Since the introduction of drugs to prevent vertical transmission of HIV, the purpose of and approach to HIV testing of pregnant women has increasingly become an area of major controversy. In recent years, many strategies to increase the uptake of HIV testing have focused on offering HIV tests to women in pregnancy-related services. New global guidance issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) specifically notes these services as an entry point for (...) provider-initiated HIV testing and counseling (PITC). The guidance constitutes a useful first step towards a framework within which PITC sensitive to health, human rights and ethical concerns can be provided to pregnant women in health facilities. However, a number of issues will require further attention as implementation moves forward. It is incumbent on all those involved in the scale up of PITC to ensure that it promotes long-term connection with relevant health services and does not result simply in increased testing with no concrete benefits being accrued by the women being tested. Within health services, this will require significant attention to informed consent, pre- and post-test counseling, patient confidentiality, referrals and access to appropriate services, as well as reduction of stigma and discrimination. Beyond health services, efforts will be needed to address larger societal, legal, policy and contextual issues. The health and human rights of pregnant women must be a primary consideration in how HIV testing is implemented; they can benefit greatly from PITC but only if it is carried out appropriately. (shrink)
: This paper goes beyond critiques of western philosophical notions of space as passive, feminine, and unintelligent by reconfiguring containment as an (inter-)active process. The author draws on work in the history of technology, on a cybernetic epistemology that emphasizes the interdependence of organism and environment, and on intersubjectivist psychoanalytic theories of the maternal provision. A more unexpected ally is found in Heidegger, whose writings on holding and supply are read in ways that contribute to the development of an urgently (...) required philosophy of container technologies. (shrink)
The main claim of this paper is that the boundary between scientific and non scientific knowledge does exist -- which means several things. First, it's not the case that anything goes: some irrationalists have been mistaken into acceptance of that wrong conclusion because they have remarked that, however the boundary might be drawn, some important scientific developments would fall afoul of the standards entitling a research practice to count as scientific. Second, the boundary is not an imaginary one, that is (...) to say besides what is scientific and what is unscientific there also is what lies at the boundary, certain research practices which are neither wholly scientific nor fully unscientific. Third, studying what is science is itself a kind of research belonging to the boundary, since the methods available in that research are not as strictly rigorous as those used in science proper; in fact, all of philosophy is included in the boundary in question. Fourth, the boundary (and in fact science itself) displays a characteristic structure pertaining to what are by now usually called «non wellfounded sets» -- sets, that is, which are somehow or other involved in themselves, whether as members, or as members of members or so on; the significance of the last thesis is that the best way of approaching philosophy of science is not standard set theory, but theories allowing non wellfounded sets are preferable. Fifth, and last, admission of the boundary's existence compels us to go beyond standard classical logic and to look for a more suitable logic, as for instance some kind of fuzzy paraconsistent logic. (shrink)
Abstract In this paper I critically investigate an unorthodox attempt to metaphysically explain in virtue of what there are states of affairs. This is a suggestion according to which states of affairs exist thanks to, rather than, as is the common view, in spite of, the infinite regress their metaphysical explanation seems to engender. I argue that, no matter in which form it is defended, or in which theoretical framework it is set, this suggestion cannot provide us with the explanation (...) we crave. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-17 DOI 10.1007/s10516-011-9174-8 Authors Anna-Sofia Maurin, Lund University, Lund, Sweden Journal Axiomathes Online ISSN 1572-8390 Print ISSN 1122-1151. (shrink)
This article is the text of an interview with D. H. Mellor conducted in Cambridge on 30 May 2001 by Anna-Sofia Maurin and Johannes Persson for the philosophical journal Theoria.
Trope theory is the view that the world is a world of abstract particular qualities. But if all there is are tropes, how do we account for the truth of propositions ostensibly made true by some concrete particular? A common answer is that concrete particulars are nothing but tropes in compresence. This answer seems vulnerable to an argument (first presented by F. H. Bradley) according to which any attempt to account for the nature of relations will end up either in (...) contradiction, nonsense, or will lead to a vicious infinite regress. I investigate Bradley’s argument and claim that it fails to prove what it sets out to. It fails, I argue, because it does not take all the different ways in which relation and relata may depend on one another into account. If relations are entities that are distinct from yet essentially dependent upon their relata, the Bradleyan problem is solved. We are then free to say that tropes in compresence are what make true propositions ostensibly made true by concrete particulars. (shrink)
That there could be ontologically complex concrete particulars is self-evidently true. A reductio may however be formulated which contradicts this truth. In this paper I argue that all of the reasonable ways in which we might refute this reductio will require the existence of at least some tropes.
