Starting from an examination of foundational issues, the book covers a range of topics, including animals, agency, enjoyment, the good life, contemplation, ...

Frege begins Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik, the work that introduces the project which was to occupy him for most of his professional career, with the question, 'What is the number one?' It is a question to which even mathematicians, he says, have no satisfactory answer. And given this scandalous situation, he adds, there is small hope that we shall be able to say what number is. Frege intends to rectify the situation by providing definitions of the number one and the (...) concept of number. But what, exactly, is required of a definition? Surely it will not do to stipulate that the number one is Julius Caesar - that would change the subject. It seems reasonable to suppose that an acceptable definition must be a true statement containing a description that picks out the object to which the numeral '1' already refers. And, similarly, that an acceptable definition of the concept of number must contain a description that picks out precisely those objects that are numbers - those objects to which our numerals refer. Yet, while Frege writes a great deal about what criteria his definitions must satisfy, the above criteria are not among those he mentions. Nor does he attempt to convince us that his definitions of '1' and the other numerals are correct by arguing that these definitions pick out objects to which these numerals have always referred. Yet, while Frege writes a great deal about what criteria his definitions must satisfy, the above criteria are not among those he mentions. Nor does he attempt to convince us that his definitions of ‘1’ and the other numerals are correct by arguing that these definitions pick out objects to which these numerals have always referred. There is, as we shall see shortly, a great deal of evidence that Frege’s definitions are not intended to pick out objects to which our numerals already refer. But if this is so, how can these definitions teach us anything about our science of arithmetic? And what criteria must these definitions satisfy? To answer these questions, we need to understand what it is that Frege thinks we need to learn about the science of arithmetic. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe is among the most distinguished and original philosophers alive today. Her work has ranged over many areas of philosophy, including metaphysics, ethics, the philosophy of mind and action, and the philosophy of religion. In each of these areas she has made seminal contributions. The essays in this book reflect the breadth of her interests and the esteem in which she is held by her colleagues. The distinguished contributors include Michael Dunnett, Nancy Cartwright, Peter Geach and Philippa Foot; and (...) Professor Anscombe's essay 'Making True' is published here for the first time. (shrink)

Not only can the influence of Gottlob Frege be found in contemporary work in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, and the philosophy of language, but his projects—and the very terminology he employed in pursuing those projects—are still current in contemporary philosophy. This is undoubtedly why it seems so reasonable to assume that we can read Frege' s writings as if he were one of us, speaking to our philosophical concerns in our language. In Joan Weiner's view, however, Frege's words (...) can be accurately interpreted only if we set that assumption aside. Weiner here offers a challenging new approach to the philosophy of this central figure in analytic philosophy. Weiner finds in Frege's corpus, from Begriffsschrift on, a unified project of remarkable ambition to which each of the writings in that corpus makes a distinct contribution—a project whose motivation she brings to life through a careful reading of his Foundations of Arithmetic. The Frege that Weiner brings into clear view is very different from the familiar figure. Far from having originated one of the standard positions on the nature of reference, Frege turns out not to have had positive doctrines on anything like what contemporary philosophers mean by "reference." Far from having served as a standard-bearer for those who take the realists' side of contemporary disputes with anti-realists, Frege turns out to have had no stake in either side of the controversy. Through Weiner's lens, Frege emerges as a thinker who has principled reasons for challenging the very assumptions and motivations that animate philosophers to dispute these doctrines. This lucidly written and accessible book will generate controversy among all readers with an interest in epistemology, philosophy of language, history of philosophy, and the philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

Protein structure is dynamic: the intrinsic flexibility of polypeptides facilitates a range of conformational fluctuations, and individual protein chains can assemble into complexes. Proteins are also dynamic in evolution: significant variations in secondary, tertiary and quaternary structure can be observed among divergent members of a protein family. Recent work has highlighted intriguing similarities between these structural and evolutionary dynamics occurring at various levels. Here we review evidence showing how evolutionary changes in protein sequence and structure are often closely related to (...) local protein flexibility and disorder, large‐scale motions and quaternary structure assembly. We suggest that these correspondences can be largely explained by neutral evolution, while deviations between structural and evolutionary dynamics can provide valuable functional insights. Finally, we address future prospects for the field and practical applications that arise from a deeper understanding of the intimate relationship between protein structure, dynamics, function and evolution. (shrink)

The knowledge account of assertion holds that it is improper to assert that p unless the speaker knows that p. This paper argues against the knowledge account of assertion; there is no general norm that the speaker must know what she asserts. I argue that there are cases in which it can be entirely proper to assert something that you do not know. In addition, it is possible to explain the cases that motivate the knowledge account by postulating a general (...) norm that assertions would be true, combined with conversational norms that govern all speech acts. A theory on which proper assertions must be true explains the data better than a theory on which proper assertions must be known to be true. (shrink)

