Online research in philosophy

This paper presents the hypothesis that linguistic capacity evolved through the action of natural selection as an instrument which increased the efficiency of the cultural transmission system of early hominids. We suggest that during the early stages of hominization, hominid social learning, based on indirect social learning mechanisms and true imitation, came to constitute cumulative cultural transmission based on true imitation and the approval or disapproval of the learned behaviour of offspring. A key factor for this transformation was the development (...) of a conceptual capacity for categorizing learned behaviour in value terms - positive or negative, good or bad. We believe that some hominids developed this capacity for categorizing behaviour, and such an ability allowed them to approve or disapprove of their offsprings- learned behaviour. With such an ability, hominids were favoured, as they could transmit to their offspring all their behavioural experience about what can and cannot be done. This capacity triggered a cultural transmission system similar to the human one, though pre-linguistic. We suggest that the adaptive advantage provided by this new system of social learning generated a selection pressure in favour of the development of a linguistic capacity allowing children to better understand the new kind of evaluative information received from parents. (shrink)

Combining perspectives on the interplay of two areas of primary importance to our lives--business and society--this anthology brings together a wide range of readings on the subject. Topics covered include the historical evolution of the business enterprise, the emergence and development of the labor force, and the impact of the international marketplace. Barry Castro concentrates on the moral and social aspects of business, the way it affects national economy, the environment, careers, the disadvantaged, government, and public opinion. Considering the (...) abundance of socioeconomic issues in everyday life, he shows that business ethics is particularly relevant to the business student of today, and that the historical, social and ethical dimensions of business are an inseparable and necessary component of business education. (shrink)

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey (SVS) data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societal-level analyses. At the individual-level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub-dimensions and two sets of values dimensions (collectivism and individualism; openness to change, conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence). At the societal-level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective (...) autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each society, we report the Cronbach’s α statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency (reliability) as well as report interrater agreement (IRA) analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country values. We also examined whether societal development level is related to systematic variation in the measurement and importance of values. Thus, the contributions of our evaluation of the SVS values dimensions are two-fold. First, we identify the SVS dimensions that have cross-culturally internally reliable structures and within-society agreement for business professionals. Second, we report the society cultural values scores developed from the twenty-first century data that can be used as macro-level predictors in multilevel and single-level international business research. (shrink)

My central point is that the recent wave of interest in business ethics is an opportunity to review the whole enterprise of undergraduate business education. Business ethics, taught as if the students, faculty, curriculum and organization of the business school were important parts of the subject matter, is a way both to affirm the seriousness of ethical inquiry and to build an increased sense of collegial responsibility for the overall curriculum students are asked to undertake.

After more than 60 years, Shannon’s research continues to raise fundamental questions, such as the one formulated by R. Luce, which is still unanswered: “Why is information theory not very applicable to psychological problems, despite apparent similarities of concepts?” On this topic, S. Pinker, one of the foremost defenders of the widespread computational theory of mind, has argued that thought is simply a type of computation, and that the gap between human cognition and computational models may be illusory. In this (...) context, in his latest book, titled Thinking Fast and Slow, D. Kahneman provides further theoretical interpretation by differentiating the two assumed systems of the cognitive functioning of the human mind. He calls them intuition (system 1) determined to be an associative (automatic, fast and perceptual) machine, and reasoning (system 2) required to be voluntary and to operate logical-deductively. In this paper, we propose a mathematical approach inspired by Ausubel’s meaningful learning theory for investigating, from the constructivist perspective, information processing in the working memory of cognizers. Specifically, a thought experiment is performed utilizing the mind of a dual-natured creature known as Maxwell’s demon: a tiny “man–machine” solely equipped with the characteristics of system 1, which prevents it from reasoning. The calculation presented here shows that the Ausubelian learning schema, when inserted into the creature’s memory, leads to a Shannon-Hartley-like model that, in turn, converges exactly to the fundamental thermodynamic principle of computation, known as the Landauer limit. This result indicates that when the system 2 is shut down, both an intelligent being, as well as a binary machine, incur the same minimum energy cost per unit of information (knowledge) processed (acquired), which mathematically shows the computational attribute of the system 1, as Kahneman theorized. This finding links information theory to human psychological features and opens the possibility to experimentally test the computational theory of mind by means of Landauer’s energy cost, which can pave a way toward the conception of a multi-bit reasoning machine. (shrink)