Contributing Authors: Lilli Alanen & Frans Svensson, David Alm, Gustaf Arrhenius, Gunnar Björnsson, Luc Bovens, Richard Bradley, Geoffrey Brennan & Nicholas Southwood, John Broome, Linus Broström & Mats Johansson, Johan Brännmark, Krister Bykvist, John Cantwell, Erik Carlson, David Copp, Roger Crisp, Sven Danielsson, Dan Egonsson, Fred Feldman, Roger Fjellström, Marc Fleurbaey, Margaret Gilbert, Olav Gjelsvik, Kathrin Glüer & Peter Pagin, Ebba Gullberg & Sten Lindström, Peter Gärdenfors, Sven Ove Hansson, Jana Holsanova, Nils Holtug, Victoria Höög, Magnus Jiborn, Karsten Klint Jensen, (...) Sigurður Kristinsson, Isaac Levi, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, David Makinson, Anna-Sofia Maurin, Philippe Mongin, Kevin Mulligan, Lennart Nordenfelt, Jonas Olson, Erik J. Olsson, Ingmar Persson, Johannes Persson, Björn Petersson, Philip Pettit, Hans Rott, Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen, Krister Segerberg, John Skorupski, Howard Sobel, Fredrik Stjernberg, Fred Stoutland, Caj Strandberg, Pär Sundström, Folke Tersman, Torbjörn Tännsjö, Peter Vallentyne, Bruno Verbeek, Stella Villarmea, and Michael J. Zimmerman. (shrink)
The treatise attempts to approach and deal with some of the most fundamental problems facing anyone who wishes to uphold some version of the so-called theory of tropes. Three assumptions serve as a basis for the investigation: (i) tropes (i.e. particular properties) exist, (ii) only tropes exist (that is, tropes are the only basic or fundamental kinds of entities), and (iii) a one-category trope-theory along these lines should be developed so that the tropes it postulates are able to serve as (...) truth-makers for all kinds of atomic propositions. Provided that these assumptions are accepted, it is found that the trope-theorist will have to deal with two important problems. First, some atomic propositions seem to require universal truth-makers. Second, some atomic propositions seem to require concrete truth-makers. As tropes are abstract particulars, it follows that the trope-theorist, in order to fulfil assumption (iii), must provide an account of exactly how he or she could construct universality and concreteness from his or her basic stock of tropes. In the treatise such constructions are attempted and some basic problems with such constructions are revealed (mainly problems having to do with the threat of regress). Although these problems are serious enough it is argued that it is nevertheless possible to deal with these basic issues while staying squarely within the boundaries of a one-category trope-ontology. (shrink)
This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: What counts as cognitive penetration?
This report highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012: 1. How should we demarcate perceptual learning from perceptual development? 2. What are the origins of multimodal associations? 3. Does our representation of time provide an amodal framework for multi-sensory integration? 4. What counts as cognitive penetration? 5. How can philosophers and psychologists most fruitfully collaborate?
This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How do we recognize distinct types of emotion in music?
This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: Does our representation of time provide and amodal framework for multi-sensory integration?
This article studies institutional investor allocations to the socially responsible asset class. We propose two elements influence socially responsible institutional investment in private equity: internal organizational structure, and internationalization. We study socially responsible investments from Dutch institutional investments into private equity funds, and compare socially responsible investment across different asset classes and different types of institutional investors (banks, insurance companies, and pension funds). The data indicate socially responsible investment in private equity is 40–50% more common when the decision to implement (...) such an investment plan is centralised with a single chief investment officer. Socially responsible investment in private equity is also more common among institutional investors with a greater international investment focus, and less common among fund-of-fund private equity investments. (shrink)
Neuroethics, in its modern form, investigates the impact of brain science in four basic dimensions: the self, social policy, practice and discourse. In this study, we analyzed a set of 461 peer-reviewed articles with neuroethics content, published by authors from 32 countries. We analyzed the data for: (1) trends in the development of international neuroethics over time, and (2) how challenges at the intersection of ethics and neuroscience are viewed in countries that are considered developed by International Monetary Fund (IMF) (...) standards, and in those that are developing. Our results demonstrate a steady increase in global participation in neuroethics from 1989 to 2005, characterized by an increase in numbers of articles published specifically on neuroethics, journals publishing these articles, and countries contributing to the literature. The focus from all countries was on the practice of brain science and the amelioration of neurological disease. Indicators of technology creation and diffusion in developing countries were specifically correlated with increases in publications concerning policy implications of brain science. Neuroethics is an international endeavor and, as such, should be sensitive to the impact that context has on acceptance and use of technological innovation. (shrink)
This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How should we demarcate perceptual learning from perceptual development?
This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: What are the origins of multimodal associations?
This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How can philosophers and psychologists most fruitfully collaborate?
