Online research in philosophy

The potential for dual use of research in the life sciences to be misused for harm raises a range of problems for the scientific community and policy makers. Various legal and ethical strategies are being implemented to reduce the threat of the misuse of research and knowledge in the life sciences by establishing a culture of responsible conduct.

In Law's Empire, Ronald Dworkin advances two incompatible versions of law as integrity. On the strong thesis, political integrity understood as coherence in fundamental moral principles constitutes an overriding constraint on justice, fairness and due process. On the weak thesis, political integrity, while a value, is not to be privileged over justice, fairness, and due process, but to be weighed along with them. I argue that the weak thesis is superior on both of Dworkin's criteria: fit and justifiability. However, (...) the weak thesis must be amended to allow for coherence in policies as well as in principles: the social consequences of legal decisions must be taken into account. (shrink)

In contrast to many of his contemporaries, A. J. Ayer was an analytic philosopher who had sustained throughout his career some interest in developments in the work of his ‘continental’ peers. Ayer, who spoke French, held friendships with some important Parisian intellectuals, such as Camus, Bataille, Wahl and Merleau-Ponty. This paper examines the circumstances of a meeting between Ayer, Merleau-Ponty, Wahl, Ambrosino and Bataille, which took place in 1951 at some Parisian bar. The question under discussion during this meeting was (...) whether the sun existed before humans did, over which the various philosophers disagreed. This disagreement is tangled with a variety of issues, such as Ayer’s critique of Heidegger and Sartre (inherited from Carnap), Ayer’s response to Merleau-Ponty’s critique of empiricism, and Bataille’s response to Sartre’s critique of his notion of ‘unknowing’, which uncannily resembles Ayer’s critique of Sartre. 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Atlas, S. On the relation between subject and object.--Bamberger, B. Religion and the arts.--Bemporad, J. Man, God, and history.--Braude, W. C. The two lives of Hillel's sandwich.--Chapman, C. B. The health guilds, the public interest and the malpractice dilemma.--Feuer, L. Influence of Abba Hillel Silver on the evolution of Reform Judaism.--Hackerman, N. Ignorance, the motivation for understanding.--Hartshorne, C. Whitehead's metaphysical system.--Ogden, S. M. Prolegomena to a Christian theology of nature.--Sandmel, S. The rationalist denial of Jewish tradition in Philo.--Shakow, D. (...) Educating the mental health researcher for potential development in man.--Turner, D. An Ashendene dozen from the Levi A. Olan collection of fine books.--Olan, L. A. A preliminary summing up. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Acknowledgements -- Notes on Contributors -- Introduction--K.Petrus -- H. Paul Grice's Defense of the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction and Its Unintended Historical Consequences in Twentieth Century Analytical Philosophy--J.Atlas -- Paul Grice and the Philosopher of Ordinary Language--S.Chapman -- Some Aspects on Reasons and Retionality--J.Baker -- The Total Content of What a Speaker Means--A.Martinich -- Showing and Meaning--M.Green -- Communicative Acts - With and Without Understanding--C.Plunze -- Perillocutionary Acts. A Gricean Approach--K.Petrus -- William James + 40: Issues in (...) the Investigation of Implicature--L.Horn -- Grice on Presupposition--A.Bezuidenhout -- Irregular Negations: Implicature and Idiom Theories--W.Davis -- Grice's Calculability Criterion and Speaker Meaning--J.Saul -- A Gricean View on Intrusive Implicatures--M.Simons -- Three Theories of Implicature: Default Theory, Relevance and Minimalism--E.Borg -- Contextualism--N.Kompa -- Index. (shrink)