Online research in philosophy

First published in 1959, this original study argues that the main characteristic of music is that it expresses and evokes emotion, and that all composers whose music has a tonal basis have used the same, or closely similar, melodic phrases, harmonies, and rhythms to affect the listener in the same ways. He supports this view with hundreds of musical examples, ranging from plainsong to Stravinsky, and contends that music is a language in the specific sense that we can identify idioms (...) and draw up a list of meanings. The book's final section analyzes two symphonies, Mozart's Fortieth and Vaughan Williams's Sixth, to explore the nature of musical inspiration and the process whereby the notes actually convey emotion from composer to listener. (shrink)

This book is an extensive survey and critical examination of the literature on the use of expert opinion in scientific inquiry and policy making. The elicitation, representation, and use of expert opinion is increasingly important for two reasons: advancing technology leads to more and more complex decision problems, and technologists are turning in greater numbers to "expert systems" and other similar artifacts of artificial intelligence. Cooke here considers how expert opinion is being used today, how an expert's uncertainty is (...) or should be represented, how people do or should reason with uncertainty, how the quality and usefulness of expert opinion can be assessed, and how the views of several experts might be combined. He argues for the importance of developing practical models with a transparent mathematic foundation for the use of expert opinion in science, and presents three tested models, termed "classical," "Bayesian," and "psychological scaling." Detailed case studies illustrate how they can be applied to a diversity of real problems in engineering and planning. (shrink)

Smell 'sensations' are among the most mysterious of conscious experiences, and have been cited in defense of the thesis that the character of perceptual experience is independent of the physical events that seem to give rise to it. Here we review the scientific literature on olfaction, and we argue that olfaction has a distinctive profile in relation to the other modalities, on four counts: in the physical nature of the stimulus, in the sensorimotor interactions that characterize its use, in the (...) structure of its intramodal distinctions and in the functional role that it plays in people's behaviour. We present two thought experiments in which we detail what would be involved in transforming sounds into smells, and also smells into colours. Through these thought-experiments, we argue that the experiential character of smell derives precisely from the structural features of olfaction, and that an embodied account of olfactory phenomenology is called for. (shrink)

The article considers Jürgen Habermas's views on the relationship between postmetaphysical philosophy and religion. It outlines Habermas's shift from his earlier, apparently dismissive attitude towards religion to his presently more receptive stance. This more receptive stance is evident in his recent emphasis on critical engagement with the semantic contents of religion and may be characterized by two interrelated theses: (a) the view that religious contributions should be included in political deliberations in the informally organized public spheres of contemporary democracies, though (...) translated into a secular language for the purposes of legislation and formal decision making and (b) the view that postmetaphysical philosophy should seek to salvage the semantic contents of religious traditions in order to supply the evocative images, exemplary figures, and inspirational narratives it needs for its social and political projects. With regard to (a), it argues that the translation requirement impairs the political autonomy of religious believers and other metaphysically inclined citizens, suggesting that this difficulty could be alleviated by making a distinction between epistemologically authoritarian and non-authoritarian religious beliefs. With regard to (b), it argues that the salvaging operation is not as straightforward as Habermas seems to suppose and that social and political philosophy may not be able to tap the semantic power of religious traditions without relying on metaphysical assumptions; it concludes that, here, too, a distinction between authoritarian and non-authoritarian approaches to knowledge and validity may be useful. (shrink)

Aesthetic discourse is highly metaphorical, and many art-critical metaphors seem to be genuinely informative. Aesthetic property realism holds that the characteristic terms of aesthetic discourse pick out mind-independent properties. The prevalence of metaphor is a problem for realism, then, because most art-critical metaphors are true only when artworks are imagined in a certain way. Realist attempts to consign metaphor to the roles of filling lexical gaps or picking out mind-independent but ineffable properties fail. I argue that a cognitivist aesthetic anti-realism (...) is a better fit with a reflective understanding of our art-related practices. Metaphorical assertions about artworks can be truth-apt, but their truth depends essentially on our mental activity. (shrink)

