I argue that legal punishment is morally wrong because it’s too morally risky. I first briefly explain how my argument differs from similar ones in the philosophical literature on legal punishment. Then I explain why legal punishment is morally risky, argue that it’s too morally risky, and discuss objections. In a nutshell, my argument goes as follows. Legal punishment is wrong because we can never sufficiently reduce the risk of doing wrong when we legally punish people. We can never sufficiently (...) reduce this risk because wrongful punishment is much worse than wrongful non-punishment and because punishment’s permissibility depends on the answers to a variety of difficult philosophical questions about which we’re fallible. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become nearly ubiquitous in modern society, from components of mobile applications to medical support systems, and everything in between. In societally impactful systems imbued with AI, there has been increasing concern related to opaque AI, that is, artificial intelligence where it is unclear how or why certain decisions are reached. This has led to a recent boom in research on “explainable AI” (XAI), or approaches to making AI more explainable and understandable to human users. In the (...) military domain, numerous bodies have argued that autonomous and AI-enabled weapon systems ought not incorporate unexplainable AI, with the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United States Department of Defense both explicitly including explainability as a relevant factor in the development and use of such systems. In this article, I present a cautiously critical assessment of this view, arguing that explainability will be irrelevant for many current and near-future autonomous systems in the military (which do not incorporate any AI), that it will be trivially incorporated into most military systems which do possess AI (as these generally possess simpler AI systems), and that for those systems with genuinely opaque AI, explainability will prove to be of more limited value than one might imagine. In particular, I argue that explainability, while indeed a virtue in design, is a virtue aimed primarily at designers and troubleshooters of AI-enabled systems, but is far less relevant for users and handlers actually deploying these systems. I further argue that human–machine teaming is a far more important element of responsibly using AI for military purposes, adding that explainability may undermine efforts to improve human–machine teamings by creating a prima facie sense that the AI, due to its explainability, may be utilized with little (or less) potential for mistakes. I conclude by clarifying that the arguments are not against XAI in the military, but are instead intended as a caution against over-inflating the value of XAI in this domain, or ignoring the limitations and potential pitfalls of this approach. (shrink)

As Vetter says, we are at the “beginning of the debate, not the end” (2015: 300) when it comes to evaluating her potentiality-based account of metaphysical modality. This paper contributes to this developing debate by highlighting three problems for Vetter’s account. Specifically, I begin (§1) by articulating some relevant details of Vetter’s potentiality-based view. This leads to the first issue (§2), concerning unclarity in the idea of degrees of potentiality. Similarly, the second issue (§3) raises trouble for Vetter’s proposed individuation (...) conditions for potentialities. Finally, the third issue (§4) is about apparently unmanifestable intrinsic potentialities, and suggests that there might be some deeper problems with anchoring metaphysical possibilities in concrete objects. More generally, though the issues detailed here are problematic, I do not take them to be fatal. However, they do show that, at minimum, further clarification of Vetter’s potentiality view is required. As Vetter says, we are at the “beginning of the debate, not the end” (2015: 300) when it comes to evaluating her potentiality-based account of metaphysical modality. This paper contributes to this developing debate by highlighting three problems for Vetter’s account. Specifically, I begin (§1) by articulating some relevant details of Vetter’s potentiality-based view. This leads to the first issue (§2), concerning unclarity in the idea of degrees of potentiality. Similarly, the second issue (§3) raises trouble for Vetter’s proposed individuation conditions for potentialities. Finally, the third issue (§4) is about apparently unmanifestable intrinsic potentialities, and suggests that there might be some deeper problems with anchoring metaphysical possibilities in concrete objects. More generally, though the issues detailed here are problematic, I do not take them to be fatal. However, they do show that, at minimum, further clarification of Vetter’s potentiality view is required. (shrink)

In a recent article Duncan Purves, Ryan Jenkins, and B. J. Strawser argue that in order for a decision in war to be just, or indeed the decision to resort to war to be just, it must be the case that the decision is made for the right reasons. Furthermore, they argue that this requirement holds regardless of how much good is produced by said action. In this essay I argue that their argument is flawed, in that it mistakes what (...) makes an agent morally good for what makes an act morally good. I argue that the main thrust of Purves et al.’s argument in fact undermines the conclusion they wish to draw, and that the reasons for one’s action do not make an in principle difference to the morality of actions in war. I further argue that this position undermines the traditional ad bellum just war constraint of right intention, and that the morality of actions in war is, at core, only concerned with outcomes. I conclude by clarifying that one’s reasons for action do in fact matter when deciding to enter war or kill in war, but only because one’s reasons significantly impact the way in which one acts. The purpose of this paper is to clear the theoretical space by showing why intentions/reasons do not in principle matter when assessing the morality of war (or killing), but this should not be taken as an argument that we should ignore intentions/reasons altogether. (shrink)