Women who suffer from fertility issues often use in vitro fertilization (IVF) to realize their wish to have children. However, IVF has its own set of strict administration rules that leave the women physically and emotionally exhausted. Feeling alienated and frustrated, many IVF users turn to internet IVF-centered forums to share their stories and to find information and support. Based on the observation of Dutch and Greek IVF forums and a selection of 109 questionnaires from Dutch and Greek IVF forum (...) users, we investigate the reasons why users of IVF participate in online communities centered on IVF, their need for emotional expression and support, and how they experience and use the information and support they receive through their participation in the online community. We argue that the emotional concerns expressed in such forums should be taken into account by health care ethics committees for IVF-related matters in order to promote more patient-oriented care and support for women going through IVF. (shrink)
This paper is essentially the author's Gödel Lecture at the ASL Logic Colloquium '09 in Sofia extended and supplemented by material from some other papers. After a brief description of traditional reverse mathematics, a computational approach to is presented. There are then discussions of some interactions between reverse mathematics and the major branches of mathematical logic in terms of the techniques they supply as well as theorems for analysis. The emphasis here is on ones that lie outside the usual (...) main systems of reverse mathematics. While retaining the usual base theory and working still within second order arithmetic, theorems are described that range from those far below the usual systems to ones far above. (shrink)
The ethical issues concerning the use of PGD (Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis) to select embryos of a particular HLA (Human Leukocyte Antigen) type are numerous. They arise from the potentially conflicting interests between those of the pre-existing child, the subject of a treatment which may be curative, and those of the sibling to be created, who cannot give consent to the donation, together with the problem of the destruction of potentially healthy embryos. This essay focuses on the web of vulnerabilities affecting (...) the parents, the sick child and the “saviour sibling,” while addressing three areas: science, bioethics and literature. The novel My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult, provides the reader with an in-depth view of the conflicting interests and emotional problems that affect the Fitzgeralds, a family experiencing the pain of seeing one of their children dying while facing the tragic consequences of trying to save this child by having another offspring. (shrink)
In this paper I argue that the infinite regress of resemblance is vicious in the guise it is given by Russell but that it is virtuous if generated in a (contemporary) trope theoretical framework. To explain why this is so I investigate the infinite regress argument. I find that there is but one interesting and substantial way in which the distinction between vicious and virtuous regresses can be understood: The Dependence Understanding. I argue, furthermore, that to be able to decide (...) whether an infinite regress exhibits a dependence pattern of a vicious or a virtuous kind, facts about the theoretical context in which it is generated become essential. It is precisely because of differences in context that he Russellian resemblance regress is vicious whereas its trope theoretical counterpart is not. (shrink)
What is the connection between modern democratic thought and globalization? This article examines the rationale behind the present crisis of democracy. It demonstrates that the problem facing modern democratic thought has less to do with the asymmetries associated with the forces of globalization and more to do with an asymmetry within popular sovereignty itself: the fact that the boundaries of democracy cannot themselves be democratically legitimated. By making this argument the article seeks to move beyond the contemporary opposition between nationalism (...) and cosmopolitanism. It shows that the appeal to globalization among contemporary political theorists to a large extent is analogous to the appeal to the nation during the French Revolution. (shrink)
∗ This paper has been presented to the Philosophy Departments of Tulane University and the University of Arizona and, originally, to the 1999 Sociedad Filosofica Ibero Americana (SOFIA) Conference on Legal and Political Philosophy, in Mazatlan, Mexico. I am most thankful to all the participants. I am especially grateful for discussions with Julia Annes, Tom Christiano, Eric Mack, Geoff Sayre-McCord, David Schmidtz and Michael Smith.
Objectivo do presente artigo é, antes de mais, verificar qual a concepção de Identidade Pessoal na Posição Original pressuposta por Rawls em Uma Teoria da Justiça e também em Liberalismo Político. Embora Rawls defenda que a concepção de Identidade Pessoal de que a teoria da justiça necessita é neutra e abstracta, a autora do artigo procura, concretamente à luz da análise de três dimensões da Identidade Pessoal (cognitiva, metafisica e narrativa) na filosofia da mente e da acção, decidir se tal (...) posição é ou não defensável. /// Aim of the present article is first of all to characterize the Rawlsian conception of personal identity in the original position (both in A Theory of Justice and in Political Liberalism). Rawls sometimes claims that the conception of personal identity necessary for his theory of justice is abstract and neutral, but that claim must be assessed. The author of the article assesses that claim precisely from the point of view of contemporary philosophy of mind and action. Three dimensions of the problem of personal identity -cognitive, metaphysical and narrative - are thus analysed in order to bring forth the ways in which decisions concerning each dimension weigh on the Rawlsian theory of justice. (shrink)
This paper deals with Quine's several attempts To define the concept of underdetermination of scientifics theories in some of his articles and with the dependence of this definition on other concepts of Quine's semantic holism. To define "underdetermination”, Quine needs to explain the relationship between theory and observation. His position concerning this subject can be criticized, on the one hand, by saying that it gives an insufficient criterion for "underdetermination", and, on the other hand, by asserting that it is still (...) too close to the reductionist's conception of truth. (shrink)
Table of Contents; Introduction by Francesco Orilia and Simone Gozzano; Modes and Mind by John Heil; Does Ontology Matter? by Anna-Sofia Maurin; Basic Ontology, Multiple Realizability and Mental Causation by Francesco Orilia; The “Supervenience Argument”:Kim’s Challenge to Nonreductive Physicalism by Ausonio Marras and Juhani Yli-Vakkuri; Tropes’ Simplicity and Mental Causation by Simone Gozzano; Zombies from Below by David Robb; Tropes and Perception by E. Jonathan Lowe; About the authors.