Critical social theories look critically at the ways in which particular social arrangements hinder human flourishing, with a view to bringing about social change for the better. In this they are guided by the idea of a good society in which the identified social impediments to human flourishing would once and for all have been removed. The question of how these guiding ideas of the good life can be justified as valid across socio-cultural contexts and historical epochs is the most (...) fundamental difficulty facing critical social theories today. This problem of justification, which can be traced back to certain key shifts in the modern Western social imaginary, calls on contemporary theories to negotiate the tensions between the idea of context-transcendent validity and their own anti-authoritarian impulses. Habermas makes an important contribution towards resolving the problem, but takes a number of wrong turnings. (shrink)

The value of a negatively defined private space is defended as important for the development of personal autonomy. It is argued that negative liberty is problematic when split off from its connection with this ideal. An ethical interpretation of personal autonomy is proposed according to which a private space is one of autonomy's preconditions. This leads to a conceptualization of privacy that is fruitful in two respects: it permits an account of privacy laws that avoids certain pitfalls, and it serves (...) as a basis for criticizing privacy-related failures of autonomy together with the social forces that produce them. Negative liberty is, furthermore, rejected as an adequate basis for modern law and democracy. Here, too, an ethically defined personal autonomy, of which negative liberty is a precondition, is held to be the most convincing normative foundation. A critical reading of Habermas' cooriginality thesis is offered in support of this argument. Key Words: cooriginality thesis • Jürgen Habermas • Herbert Marcuse • negative liberty • personal autonomy • positive liberty • privacy • Martin Walser. (shrink)

This paper is designed to do three things. First, it discusses some of the key trends in business ethics in the academic and corporate communities. Initiatives like the Arthur Andersen Business Ethics Program are noted. Secondly, the paper examines certain basic misconceptions about the field and concludes that the adage that good ethics is good business is still true. Finally, the paper highlights fourteen business attitudes or practices that may put a firm at ethical risk. For example, the paper discusses (...) the risk of using ethics as simply a public relations initiative.Man's life is not a state of unalloyed happiness. The earth is no paradise. Although this is not the fault of social institutions, people are wont to hold them responsible for it. The foundation of any and every civilization, including our own, is private ownership of the means of production. Whoever wishes to criticize modern civilization, therefore, begins with private property. It is blamed for everything that does not please the critic, especially those evils that have their origin in the fact that private property has been hampered and restrained in various respects so that its full social potentialities cannot be realized.1. (shrink)

In this paper, it will be shown that Peirce was of two minds about whether his scientific fallibilism, the recognition of the possibility of error in our beliefs, applied to mathematics. It will be argued that Peirce can and should hold a theory of fallibilism within mathematics, and that this position is more consistent with his overall pragmatic theory of inquiry and his general commitment to the growth of knowledge. But to make the argument for fallibilism in mathematics, Peirce's theory (...) of fallibilism must be reconceived to incorporate two different kinds of fallibilism, which correspond to two different kinds of truth claims. (shrink)

Critical social theory has an uneasy relationship with utopia. On the one hand, the idea of an alternative, better social order is necessary in order to make sense of its criticisms of a given social context. On the other hand, utopian thinking has to avoid ‘bad utopianism’, defined as lack of connection with the actual historical process, and ‘finalism’, defined as closure of the historical process. Contemporary approaches to critical social theory endeavour to avoid these dangers by way of a (...) post metaphysical strategy. However, they run up against the problem that utopian thinking has an unavoidable metaphysical moment. Rather than seeking to eliminate this moment, therefore, they should acknowledge its inevitability. The challenge is to maintain a productive tension between closure and contestability and between attainability and elusiveness. The paper outlines a strategy for meeting this challenge, a strategy that is based on a distinction between the metaphysical content of utopian projections and their fallible claims to validity. Key Words: critical social theory • fallibilism • metaphysical closure • postmetaphysical thinking • reflexivity • regulative idea • utopia. (shrink)

Subjective probability considered as a logic of partial belief succumbs to three fundamental fallacies. These concern the representation of preference via expectation, the measurability of partial belief, and the normalization of belief.

