Previous studies show that medical students in clinical training face ethical problems that are not often discussed in the literature. In order to make teaching timely and relevant for them, it is important to understand what medical students perceive as ethical problems, as various factors may influence their perception, including cultural differences and working environment. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore students’ perceptions of what an ethical problem is, during their clinical training in the hospital, and compare (...) the results from two different countries. We observed a total of eighteen ethics group discussions and interviewed fifteen medical students at two medical schools, in Indonesia and the Netherlands. Data were interpreted and analyzed using content analysis. We found that students in both settings encounter problems which are closer to their daily work and responsibilities as medical students and perceive these problems as ethical problems. Indonesian students perceived substandard care and inequity in healthcare as ethical problems, while Dutch students perceived that cases which are not matters of life and death are less worthy to discuss. Our study suggests that there might be a gap between ethical problems that are discussed in class with teachers, and problems that students actually encounter in practice. Teachers should be aware of the everyday situations in clinical training which may be perceived by students as ethically problematic and should acknowledge and discuss these ethical problems with students as part of the learning processes in ethics education. (shrink)

Studies have shown that students may feel emotional discomfort when they are asked to identify ethical problems which they have encountered during their training. Teachers in medical ethics, however, more often focus on the cognitive and rational ethical aspects and not much on students’ emotions. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore students’ feelings and emotions when dealing with ethical problems during their clinical training and explore differences between two countries: Indonesia and the Netherlands. We observed a total (...) of eighteen ethics group discussions and interviewed fifteen medical students at two medical schools. Data were interpreted and analyzed using content analysis. We categorized students’ negative emotions based on their objects of reflection and came up with three categories: emotions concerning their own performance, emotions when witnessing unethical behaviors, and emotions related to barriers and limitations of their working environment. Our study suggests that addressing emotional responses in a culturally sensitive way is important to develop students’ self-awareness. Teachers should be able to guide students to reflect on and be critical of their own thoughts and emotions, to understand their own moral values, especially when confronted with other individuals. (shrink)

Studies have shown that students may feel emotional discomfort when they are asked to identify ethical problems which they have encountered during their training. Teachers in medical ethics, however, more often focus on the cognitive and rational ethical aspects and not much on students’ emotions. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore students’ feelings and emotions when dealing with ethical problems during their clinical training and explore differences between two countries: Indonesia and the Netherlands. We observed a total (...) of eighteen ethics group discussions and interviewed fifteen medical students at two medical schools. Data were interpreted and analyzed using content analysis. We categorized students’ negative emotions based on their objects of reflection and came up with three categories: emotions concerning their own performance, emotions when witnessing unethical behaviors, and emotions related to barriers and limitations of their working environment. Our study suggests that addressing emotional responses in a culturally sensitive way is important to develop students’ self-awareness. Teachers should be able to guide students to reflect on and be critical of their own thoughts and emotions, to understand their own moral values, especially when confronted with other individuals. (shrink)

Studies have shown that students may feel emotional discomfort when they are asked to identify ethical problems which they have encountered during their training. Teachers in medical ethics, however, more often focus on the cognitive and rational ethical aspects and not much on students’ emotions. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore students’ feelings and emotions when dealing with ethical problems during their clinical training and explore differences between two countries: Indonesia and the Netherlands. We observed a total (...) of eighteen ethics group discussions and interviewed fifteen medical students at two medical schools. Data were interpreted and analyzed using content analysis. We categorized students’ negative emotions based on their objects of reflection and came up with three categories: emotions concerning their own performance, emotions when witnessing unethical behaviors, and emotions related to barriers and limitations of their working environment. Our study suggests that addressing emotional responses in a culturally sensitive way is important to develop students’ self-awareness. Teachers should be able to guide students to reflect on and be critical of their own thoughts and emotions, to understand their own moral values, especially when confronted with other individuals. (shrink)

Studies have shown that students may feel emotional discomfort when they are asked to identify ethical problems which they have encountered during their training. Teachers in medical ethics, however, more often focus on the cognitive and rational ethical aspects and not much on students’ emotions. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore students’ feelings and emotions when dealing with ethical problems during their clinical training and explore differences between two countries: Indonesia and the Netherlands. We observed a total (...) of eighteen ethics group discussions and interviewed fifteen medical students at two medical schools. Data were interpreted and analyzed using content analysis. We categorized students’ negative emotions based on their objects of reflection and came up with three categories: emotions concerning their own performance, emotions when witnessing unethical behaviors, and emotions related to barriers and limitations of their working environment. Our study suggests that addressing emotional responses in a culturally sensitive way is important to develop students’ self-awareness. Teachers should be able to guide students to reflect on and be critical of their own thoughts and emotions, to understand their own moral values, especially when confronted with other individuals. (shrink)