Upshot: According to Biology of Cognition and Language (Maturana’s approach) the immune system is not a cognitive system and defining of a cognitive paradigm is not what we understand as a Maturanian approach to immunology. The true cognitive actions in immunology are performed by immunologists acting as observers, not by body organs or systems. Stimuli and responses are not adequate concepts in the description of systems. As a closed network of cellular/molecular interactions, the immune system yields patterns of activity as (...) is transparent in robust conserved profiles of reactivity of natural immunoglobulins, as investigated by Nóbrega et al. and Cohen et al., which offer the opportunity to unravel its natural, spontaneous activity. Dietary materials, products of the commensal microbiome are the most abundant and common elements continuously incorporated to the network activity and, thus, also represent an important avenue of investigation. (shrink)

This paper undertakes an inquiry into the relationship between the disciplinary training of business ethicists, their institutional affiliations, those whose work they cite, those with whom they collaborate, and — to some degree — the kind of work they do. It is intended as a response to both the historic injunction that we examine ourselves and to what is seen as the considerable disarray of the field.

The Benacerraf’s problem is a problem about how we can attain mathematical knowledge: mathematical entities are entities not located in space-time; we exist in spacetime; so, it does not seem that we could have a causal connection with mathematical entities in order to attain mathematical knowledge. In this paper, I propose a solution to the Benacerraf’s problem supported by the Quinean doctrines of naturalism, confirmational holism and postulation. I show that we have empirical knowledge of centres of mass and of (...) entities outside of our light cone and that these entities are inefficacious causality entities, at least, with us. At the end, I defend the existential knowledge of centres of mass and of entities outside of our light cone against the Eleatic principle of Cheyne, that we only could attain existential knowledge of entities by a causal connection. (shrink)

This paper seeks to destabilize the silent privilege given to the secured juridical-political position of the citizen as the stable site of enunciation of the problem/solution framework under which the stranger (foreigner, immigrant, refugee) is theoretically located. By means of textual, intertextual, and extratextual readings of Antigone, the paper argues that it is politically and literarily possible to (re)invent her for strangers in the twenty-first century, that is, for those symbolically produced as not-legally locatable and who resignify their ambivalent ontological (...) status between life and death as an alternative sociopolitical location of speech and action in equality with “others.”. (shrink)

The author argues that a continuing effort to avoid self-deception is the pre-requisite to any ethical analysis; that this effort cannot be altogether successful; that it is Iikely to even be dysfunctional in a variety of organizational contexts, perhaps particularly in the context of corporate middle management, but that it ought not therefore be ignored. It is contended that business ethicists should be committed to making the difficulties associated with self-scrutiny explicit. Finally, it is argued that in order to do (...) that Ilegitimately for the corporation, university based business ethicists must be willing to face up to parallel difficulties in the university generally and in the school of business in particular. (shrink)

En el presente artículo, una vez expuestas las diversas teorías de la risa, se defiende que la risa básica (la que no tiene función social) tiene como elemento necesario, aunque no suficiente, la incongruencia. Asimismo, se postula que el chiste, generado primariamente para hacer reír, se constituye en paradigma hermenéutico de comprensión que proporciona una nueva visión de un estado de cosas y rompe lo que naturalmente cabía esperar del decurso del relato. Aunque haya un entorno de interpretaciones posibles, sólo (...) una es la correcta, y ésa es la que convierte al chiste en lo que es. In this paper, after introducing the different theories of laughter, we defend that basic laughter (that one without a social function) has incongruity as its necessary, though not sufficient, element. Besides, we propose the joke (made primarily to provoke laughter) as a hermeneutic paradigm of understanding that provides a new view of a state of affairs, and breaks with what should be naturally expected from the course of the narrative. Even though there is a series of possible interpretations, only one is the right one, and that is the one that makes the joke a joke. (shrink)

