The doctor-patient relationship is usually seen and accepted as a giving-taking association, in which the doctor is a giver and the patient is a taker. The paper challenges such a one-way relationship, and stresses the patient as a giver and the doctor as a receiver. The patient is described as a source for the emotional development of the doctor, and as a source of knowledge. He is also a source for what could be called life experience. By serving as a (...) source for these three elements, the patient is also seen as a source for reward. There is a danger of under-utilisation of this reward by the doctor, when (1) he is engaged only in giving, (2) he wilfully obstructs the channel of information, and (3) he feels saturation called by the doctor experience. This under-utilisation will ultimately lead to medical parasitism. This parasitism is seldom recognised by the patient, because the arrest of development of a doctor is usually hardly noticed, and this will lead to neglect of the patient, so that the trade between doctor and patient becomes unfair, as the long-term investment which the patient has placed in the doctor, does not pay off any longer. (shrink)
Can it be better or worse for a person to be than not to be, that is, can it be better or worse to exist than not to exist at all? This old 'existential question' has been raised anew in contemporary moral philosophy. There are roughly two reasons for this renewed interest. Firstly, traditional so-called “impersonal” ethical theories, such as utilitarianism, have counter-intuitive implications in regard to questions concerning procreation and our moral duties to future, not yet existing people. Secondly, (...) it has seemed evident to many that an outcome can only be better than another if it is better for someone, and that only moral theories that are in this sense “person affecting” can be correct. The implications of this Person Affecting Restriction will differ radically, however, depending on which answer one gives to the existential question. Melinda Roberts (2003) and Matthew Adler (2009) have defended an affirmative answer to the existential question using an assumption that one can asribe a zero level of wellbeing to a person in a world in which that person doesn't exist. Contrariwise, Derek Parfit (1984), John Broome (1999), and others have worried that if we take a person’s life to be better for her than non-existence, then we would have to conclude that it would have been worse for her if she did not exist, which is absurd: Nothing would have been worse or better for a person if she had not existed. The paper suggests that an affirmative answer to the existential question can avoid such absurdities: One can claim that, say, it is better for a person to exist than not to exist, without implying that it would have been worse for a person if she had not existed or that her level of wellbeing would then have been lower. (shrink)
A number of epistemologists have defended a necessary condition for knowledge that has come to be labeled as the “safety” condition. Timothy Williamson, Duncan Pritchard, and Ernest Sosa are the foremost defenders of safety. According to these authors an agent S knows a true proposition P only if S could not easily have falsely believed P. Disagreement arises, however, with respect to how they capture the notion of a safe belief. -/- This article is a treatment of the different presentations (...) and defenses of the safety condition for knowledge. Special attention is first paid to an elucidation of the various aspects or features of the safety condition. Following a short demonstration of the manner in which the safety condition handles some rather tough Gettier-like cases in the literature, some problems facing safety conclude this article. (shrink)
Parallel language activation in bilinguals leads to competition between languages. Experience managing this interference may aid novel language learning by improving the ability to suppress competition from known languages. To investigate the effect of bilingualism on the ability to control native-language interference, monolinguals and bilinguals were taught an artificial language designed to elicit between-language competition. Partial activation of interlingual competitors was assessed with eye-tracking and mouse-tracking during a word recognition task in the novel language. Eye-tracking results showed that monolinguals looked (...) at competitors more than bilinguals, and for a longer duration of time. Mouse-tracking results showed that monolinguals’ mouse movements were attracted to native-language competitors, whereas bilinguals overcame competitor interference by increasing the activation of target items. Results suggest that bilinguals manage cross-linguistic interference more effectively than monolinguals. We conclude that language interference can affect lexical retrieval, but bilingualism may reduce this interference by facilitating access to a newly learned language. (shrink)