The discussion starts with the fact of ethical disagreement in contemporary liberal democracies. In responding to the question of whether such conflicts are reconcilable, it proposes a normative model of deliberative democracy that seeks to avoid the privatization of ethical concerns. It is argued that many contemporary models of democracy privatize ethical matters either because of a view that ethical conflicts are fundamentally irreconcilable or because of a mis trust of the ideal of rational consensus in the fields of law (...) and politics. Against this, the article contends that most ethical disagree ments are reconcilable in principle; it further suggests that mistrust of the ideal of rational consensus in the fields of law and politics is based on misunderstanding. Here, Habermas's model of deliberative democracy is drawn on. His account of public ethical deliberation is criticized and his negative interpretations of civic republicanism and ethical patterning are questioned; however, his model is seen as fundamentally fruitful from the point of view of dealing with ethical conflict. Key Words: civic republicanism • coercion • consensus • deliberative democracy • ethical disagreements • ethical patterning • ethical-political discourses • ethical privatization • Habermas. (shrink)

As the interest in the quality of work life grows, it becomes increasingly apparent that certain practices within this arena require critical scrutiny. This paper is an examination of one such area, performance appraisal (PA). We examine some of the main conceptual issues in PA, and we sketch some key, practical dilemmas that may arise in the use of PA. We conclude that one can morally justify the use of PA under certain condition, and we suggest possible solutions to key (...) ethical dilemmas that are faced by the manager and the employee. (shrink)

. . . [T]here manifestly is not one drop of principle in the whole vast reservoir of established scientific theory that has sprung from any other source than the power of the human mind to originate ideas that are true. But this power, for all it has accomplished, is so feeble that as ideas flow from their springs in the soul, the truths are almost drowned in a flood of false notions; and that which experience does is gradually, and by (...) a sort of fractionation, to precipitate and filter off the false ideas, eliminating them and letting the truth pour on in its mighty current. But precisely how does this action of experience take place? It takes place by a series of surprises. Throughout the .. (shrink)

Artworks frequently are the objects of multiple and apparently conflicting aesthetic judgements. This commonplace of the artworld poses a challenge for realist metaphysics, because to assert conflicting judgements of an artwork seems to amount to asserting p & p. Critical pluralism is an ever-more frequently invoked solution to this impasse. What its varieties share in common is the claim that the disagreement between judgements is only an apparent one. I argue, however, that critical pluralism masquerades either as relativism or anti-realism. (...) I examine a number of pluralist proposals, including one that attempts to reconcile pluralism with critical monism, and argue that they are inadequate to their advertised task. Finally, I sketch a solution employing dialetheic logic that captures both intuitions about these cases: that sometimes, judgements about artworks can truly conflict and jointly be true. (shrink)

This paper outlines the moral contours of human relationships with companion animals. The paper details three sources of duties to and regarding companion animals: (1) from the animal’s status as property, (2) from the animal’s position in relationships of care, love, and dependency, and (3) from the animal’s status as a sentient being with a good of its own. These three sources of duties supplement one another and not only differentiate relationships with companion animals from wild animals and other categories (...) of domestic animals such as livestock, but they also overlap to provide moral agents with additional reasons for preventing and avoiding harm to companion animals. The paper concludes that not only do owners and bystanders have direct and indirect duties to protect companion animals from harm, but also that these duties have the potential, in some circumstances, to clash with duties owed to the state and fellow citizens. (shrink)

One of the principal challenges facing contemporary social philosophy is how to find foundations that are normatively robust yet congruent with its self-understanding. Social philosophy is a critical project within modernity, an interpretative horizon that stresses the influences of history and context on knowledge and experience. However, if it is to engage in intercultural dialogue and normatively robust social critique,social philosophy requires non-arbitrary,universal normative standards.The task of normative foundations can thus be formulated in terms of negotiating the tension between 'contextualism' (...) and 'objectivism'. Six contemporary responses to this challenge are examined.Their respective limitations call for renewed reflection on justificatory strategies, in particular for a conception of 'objectivity' based in a normative theory of social learning processes. (shrink)