This book brings together thirteen articles on the most discussed thinkers in the rationalist movement: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Malebranche. These articles address the topics in metaphysics and epistemology that figure most prominently in contemporary work on these philosophers. The articles have all been produced since 1980, and their authors are among the most respected in the field.

This chapter examines the restrictions on justification of punishment that result from the claim that human beings lack freedom of the will. The variety of free will at issue is the control in action required for the agent to basically deserve to be blamed or punished. If we lack such free will, the classical retributive justification is undermined. Furthermore, if we lack such free will, one justification for using criminals as means for the purpose of general deterrence is also threatened. (...) Since even if we lack free will, we yet retain the right to harm in self-defense, special deterrence that invokes such a right, and the attendant general deterrence, are in the clear. Finally, ways in which additional general deterrence absent free will might be justified are explored. (shrink)

A concise yet rigorous introduction to logic and discrete mathematics. This book features a unique combination of comprehensive coverage of logic with a solid exposition of the most important fields of discrete mathematics, presenting material that has been tested and refined by the authors in university courses taught over more than a decade. The chapters on logic - propositional and first-order - provide a robust toolkit for logical reasoning, emphasizing the conceptual understanding of the language and the semantics of classical (...) logic as well as practical applications through the easy to understand and use deductive systems of Semantic Tableaux and Resolution. The chapters on set theory, number theory, combinatorics and graph theory combine the necessary minimum of theory with numerous examples and selected applications. Written in a clear and reader-friendly style, each section ends with an extensive set of exercises, most of them provided with complete solutions which are available in the accompanying solutions manual. Key Features: Suitable for a variety of courses for students in both Mathematics and Computer Science. Extensive, in-depth coverage of classical logic, combined with a solid exposition of a selection of the most important fields of discrete mathematics Concise, clear and uncluttered presentation with numerous examples. Covers some applications including cryptographic systems, discrete probability and network algorithms. Logic and Discrete Mathematics: A Concise Introduction is aimed mainly at undergraduate courses for students in mathematics and computer science, but the book will also be a valuable resource for graduate modules and for self-study. (shrink)

Preparing words in speech production is normally a fast and accurate process. We generate them two or three per second in fluent conversation; and overtly naming a clear picture of an object can easily be initiated within 600 msec after picture onset. The underlying process, however, is exceedingly complex. The theory reviewed in this target article analyzes this process as staged and feedforward. After a first stage of conceptual preparation, word generation proceeds through lexical selection, morphological and phonological encoding, phonetic (...) encoding, and articulation itself. In addition, the speaker exerts some degree of output control, by monitoring of self-produced internal and overt speech. The core of the theory, ranging from lexical selection to the initiation of phonetic encoding, is captured in a computational model, called WEAVER++. Both the theory and the computational model have been developed in interaction with reaction time experiments, particularly in picture naming or related word production paradigms, with the aim of accounting for the real-time processing in normal word production. A comprehensive review of theory, model, and experiments is presented. The model can handle some of the main observations in the domain of speech errors (the major empirical domain for most other theories of lexical access), and the theory opens new ways of approaching the cerebral organization of speech production by way of high-temporal-resolution imaging. (shrink)

Derk Pereboom articulates and defends an original, forward-looking conception of moral responsibility. He argues that although we may not possess the kind of free will that is normally considered necessary for moral responsibility, this does not jeopardize our sense of ourselves as agents, or a robust sense of achievement and meaning in life.

A marxist view on the priority of the function of the stimulation of creativity as compared to the other functions of art 59 2.3.1. ...