A large chorus of voices has grown around the claim that theistic belief is epistemically suspect since, as some cognitive scientists have hypothesized, such beliefs are a byproduct of cognitive mechanisms which evolved for rather different adaptive purposes. This paper begins with an overview of the pertinent cognitive science followed by a short discussion of some relevant epistemic concepts. Working from within a largely Williamsonian framework, we then present two different ways in which this research can be formulated into an (...) argument against theistic belief. We argue that neither version works. (shrink)
I thank the commentators for their extremely rich and stimulating discussions of Thought and World.1 Their commentaries show that a number of TW’s claims are in need of clarification and defense, and that some of its arguments contain substantial lacunae. I am very pleased to have these flaws called to my attention, and to have an opportunity to try to correct them. Also, I am grateful for the commentators’ endorsements. As is perhaps inevitable in a symposium of this kind, the (...) commentaries contain more questions and objections than expressions of agreement; but even so, each of the com- mentators conveys the impression that he found TW to be worth reading. It is an honor to receive endorsements, even qualified endorsements, from such a distinguished company. (shrink)
Marian David defends the correspondence theory of truth against the disquotational theory of truth, its current major rival. The correspondence theory asserts that truth is a philosophically rich and profound notion in need of serious explanation. Disquotationalists offer a radically deflationary account inspired by Tarski and propagated by Quine and others. They reject the correspondence theory, insist truth is anemic, and advance an "anti-theory" of truth that is essentially a collection of platitudes: "Snow is white" is true if and (...) only if snow is white; "Grass is green" is true if and only if grass is green. According to disquotationalists the only profound insight about truth is that it lacks profundity. David contrasts the correspondence theory with disquotationalism and then develops the latter position in rich detail--more than has been available in previous literature--to show its faults. He demonstrates that disquotationalism is not a tenable theory of truth, as it has too many absurd consequences. (shrink)
This book explores the language and arguments Jacques Derrida uses in his writings, and how this is at the core of his work. Marian Hobson explores the French language in which Derrida's philosophy is written in, and the ways his ideas are organized, to suggest that this has an overriding affect on how his translated work affects our understanding of his thought.
Narrowly speaking, the correspondence theory of truth is the view that truth is correspondence to a fact -- a view that was advocated by Russell and Moore early in the 20 th century. But the label is usually applied much more broadly to any view explicitly embracing the idea that truth consists in a relation to reality, i.e., that truth is a relational property involving a characteristic relation (to be specified) to some portion of reality (to be specified). During the (...) last 2300 years this basic idea has been expressed in many ways, resulting in a rather extended family of views, theories, and theory sketches. The members of the family employ various concepts for the relevant relation (correspondence, conformity, congruence, agreement, accordance, copying, picturing, signification, representation, reference, satisfaction) and/or various concepts for the relevant portion of reality (facts, states of affairs, situations, events, objects, sequences of objects, sets, properties, tropes). The resulting multiplicity of versions and reformulations of the theory is due to a blend of substantive and terminological differences. (shrink)
Contra Lewis, it is argued that the correspondence theory is a genuine rival theory of truth: it goes beyond the redundancy theory; it competes with other theories of truth; it is aptly summarized by the slogan 'truth is correspondence to fact'; and it really is a theory of truth.
