophy, employing this as a starting point for exploring various themes exposed in the Apology. These include the relation of philosophy to democracy, rhetoric, politics, or society in general, and the overarching question of what comprises the philosophic life.

This article develops a new phenomenological account of the shame people typically tend to feel when seen naked by others. Although shame at nakedness is a paradigmatic and widespread form of shame, it has been under-explored in the literature on shame. The central thesis of the article is that shame at nakedness is rooted in our desire for social affirmation and constituted by our capacity for social self-consciousness. I argue that our ability to sense how others see us and judge (...) us gives rise to a dynamic tension between our effort to control our public self-presentation and the experience of being exposed to others in an uncontrolled manner. What makes us prone to feel shame or shame anxiety at being seen naked is that we feel that we have revealed our naked and true self as potentially or actually shameful and that our public persona has been undermined. Furthermore, the vulnerability and lack of control that are part and parcel of naked exposure can be a source of shame. In my analysis, shame at nakedness encompasses both literal bodily nakedness and other kinds of uncontrolled and unguarded exposure. The article also offers an argument as to the roots of the more or less ubiquitous tendency to feel shame at exhibiting one’s genitals in public. I develop my account through critical engagements with the main contemporary attempts to account for shame at nakedness, critiquing their insufficiencies and reframing their insights. (shrink)

We introduce generalized quantifiers, as defined in Tarskian semantics by Mostowski and Lindström, in logics whose semantics is based on teams instead of assignments, e.g., IF-logic and Dependence logic. Both the monotone and the non-monotone case is considered. It is argued that to handle quantifier scope dependencies of generalized quantifiers in a satisfying way the dependence atom in Dependence logic is not well suited and that the multivalued dependence atom is a better choice. This atom is in fact definably equivalent (...) to the independence atom recently introduced by Väänänen and Grädel. (shrink)

This article develops a new phenomenological analysis of the interpersonal motives and structure of shame. I pursue the argument that shame is rooted in our desire for social affirmation and conditioned by our ability to see ourselves as we appear to others. My central thesis is that shame is what we feel when, due to some trait or action of ours, we come to perceive ourselves as fundamentally despicable and non-affirmable. By showing how our urge for affirmation fuels and informs (...) our self-perception in shame, the analysis provides a better understanding of the simultaneously interpersonal and personal character of shame. Furthermore, it sheds new light on some central aspects of shame that have been insufficiently understood: on the emotional charge and quality of shame, on the role played by our values and identity in shame, and on the continuity, differences, and transfers between personal shame, social shame, and embarrassment. (shrink)

The guiding thesis of this chapter is that self-understanding is centrally an existential challenge. In particular, the chapter aims to lay bare the massive potential of our desire for social affirmation to influence and distort our self-understanding, mostly in a covert and unacknowledged fashion. To the extent that we are driven by this desire, we are primarily concerned with assessing, in an emotionally charged and self-deceptive manner, the social worth of our self, whereas we lack the will and ability to (...) understand ourselves in an open and unqualified manner. Ultimately, it is argued that whatever the cognitive demands of self-understanding and our ability to meet these demands may be, we can never know more about ourselves than we are existentially willing to face and acknowledge. (shrink)

According to linguistic conventionalism, necessities are to be explained in terms of the conventionally adopted rules that govern the use of linguistic expressions. A number of influential arguments against this view concerns the ‘Truth-Contrast Thesis’. This is the claim that necessary truths are fundamentally different from contingent ones since they are not made true by ‘the facts’. Instead, they are supposed to be something like ‘true in virtue of meaning’. This thesis is widely held to be a core commitment of (...) the conventionalist position, and the view is frequently rejected on the grounds that this thesis is untenable. I argue that this line of reasoning is mistaken. While the thesis should be rejected, it is not, I argue, entailed by linguistic conventionalism – nor was it invariably accepted by the paradigmatic conventionalists. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe article sets Christianity into the perspective of contemporary China and its challenges, and discusses the role of intellectuals, from the “Cultural Christians” of the 1980s to the younger generation of “public intellectual” Christians of today. The five scholars represented in this issue are presented and put into context as voices in contemporary Chinese society.

Anthropomorphism has long been considered a cardinal error when describing animals. Ethicists have feared the consequences of misrepresenting animals in their reasoning. Recent research within human- animal studies, however, has sophisticated the notion of anthropomorphism. It is suggested that avoiding anthropomorphism merely creates other morphisms, such as mechanomorphism. Instead of avoiding anthropomorphism, it is argued that it is a communicative strategy that should be used critically. Instances of anthropomorphism in animal ethics are analyzed in this paper. Some analogies made between (...) people and non-human animals in present theories of animal ethics are clear instances of psychological anthropomorphism. Other analogies are implicit cases of cultural anthropomorphism. It is argued that animal ethics needs to take the wider discourse of critical anthropomorphism into account in order to sophisticate the understanding and use of anthropomorphic projections. Anthropomorphism is an efficient tool of communication, and it may be made an adequate one as well. (shrink)

We characterize the expressive power of extensions of Dependence Logic and Independence Logic by monotone generalized quanti ers in terms of quanti er extensions of existential second-order logic.