Most people assume that, even though some degenerative or criminal behavior may be caused by influences beyond our control, ordinary human actions are not similarly generated, but rather are freely chosen, and we can be praiseworthy or blameworthy for them. A less popular and more radical claim is that factors beyond our control produce all of the actions we perform. It is this hard determinist stance that Derk Pereboom articulates in Living Without Free Will. Pereboom argues that our best (...) scientific theories have the consequence that factors beyond our control produce all of the actions we perform, and that because of this, we are not morally responsible for any of them. He seeks to defend the view that morality, meaning and value remain intact even if we are not morally responsible, and furthermore, that adopting this perspective would provide significant benefit for our lives. (shrink)

Experientialist accounts of wellbeing are those accounts of wellbeing that subscribe to the experience requirement. Typically, these accounts are hedonistic. In this article I present the claim that hedonism is not the most plausible experientialist account of wellbeing. The value of experience should not be understood as being limited to pleasure, and as such, the most plausible experientialist account of wellbeing is pluralistic, not hedonistic. In support of this claim, I argue first that pleasure should not be understood as a (...) broad term to describe valuable experiences generally. I then analyze responses to the main argument against a monistic view on the value of experience: the philosophy of swine objection. I argue that such responses deviate from the central hedonistic view that only pleasure and pain matter for wellbeing. I then argue that the argument can be avoided on a pluralistic account, and formulate a plausible candidate for an account of pluralistic experientialism, in which, besides pleasure, non-hedonic aspects of experience like novelty, compassion, and aesthetic value also contribute to wellbeing. (shrink)

-/- The term “natural religion” is sometimes taken to refer to a pantheistic doctrine according to which nature itself is divine. “Natural theology”, by contrast, originally referred to (and still sometimes refers to)[1] the project of arguing for the existence of God on the basis of observed natural facts. -/- In contemporary philosophy, however, both “natural religion” and “natural theology” typically refer to the project of using all of the cognitive faculties that are “natural” to human beings—reason, sense-perception, introspection—to investigate (...) religious or theological matters. Natural religion or theology, on the present understanding, is not limited to empirical inquiry into nature, and it is not wedded to a pantheistic result. It does, however, avoid appeals to special non-natural faculties (ESP, telepathy, mystical experience) or supernatural sources of information (sacred texts, revealed theology, creedal authorities, direct supernatural communication). In general, natural religion or theology (hereafter “natural theology”) aims to adhere to the same standards of rational investigation as other philosophical and scientific enterprises, and is subject to the same methods of evaluation and critique. Natural theology is typically contrasted with “revealed theology”, where the latter explicitly appeals to special revelations such as miracles, scriptures, and divinely-superintended commentaries and creedal formulations. (See DeCruz and DeSmedt 2015) -/- Philosophers and religious thinkers across almost every epoch and tradition (Near Eastern, African, Asian, and European) have engaged the project of natural theology, either as proponents or critics. The question of whether natural theology is a viable project is at the root of some of the deepest religious divisions: Shi’ite thinkers are optimistic about reason’s ability to prove various theological and ethical truths, for instance, while Sunnis are not; Roman Catholic theologians typically think that reason provides demonstrations of the existence of God, while many Protestant theologians do not. Unlike most of the topics discussed in an encyclopedia of philosophy, this is one over which wars have been fought and throats have been cut. -/- The most active discussions of natural theology in the West occurred during the high medieval period (roughly 1100–1400 C.E.) and the early modern period (1600–1800 C.E.). The past few decades have witnessed a revival of natural theological debate in the public sphere: there are now institutes promoting “Intelligent Design Theory”, popular apologetics courses, campus debates between believers and agnostics, a “New Atheist” movement, Youtube debates between apologists and atheists regarding new books in natural theology (such as the one between Nathan Lewis and Bernie Dehler on the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology),[2] and TED talks by famous atheists on how to resist natural religion (such as the one by Richard Dawkins in February 2002).[3] -/- Among professional philosophers (who aren’t typically part of these more popular debates), arguments over our ability to justify positive or negative answers to religious questions have become fairly technical, often employing sophisticated logical techniques in an effort to advance the discussion instead of retreading the same old ground. The prestigious Gifford Lectures series hosted by a consortium of Scottish universities, however, has tried to feature new but still accessible work in natural theology for over 100 years (it too has a Youtube channel!)[4] -/- In this article, we aim to avoid most the more recent complexities but also explain their origins by focusing on some central developments in the early modern period that helped to frame contemporary natural theological debates. We are focused here only on theoretical arguments (both a priori and a posteriori or empirical ones). It is controversial whether moral arguments are also part of natural theology, but we set them aside here (see also the entry on God, arguments for the existence of: moral arguments). (shrink)