A look at the nature of the universe, God, and our place within it explores the transformational role of consciousness in all human enterprise, offering inspirational insights into questions about religion, human existence, and good and evil.

This chapter presents David Foster Wallace's views about three positions regarding the good life—ironism, hedonism, and narrative theories. Ironism involves distancing oneself from everything one says or does, and putting on Wallace's so-called “mask of ennui.” Wallace said that the notion appeals to ironists because it insulates them from criticism. However, he reiterated that ironists can be criticized for failing to value anything. Hedonism states that a good life consists in pleasure. Wallace rejected such a notion, doubting that pleasure could (...) play a fundamental role in the good life. Lastly, narrative theories characterize the good life by fidelity to a unified narrative -- a systematic story about one's life, composed of a set of ends or principles according to which one lives. Wallace believed that these theories turn people into spectators, rather than the participants in their own lives. (shrink)

In international law and the ethics of war, there are a variety of actions which are seen as particularly problematic and presumed to be always or inherently wrong, or in need of some overwhelmingly strong justification to override the presumption against them. One of these actions is assassination, in particular, assassination of heads of state. In this essay I argue that the presumption against assassination is incorrect. In particular, I argue that if in a given scenario war is justified, then (...) assassination of the enemy state's leader is also justified, and in fact ought to be pursued as a means short of war. I defend this position on both consequential and deontic grounds, arguing that assassination is both more discriminate than war and serves to harm only those most responsible for the situation which justifies war in the first place. I conclude by arguing that a norm of assassination, far from being a destabilizing force, as some have argued, would in fact serve to reinforce international norms of rights and respect for persons by making clear that tyrants and would-be oppressors cannot hide behind military forces or notions of sovereignty to protect themselves from judgment and retribution. (shrink)

How can you steal something that doesn’t exist? This question confronts those of us who take an irrealist view of virtual objects and agree with the Supreme Court of the Netherlands that robbery took place when two boys used non-virtual violence to coerce a third boy into relinquishing his virtual amulet and mask. Here we outline this Puzzle of Virtual Theft, along with the closely related Puzzle of Virtual Value. After demonstrating how these puzzles are deeply problematic for the irrealist, (...) we go on to sketch a solution that not only circumscribes the puzzles but also offers a framework by which legal scholars can make sense within existing legal codes of the new phenomenon of virtual theft. (shrink)

Science has always been tightly associated with environmental ethics in a way traditional ethics has not. However, despite this proximity, science has had a merely informational role, where it must inform ethics but not intervene in ethical judgment. Science is seen as an amoral enterprise, requiring an ethics rather than recommending one. In this paper I try to go against this common view. First, I give a critique of the naturalistic fallacy following the lines of Frankena. Then I go on (...) to describe the two possible roles science can have in ethical though, and in environmental ethics in particular. As it turns out, science does not only inform ethics, but can actually have moral import and intervene in moral judgment. Finally, from an ecocentric point of view, I try to illustrate this last point by construing the ecological notion of resilience as a moral boundary—a scientifically determined boundary between right and wrong. (shrink)

