We propose a domain-level ontology of plays for the facilitation of play-based collaborative autonomy among unmanned and manned-unmanned aircraft teams in the Army’s Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) mission domain. We define a play as a type of plan that prescribes some pattern of intentional acts that are intended to reliably result in some goal in some competitive context, and which specifies one or more roles that are realized by those prescribed intentional acts. The ontology is well suited to be extended (...) to other types of military and nonmilitary unmanned vehicle operations. (shrink)

Discussions of moral weakness in recent and even not so recent ethics have generally neglected large areas of the moral life. In some cases, it may be argued, such neglect has been accidental in that the philosopher or philosophers concerned have set out to examine problems thrown up by a class or classes of actions without purporting to present an exhaustive account of moral weakness. In other cases such neglect is pernicious in that if not designed to protect a certain (...) philosophical position it has by the doctrinaire delimitation of the range of examples considered had precisely that effect. This delimitation has often arisen out of unexamined presuppositions as to the nature of moral weakness. They are embodied in the following general framework suggested as an account not of some cases of weakness but of all cases: In a case of weakness a man does something that he knows or believes he should not do, or fails to do something that he knows or believes he should do, when the occasion and the opportunity for acting or refraining is present, and when it is in his power, in some significant sense, to act in accordance with his knowledge or belief. (shrink)

Across the world, healthcare providers must wrestle with the twin ogres of finite resources and infinite demand. Successful healthcare delivery creates its own legacy of need. For example, a renal failure patient may now be given a greatly extended life by means of dialysis or organ transplantation. In the process, the healthcare provider has created a permanent demand for services during that extended life. It has been estimated that the recurrent cost of maintaining a patient on hemodialysis for 1 year (...) in the United Kingdom is in the region of £20,000. (shrink)

A Decent Proposal: Ethical Review of Clinical Research Donald Evans and Martyn Evans Centre for Philosophy and Health Care University of Wales Swansea, UK The investigation and development of modern medicines and medical technology can create numerous ethical dilemmas both for clinical researchers and research ethics committees. A Decent Proposal: Ethical Review of Clinical Research seeks to facilitate and encourage good clinical research by exploring the concerns, responsibilities, general issues and particular pitfalls associated with ethical aspects of research. It (...) provides practical guidelines for researchers on how to improve the quality of research design, while for those appointed to scrutinise research proposals it offers advice on how to apply consistent, careful and critical reasoning to the process of assessing ethical standards. As such, it will provide invaluable assistance to clinical researchers and ethics committees alike in understanding the moral challenges posed by modern health care. (shrink)

Some philosophers such as Ninian Smart have claimed that mystics from different religious traditions may sometimes have the same experience , while nevertheless giving different and tradition-bound descriptive reports of that experience. In two important essays, Steven Katz has challenged such a claim. Mystics from different religious traditions do not have the same experience.

Donald Evans; XIII*—Photographs and Primitive Signs, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1 June 1979, Pages 213–238, https://doi.org/10.

There is a tension between the preservation of academic freedom and the economic context in which the university currently finds itself. This tension embodies serious threats to global health as a result of three overlapping phenomena which impede the production and diffusion of valuable knowledge about health. These phenomena, the privatisation, commercialisation and instrumentalisation of knowledge are identified and examined in this paper in relation to human rights and international morality.

Let us consider Flew’s main contention, that the onus of proof lies on the theist. The “proof” which is required of the theist involves showing that his concept of God is such that the existence of God is theoretically possible and providing sufficient reasons, though not necessarily a demonstration, to warrant believing that God exists. The “onus” which is on the theist does not preclude the possibility of a theistic proof. It is similar to the “onus” which is on the (...) prosecutor in an English court: it is up to the prosecutor to prove guilt, but such proof is possible. And just as the prosecutor does not have to drop his personal conviction—if he has one—that the defendant is guilty, the theist does not have to drop his own theistic belief. What Flew is asking the theist to do is to accept a procedure. Like the affirmative side in a debate, the theist is asked to concede that if he has not provided grounds for what he affirms, he has lost the debate— whether or not the opposition says anything. If a theist moves, “Resolved that this house affirms the existence of God”, the presumption in the debate is atheistic; the theist has to prove his claim or lose the debate. He is like a prosecutor in a court where the procedural rule is that innocence is presumed; the prosecutor must prove guilt or lose his case. Flew holds that the presumption of atheism is a better procedure than the presumption of theism, where the atheist would affirm, “Resolved that this house affirms the non-existence of God”, and the atheist would have to prove his claim or lose the argument. (shrink)