This paper reflects on ethical issues raised in research with homeless people in rural areas. It argues that the significant embracing of dialogic and reflexive approaches to social research is likely to render standard approaches to ethical research practice increasingly complex and open to negotiation. Diary commentaries from different individuals in the research team are used to present self-reflexive accounts of the ethical complexities and dilemmas encountered in offering explanations of the validity of the research, in carrying out ethnographic encounters (...) with homeless people and in producing and evaluating the outputs of research. Reflexivity does not dissolve ethical tensions, but opens up possibilities for new ethical and moral maps with which to explore ethical terrains more appropriately and more honestly. (shrink)

The article considers the role of translation in encounters between religious citizens and secular citizens. It follows Habermas in holding that translations rearticulate religious contents in a way that facilitates learning. Since he underplays the complexities of translation, it takes some steps beyond Habermas towards developing a more adequate account. Its main thesis is that the required account of translation must keep sight of the question of truth. Focusing on inspirational stories of exemplary figures and acts, it contends that a (...) successful translation makes truth appear anew; further, that it is the central role of truth in translation that enables the prospect of learning from the inspirational messages of religion. By highlighting truth as the point of continuity between intercultural learning and learning from religion, it provides support for the thesis that encounters between religious and secular citizens are a subset of intercultural encounters and, as such, contexts of possible mutual learning. (shrink)

This paper reflects on ethical issues raised in research with homeless people in rural areas. It argues that the significant embracing of dialogic and reflexive approaches to social research is likely to render standard approaches to ethical research practice increasingly complex and open to negotiation. Diary commentaries from different individuals in the research team are used to present self-reflexive accounts of the ethical complexities and dilemmas encountered in offering explanations of the validity of the research, in carrying out ethnographic encounters (...) with homeless people and in producing and evaluating the outputs of research. Reflexivity does not dissolve ethical tensions, but opens up possibilities for new ethical and moral maps with which to explore ethical terrains more appropriately and more honestly. (shrink)

I consider argumentation from the point of view of context-transcendent cognitive transformation through reference to the critical social theory of Jürgen Habermas. My aim is threefold. First, to make the case for a concept of context-transcendent cognitive transformation. Second, to clarify the transformatory role of argumentation itself by showing that, while argumentation may contribute constructively to context-transcendent cognitive transformation, such transformation presupposes the existence of a reality conceptually independent of argumentation. Third, to cast light on the problem of how to (...) justify argumentatively the poetically formulated, novel and innovative semantic contents that may be required for context-transcendent cognitive transformation. I conclude that the difficulties involved in argumentatively assessing novel and innovative semantic contents should not be misconstrued as evidence of an unbridgeable gap between language and experience but rather suggest the need for a more dynamic normative conception of language and for a more receptive model of autonomous agency. (shrink)

Pragmatic bioethics represents a novel approach to the discipline of bioethics, yet has met with criticisms which have beset the discipline of bioethics in the past. In particular, pragmatic bioethics has been criticized for its excessively fuzzy approach to fundamental questions of normativity, which are crucial to a field like bioethics. Normative questions need answers, and consensus is not always enough. The approach here is to apply elements of the discourse ethics of Habermas and Putnam to the sphere of (...) bioethics, in order to develop a normative structure out of the framework of bioethical inquiry as it stands. The idea here is that the process of inquiry contains its own normative structure as it aims to discover norms. Such an approach, which fuses pragmatic bioethics with discourse ethics (which equally draws on pragmatism), may rightly be called a "Pragmatic Discourse Bioethics.". (shrink)