la82 12.00 Normal 0 21 false false false PT-BR X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabela normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} Algumas passagens bastante controversas dos Fundamentos da Metafísica dos Costumes sáo comumente interpretados como se Kant propusesse a tese de que as ações náo podem ter qualquer valor moral quando estiverem acompanhadas de inclinações ( Neigungen ) favoráveis a (...) tais ações. O que resulta dessa interpretaçáo é uma retrato de Kant como um severo defensor de uma moralidade em que sentimentos de compaixáo e assemelhados nada acrescentam ao valor moral de uma açáo, e em vez disso, o solapam. Neste artigo, sustento que tal interpretaçáo náo é apoiada pela evidência textual. Além disso, discuto tentativas feitas por diversos autores no sentido de mostrar que as inclinações favoráveis sáo na verdade compatíveis com a argumentaçáo de Kant nos Fundamentos e defendo uma versáo em particular da tese da compatibilidade. (shrink)

In his 1982 book Wittgenstein On Rules and Private Language, Saul Kripke maintains that Wittgenstein´s rule following considerations land us with a skeptical argument about meaning. This essay contains a short exposition of Kripke´s argument. In addition, I hold, both on textual grounds and by an appeal to some select secondary literature, that Wittgenstein offered no such skeptical argument in the Philosophical Investigations . Although Wittgenstein certainly repudiates a view of meaning based on temporally located mental states, it does not (...) follow that there can be no meaning-grounding facts of other sorts. Although it is true that mental states, viewed atomistically, offer no sure foundation for meaning, I argue that it need not follow, pace Kripke, that no facts about an individual´s past mental life can ever make it clear that he meant ‘plus’ rather than ‘quus’ while performing any addition. For the individual´s past mental life is indeed relevant to meaning when considered in its unfolding in time. The essay further contains explorations on the very nature of the practice of following a rule and ends with a discussion of the solitary rule follower. (shrink)

Along 19th and 20th centuries, art became a sort of new religion, sometimes coexisting peacefully with the institutional one, sometimes trying to provide what the institutional religion was not able to provide any more. Nowadays, art has adopted many of the solutions, topics and theories that theology has handled since it was born. Arthur C. Danto treats art as a reality whose history is over (and so, a escathological reality) and also as a metaxological (metaxy=between) reality dwelling between two realms. (...) Thus, we cannot decide by pure perceptive means whether something is art or not. This consideration has important consequences for art theory. (shrink)

Humans have developed the capacity to approve or disapprove of the behavior of their children and of unrelated individuals. The ability to approve or disapprove transformed social learning into a system of cumulative cultural inheritance, because it increased the reliability of cultural transmission. Moreover, people can transmit their behavioral experiences (regarding what can and cannot be done) to their offspring, thereby avoiding the costs of a laborious, and sometimes dangerous, evaluation of different cultural alternatives. Our thesis is that, during ontogeny, (...) the evaluative communication (approval/disapproval) between parents and offspring is substituted by other evaluative communications among peers, like individuals of the same generation. Each person belongs to a reference social group with individuals that interact more intensively. Humans have developed psychological mechanisms that enable cultural transmission by being receptive to parental advice as well as their reference social group. The selective pressure that promoted these new evaluative interactions arose to facilitate the establishment of efficient cooperative relationships. In short, the social control of behavior is essential to understand human cultural transmission. (shrink)

v. 1. Para pensar a Bolívar -- v. 2. Lenguajes republicanos.

Patrick Grim has put forward a set theoretical argument purporting to prove that omniscience is an inconsistent concept and a model theoretical argument for the claim that we cannot even consistently define omniscience. The former relies on the fact that the class of all truths seems to be an inconsistent multiplicity (or a proper class, a class that is not a set); the latter is based on the difficulty of quantifying over classes that are not sets. We first address the (...) set theoretical argument and make explicit some ways in which it depends on mathematical Platonism. Then we sketch a non Platonistic account of inconsistent multiplicities, based on the notion of indefinite extensibility, and show how Grim’s set theoretical argument could fail to be conclusive in such a context. Finally, we confront Grim’s model theoretical argument suggesting a way to define a being as omniscient without quantifying over any inconsistent multiplicity. (shrink)

We show how second order logic incompleteness follows from incompleteness of arithmetic, as proved by Gödel.

