The pair democreteanism-Platonism (nothing/something is outside space-Time) differs from the pair nominalism-Realism (universals are/are not nameable entities). Nominalism need not be democretean, And democreateanism is nominalist only if conceptualism is rejected. Putnam's critique of nominalism is thus invalid. Quine's theory is democretean-When-Possible: quine is also a minimalist platonist. Conceptualists and realists agree that universals exist but not as physical objects. Nominalists accept universals only as "facons de parler".

Methodological disputes in economics have been with us since Mill and Senior fought over the nature of economic science in the first half of the 19th Century. Progress has been extremely slow, and there is good reason for this as the present essay hopes to show. Three important methodological positions are examined critically: the “ultra-empiricism” of T.W. Hutchison, the “moderate empiricism” of Milton Friedman, and the “extreme a priorism” of Lionel Robbins and Ludwig Von Mises. The argument between Guttierrez and (...) Block inTheory and Decision over praxiology is discussed in connection with the last mentioned position. The paper concludes that “extreme a priorism,” though very much out of fashion is not without its resources. The work of the contemporary German philosopher, Paul Lorenzen, is enlisted to bolster this position. (shrink)

In philosophy, old theories never die, they just hibernate. For many years, no philosophical approach could have been more out of date than that of the British Hegelians: Green, Bradley, and Bosanquet. No theory has been “refuted” more often than their coherence account of truth, both as a definition of truth and as a criterion of truth. Coherence did enjoy a brief renaissance during the early days of logical positivism. Neurath put forth such an account. Carnap, during one of his (...) many periods, came under the influence of Neurath’s brand of physicalism and Carl Hempel defended the coherence view against the criticisms of Schlick, among others. (shrink)

Philosophers probably ask more What is questions than anyone else. From the Socratic-Platonic What is Justice, Love, Virtue, etc., through the Aristotelian quest for essences and the contemporary concern with various modes of meaning, philosophers have kept raising What is questions. Now some say that this penchant for What is represents the worst in philosophy. Such questions inevitably lead to confusing verbal or definitional matters, with substantive or factual matters. Lexicography is not an important part of either science or philosophy. (...) It is truth and not meaning that matters. If philosophers are to continue with their What is brand of questioning, they would do well to interpret What is x as a request for a true theoretical account of x. It is true theories we are after—a not very surprising conclusion. When a philosopher asks What is life? he is asking for the best theoretical account available of the phenomenon of life. Of course, we cannot always be sure that this is the question he is asking. He might be asking about the importance of life in some evaluative sense. Is life better than death? What is life, anyway? Is life worth living? And perhaps these are the truly philosophical questions about life. They are certainly elusive enough to deserve the appellation philosophical. When the scientist asks what is life, he asks for a biological theory. But when a philosopher asks this question, he is after something deeper. There are philosophers and philosophers. In what follows, philosophers are what used to be termed natural philosophers. In this usage, Newton was a great philosopher. And who would not be happy to have Newton as one of us. (shrink)

Summary The incommensurability of scientific theories is not the only famous incommensurability issue in the history of western philosophy. The commensurability of all magnitudes (things) by means of ratios of integers (arithmetical ratios) wasthe thesis of Pythagoreanism. The diagonal and side of a square, however, are not commensurable, thus the Pythagorean thesis is refuted. Most philosophers ancient and contemporary would agree that Pythagoreanism was refuted by the counter-example and the concommitant argument or proof. The incommensurabilists were victorious. The present paper (...) examines the prospects of the contemporary thesis of the incommensurability of scientific theories in the light of the history of the Pythagorean thesis. What factors were responsible for the rather clear-cut victory of theincommensurability side? How were they able to carry through a refutation? How likely is it that the contemporary dispute over the commensurability of scientific theories will be resolved in such a sharp manner? The paper concludes that it is not at all likely. (shrink)

