One of the key criticisms of the ethical review process is the time taken to decision, and associated resource use. A key source of delay is that most submissions are required to respond to at leas...

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

Recently, philosophers have come forth with approaches to chemistry based on its actual practice, imparting to it a proper aim and character of its own. These approaches add to the currently growing movement of pluralist philosophies of science. We draw on recent pluralist accounts from chemistry and analyse three notions from modern chemical practice and theory in terms of these accounts, in order to complement the so far more general pluralist approaches with specific evidence. Our survey reveals that the concept (...) of element indicates conceptual pluralisms in chemistry. that electronegativity illustrates methodological pluralism in determining one and the same concept, and that acidity is an instance of plurality hidden behind ‘one notion’. (shrink)

Electronegativity is a quantified, typical chemical concept, which correlates the ability of chemical species to attract electrons during their contact with other species with measurable quantities such as dissociation energies, dipole moments, ionic radii, ionization potentials, electron affinities and spectroscopic data. It is applied to the description and explanation of chemical polarity, reaction mechanisms, other concepts such as acidity and oxidation, the estimation of types of chemical compounds and periodicity. Although this concept is very successful and widely used, and in (...) spite of the fact that it is still subject to scientific investigations, neither a more than intuitive definition nor a generally accepted, logically clear and standardized quantification model has been developed. In the present work, electronegativity is presented and discussed with respect to its main conceptual and operational continuities and discontinuities. We try to analyze the epistemological status of electronegativity, conceived as a typical notion of chemical sciences. Under ‘epistemological status’ we subsume the issues of its reference, its historical persistence, and the relationship between its measurement and quantification. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant has built up a dualistic epistemology that seems to fit to the peculiarities of chemistry quite well. Friedrich Paneth used Kant’s concept and characterised simple and basic substances which refer to the empirical and to the transcendental world, respectively. This paper takes account of the Kantian influences in Paneth’s philosophy of chemistry, and discusses pertinent topics, like observables, atomism and realism.

The eminent radiochemist Friedrich Paneth (1887–1958) tried to come to terms with the following epistemological problem: On the one hand chemical elements are characterized empirically as indestructible material species, on the other hand they are characterized theoretically as having the same number of protons in the nuclei of their atoms. Paneth used the dualistic Kantian epistemology (using Eduard von Hartmann's interpretation) in order to describe the combination of these two aspects, applying the terms “Grundstoff”, fundamental matter, to the latter and (...) “einfacher Stoff”, simple matter, to the former. The present paper discusses the applicability of Kant's philosophy – in the interpretation of Paneth – to the (modern) philosophy of chemistry. (shrink)

The eminent radiochemist Friedrich Paneth (1887–1958) tried to come to terms with the following epistemological problem: On the one hand chemical elements are characterized empirically as indestructible material species, on the other hand they are characterized theoretically as having the same number of protons in the nuclei of their atoms. Paneth used the dualistic Kantian epistemology (using Eduard von Hartmann's interpretation) in order to describe the combination of these two aspects, applying the terms “Grundstoff”, fundamental matter, to the latter and (...) “einfacher Stoff”, simple matter, to the former. The present paper discusses the applicability of Kant's philosophy – in the interpretation of Paneth – to the (modern) philosophy of chemistry. (shrink)

In this short essay I address the central topic of the Centenary Workshop on Acidity, that is the relations of the classical protonist acid–base theory by Brønsted and the electronist approach by Lewis. Emphasis is laid on the empirical background of both approaches and the over-theoretization of chemical phenomena (essentialism) is criticized.

Chemistry as the special science of the elements Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9458-4 Authors Klaus Ruthenberg, Faculty of Science, Coburg University of Applied Sciences, 96406 Coburg, Germany Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

Dies ist eine der wenigen umfassenden Monographien zur Philosophie der großen Naturwissenschaft Chemie auf dem aktuellen Stand der seit etwa drei Jahrzehnten aufblühenden wissenschaftsphilosophischen Teildisziplin. Es wird untersucht, wie die zentralen Aspekte Stofflichkeit, Analyse, Synthese, Kompositionismus, Potentialität, Affinität, Reaktivität, Temporalität, Atomismus, Individuen, Arten, Bindungstheorie, Unterbestimmtheit, und Pluralismus in der Chemie zusammenhängen. Die These wird vertreten, dass es der Chemie keinerlei Abbruch hinsichtlich ihrer wissenschaftlichen Bedeutung tut, sie mit Kant als „systematische" Kunst anzusehen. Vielmehr besteht sogar Anlass, sich mit einer gleichsam (...) „metachemischen" Grundhaltung von den Unzulänglichkeiten herkömmlicher Wissenschaftstheorie zu lösen. Das Buch ist die Bilanz von Bemühungen des Autors in der Chemiephilosophie in den genannten drei Jahrzehnten. (shrink)

How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" -- it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book A Secular Age (2007) provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present -- a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book is a (...) compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers. Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are -- whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to higher-order metaphysics as well as to the contributions to this volume. We discuss five topics, corresponding to the five parts of this volume, and summarize the contributions to each part. First, we motivate the usefulness of higher-order quantification in metaphysics using a number of examples, and discuss the question of how such quantifiers should be interpreted. We provide a brief introduction to the most common forms of higher-order logics used in metaphysics, and indicate a (...) number of questions which can be raised in such systems using logical vocabulary alone. Using a further example, we return to applications of higher-order logics in metaphysics. We also mention key developments in the history of higher-order logic as it pertains to metaphysics. Finally, we mention certain arguments which have been raised against the use of higher-order logic, and some ways of responding to them. (shrink)

Practical deliberation often involves conditional judgements about what will (likely) happen if certain alternatives are pursued. It is widely assumed that the conditionals useful in deliberation are counterfactual or subjunctive conditionals. Against this, I argue that the conditionals of deliberation are indicatives. Key to the argument is an account of the relation between 'straightforward' future-directed conditionals like ' If the house is not painted, it will soon look quite shabby' and * "w e r e ' ' e d F (...) D C s like ' If the house were not to be painted, it would soon look quite shabby': an account on which both of these types of FDCs are grouped with the indicatives for semantic treatment and on which, while conditionals of both types are properly used in means/ends deliberations, those of the ' were'ed-up variety are especially well suited for that purpose. (shrink)

In the traditional form of canonical quantization, certain field components (not having “conjugate” momenta) must be regarded as noncanonical. This long-known distinction enters modern gauge theories, when they are canonically quantized as by Kugo and Ojima. We avoid that peculiarity by not using any conjugate “momenta” at all. In our formulation, canonical quantization can be related to Feynman's path integral.

Putative counterexamples to the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles (PII) are notoriously inconclusive. I establish ground rules for debate in this area, offer a new response to such counterexamples for friends of the PII, but then argue that no response is entirely satisfactory. Finally, I undermine some positive arguments for PII.

Aggregating individuals’ consistent attitudes might produce inconsistent collective attitudes. Some groups therefore need the capacity to form attitudes that are irreducible to those of their members. Such groups, group-agent realists argue, are agents in control of their own attitude formation. In this paper, however, I show how group-agent realism overlooks the important fact that groups consist of strategically interacting agents. Only by eliminating group agency from our social explanations can we see how individuals vote strategically to gain control of their (...) groups and produce collective attitudes we cannot make sense of if we treat groups as agents. (shrink)