Background: Family members are often required to act as substitute decision-makers when health care or research participation decisions must be made for an incapacitated relative. Yet most families are unable to accurately predict older adult preferences regarding future health care and willingness to engage in research studies. Discussion and documentation of preferences could improve proxies' abilities to decide for their loved ones. This trial assesses the efficacy of an advance planning intervention in improving the accuracy of substitute decision-making and increasing (...) the frequency of documented preferences for health care and research. It also investigates the financial impact on the healthcare system of improving substitute decision-making. Methods/DesignDyads (n = 240) comprising an older adult and his/her self-selected proxy are randomly allocated to the experimental or control group, after stratification for type of designated proxy and self-report of prior documentation of healthcare preferences. At baseline, clinical and research vignettes are used to elicit older adult preferences and assess the ability of their proxy to predict those preferences. Responses are elicited under four health states, ranging from the subject's current health state to severe dementia. For each state, we estimated the public costs of the healthcare services that would typically be provided to a patient under these scenarios. Experimental dyads are visited at home, twice, by a specially trained facilitator who communicates the dyad-specific results of the concordance assessment, helps older adults convey their wishes to their proxies, and offers assistance in completing a guide entitled My Preferences that we designed specifically for that purpose. In between these meetings, experimental dyads attend a group information session about My Preferences. Control dyads attend three monthly workshops aimed at promoting healthy behaviors. Concordance assessments are repeated at the end of the intervention and 6 months later to assess improvement in predictive accuracy and cost savings, if any. Copies of completed guides are made at the time of these assessments. DiscussionThis study will determine whether the tested intervention guides proxies in making decisions that concur with those of older adults, motivates the latter to record their wishes in writing, and yields savings for the healthcare system. Trial RegistrationISRCTN89993391. (shrink)

Abstract:Representations of the space of the village, the wilderness, and the overlapping edge of the forest between them often play a critical role in intercultural collisions between the “developing” world's spaces and pressures from the ‘developed’ world's activities within them. These collisions include land grabs and resource extraction, conversion of forest or wilderness to mechanized agriculture, uneven legal disputes over what constitutes ownership and use, and conservation efforts to reduce climate change or restore genetic biodiversity in forests. This study illuminates (...) how the physical and perceptual spaces of village, wilderness, and forest change, resist change, and are forced to change in three key domains: health (traditional medicine), food security (hunting, farming, and resource extraction in general), and use-ownership (as indigenous knowledge, occupancy, and access to land-use generally). Findings from the study disclose a need to include time (as the pace of change) whenever changed perceptions of space are proposed or occur. Recommendations include applying the criterion to strive always for the least disruptive (short-term) procedures for addressing a problem such that those outcomes achieve the most sustainable impacts over the long-term. (shrink)

Confidentiality is a central bioethical principle governing the provider–patient relationship. Dating back to Hippocrates, new laws have interpreted it for the age of precision medicine and electronic medical records. This is where the discussion of privacy and technology often ends in the scientific health literature when Internet-related technologies have made privacy a much more complex challenge with broad psychological and clinical implications. Beyond the recognised moral duty to protect patients’ health information, clinicians should now advocate a basic right to privacy (...) as a means to safeguard psychological health. The article reviews empirical research into the functions of privacy, the implications for psychological development and the resigned sentiment taking hold regarding the ability to control personal data. The article concludes with a call for legislative, educational and research steps to readjust the equilibrium between the individual and ‘Big Data’. (shrink)

Discussions of political obligation and political authority have long focused on the idea that the commands of genuine authorities constitute content-independent reasons. Despite its centrality in these debates, the notion of content-independence is unclear and controversial, with some claiming that it is incoherent, useless, or increasingly irrelevant. I clarify content-independence by focusing on how reasons can depend on features of their source or container. I then solve the long-standing puzzle of whether the fact that laws can constitute content-independent reasons is (...) consistent with the fact that some laws must fail to bind due to their egregiously unjust content. Finally I defend my understanding of content-independence against challenges and show why it retains a place of special importance for questions about the law and political obligation. Content-independence highlights that it is some feature of the law or law-making process in general that is supposed to generate moral obligations for citizens, not the merits of particular laws. (shrink)

Alonzo Church famously provided three principal competing criteria for “strict synonymy,” i.e., sameness of semantic content. These are his Alternatives (0), (1), and (2)—numbered in order of increasing course-grainedness of content. On Alternative (2), expressions are deemed strictly synonymous iff they are logically equivalent. This criterion seems hopeless as an account of the objects of propositional attitude. On Alternative (1), expressions are deemed synonymous iff they are λ-convertible. Alternative (1) also evidently conflicts with discourse about the attitudes. On Alternative (0), (...) expressions are deemed strictly synonymous iff they are “synonymously isomorphic” in Church’s sense. On Alternative (0), semantic content is so fine-grained that not even “Romeo loves Juliet” and “Juliet is loved by Romeo” qualify as strictly synonymous. A fourth alternative, here called “Alternative (3),” deems expressions strictly synonymous iff they are co-intensional, i.e., they have the same semantic extension with respect to the same possible worlds. This criterion’s notion of content is even more course grained than that of Alternative (2). Several objections to Alternative (3) are considered. (This article is wholly contained within the author’s more definitive essay, “Singular Concepts”.). (shrink)