School effectiveness research together with what is now described as the 'school improvement movement' has captured both the Conservative and New Labour imaginations as a basis for educational planning and policy making in the UK. Internationally school effectiveness enjoys and expanding and enthusiastic audience. This book provides a critique of this research genre, particularly in the light of the recent calls for teaching to go 'back to the basics'. The editors argue that this school effectiveness research is simplistic in its (...) analysis of educational problems. Far from getting to the bottom of the problem of failing students and schools, they argue, these 'movements' are merely scratching at the surface of the problems and coming up with notions for superficial improvements. (shrink)

One of the most important philosophers of recent times, Elizabeth Anscombe wrote books and articles on a wide range of topics, including the ground-breaking monograph Intention. Her work is original, challenging, often difficult, always insightful; but it has frequently been misunderstood, and its overall significance is still not fully appreciated. This book is the first major study of Anscombe's philosophical oeuvre. In it, Roger Teichmann presents Anscombe's main ideas, bringing out their interconnections, elaborating and discussing their implications, pointing out (...) objections and difficulties, and aiming to give a unified overview of her philosophy. Many of Anscombe's arguments are relevant to contemporary debates, as Teichmann shows, and on a number of topics what Anscombe has to say constitutes a powerful alternative to dominant or popular views. Among the writings discussed are Intention, "Practical Inference," "Modern Moral Philosophy," "Rules, Rights and Promises," "On Brute Facts," "The First Person," "The Intentionality of Sensation," "Causality and Determination," An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, "The Question of Linguistic Idealism," and a number of other pieces, including some that are little known or hard to obtain. A complete bibliography of Anscombe's writings is also included. Ranging from the philosophy of action, through ethics, to philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and the philosophy of logic and language, this book is a study of one of the most significant bodies of work in modern philosophy, spanning more than fifty years, and as pertinent today as ever. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) was unquestionably one of the most important philosophers of all time. He trained as a mathematician, and his work in philosophy started as an attempt to provide an explanation of the truths of arithmetic, but in the course of this attempt he not only founded modern logic but also had to address fundamental questions in the philosophy of language and philosophical logic. Frege is generally seen (along with Russell and Wittgenstein) as one of the fathers of the (...) analytic method, which dominated philosophy in English-speaking countries for most of the twentieth century. His work is studied today not just for its historical importance but also because many of his ideas are still seen as relevant to current debates in the philosophies of logic, language, mathematics and the mind. The Cambridge Companion to Frege provides a route into this lively area of research. (shrink)

Can we lose our concepts? A case like ‘phlogiston’ invites a positive answer, though the sensefulness of ‘There is no phlogiston’ gives us pause. But concepts are about more than just ‘extension-determination’; hence Diamond’s examination of putative loss of moral concepts does point to a possible phenomenon. That loss of concepts could be regrettable seems to make room for the thought that having certain concepts could likewise be regrettable. Anscombe’s critique of the concept of ‘moral obligation’ appears to be suggesting (...) this, but it presents a dilemma: do the relevant words and phrases have a ‘special sense’ or are they senseless? Either answer is acceptable, I argue; roughly speaking, confused use makes for confused meaning. Objections coming from a certain picture of the autonomy of grammar fail. A diagnosis of ‘confused use’ can lead naturally to our seeing speakers as caught up in a species of dishonesty or inauthenticity, and also to our referring to the ‘kind of nonsense’ being talked. This last phrase seems to fall foul of the sort of consideration Diamond raised when discussing nonsense in the Tractatus. However, the case of ‘secondary sense’ shows us how we can understand this reference to ‘kinds of nonsense’. (shrink)

Australia and Papua New Guinea share a number of important social, cultural, and historical features, making a sustained comparison between the two especially productive. This situates the ethnography of the two areas within a comparative framework and examines the relationship between indigenous systems of knowledge and place - an issue of growing concern to anthropologists. The essays demonstrate the manner in which regimes of restricted knowledge serve to protect and augment cultural property and the proprietorship over sites and territory; how (...) myths evolve to explain and culturally appropriate important events pertaining to contact between indigenous and Western societies; how graphic designs and other culturally important iconic and iconographic processes provide conduits of cross-cultural appropriation between indigenous and non-indigenous societies in today's multicultural nation states. (shrink)

Recently attention has been paid to the epistemic requirements for proper assertion. The most popular account has been the knowledge account, that we can only properly assert what we know. Others have criticized the knowledge account and argued that the norm of assertion is truth, belief, or assertion of what it is reasonable to believe.