Throughout more than two millennia philosophers adhered massively to ideal standards of scientific rationality going back ultimately to Aristotle’s Analytica posteriora. These standards got progressively shaped by and adapted to new scientific needs and tendencies. Nevertheless, a core of conditions capturing the fundamentals of what a proper science should look like remained remarkably constant all along. Call this cluster of conditions the Classical Model of Science. In this paper we will do two things. First of all, we will propose a (...) general and systematized account of the Classical Model of Science. Secondly, we will offer an analysis of the philosophical significance of this model at different historical junctures by giving an overview of the connections it has had with a number of important topics. The latter include the analytic-synthetic distinction, the axiomatic method, the hierarchical order of sciences and the status of logic as a science. Our claim is that particularly fruitful insights are gained by seeing themes such as these against the background of the Classical Model of Science. In an appendix we deal with the historiographical background of this model by considering the systematizations of Aristotle’s theory of science offered by Heinrich Scholz, and in his footsteps by Evert W. Beth. (shrink)

In the history of Jewish, Christian and Muslim culture, religious identity was not only formed by historical claims, but also by the usage of certain images: “images of God”, “images of the others”, “images of the self.”This book includes a discussion of the role of these images in society and politics, in theology and liturgy, yesterday and today.

Throughout the twentieth century, German writers, philosophers, theologians, and historians turned to Gnosticism to make sense of the modern condition. While some saw this ancient Christian heresy as a way to rethink modernity, most German intellectuals questioned Gnosticism's return in a contemporary setting. In No Spiritual Investment in the World, Willem Styfhals explores the Gnostic worldview's enigmatic place in these discourses on modernity, presenting a comprehensive intellectual history of Gnosticism's role in postwar German thought. Establishing the German-Jewish philosopher Jacob Taubes (...) at the nexus of the debate, Styfhals traces how such figures as Hans Blumenberg, Hans Jonas, Eric Voegelin, Odo Marquard, and Gershom Scholem contended with Gnosticism and its tenets on evil and divine absence as metaphorical detours to address issues of cultural crisis, nihilism, and the legitimacy of the modern world. These concerns, he argues, centered on the difficulty of spiritual engagement in a world from which the divine has withdrawn. Reading Gnosticism against the backdrop of postwar German debates about secularization, political theology, and post-secularism, No Spiritual Investment in the World sheds new light on the historical contours of postwar German philosophy. (shrink)

It is often claimed that Russellian monism carries a commitment to a structuralist conception of physics, on which physics describes the world only in terms of its spatiotemporal structure and dynamics. We argue that this claim is mistaken. On Russellian monism, there is more to consciousness, and to the rest of concrete reality, than spatiotemporal structure and dynamics. But the latter claim supports only a conditional claim about physics: _if_ structuralism about physics is true, then there is more to consciousness (...) and to the rest of concrete reality than physics describes. Given the fundamental nature of their position, Russellian monists can, we argue, deny the antecedent without inconsistency. We also draw out two significant consequences of that result. One is that it provides a response to some recent objections to Russellian monism, by Alyssa Ney and Eric Hiddleston. The other consequence concerns a line of reasoning known as _the structure and dynamics argument_—reasoning that is thought to motivate Russellian monism. In David J. Chalmers’s version, which is regarded as canonical, structuralism about physics is implied by a premise. If our main thesis is true, then that version is problematic, at least from the perspective of Russellian monists who take the argument to motivate their theory. However, we argue, the argument can be reformulated without relying on structuralism about physics. (shrink)

In this book, Derk Pereboom explores how physicalism might best be formulated and defended against the best anti-physicalist arguments. Two responses to the knowledge and conceivability arguments are set out and developed. The first exploits the open possibility that introspective representations fail to represent mental properties as they are in themselves; specifically, that introspection represents phenomenal properties as having certain characteristic qualitative natures, which these properties might actually lack. The second response draws on the proposal that currently unknown fundamental (...) intrinsic properties provide categorical bases for known physical properties and would also yield an account of consciousness. While there are non-physicalist versions of this position, some are amenable to physicalism. The book's third theme is a defense of a nonreductive account of physicalism. The type of nonreductivism endorsed departs from others in that it rejects all token identity claims for psychological and microphysical entities. The deepest relation between the mental and the microphysical is constitution, where this relation is not to be explicated by the notion of identity. (shrink)