Practical medical decisions are closely integrated with ethical and religious beliefs in the Philippines. This is shown in a survey of Filipino physicians' attitudes towards severely compromised neonates. This is also the reason why the ethical analysis of critical care practices must be situated within the context of local culture. Kagandahang loob and kusang loob are indigenous Filipino ethical concepts that provide a framework for the analysis of several critical care practices. The practice of taking-from-the-rich-to-give-to-the-poor in public hospitals is not (...) compatible with these concepts. The legislated definition of death and other aspects of the Philippine Law on Organ Transplants also fail to be compatible with these concepts. Many ethical issues that arise in a critical care setting have their roots outside the seemingly isolated clinical setting. Critical care need not apply only to individuals in a serious clinical condition. Vulnerable populations require critical attention because potent threats to their lives exist in the water that they drink and the air that they breathe. We cannot ignore these threa ts even as we move inevitably towards a technologically dependent, highly commercialized approach to health management. (shrink)

Cantor’s proof that the powerset of the set of all natural numbers is uncountable yields a version of Richard’s paradox when restricted to the full definable universe, that is, to the universe containing all objects that can be defined not just in one formal language but by means of the full expressive power of natural language: this universe seems to be countable on one account and uncountable on another. We argue that the claim that definitional contexts impose restrictions on the (...) scope of quantifiers reveals a natural way out. (shrink)

To date the teaching of business ethics has been examined from the descriptive, prescriptive, and analytical perspectives. The descriptive perspective has reviewed the existence of ethics courses (e.g., Schoenfeldtet al., 1991; Bassiry, 1990; Mahoney, 1990; Singh, 1989), their historical development (e.g., Sims and Sims, 1991), and the format and syllabi of ethics courses (e.g., Hoffman and Moore, 1982). Alternatively, the prescriptive literature has centred on the pedagogical issues of teaching ethics (e.g., Hunt and Bullis, 1991; Strong and Hoffman, 1990; Reeves, (...) 1990; Castro, 1989; George, 1987; Golenet al., 1985) and in providing recommendations for teachers of business ethics (e.g., Nappi, 1990; Hosmer and Steneck, 1989). From the analytical perspective judgments have been made as to whether courses in ethics are in fact effective in achieving value and attitudinal modifications in students (e.g., Loeb, 1991; Weber, 1990; Wynd and Mager, 1989; Pamental, 1989; Martin, 1982; Purcell, 1977). The evidence to date suggests that courses can be a means of achieving ethical awareness and sensitivity in students although it should be recognized that significant objections to the teaching of business ethics do exist and greatly inhibit their successful introduction. This paper addresses a number of the common objections to the teaching of business ethics that must be overcome if ethical programs are to continue in the future, and concludes with recommendations to facilitate the establishment of ethical training in an academic context. (shrink)

Boundary crossings in academia are rarely addressed by university policy despite the risk of problematic or unethical faculty - student interactions. This study contributes to an understanding of undergraduate college student perceptions of appropriateness of faculty - student nonsexual interactions by investigating the influence of gender and ethnicity on student judgments of the appropriateness of numerous hypothetical interactions. Overall, students deemed the majority of interactions as inappropriate. Female students judged a number of interactions as more inappropriate than did male students, (...) and with a few exceptions, Mexican American and Anglo American students were similar in their ratings of the appropriateness of faculty - student interactions. These findings suggest that universities need to be proactive in establishing guidelines concerning faculty-student boundary crossings. (shrink)

The empirical relationship between a firm’s social performance and its financial performance is still not well established in the literature. Despite more than 30 years of research and more than 100 empirical studies on the issue, the results are still mixed. We argue that the heterogeneous results found in previous studies are not due exclusively to problems related with the measurement instruments or the samples used. Instead, we posit that a more fundamental problem related with the endogeneity of social strategic (...) decisions could be driving most of the empirical findings. We show that, using a panel data of 658 firms from 1991 to 2005, how some of the results found in previous research change, and some are even reversed when endogeneity is properly taken into account. (shrink)