Roderick Chisholm appears to agree with Kant on the question of the existence of synthetic a priori knowledge. But Chisholm’s conception of the a priori is a traditional Aristotelian conception and differs markedly from Kant’s. Closer scrutiny reveals that their agreement on the question of the synthetic a priori is merely verbal: what Kant meant to affirm, Chisholm denies. Curiously, it looks as if Chisholm agreed on all substantive issues with the empiricist rejection of Kant’s synthetic a priori. In the (...) end, it turns out that Chisholm disagrees with both, empiricism and Kant, over a fundamental question: whether mere understanding of the contents of our thoughts must always remain within the circle of our own ideas or can provide us with genuine knowledge of matters of fact. (shrink)
Quine’s paper “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” is famous for its attack on analyticity and the analytic/synthetic distinction. But there is an element of Quine’s attack that should strike one as extremely puzzling, namely his objection to Carnap’s account of analyticity. For it appears that, if this objection works, it will not only do away with analyticity, it will also do away with other semantic notions, notions that (or so one would have thought) Quine does not want to do away with, (...) in particular, it will also do away with truth. I shall argue that there is, indeed, no way for Quine to protect truth against the type of argument he himself advanced in “Two Dogmas” against Carnap’s notion of analyticity. If he wants to keep his argument, Quine has to discard truth along with analyticity. At the end of the paper I suggest an interpretation of Quine on which he can be seen as having done just that. (shrink)
In some recent articles, Jaegwon Kim has argued that non-reductive physicalism is a myth: when it comes to the mind-body problem, the only serious options are reductionism, eliminativism, and dualism.[1] And when it comes to reductionism, Kim is inclined to regard a functionalist theory of the mind as the best available option—mostly because it offers the best explanation of mind-body supervenience. In this paper, I will discuss Kim’s views about functionalism. They may be contended on two general grounds. First, some (...) functionalists will object to being classified as reductionists. Second, Kim argues for a version (or a reading) of functionalism, conceptualized functionalism, that makes it rather similar to the “old” mind-body identity theory it was designed to replace. Moreover, Kim’s conceptualized functionalism turns out to be a somewhat surprising brand of reductionism—a reductionism with some eliminativist cut-outs and, possibly, some dualist leftovers. At the end of the paper I propose a construal of the more standard version of functionalism that obviates Kim’s argument for switching-over to his conceptualized version. (shrink)
Philosopher’s judgements on the philosophical value of Tarski’s contributions to the theory of truth have varied. For example Karl Popper, Rudolf Carnap, and Donald Davidson have, in their different ways, celebrated Tarski’s achievements and have been enthusiastic about their philosophical relevance. Hilary Putnam, on the other hand, pronounces that “[a]s a philosophical account of truth, Tarski’s theory fails as badly as it is possible for an account to fail.” Putnam has several alleged reasons for his dissatisfaction,1 but one of them, (...) the one I call the modal objection (cf. Raatikainen 2003), has been particularly influential. In fact, very similar objections have been presented over and over again in the literature. Already in 1954, Arthur Pap had criticized Tarski’s account with a similar argument (Pap 1954). Moreover, both Scott Soames (1984) and John Etchemendy (1988) use, with an explicit reference to Putnam, similar modal arguments in relation to Tarski. Richard Heck (1997), too, shows some sympathy for such considerations. Simon Blackburn (1984, Ch. 8) has put forward a related argument against Tarski. Recently, Marian David has criticized Tarski’s truth definition with an analogous argument as well (David 2004, p. 389-390).2 This line of argument is thus apparently one of the most influential critiques of Tarski. It is certainly worthy of serious attention. Nevertheless, I shall argue that, given closer scrutiny, it does not present such an acute problem for the Tarskian approach to truth as many philosophers think. But I also believe that it is important to understand clearly why this is so. Moreover, I think that a careful consideration of the issue illuminates certain important but somewhat neglected aspects of the Tarskian approach. (shrink)
Fregean thoughts (i.e. the senses of assertoric sentences) are structured entities because they are composed of simpler senses that are somehow ordered and interconnected. The constituent senses form a unity because some of them are ?saturated? and some ?unsaturated?. This paper shows that Frege's explanation of the structure of thoughts, which is based on the ?saturated/unsaturated? distinction, is by no means sufficient because it permits what I call ?wild analyses?, which have certain unwelcome consequences. Wild analyses are made possible because (...) any ?unsaturated? sense that is a mode of presentation of a concept together with any ?saturated? sense forms a thought. The reason is that any concept can be applied to any object (which is presented by a ?saturated? sense). This stems from the fact that Frege was willing to admit only total functions. It is also briefly suggested what should be done to block wild analyses. (shrink)