Explores the ideas of Turing, Lucas, Scriven, Putnam, and Searle, and renders the Gödel-Church-Lucas argument in terms intelligible to beginning students. Updated and expanded to take into account important arguments and developments in the ten years since its original publication, this provocative dialogue explores the ideas of Turing, Lucas, Scriven, Putnam, and Searle, and renders the complex Gödel-Church-Lucas argument in transparent terms. It includes a new argument, based loosely on Tarski's work on truth and the liar paradox, and a new (...) section dealing with the problem of qualitative features of experience, such as color properties. (shrink)

As social creatures, human beings possess a number of identities. A young woman, for example, is a daughter and a member of a particular ethnic group. She is also likely to be a citizen, a friend,...

The abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib had far-reaching consequences, leading many people around the world to question the legitimacy of U.S. goals and activities in Iraq. Drawing on extensive unclassified reports from multiple investigations that followed Abu Ghraib, this article considers both psychological and social-situational factors that contributed to ethical failures there. This analysis suggests that leaders need to be more attuned to the developmental stage of subordinates and take appropriate steps to reinforce ethical behaviors. From (...) a psychological standpoint, young adults especially are strongly inclined to behave in accord with social conventions and pressures around them. Particularly in ambiguous circumstances, it is important that standards of behavior be clear and explicit throughout all phases of an operation and that leaders at all levels represent and reinforce those standards. (shrink)

Dual-process models of cognition suggest that there are two types of thought: autonomous Type 1 processes and working memory dependent Type 2 processes that support hypothetical thinking. Models of creative thinking also distinguish between two sets of thinking processes: those involved in the generation of ideas and those involved with their refinement, evaluation, and/or selection. Here we review dual-process models in both these literatures and delineate the similarities and differences. Both generative creative processing and evaluative creative processing involve elements that (...) have been attributed to each of the dual processes of cognition. We explore the notion that creative thinking may rest upon the nature of a shifting process between Type 1 and Type 2 dual processes. We suggest that a synthesis of the evidence bases on dual-process models of cognition and of creative thinking, together with developing time-based approaches to explore the shifting process, could better inform the development of i.. (shrink)

Physician-assisted suicide laws in Oregon and Washington require the person's current competency and a prognosis of terminal illness. In The Netherlands voluntariness and unbearable suffering are required for euthanasia. Many people are more concerned about the loss of autonomy and independence in years of severe dementia than about pain and suffering in their last months. To address this concern, people could write advance directives for physician-assisted death in dementia. Should such directives be implemented even though, at the time, the person (...) is no longer competent and would not be either terminally ill or suffering unbearably? We argue that in many cases they should be, and that a sliding scale which considers both autonomy and the capacity for enjoyment provides the best justification for determining when: when written by a previously well-informed and competent person, such a directive gains in authority as the later person's capacities to generate new critical interests and to enjoy life decrease. Such an extension of legalized death assistance is grounded in the same central value of voluntariness that undergirds the current more limited legalization. (shrink)

Almost all jurisdictions where physician-assisted death is legal require that the requesting individual be competent to make medical decisions at time of assistance. The requirement of contemporary competence is intended to ensure that PAD is limited to people who really want to die and have the cognitive ability to make a final choice of such enormous import. Along with terminal illness, defined as prognosis of death within six months, contemporary competence is regarded as an important safeguard against mistake and abuse, (...) arguably the strongest objections to legalizing PAD.The insistence on contemporary competence is problematic. It means that someone who has dementia is ruled out as a candidate for PAD, even if she is terminally ill and suffering terrible and unrelievable pain. It also rules out individuals with strong and unwavering desires not to end their life in dementia. (shrink)