Mawson recently argued that since a temporal God can’t know what we’ll freely choose, so he’s not completely omniscient and hence not omnipotent, whence his beneficence is a matter of luck. However, even (transfinite) arithmetic is inde-finitely extensible and only an everlasting, changeable God could learn forever. Furthermore an epistemically perfect being would hardly, I argue, be completely certain that there were no other perfect beings, because such negative empirical be-liefs could hardly be fully justified. So if God could learn, (...) then heavenly souls would probably ask to be born into a world this far from heaven (causally and epistemically) because that would probably help God to learn more about such matters. And since an omnipotent God’s perfect goodness is most likely to lead to human suffering and divine hiddenness if omnipotence includes the power to change, so it probably does. (shrink)

The metaphysical concept of continuity is important, not least because physical continua are not known to be impossible. While it is standard to model them with a mathematical continuum based upon set-theoretical intuitions, this essay considers, as a contribution to the debate about the adequacy of those intuitions, the neglected intuition that dividing the length of a line by the length of an individual point should yield the line’s cardinality. The algebraic properties of that cardinal number are derived pre-theoretically from (...) the obvious properties of a line of points, whence it becomes clear that such a number would cohere surprisingly well with our elementary number systems. (shrink)

During the last decade, the intensity of interest in the subject of business ethics has surprised even the most ardent defenders of the movement. It is easy to become euphoric over such developments. Yet, we should not be lulled into believing that such growth has no limits. The fact is that the movement stands at a watershed where certain alternative courses of action are available. In this paper, I outline what some of those crossroads are and what the consequences will (...) be if certain actions are or are not taken. The key to success is dependent upon a multidisciplinary approach that relies on dialogue and cooperation among colleagues in the academy and in business. This will ensure a true mix of theory and practice. (shrink)

A simultaneous collision that produces paradoxical indeterminism (involving N0 hypothetical particles in a classical three-dimensional Euclidean space) is described in Section 2. By showing that a similar paradox occurs with long-range forces between hypothetical particles, in Section 3, the underlying cause is seen to be that collections of such objects are assumed to have no intrinsic ordering. The resolution of allowing only finite numbers of particles is defended (as being the least ad hoc) by looking at both -sequences (in the (...) context of a very basic supertask, in Section 4) and *-sequences (reversed -sequences, in the form of paradoxical results from the recent literature). Introduction The simultaneous collision The paradox in other contexts The basic problem is N0 things The recent literature Generating N0 things. (shrink)

This paper posits that the writings of Hélène Cixous convey a remarkable intimacy, firstly in the representation of love, with its relationship to knowledge and time; and, secondly, in the relationship her texts create with the reader. Cixous?s use of her life, from the publication of her dreams to the life events which are the creative impetus for texts such as The Book of Promethea (1983) and The Day I Wasn?t There (2000) inform a discussion of the figures of the (...) lover, the dead child, and that of the brother, his interdiction against appearing in her texts, and the ethical dimension this produces for the reader. Finally, the implications of Cixous?s imbrication of literature, dreaming, writing and life is considered as a gesture of intimacy which opens a possibility for radically reconceiving our usual separation of these realms of experience. (shrink)

In a widely publicized lecture in 2008, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, expressed his concern that the conception of law and democratic citizenship prevailing in England may lead to ghettoization. The problem, in his view, is that the bulk of the convictions and commitments that define a given citizen’s identity are seen as a matter of individual choice and relegated to the private realm. In diagnosing this problem, Williams tacitly distances himself from a privatizing view of democratic politics. In (...) response to the problem, he calls for consideration of the possibility of supplementary jurisdictions, whereby certain legal functions would be delegated to the religious courts of a community. The article is broadly supportive of Williams’ concern to avoid privatization and his emphasis on the importance of openness to learning from other legal codes. However, it finds no convincing case for legally recognizing plural jurisdictions. It concludes that this aim is better served by Seyla Benhabib’s proposal for vibrant, ongoing exchanges between different legal codes, and between such codes and political and cultural beliefs, traditions and practices. (shrink)

Los's probability semantics are used to identify the appropriate probability conditional for use in probabilistic explanations. This conditional is shown to have applications to probabilistic reasoning in expert systems. The reasoning scheme of the system MYCIN is shown to be probabilistically invalid; however, it is shown to be "close" to a probabilistically valid inference scheme.