The next contrast, like that between grammatical beliefs and non-grammatical beliefs, has to do with what is believed. My labels for the contrast may be misleading, but I have not found better ones. Some beliefs are ‘ existential ’, others are ‘ non-existential ’. You will be misled if the labels suggest my earlier contrasts between intentional and non-intentional or attitudinal and non-attitudinal, or the contrast often made between what exists and what is non-existent. The existential/non-existential contrast is a contrast (...) made in terms of conditions of understanding . By an ‘existential’ belief I mean a belief where what is believed can only be understood to the extent that one has fulfilled certain existential conditions—that is, conditions which existentialist philosophers emphasise, conditions having to do with the personal depth and authenticity of one's commitments, attitudes and general life-experience. A non-existential belief is one which has no such conditions for understanding. (shrink)

For Ian Ramsey, talk about God raises many philosophical problems: ‘If we are not to use anthropomorphic concepts like love, power, wisdom, we cannot talk about God; but if we do use them, how do we manage to talk of God and not man?’ ‘Believers wish on the one hand to claim that he is indescribable and ineffable, and yet on the other hand to talk a great deal about him. Nay more, when they speak of God they say that (...) he is transcendent and immanent, im passible yet loving, and so on. But if we speak like this, are we talking significantly at all? Here is the Falsification Problem: What kind of talk can this talk about God be, if it permits us to use such conflicting descriptions of God and to continue to use these descriptions in the face of any and all empirical phenomena?’. (shrink)

In The Moral Mystic James Home has written a sequel to his Beyond Mysticism, where he ably explored a variety of philosophical issues arising from mysticism. This time his study has a special focus, and he makes an important contribution to the ongoing philosophical discussion of relations between religion and morality. As Home notes, “There is a very wide consensus in the philosophic world that religion and morality are independent of each other and that we can produce reliable moral judgments (...) independently, with no need for religious guidance”. Home agrees that a non-religious morality is a reasonable option, but he claims that a religious commitment and perspective can sometimes intelligibly and legitimately affect an agent's morality. He supports this claim, not by an abstract argument, but by a descriptive analysis of the reflective process which goes on in a particular kind of religious person whom he calls the “moral mystic”. Why appeal to mysticism to show that religion can be positively and rationally relevant to morality? Such an appeal is initially implausible, for philosophers and others have severely criticized mystics for being amoral and perhaps even immoral. Home begins his book with a summary of such criticisms, but he claims that they apply to “pure” mystics rather than to his moral mystics. This distinction between mystics is crucial for his thesis. (shrink)

This book is for people who find themselves beset by arguments: persuasions open and hidden, put forward in books or on buses, blown up onto hoardings or piped right into the home by television and radio. Such arguments may need to be critically weighed and cautiously assessed, if the arguee is not to be taken for a ride. For such analysis, some introduction to logic is required. This book explains how to decide which arguments are sound and what makes the (...) bad ones bad. (shrink)

Written by a leading proponent of the philosophy and ethics of healthcare, this volume, filled with thought-provoking and frequently controversial ideas and arguments provides readers with a contribution to the literature on medical ethics.

This paper provides part of an analysis of the use of the Maori term whakapapa in a study designed to test the compatibility and commensurability of views of members of the indigenous culture of New Zealand with other views of genetic technologies extant in the country. It is concerned with the narrow sense of whakapapa as denoting biological ancestry, leaving the wider sense of whakapapa as denoting cultural identity for discussion elsewhere. The phenomenon of genetic curiosity is employed to facilitate (...) this comparison. Four levels of curiosity are identified, in the Maori data, which penetrate more or less deeply into the psyche of individuals, affecting their health and wellbeing. These phenomena are compared with non-Maori experiences and considerable commonalities are discovered together with a point of marked difference. The results raise important questions for the ethical application of genetic technologies. (shrink)

