Online research in philosophy

This article tries to analyze the meaning of a decent minimum of health care, by confronting the idea of decent care with the concept of justice. Following the ideas of Margalith about a decent society, the article argues that a just minimum of care is not necessarily a decent minimum. The way this minimum is provided can still humiliate individuals, even if the end result is the best possible distribution of the goods as seen from the viewpoint of justice. This (...) analysis is combined with an analysis from the perspective of solidarity, particularly of reflective solidarity, as a way to develop decent care, which is care that does not humiliate individuals and maintains their dignity. (shrink)

The relation between “presence” and “representation” is an age-old topic in the arts, but it is further complicated in our time of advanced media conditions. Pierre Huyghe is one artist who has consistently addressed questions of presence and representation throughout his artistic oeuvre, including the role of the witness within it. Considering the sophistication of Huyghe’s work with regard to the riddle of presence in the realm of contemporary means of representation, the artist’s work is taken as a case study (...) for a broad range of artists exploring related topics within the arts and the media. This paper argues that art that interrogates the question of presence within the context of contemporary media culture—from Marina Abramović to Stelarc, Jeffrey Shaw to Julia Scher—asks for being interpreted through presence theories developed within the field of media studies in addition to methods of art theory and criticism. Accordingly, Huyghe’s work is productively related to one such theory, namely the YUTPA model by Caroline Nevejan, which theorizes the interrelated concepts of natural, mediated, and witnessed presence. (shrink)

Validity of dynamic temporal reasoning is semantically characterized for Englishand Dutch aspectual adverbs in Discourse Representation Theory. This dynamicperspective determines how the content needs to be revised and what informationis preserved across updates, when the order of premises is considered relevant.Resetting contextual parameters relies on modelling the basic aspectual polaritytransitions and temporal reasoning extensionally. For intensional aspectual adverbialsthe speaker''s attitudes regarding past alternatives to and possible continuations of thecurrent state come into play. Additional considerations are offered for generalizing thissystem to (...) the full logical space for linguistic universals, lexicalized quite differently inDutch and English. (shrink)

Modelling human reasoning characterizes the fundamental human cognitive capacity to describe our past experience and use it to form expectations as well as plan and direct our future actions. Natural language semantics analyzes dynamic forms of reasoning in which the real-time order determines the temporal relations between the described events, when reported with telic simple past-tense clauses. It provides models of human reasoning that could supplement ACT-R models.

In designing stratified models of human language, understanding notions of logical consequence and validity of inference require separating the aspects of meaning that vary between models from logical constants. Modelling meaning requires choices regarding the primitives, where the Fregean program is still offering us the fundamental insights on the role of truth, judgement, and grasping or sharing of thoughts.

Semantic realism fits Millikan's account of kind terms in its focus on information-theoretic abilities and strategic ways of gathering information in human communication. Instead of the traditional logical necessity, we should interpret rigid designation in a dynamic semantics as a legislative act to constrain possible ways in which our belief may change.

Health care policy in the Netherlands has long been guided by the values of solidarity and equality. As a result of several forces, particularly the scarcity of resources, the retreat of the Welfare State and the introduction of market forces in health care, both values are increasingly under strain. Next to solidarity and equality, freedom of choice and financial responsibility are playing an important role in Dutch health care. Consequently, there is a growing division in Dutch heaith care between two (...) tiers, one basic tier giving access to a basic package of services and a luxury tier giving access to a higher quality of care and to services not included in the basic package. The main thesis of the article is that a two-tier system is morally justified on the condition that the basic tier is universally accessible and is based on the value of humanitarian solidarity. Keywords: access to health care, health insurance, resource allocation, solidarity CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)