Gaisi Takeuti has recently proposed a new operation on orthomodular lattices L, ⫫: $\scr{P}(L)\rightarrow L$ . The properties of ⫫ suggest that the value of ⫫ $(A)(A\subseteq L)$ corresponds to the degree in which the elements of A behave classically. To make this idea precise, we investigate the connection between structural properties of orthomodular lattices L and the existence of two-valued homomorphisms on L.

What follows is a response to an article by Spiecker and Steutel in which they pose the question of whether sex between people with "mental retardation" (sic) is morally permissible and in which they argue that since many such people cannot give "valid consent", the additional consent of caretakers may be required. However, we argue that the term "mental retard" is offensive and that either the UK terminology ("the learning disabled") or the internationally accepted term ("intellectually disabled") are more acceptable. (...) Moreover, we point out that Spiecker and Steutel are mistaken. Many "learning disabled" people can and do give "valid consent". In any case, their question is itself dubious. Why should two learning disabled people who want to have sex together need anyone else's consent? In addition, we briefly address the rights of the learning disabled to the same sexual freedom as others, on the one hand, and to freedom from sexual exploitation on the other hand. Finally, we consider the implications of these issues for moral education. We suggest that carers need to develop empathy and, where necessary, advocacy skills. We point to the existence of training programmes on sexuality and protection issues. (shrink)

In this article, a sequel to “Prophetic Experience as Revelation,” I argue that history is the symbolic agency through which revelation occurs. Four issues are central to this claim: the action of God in history, the notion of universal history as revelation, the concept of Christian history as revelation, and the function of history as a symbol in the process of revelation itself.

To attempt in two short articles to provide an adequate review of present-day reflection about divine revelation to humans is folly; in addition to suggest and justify a particular understanding of revelation borders on the impossible. What I propose to do is something much more limited: within the content of contemporary discussion about revelation to examine only two critical and, I hope, illumining instances - namely, the revelation of the divine that occurs in prophetic experience (which I will deal with (...) here) and (in the sequel) human history as the symbolic agency through which revelation occurs. (shrink)

The essays in this collection, which derive from the conference 'Alienation and Alterity: Otherness in Modern and Contemporary Francophone Contexts', held at the University of Exeter in September 2007, explore various aspects of this ...

Essays on Philosophy and Economic Methodology By Daniel M. Hausman Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. 259. ISBN 0?521?41740?6. £35.00. Le Fondement de la morale: Essai d'éthiquephilosophique By André Léonard Cerf, 1991. Pp. 381. ISBN not available. FF240. The Philosophy of Time Edited By Robin Le Poidevin and Murray MacBeath Oxford University Press, 1993. Pp. 230. ISBN 0?19?823998?X. £27.50. The Ethics and Politics of Human Experimentation By Paul M. McNeill Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. 315. ISBN 0?521?41627?2. £35.00. Modern Conditions, Postmodern (...) Controversies By Barry Smart Routledge, 1991. Pp. 241. ISBN 0?415?06952. £10.99. Religion in Relation. Method, Application and Moral Location By Ivan Strenski Macmillan, 1993. Pp. ix + 257. ISBN 0?333?53469?7. £45.00. Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State By Jonathan Wolff Polity Press, 1991. Pp. ix + 168. ISBN 0?7456?0603?2. £8.95 pbk. (shrink)

Cognition in work teams has been predominantly understood and explained in terms of shared cognition with a focus on the similarity of static knowledge structures across individual team members. Inspired by the current zeitgeist in cognitive science, as well as by empirical data and pragmatic concerns, we offer an alternative theory of team cognition. Interactive Team Cognition (ITC) theory posits that (1) team cognition is an activity, not a property or a product; (2) team cognition should be measured and studied (...) at the team level; and (3) team cognition is inextricably tied to context. There are implications of ITC for theory building, modeling, measurement, and applications that make teams more effective performers. (shrink)