In Every Thing Must Go James Ladyman and Don Ross argue for a radical version of naturalistic metaphysics and propose that contemporary analytic metaphysics is detached from science and should be discontinued. The present article addresses the issues of whether science and metaphysics are separable, intuitions and understanding should be excluded from scientific theory, and Ontic Structural Realism satisfies the criteria of the radical version of naturalism advanced by Ladyman and Ross. The point underlying those topics is that successful scientific (...) research presupposes metaphysics, and that basic epistemic virtues common to metaphysics and science may allow us—as opposed to what Ladyman and Ross suggest—to increase our understanding of the world and to put constraints on allowable metaphysical theories. (shrink)

Scientific risk evaluations are constructed by specific evidence, value judgements and biological background assumptions. The latter are the framework-setting suppositions we apply in order to understand some new phenomenon. That background assumptions co-determine choice of methodology, data interpretation, and choice of relevant evidence is an uncontroversial claim in modern basic science. Furthermore, it is commonly accepted that, unless explicated, disagreements in background assumptions can lead to misunderstanding as well as miscommunication. Here, we extend the discussion on background assumptions from basic (...) science to the debate over genetically modified (GM) plants risk assessment. In this realm, while the different political, social and economic values are often mentioned, the identity and role of background assumptions at play are rarely examined. We use an example from the debate over risk assessment of stacked genetically modified plants (GM stacks), obtained by applying conventional breeding techniques to GM plants. There are two main regulatory practices of GM stacks: (i) regulate as conventional hybrids and (ii) regulate as new GM plants. We analyzed eight papers representative of these positions and found that, in all cases, additional premises are needed to reach the stated conclusions. We suggest that these premises play the role of biological background assumptions and argue that the most effective way toward a unified framework for risk analysis and regulation of GM stacks is by explicating and examining the biological background assumptions of each position. Once explicated, it is possible to either evaluate which background assumptions best reflect contemporary biological knowledge, or to apply Douglas' 'inductive risk' argument. (shrink)

Fredrik Svenaeus' book is a delight to read. Not only does he exhibit keen understanding of a wide range of topics and figures in both medicine and philosophy, but he manages to bring them together in an innovative manner that convincingly demonstrates how deeply these two significant fields can be and, in the end, must be mutually enlightening. Medicine, Svenaeus suggests, reveals deep but rarely explicit themes whose proper comprehension invites a careful phenomenological and hermeneutical explication. Certain philosophical approaches, (...) on the other hand - specifically, Heidegger's phenomenology and Gadamer's hermeneutics - are shown to have a hitherto unrealized potential for making sense of those themes long buried within Western medicine. Richard M. Zaner, Ann Geddes Stahlman Professor of Medical Ethics, Vanderbilt University. (shrink)

While some suggestions have been made as to how the duty to undertake humanitarian intervention should be assigned to specific states, the question of how to assign the duty to carry the economic a...

The objective of this paper is to balance two major conceptual tendencies in science policy studies, continuity and discontinuity theory. While the latter argue for fundamental and distinct changes in science policy in the late 20th century, continuity theorists show how changes do occur but not as abrupt and fundamental as discontinuity theorists suggests. As a point of departure, we will elaborate a typology of scientific governance developed by Hagendijk and Irwin ( 2006 ) and apply it to new empirical (...) material. This makes possible a contextualization of the governance of science related to the codification of the “third assignment” of the Swedish higher education law of 1977. The law defined the relation between university science and Swedish citizens as a dissemination project, and did so despite that several earlier initiatives actually went well beyond such a narrow conceptualisation. Our material reveals continuous interactive and rival arrangements linking the state, public authorities, the universities and private industrial enterprises. We show how different but coexisting modes of governance of science existed in Sweden during the 20th century, in clear contrast with the picture promoted by discontinuity theorists. A close study of the historical development suggests that there were several periods of layered governance when interactions and dynamics associated with continuity as well as discontinuity theories were prevalent. In addition, we conclude that the typology of governance applied in the present paper is fruitful for carrying out historical analyses of the kind embarked upon in spite of certain methodological shortcomings. (shrink)

ArgumentA number of issues related to vaccines and vaccinations in society are discussed in this paper. Our purpose is to merge an analysis of some recent changes in the vaccine market with social science research on the relationship between citizens and authorities. The article has two empirical parts. The first shows how the vaccine market, which for many years has had immense financial problems, nowadays seems to becoming economically vitalized, mostly due to the production of new and profitable vaccines. However (...) prosperous the future may appear, certain reactions from the public regarding vaccination initiatives offer insight into inherent problems of vaccine policies in many Western countries. In the second part of the article, these problems are exemplified with the recent controversy over the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine. We conclude that in spite of the improving profit-margins, the vaccine market remains vulnerable and insecure. Vaccines are permeated bysociety, even more so than pharmaceutics that are used to cure or alleviate illnesses. Radical changes in financial conditions with promises of a more profitable market will not, we argue, solve other even more fundamental problems. (shrink)

This book brings phenomenology, the main player in the continental tradition of philosophy, to bioethics. Medical science and emerging technologies are examined as endeavours that bring enormous possibilities in relieving human suffering but also great risks in transforming our fundamental life views.