Graph-based frames have been introduced as a logical framework which internalises an inherent boundary to knowability (referred to as ‘informational entropy’), due, e.g. to perceptual, evidential or linguistic limits. They also support the interpretation of lattice-based (modal) logics as hyper-constructive logics of evidential reasoning. Conceptually, the present paper proposes graph-based frames as a formal framework suitable for generalising Pawlak's rough set theory to a setting in which inherent limits to knowability exist and need to be considered. Technically, the present paper (...) establishes systematic connections between the first-order correspondents of Sahlqvist modal reduction principles on Kripke frames, and on the more general relational environments of graph-based and polarity-based frames. This work is part of a research line aiming at: (a) comparing and inter-relating the various (first-order) conditions corresponding to a given (modal) axiom in different relational semantics; (b) recognising when first-order sentences in the frame-correspondence languages of different relational structures encode the same ‘modal content’; (c) meaningfully transferring relational properties across different semantic contexts. The present paper develops these results for the graph-based semantics, polarity-based semantics, and all Sahlqvist modal reduction principles. As an application, we study well known modal axioms in rough set theory (such as those corresponding to seriality, reflexivity, and transitivity) on graph-based frames and show that, although these axioms correspond to different first-order conditions on graph-based frames, their intuitive meaning is retained. This allows us to introduce the notion of hyperconstructivist approximation spaces as the subclass of graph-based frames defined by the first-order conditions corresponding to the same modal axioms defining classical generalised approximation spaces, and to transfer the properties and the intuitive understanding of different approximation spaces to the more general framework of graph-based frames. The approach presented in this paper provides a base for systematically comparing and connecting various formal frameworks in rough set theory, and for the transfer of insights across different frameworks. (shrink)

This paper concentrates on some aspects of the history of the analyticsynthetic distinction from Kant to Bolzano and Frege. This history evinces considerable continuity but also some important discontinuities. The analytic-synthetic distinction has to be seen in the first place in relation to a science, i.e. an ordered system of cognition. Looking especially to the place and role of logic it will be argued that Kant, Bolzano and Frege each developed the analytic-synthetic distinction within the same conception of scientific rationality, (...) that is, within the Classical Model of Science: scientific knowledge as cognitio exprincipiis. But as we will see, the way the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments or propositions functions within this model turns out to differ considerably between them. (shrink)

Levelt, reviewing the AGL field from a psycholinguistic perspective, identifies various gaps and makes a number of concrete suggestions for improving several currently used experimental designs. He raises the question whether artificial (and natural) grammar learning is about detecting ‘rules’, as is commonly assumed, or rather the detection of a set of ‘constraints’. He cautions the community to not ignore ‘semantics’, and recommends to consider less artificial tasks, that may be needed for learning more complex rules by human or nonhuman (...) animals. (shrink)

Wrongdoing and the Moral Emotions provides an account of how we might effectively address wrongdoing given challenges to the legitimacy of anger and retribution that arise from ethical considerations and from concerns about free will. The issue is introduced in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 asks how we might conceive of blame without retribution, and proposes an account of blame as moral protest, whose function is to secure forward-looking goals such as the moral reform of the wrongdoer and reconciliation in relationships. (...) Chapter 3 considers whether it's possible to justify effectively dealing those who pose dangerous threats if they do not deserve to be harmed, and contends that wrongfully posing a threat is the core condition for the legitimacy of defensive harming. Chapter 4 provides an account of how to treat criminals without a retributive justification for punishment, and argues for an account in which the right of self-defense provides justification for measures such as preventative detention. Chapter 5 considers how we might forgive if wrongdoers don't basically deserve the pain of being resented, which forgiveness would then renounce, and proposes that forgiveness be conceived instead as renunciation of the stance of moral protest. Chapter 6 considers how personal relationships might function without retributive anger having a role in responding to wrongdoing, and contends that the stance of moral protest, supplemented with non-retributive emotions, is sufficient. Chapter 7 surveys the options for theistic and atheistic attitudes regarding the fate of humanity in a deterministic universe, and defends an impartial hope for humanity. (shrink)

We provide syntactic necessary and sufficient conditions on the formulae reducible by the second-order quantifier elimination algorithm DLS. It is shown that DLS is compete for all modal Sahlqvist and Inductive formulae, and that all modal formulae in a single propositional variable on which DLS succeeds are canonical.