Competent patients have considerable legal authority to control life‐and‐death care. They may refuse medical life support, including medically delivered food and fluids. Even when they are not in need of any life‐saving care, they may expedite death by refusing food and water by mouth—voluntarily stopping eating and drinking, or VSED. Neither right is limited to terminal illness. In addition, in four U.S. states, competent patients, if terminally ill, may obtain lethal drugs for aid‐in‐dying.For people who have dementia and are no (...) longer competent, however, control over the end of life is much less extensive. They may have written a clear advance directive for refusing life‐saving care in specified circumstances yet subsequently find themselves living for years in severe dementia with no need for life‐saving care that could be refused. Chronic progressive dementia is not itself life threatening until its very final stage. Even in jurisdictions that permit active aid‐in‐dying, individuals with advanced dementia are not eligible; they lack the required current competence, and they are seldom deemed terminally ill. As for the right to VSED, its very name—voluntarily stopping eating and drinking—is seen as excluding noncompetent persons.One option for ensuring that one does not live years in severe dementia is to use advance directives to withhold food and water by mouth. The driving element behind VSED is that forcing people to ingest food is as objectionable an intrusion on bodily integrity, privacy, and liberty as imposing unwanted medical treatment. Thus, if incompetent people do not lose their rights to refuse life‐saving treatment, and if people when competent have just as strong a right to VSED as they do to refuse life‐saving treatment, then people do not lose their right to VSED when incompetent either. They only have to exercise it by AD. (shrink)

The Big Bang is a myth, says Paul Brockelman in this fascinating look at the spiritual side of modern cosmology. But it is a myth in the best sense--a fully realized creation story, one that, for all its scientific origins, has the power to transform us spiritually. In Cosmology and Creation, philosopher and religious scholar Brockelman seeks to bridge the gap between the scientific and the spiritual, to bring together the head and the heart. We have isolated the two (...) realms from each other for so long, he argues, that we have begun to lose a mystical sense of our place in the universe. But Brockelman believes that contemporary physics has advanced far beyond the mechanical view of nature, as propagated in the Enlightenment; the cosmology of the Big Bang has fostered a new way of understanding existence itself. To illustrate, he examines creation myths of the past, showing how they transcend simple explanations of the world to provide a deeper understanding of what our lives mean. And the fifteen-billion-year tale of the universe embraced by scientific cosmology serves precisely the same purpose, Brockelman claims; it bears a close resemblance to classic creation myths--and, indeed, it can transform our inner relationship with nature. The new scientific cosmology, Brockelman argues, offers something never before seen in human history: a scientifically accurate understanding of the entire universe and a spiritual vision of a "wider order of being" to which we all belong. Passionate and provocative, Cosmology and Creation promises to spark a lively debate about the new links between science and religion. (shrink)

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_Speaking _is an introduction to the philosophy of language from an existential and phenomenological point of view. Gusdorf's central concern is to analyze speech within the context of human reality. Speech is an abstraction, but speaking is not, he says. Speaking expresses the experimental and dialectical relation of man, nature, and society. It is through speaking that nature is sublimated into the meant and expressive world of human reality.

Nietzsche and Kant on Aesthetics and Anthropology is the third of a three-volume collection exploring Nietzsche’s relationship to the Kantian legacy in philosophy. This volume examines his relationship to Kant’s aesthetic and anthropological views, focusing on the traces of Kant’s third Critique and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View that can be found in Nietzsche’s published and unpublished works. In this review, I offer a summary of each of its chapters, with some brief commentary, and underscore its major themes, (...) contributions, and omissions. In their introduction, Maria Branco and Katia Hay signal that the scope of this volume goes well beyond a strict understanding of aesthetics as the evaluation of... (shrink)

In the United States, amid the fractious politics of attempting to achieve something close to universal access to basic health care, two impressions are likely to feed skepticism about the status of a right to universal access: the moral principles that underlie any right to universal access may seem incredibly "ideal," not well rooted in the society's actual fabric, and the necessary practical and political attempts to limit the scope of universally accessible care to make its achievement realistic may seem (...) marked less by moral rhyme and reason than by the pull of conflicting interests. I try to directly dispel the first of these impressions and to obliquely question the second. The immense political barriers to .. (shrink)