This catalogue essay is based on a series of interviews conducted by the authors with international scholars who were asked to reflect on Guattari's scattered comments concerning animism. Interviewees are: Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (anthropologist, Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro), Eric Alliez (philosopher, Paris), Jean Claude Polack (psychoanalyst, Paris), Barbara Glowczewski (anthropologist, Paris), Peter Pál Pelbart (philosopher, São Paolo) Janja Rosangela Araujo (master of Capoeira Angola, and professor, Salvador de Bahia) and Jean Jacques Lebel (artist, Paris). Animism was thought (...) by Guattari in relation to a number of themes and places in excess of religion and ritual but in the context of the shattering of capitalism. (shrink)

Godel's and Tarski's theorems were inspired by paradoxes: the Richard paradox, the Liar. Godel, in the 1951 Gibbs lecture argued from his metatheoretical results for a metaphysical claim: the impossibility of reducing, both, mathematics to the knowable by the human mind and the human mind to a finite machine (e.g. the brain). So Godel reasoned indirectly from paradoxes for metaphysical theses. I present four metaphysical theses concerning mechanism, reductive physicalism and time for the only purpose of suggesting how it could (...) be argued for them directly from paradoxical sentences. (shrink)

Focusing on philosophy’s roles in problem solving, this essay proposes a philosophy curriculum for a university “universalized” according to a Cuban model. This model arises from Fidel Castro Ruz’s “dream” that the Cuban nation itself should become a university for its people. The paper’s immediate stimulus was aVenezuelan paper on rural universalized universities at the Havana conference on university education, Universidad 2008. What should be the place of philosophy in a university curriculum for rural students? In the idiom of (...) Richard Rorty, philosophy is the collection of stories we tell ourselves for guidance through life. Philosophy’s critical function is to generate new stories when old ones fail to solve the problems that gave birth to them. The essay’s three parts address three levels of generality in philosophical reflection. The most general philosophical theories, such as Marxism or pragmatism, offer wholesale guidelines for life. More specific theories direct the practices of narrow subjects, such as physics, psychology, or economics. The most specific theories focus on the nexus of theoryand practice in solving life’s most concrete problems. The essay advocates a philosophy curriculum that contrasts students’ current philosophies with alternatives from the history of thought. Students absorb philosophies from the cultures in which they are raised. When students understand the accidental nature of their guiding thoughts, they are motivated to reflect critically on historical alternatives. When students study how to solve their problems using more specific disciplines like the arts and sciences, the history of the philosophies of those subjects will help them understand their freedom to choose among alternative solutions. When students reflect on the daily problems they must solve, attention to the connections of theory and practice can amplify their range of choices. (shrink)

Following an idea from Gödel and Carnap we show how we can speak with absolute generality even if we cannot quantify with absolute generality.

Assuming the indefinite extensibility of any domain of quantification leads to reasoning with extensible domain semantics. It is showed that some theorems (e.g. Thomson's) in conventional semantics logic are not theorems in a logic provided with this new semantics.

Fast food companies like Siam Burger that participate in health awareness campaigns create a conflict of interest between the social responsibility of promoting health and the business interest of increasing sales through marketing strategies like advertising. Alternative options of raising health awareness without mitigating the involvement of fast food companies either by denying advertisements or having a third party foundation should be explored.

I address the claim by Valor and Martínez that Goldstein's cassationist approach to Liar-like paradoxes generates paradoxes it cannot solve. I argue that these authors miss an essential point in Goldstein's cassationist approach, namely the thesis that paradoxical sentences are not able to make the statement they seem to make.

My aim is to make some comments on the ontology of the correspondence theory of truth. First I shall give reasons for rejecting a Platonic view of propositions. This motivates locating propositions in the world. I then present a version of Russell’s theory of truth, which if it locates propositions anywhere locates them in the world. I consider some of the advantages of this theory, not least among being that it does not need facts as entities.