In Reason, Truth, and History Hilary Putnam has presented an anti-skeptical argument purporting to prove that we are not brains in a vat. How exactly the argument goes is somewhat controversial. A number of competing "recon¬structions" have been proposed. They suffer from a defect which they share with what seems to be Putnam's own version of the argument. In this paper, I examine a very simple and rather natural reconstruction of the argument, one that does not employ any premises in (...) which a sentence, viz. the sentence 'I am a brain in a vat', is mentioned rather than used. In this respect my version of the argument is importantly different from what appears to be Putnam's own version. (shrink)
This paper is concerned with a popular view about the nature of propositions, commonly known as the Russellian view of propositions. Alvin Plantinga has dubbed it, or more precisely, a crucial consequence of it, Existentialism, and in his paper “On Existentialism” (1983) he has presented a forceful argument intended as a reductio of this view. In what follows, I describe the main relevant ingredients of the Russellian view of propositions and states of affairs. I present a relatively simple response Russellians (...) might want to make to Plantinga’s anti-existentialist argument. I then explore one aspect of this response—one that leads to some rather curious consequences for the Russellian view of propositions and states of affairs. (shrink)
Contribution to book symposium on C. Hill's: Thought and World. Focus is primarily on the intelligibility of Hill's substitutional quantification into propositions.
I dedicate my dissertation to my parents and step-parents, whose support has been unwavering and invaluable, and to three teachers who shaped me: George Bealer, Marian Keane, and Anne Moore.
The authors present the main ideas of the computer-assisted proof of Mischaikow and Mrozek that chaos is really present in the Lorenz equations. Methodological consequences of this proof are examined. It is shown that numerical calculations can constitute an essential part of mathematical proof not only in the discrete mathematics but also in the mathematics of continua.
As to the preference which most people—as long as they are not annoyed by instances—feel in favor of true propositions, this must be based, apparently, upon an ultimate ethical proposition: ‘It is good to believe true propositions, and bad to believe false ones’. This proposition, it is to be hoped, is true; but if it is not, there is no reason to think that we do ill in believing it. Bertrand Russell, “Meinong’s Theory of Complexes and Assumptions” (1904).
I want to discuss, in some detail, a short section from Quine’s Philosophy of Logic. It runs from pages 10 to 13 of the second, revised edition of the book and carries the subheading ‘Truth and semantic ascent’.1 In these two and a half pages, Quine presents his well-known account of truth as a device of disquotation, employing what I call Quine’s Ladder. The section merits scrutiny, for it has become the central document for contemporary deflationary views about truth.
In this article I wish to show how care ethics puts forward a fundamental critique on the ideal of independency in human life without thereby discounting autonomy as a moral value altogether. In care ethics, a relational account of autonomy is developed instead. Because care ethics is sometimes criticized in the literature as hopelessly vague and ambiguous, I shall begin by elaborating on how care ethics and its place in ethical theory can be understood. I shall stipulate a definition of (...) care ethics as a moral perspective or orientation from which ethical theorizing can take place. This will mean that care ethics is more a stance from which we can theorize ethically, than ready-made theory in itself. In conceiving care ethics in this way, it becomes possible to make clear that, for instance, a moral concept of autonomy is not abandoned, but instead is given a particular place and interpretation. In the final part of this article I will show how ârelational autonomyâ can be applied fruitfully in the practice of psychiatric care. (shrink)
According to a classical correspondence theory of truth, a proposition is true iff it corresponds to a fact. The approach has its competitors. One of them, the identity theory of truth, pushes for a surprising simplification. It says that true propositions do not correspond to facts, they are facts. Some find this view too bizarre to be taken seriously. Some are attracted to it because they worry that the correspondence theory opens a gap between our thoughts and reality--a gap that, (...) once opened, will turn out to be unbridgeable, thus making it impossible for our thoughts to come into contact with reality and for us to attain knowledge. They think the identity theory will avoid these nasty consequences because it does not open the gap to begin with. The no-gap theme will play a role in the background of the present paper. It will surface at times. But the paper is more concerned with a different theme, the collapse-charge. Opponents of the correspondence theory sometimes charge that the theory is unstable, that it must collapse into the identity theory, because there is not enough play between true propositions and facts to leave room for a genuine relation to hold between them. Those who regard the identity theory as absurd might see this a reductio of the correspondence theory. Others might see it as an argument for the identity theory. After some exploration of the identity theory, I will present one form of the collapse-charge, then I will discuss what a correspondence theorist has to offer by way of a response. (shrink)
Marian Przełęcki’s semantics for the Received View is a good explication of Carnap’s position on the subject, anticipates many discussions and results from both proponents and opponents of the Received View, and can be the basis for a thriving research program.