We suggest a rigorous theory of how objective single-case transition probabilities fit into our world. The theory combines indeterminism and relativity in the “branching space–times” pattern, and relies on the existing theory of causae causantes (originating causes). Its fundamental suggestion is that (at least in simple cases) the probabilities of all transitions can be computed from the basic probabilities attributed individually to their originating causes. The theory explains when and how one can reasonably infer from the probabilities of one “chance (...) set-up” to the probabilities of another such set-up that is located far away. (shrink)

The fundamental issue of Kainz’s “contemporary reconstruction of the Hegelian problematic” is the relationship of three factors: paradox, dialectic, and system. More specifically, “might it not be the case that dialectic, paradox, and system are necessarily interrelated, so that, for example, a dialectic without paradox would be suspect, and philosophically significant dialectical paradoxes might be optimally presented in a system”? The issue is complicated by the fact that these three not only have multiple meanings, but are - despite significant interrelationships (...) - separable. From examples of their different combinations in the history of philosophy, “it would seem that almost any combination of the three factors is possible, and/or actually achieved”. This point is illustrated by Nicolas of Cusa, Kant’s “Transcendental Dialectic,” Marx and Engels, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Bradley, and Derrida. (shrink)

I defend the acceptance principle for testimony (APT), that hearers are justified in accepting testimony unless they have positive evidence against its reliability, against Elizabeth Fricker's local reductionist view. Local reductionism, the doctrine that hearers need evidence that a particular piece of testimony is reliable if they are to be justified in believing it, must on pain of scepticism be complemented by a principle that grants default justification to some testimony; I argue that (APT) is the principle required. I consider (...) two alternative weaker principles as complements to local reductionism; one yields counter-intuitive results unless we accept (APT) as well, while the other is too weak to enable local reductionism to avoid scepticism. (shrink)

A system as complex as man can be viewed from many sides, and the one or the other axis can be selected to form a theoretical image. Partial truths will emerge, and their mutual intermeshing will gradually raise truth to higher levels. … It has always proven prejudicial to attribute general validity to a partial truth. Yet, a partial truth could not have been reached without overstating its value. Thus the history of truth is intimately interconnected with the history of (...) emotion, but the latter has remained in the dark.Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities. (shrink)

I defend the acceptance principle for testimony (APT), that hearers are justified in accepting testimony unless they have positive evidence against its reliability, against Elizabeth Fricker's local reductionist view. Local reductionism, the doctrine that hearers need evidence that a particular piece of testimony is reliable if they are to be justified in believing it, must on pain of scepticism be complemented by a principle that grants default justification to some testimony; I argue that (APT) is the principle required. I consider (...) two alternative weaker principles as complements to local reductionism; one yields counter-intuitive results unless we accept (APT) as well, while the other is too weak to enable local reductionism to avoid scepticism. (shrink)

BackgroundIn childhood cancer care, healthcare professionals must deal with several difficult moral situations in clinical practice. Previous studies show that morally difficult challenges are related to decisions on treatment limitations, infringing on the child's integrity and growing autonomy, and interprofessional conflicts. Research also shows that healthcare professionals have expressed a need for clinical ethics support to help them deal with morally difficult situations. Moral case deliberations (MCDs) are one example of ethics support. The aim of this study was to describe (...) the MCD-related outcomes that healthcare professionals in childhood cancer care considered important, before MCDs were implemented, in order to facilitate the implementation of MCDs in childhood cancer care in Sweden.MethodsThis study is based on qualitative data. Healthcare professionals, mostly representing registered nurses, nursing assistants and physicians, working at childhood cancer care centres in Sweden, were invited to respond to the translated and content validated European MCD Outcomes Instrument, before participating in regular MCDs. Answers to the main open-ended question, included in the questionnaire, was analysed according to systematic text condensation.ResultsData was collected from 161 responses from the healthcare professionals. The responses included healthcare professionals’ perceptions of which MCD-related outcomes they found important for handling moral challenges. Three different themes of important outcomes from the analysis of the data are presented as follows:Interprofessional well-being in team interactionson a team level;Professional comfort when dealing with moral challengeson a personal level; andImproved quality of care for the child and the familyon a care level.ConclusionsHealthcare professionals in childhood cancer care considered it important that ethics support could enhance the well-being of interprofessional teams, support healthcare professionals on an individual level and improve quality of care. The results of this study can be used in current and future training for MCD-facilitators. When knowing the context specific important MCD-outcomes, the sessions could be adapted. Managers in childhood cancer care would benefit from knowing about the specific important outcomes for their target group because they could then create relevant working conditions for clinical ethics support. (shrink)

Physicians generally recommend that patients resuscitated with naloxone after opioid overdose stay in the emergency department for a period of observation in order to prevent harm from delayed sequelae of opioid toxicity. Patients frequently refuse this period of observation despiteenefit to risk. Healthcare providers are thus confronted with the challenge of how best to protect the patient’s interests while also respecting autonomy, including assessing whether the patient is making an autonomous choice to refuse care. Previous studies have shown that physicians (...) have widely divergent approaches to navigating these conflicts. This paper reviews what is known about the effects of opioid use disorder on decision-making, and argues that some subset of these refusals are non-autonomous choices, even when patients appear to have decision making capacity. This conclusion has several implications for how physicians assess and respond to patients refusing medical recommendations after naloxone resuscitation. (shrink)