Corporate governance (CG) can be seen to operate through a 'double agency' relationship: one between the shareholders and corporate management, and another between the corporate management and the firm's employees. The CG and labour management of firms are closely related. A particularly productive way to study how CG affects and is affected by the employment relationship has been to compare CG across countries. The contributions of this paper to that literature are threefold. (1) An integration of aspects of the labour (...) management literature in the CG debate. (2) Based on a sample of about 1000 firms from 31 countries, we find evidence of complementarities between the CG and the labour management of firms. Extreme cases, in general, outperform mixed cases. (3) Firm differences within countries are more important than scholars have assumed so far. We present the results of the study and implications for future research and for practice. (shrink)

La evidencia comparativa reciente sugiere que algunas especies no humanas sienten empatía hacia otros congéneres, la cual es una capacidad necesaria para la presencia y evolución de la moralidad. Por otro lado, la Hipótesis del Cerebro Social plantea relaciones entre la evolución de la neocorteza cerebral en primates y el tamaño de sus grupos sociales. Este artículo vincula estas ideas al señalar que: (i) la empatía y la moralidad son subproductos de la expansión de la neocorteza cerebral, y (ii) la (...) función de tales capacidades es facilitar la cooperación entre individuos, aumentando su cohesión social. Recent comparative evidence suggests that some nonhuman species feel empathy towards fellow group members and empathy is a necessary capacity for the presence and evolution of morality. On the other hand, the Social Brain Hypothesis suggests relationships between the evolution of brain's neocortex in primates and the size of their social groups. This paper links these ideas by suggesting that (i) empathy and morality are by-products of the expansión of brain's neocortex, and that (ii) the function of such capacities is to facilitate cooperation between individuals, increasing their social cohesion. (shrink)

Different theoretical approaches highlight the growing relevance of corporate reputation as strategic factor. Among these approaches the arguments of the Resource-Based View are special worthwhile (Grant, 1991, California Management Review 33(3), 114–135; Barney, 1999, Sloan Management Review Spring, 137–145). Nevertheless, this topic poses several methodological problems (Barney et al., 2001), as the unavailability to identify and measure this organizational factor, that is “socially complex” and intangible in its nature. In this work, using the findings of our empirical research on Spanish (...) biotechnology firms, we carry out an identification and measurement of corporate reputation, highlighting its two key components: “business reputation” and “social reputation”. (shrink)

Relatively subtle forms of exploitation of human subjects may arise from the inefficiency or incompetence of a researcher, from the existence of a power imbalance between principal and subject, or from the uneven distribution of research risks among various segments of the population. A powerful and knowledgeable person (or institution) may perpetrate the exploitation of an unempowered and ignorant individual even without intending to. There is an ethical burden on the former to protect the interests of the vulnerable. Excessive or (...) insufficient compensation may be exploitative. However, genuine economic imperatives motivating needy volunteers have to be considered. These forms of exploitation should be appreciated in the context of social and cultural factors suggesting that the relationship between researcher and subject cannot properly be appraised as a contractual undertaking. While compliance with pertinent codes and regulations minimises the exploitative potential, they cannot be enforced in a way that does not recognise a society's peculiar characteristics. The experience with some Filipino cultural traits illustrates this point. (shrink)

We use two logical resources, namely, the notion of recursively defined function and the Benardete-Yablo paradox, together with some inherent features of causality and time, as usually conceived, to derive two results: that no ungrounded causal chain exists and that time has a beginning.

There is a frequent attitude of scholars against the quantification of Social Sciences. Our purpose here consists of describing the central topic of quantification, namely the measure ment topic by the axiomatic method. We emphasize the significance of measurement axioms for building the laws of experimental knowledge. The first step which seems unavoidable for every measuring process, thus the order structure, is presented as the initial topic which must be followed up by the more sophisticated topics in the future. The (...) above mentioned attitude against the quantification is disclosed as a prejudice without any rational support given the actual scientific development of measurement. (shrink)

We offer a number of arguments for or against particular metaphysical theses. All of them are based in phenomena or results in mathematical logic, broadly conceived, and are offered as exemplification of the possibility of arguing in metaphysics from such results.