Minimalism, Paul Horwich’s deflationary conception of truth, has recently received a makeover in form of the second edition of Horwich’s highly stimulating book Truth1. I wish to use this occasion to explore a thesis vital to Minimalism: that the minimal theory of truth provides an adequate explanation of the facts about truth. I will indicate why the thesis is vital to Minimalism. Then I will argue that it can be saved from objections only by tampering with the standards of adequate (...) explanation —a move that deprives it from giving support to Minimalism. At the heart of Minimalism lies a theory of truth for propositions. It is called the minimal theory, or MT for short. It consists of a collection of axioms. Each axiom is a proposition of the form.. (shrink)
The paper offers some preliminary and rather unsystematic reflections about the question: Do Beliefs Have Their Contents Essentially? The question looks like it ought to be important, yet it is rarely discussed. Maybe thatâs because content essentialism, i.e., the view that beliefs do have their contents essentially, is simply too obviously and trivially true to deserve much discussion. I sketch a common-sense argument that might be taken to show that content essentialism is indeed utterly obvious and/or trivial. Somewhat against this, (...) I then point out that a sexy conclusion that is sometimes drawn from Putnam-Burge-style externalist arguments, namely that our mental states are not in our heads, presupposes content essentialism â which suggests that the view is not entirely trivial. Moreover, it seems intuitively that physicalists should reject the view: If beliefs are physical states, how could they have their propositional contents essentially? I distinguish three readings of the title question. Content essentialism does seem fairly obvious on the first two, but not so on the third. I argue that the common-sense argument mentioned earlier presupposes one of the first two readings but fails to apply to the third, on which âbeliefâ refers to belief-state tokens. Thatâs because ordinary belief individuation is silent about belief-state tokens. Token physicalists, I suggest, should indeed reject content essentialism about belief-state tokens. What about token dualists? One might think they ought to embrace content essentialism about belief-state tokens. I end with puzzling why this should be so. (shrink)
If women are not yet accorded the full rights of citizenship internationally and especially in the military context, a feminist position on just war may have to be provisional. Drawing on Virginia Woolf's argument referenced in the title, Eide suggests in this essay that feminist theory develop its principles from women's exclusion from national privileges and argues that jus post bellum or justice after war be central to feminist theories of just war.
Chapter One INTRODUCTORY REMARKS The title of this monograph needs explanation. It certainly sounds too promising. A more adequate, though more cumbersome ...
A cross-cultural empirical study is reported in this article which looks at ethical beliefs and behaviours among French and German managers, and compares this with previous studies of U.S. and Israeli managers using a similar questionnaire. Comparisons are made between what managers say they believe, and what they do, between managers and their peers' attitudes and behaviours, and between perceived top management attitudes and the existence of company policy. In the latter, significant differences are found by national ownership of the (...) company rather than the country in which it is situated. Significant differences are found, for both individual managers by nationality, and for companies by nationality of parents, in the area of organizational loyalty. The attitude towards accepting gifts and favours in exchange for preferential treatment, as a measure of societal values, is also found to show significant differences between national groups. However, no significant differences are found for measures for group loyalty, conflict between organizational and group loyalty and for conflicts between self and group/organization. The findings have implications for cross-border management decision strategies regarding such issues as receiving and giving of gifts, and the management of relations between local employees and international organizations which may be affected by differences in attitude to corporate loyalty. (shrink)
The causes of asymmetries for handedness and cerebral speech are of scientific interest, but is it sensible to try to determine which of these came first? I argue that (1) first causes belong to mythology, not science; (2) much of the cited evidence is weak; and (3) the treatment of individual differences is inadequate in comparison with the right shift theory.