There is its own philosophical tradition in Russia. The traditional Russian philosophy is idealistic and religious. The basic categories of traditional Russian philosophy: "Ideal", "Sofia", "Sobornost", « Beauty, True, Kind (the Blessing)». The basic problem of Russian philosophy is to find the way of rescue mankind. One of the cardinal problems is the problem of civilization choice: East – West - Russia. According to the method of Russian philosophy it is not so analytic, but it is synthetic. Synthetic character (...) of Russian philosophy was most full embodied in V.S.Solovjev's philosophical system (1853-1900). In Russian philosophy the person, its destiny in the world was considered as a rule, globally - in universal, space scale. Russian cosmizm has formulated antropocosmik a paradigmon principles coevolution the nature and a noosphere which demands special culture. (shrink)
Este artigo tem por tema a filosofia da psicologia. A psicologia é considerada como ciência natural e parte da biologia, herdando por isso os problemas epistemológicos desta, nomeadamente os que dizem respeito às explicações teleológicas. Na psicologia a questão teleológica torna-se no problema do conteúdo ou intencionalidade de estados mentais. Pressupõe-se na discussão que deve ser possivel uma ciência natural do mental e dessa entidade - o comportamento - apenas discernível no mundo fisico se olharmos para funções de sistemas. Mais (...) em geral, a discussão enquadra-se no debate acerca de externalismo/internalismo em filosofia da mente. Há um conflito quanto ao realismo a que se é ou não conduzido no tratamento do problema. A posição de Ruth G. Millikan é realista, enquanto que a de Daniel Dennett é usualmente classificada como instrumentalista. /// This essay deals with the philosophy of psychology. Psychology is here considered as a natural science, a part of biology, and, as such, it has inherited its epistemological problems, namely those related to the teleological explanations. In psychology, the teleological question is the problem of the content or intentionality of mental states. Throughout the discussion, it is assumed that a natural science must be possible dealing not only with mental states but also with that entity - behaviour - which is only perceived in the physical world taking into account system functions. More generally, this discussion is part of the debate on internalism/externalism in philosophy of mind. A conflict arises as to one's stand on realism. Ruth G. Millikan's position is realist, whereas that of Daniel Dennett is usually classified as instrumentalist. (shrink)
Aggregating snippets from the semantic memories of many individuals may not yield a good map of an individual’s semantic memory. The authors analyze the structure of semantic networks that they sampled from individuals through a new snowball sampling paradigm during approximately 6 weeks of 1-hr daily sessions. The semantic networks of individuals have a small-world structure with short distances between words and high clustering. The distribution of links follows a power law truncated by an exponential cutoff, meaning that most words (...) are poorly connected and a minority of words has a high, although bounded, number of connections. Existing aggregate networks mirror the individual link distributions, and so they are not scale-free, as has been previously assumed; still, there are properties of individual structure that the aggregate networks do not reflect. A simulation of the new sampling process suggests that it can uncover the true structure of an individual’s semantic memory. (shrink)
One of the main contributions of philosophers at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century to philosophy of science and semantics was the thesis inspired in the scientific advances of natural and exact sciences, that there is not a single true theory of what goes on in the empirical world, but rather the possibility of constructing multiple versions, equally satisfac-tory, of an explanation of the world. In the Vienna Circle, more specifically, the conventionalist movement showed (...) its influence primarily in the writings of Neurath, but also, more subtly, in the texts of Carnap. In this paper, I shall examine the theoretical relations between Quine’s holistic thesis and the conventionalist aspects of his work. In order to do this I will discuss Neurath’s holistic coherentism and of the conventionalist and holistic aspects present in Camap’s work, which merge, mainly in the Aufbau, with reduc-tionist aims. Thus, I intend to help to clarify to what extent Quine’s holism depends on a conventionalist position and to what extent conventionalism, in its turn, can get along with reductionist epistemological remains. (shrink)