The Monist’s call for papers for this issue ended: “if formalism is true, then it must be possible in principle to mechanize meaning in a conscious thinking and language-using machine; if intentionalism is true, no such project is intelligible”. We use the Grelling-Nelson paradox to show that natural language is indefinitely extensible, which has two important consequences: it cannot be formalized and model theoretic semantics, standard for formal languages, is not suitable for it. We also point out that object-object mapping (...) theories of semantics, the usual account for the possibility of non intentional semantics, doesn’t seem able to account for the indefinitely extensible productivity of natural language. (shrink)

The offer of the fast food company gives rise to suspicion. This seems to be based on unfounded stereotypes, however. This paper argues that we need to preserve choices in taking particular courses of action. There is nothing inherently wrong in fast food consumption so long as consumers are made aware of the importance of weight management and proper nutrition.

Given the possibilities of synthetic biology, weapons of mass destruction and global climate change, humans may achieve the capacity globally to alter life. This crisis calls for an ethics that furnishes effective motives to take global action necessary for survival. We propose a research program for understanding why ethical principles change across time and culture. We also propose provisional motives and methods for reaching global consensus on engineering field ethics. Current interdisciplinary research in ethics, psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary theory grounds (...) these proposals. Experimental ethics, the application of scientific principles to ethical studies, provides a model for developing policies to advance solutions. A growing literature proposes evolutionary explanations for moral development. Connecting these approaches necessitates an experimental or scientific ethics that deliberately examines theories of morality for reliability. To illustrate how such an approach works, we cover three areas. The first section analyzes cross-cultural ethical systems in light of evolutionary theory. While such research is in its early stages, its assumptions entail consequences for engineering education. The second section discusses Howard University and University of Puerto Rico/Mayagüez (UPRM) courses that bring ethicists together with scientists and engineers to unite ethical theory and practice. We include a syllabus for engineering and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) ethics courses and a checklist model for translating educational theory and practice into community action. The model is based on aviation, medicine and engineering practice. The third and concluding section illustrates Howard University and UPRM efforts to translate engineering educational theory into community action. Multidisciplinary teams of engineering students and instructors take their expertise from the classroom to global communities to examine further the ethicality of prospective technologies and the decision-making processes that lead to them. (shrink)

We consider the problem of measurement using the Lindblad equation, which allows the introduction of time in the interaction between the measured system and the measurement apparatus. We use analytic results, valid for weak system-environment coupling, obtained for a two-level system in contact with a measurer (Markovian interaction) and a thermal bath (non-Markovian interaction), where the measured observable may or may not commute with the system-environment interaction. Analysing the behavior of the coherence, which tends to a value asymptotically close to (...) zero, we obtain an expression for the time of measurement which depends only on the system-measurer coupling, and which does not depend on whether the observable commutes with the system-bath interaction. The behavior of the coherences in the case of strong system-environment coupling, found numerically, indicates that an increase in this coupling decreases the measurement time, thus allowing our expression to be considered the upper limit for the duration of the process. (shrink)

Computationalism is the claim that all possible thoughts are computations, i.e. executions of algorithms. The aim of the paper is to show that if intentionality is semantically clear, in a way defined in the paper, then computationalism must be false. Using a convenient version of the phenomenological relation of intentionality and a diagonalization device inspired by Thomson's theorem of 1962, we show there exists a thought that canno be a computation.

There is a credibility decay on positive knowledge among the social scientists and particularly among the psychologists. Certainly different prejudices dwell upon this phenomenon. First and principal the usually made identity of positive and natural knowledge. This belief is also fed by many others such as that one which assumes that every quantification, which is a consequence of positive knowledge,follows the model of the Physical Sciences. We consider that all these prejudices do not keep in mind the work done in (...) the last decades on the Theories of Measure. We consider also that psychophysical methods which have been introduced by Stevens present a stimulating program for the behavioral sciences and they open a new frontiere to the positive knowledge. (shrink)