The T-biconditionals, also known as T-sentences or T-equivalences, play a very prominent role in contemporary work on truth. It is widely held that they are so central to our understanding of truth that conformance with them is indispensable to any account of truth that aspires to be adequate. Even “deflationists” and “inflationists” tend to agree on this point; their debate turns largely on just how central a role these biconditionals can play in a theory of truth. In the present paper, (...) I want to bracket this debate about their “theoretical role” and focus on the T- biconditionals themselves. They are typically presented as entirely unproblematic, as models of simplicity, clarity, and obviousness. I confess that I find them rather more puzzling than that. The main purpose of the paper is to reflect on some of these biconditionals and to survey and explore some doubts one might have about their virtues. (shrink)
The approach adopted in the paper is based on the theory known as Montague grammar. Accepting, in general, that theory — especially in its modified version, which is due to Thomason and Kaplan — the author points out certain inadequacy in its treatment of the meaning of some indexical expressions and suggests some modification of its theoretical framework in order to avoid that shortcoming. It is claimed that to do justice to the meaning of so-called indefinite indexicals (such as we, (...) you, now) two kinds of dependence of their semantic values upon the context of use must be taken into account — a semantic (or lexical) and a pragmatic (or extralexical) one. (shrink)
This paper draws on the economics of ethical compliance model to examine the association between ethical reasoning, perceived risk of detection, perceived levels of penalties and Chinese auditors'' ethical behavior in an audit conflict situation. Using 53 Chinese auditors from Shenzen as subjects, and a survey questionnaire, this study found that there is a significant negative association between ethical reasoning and the likelihood of unethical behavior and that this negative association is weaker for auditors who perceive higher risks of detection.
The main objective of the Flemish research project ‘Nanotechnologies for tomorrow’s society’ (NanoSoc) is to develop and try out an interactive process as a suitable methodology for rendering nanoresearchers aware of underlying assumptions that guide nanotech research and integrating social considerations into the research choices they face. In particular, the NanoSoc process should sustain scientists’ capacities to address growing uncertainties on the strategic, scientific and public acceptance level. The article elaborates on these uncertainties and involved dilemmas scientists are facing and (...) proposes a process approach which addresses strategic uncertainty by alternating between ‘visioning’ and ‘technology assessment’; a process design which manages complexity by promoting reflexivity among scientists by exposing them to deliberations in civil society (social experts, stakeholders, citizens) on plausible futures with nanotechnologies; and as an answer to societal ambivalence, certain process quality requirements such as an attitude of perplexity or openness towards ‘plurality’ and an attitude of ‘temporary closure’, both in support of understanding and learning from differences. (shrink)
Borrett, Kelly and Kwan [(2000) Phenomenology, dynamical neural networks and brain function, Philosophical Psychology, 13, 000-000] claim that unbiased, self-evident, direct description is possible, and may supply the data that brain theories account for. Merleau-Ponty's [(1962) Phenomenology of perception, London: Routledge] description of Schneider's apraxia is offered as a case in point. According to the authors, Schneider's apraxia justifies brain components of (...) predicative and pre-predicative experience. The description derives from a bias, however, that parallels modularity's morphological reduction. The presence of biasing presuppositions contradicts the goal of direct description. Moreover, the authors' brain account is not necessary to explain Schneider's apraxia, and morphological reduction is not sufficient to explain emergent phenomena of motor control. (shrink)