This thought-provoking book discusses the concept of progress in economics and investigates whether any advance has been made in its different spheres of research. The authors look back at the history, successes and failures of their respective fields and thoroughly examine the notion of progress from an epistemological and methodological perspective. The idea of progress is particularly significant as the authors regard it as an essentially contested concept which can be defined in many ways – theoretically or empirically; locally or (...) globally; or as encouraging or impeding the existence of other research traditions. The authors discuss the idea that for progress to make any sense there must be an accumulation of knowledge built up over time rather than the replacement of ideas by each successive generation. Accordingly, they are not concerned with estimating the price of progress, reminiscing in the past, or assessing what has been lost. Instead they apply the complex mechanisms and machinery of the discipline to sub-fields such as normative economics, monetary economics, trade and location theory, Austrian economics and classical economics to critically assess whether progress has been made in these areas of research. -/- Bringing together authoritative and wide-ranging contributions by leading scholars, this book will challenge and engage those interested in philosophy, economic methodology and the history of economic thought. It will also appeal to economists in general who are interested in the advancement of their profession. (shrink)

Applied ontologies have been used more and more frequently to enhance systems engineering. In this paper, we argue that adopting principles of ontological realism can increase the benefits that ontologies have already been shown to provide to the systems engineering process. Moreover, adopting Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), an ISO standard for top-level ontologies from which more domain specific ontologies are constructed, can lead to benefits in four distinct areas of systems engineering: (1) interoperability, (2) standardization, (3) testing, and (4) data (...) exploitation. Reaping these benefits in a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) context requires utilizing an ontology’s vocabulary when modeling systems and entities within those systems. If the chosen ontology abides by the principles of ontological realism, a semantic standard capable of uniting distinct domains, using BFO as a hub, can be leveraged to promote greater interoperability among systems. As interoperability and standardization increase, so does the ability to collect data during the testing and implementation of systems. These data can then be reasoned over by computational reasoners using the logical axioms within the ontology. This, in turn, generates new data that would have been impossible or too inefficient to generate without the aid of computational reasoners. (shrink)

The tone of this paper is largely critical. Therefore, I would like to begin by praising Donald McCloskey and Arjo Klamer for their exciting and provocative initiative in the metatheory of economics. They have done us a great favor by opening our eyes to some hidden aspects in the intellectual practices of economists. They have shown that economics is rhetoric; it is persuasion, discourse, conversation, and negotiation, to use their favorite phrases. They have provided plausible arguments and illuminating examples (...) to convince us of the literary character of economic reasoning, notwithstanding the formal languages used by economists and the positivist pretensions typical of the self-image of the discipline. However, McCloskey and Klamer have been less successful in trying to convince us of what economics is not. In particular, it concerns me that they have opened up a gap between rhetoric and realism. They seem to think that because economics has a rhetorical character, it cannot be understood in realist terms. I will argue that this view is mistaken: rhetoric and realism do not exclude each other, but rather they are capable of being combined in a coherent methodology of economics. It is a valuable contribution to import the insights of the newly rehabilitated rhetoric to the metatheory of economics; but it is unnecessary to marry them with enthusiasm about the fashionable anti-realism of Richard Rorty and others. While this is my overall thesis, it is clear that only initial steps towards its substantiation can be taken in this paper. I intend to proceed as follows. I will first make an attempt to locate the problem at hand in the history of the metatheory of economics. Then I will point out those elements in rhetorical metatheory as practiced and defended by Klamer and McCloskey that apparently have anti-realist or non-realist assumptions or implications, either directly or via considerations of scientific rationality. Next I will formulate a few concepts of realism, the differences between which have been ignored in the methodology of economics to this day. Then I will make preliminary attempts to inquire into the mutual compatibility of the rhetorical insights provided by McCloskey and Klamer and realism in this context. I will show that, in principle, there should be no insurmountable obstacles to combining the two; in some of its senses, realism will even turn out to be presupposed by the rhetorical approach. I do not primarily intend to argue for realism as such in this paper. Instead, I will argue for the compatibility of realism and rhetoric. The argument is based on Klamer's and McCloskey's own commitments; in this sense, the argument is immanent to their rhetorical approach. As a final point, I will argue that one should not be indifferent about realism: it does make a difference in economics and in the methodology of economics whether rhetoric is accepted with or without realism. (shrink)

This article proposes ‘Recursive Consequentialism’: the moral theory which gives agents whatever advice will produce good consequences by being given. It can be thought of as a version of Donald Regan's ‘Cooperative Utilitarianism’ to which two additional elements have been added: allowing people with differing conceptions of ‘good consequences’, e.g., a Utilitarian and a non-Utilitarian, to cooperate with one another, and taking into account the full consequences of accepting, not just complying with, moral guidance. The theory is motivated by (...) a series of game-theoretic examples in which adherence to alternative Consequentialist moral theories produces bad consequences. (shrink)