Resumen: En su libro Mujeres y discursos gerenciales. Hacia la autogestión feminista, María Medina-Vicent aborda desde una perspectiva crítica feminista los discursos gerenciales dirigidos a las mujeres, desvelando el androcentrismo y la presencia —y perpetuación— de tradicionales roles y estereotipos de género en los modelos de gestión. Mi propuesta pretende incidir en dos aspectos del análisis realizado por Medina-Vicent, por un lado, remarcar los peligros de la despolitización de los discursos gerenciales dirigidos a mujeres —sobre todo en tanto que la (...) literatura gerencial acaba por informarnos a todas—. Por otro, profundizar en la crítica que la autora realiza de la cooptación del feminismo por parte de estos discursos.: In her book Mujeres y discursos gerenciales. Hacia la autogestión feminista, Medina-Vicent approaches management discourses aimed at women from a critical feminist perspective, revealing the androcentrism and the presence and perpetuation of traditional gender roles and stereotypes in management models. My proposal aims to highlight two aspects of Medina-Vicent’s analysis: on the one hand, to highlight the dangers of depoliticizing management discourses aimed at women - especially insofar as management literature ends up informing us all. On the other hand, the author’s critique of the co-optation of feminism by these discourses will be explored in greater depth. Palabras clave: discursos gerenciales, teoría feminista, antifeminismo, despolitización. Keywords: managerial discourses, feminist theory, antifeminism, depoliticization. (shrink)

Changing our minds isn't easy. Even when we recognize our views are disputed by intelligent and informed people, we rarely doubt our rightness. Why is this so? How can we become more open-minded, putting ourselves in a better position to tolerate conflict, advance collective inquiry, and learn from differing perspectives in a complex world? -/- Nathan Ballantyne defends the indispensable role of epistemology in tackling these issues. For early modern philosophers, the point of reflecting on inquiry was to understand (...) how our beliefs are often distorted by prejudice and self-interest, and to improve the foundations of human knowledge. Ballantyne seeks to recover and modernize this classical tradition by vigorously defending an interdisciplinary approach to epistemology, blending philosophical theorizing with insights from the social and cognitive sciences. -/- Many of us need tools to help us think more circumspectly about our controversial views. Ballantyne develops a method for distinguishing between our reasonable and unreasonable opinions, in light of evidence about bias, information overload, and rival experts. This method guides us to greater intellectual openness--in the spirit of skeptics from Socrates to Montaigne to Bertrand Russell--making us more inclined to admit that sometimes we don't have the right answers. With vibrant prose and fascinating examples from science and history, Ballantyne shows how epistemology can help us know our limits. (shrink)

Cause and effect relationships play a central role in how we perceive and make sense of the world around us, how we act upon it, and ultimately, how we understand ourselves. Almost two decades ago, computer scientist Judea Pearl made a breakthrough in understanding causality by discovering and systematically studying the “Ladder of Causation” [Pearl and Mackenzie 2018], a framework that highlights the distinct roles of seeing, doing, and imagining. In honor of this landmark discovery, we name this the Pearl (...) Causal Hierarchy (PCH). In this chapter, we develop a novel and comprehensive treatment of the PCH through two complementary lenses, one logical-probabilistic and another inferential-graphical. Following Pearl’s own presentation of the hierarchy, we begin by showing how the PCH organically emerges from a well-specified collection of causal mechanisms (a structural causal model, or SCM). We then turn to the logical lens. Our first result, the Causal Hierarchy Theorem (CHT), demonstrates that the three layers of the hierarchy almost always separate in a measure theoretic sense. Roughly speaking, the CHT says that data at one layer virtually always underdetermines information at higher layers. Since in most practical settings the scientist does not have access to the precise form of the underlying causal mechanisms – only to data generated by them with respect to some of PCH’s layers – this motivates us to study inferences within the PCH through the graphical lens. Specifically, we explore a set of methods known as causal inference that enable inferences bridging PCH’s layers given a partial specification of the SCM. For instance, one may want to infer what would happen had an intervention been performed in the environment (second-layer statement) when only passive observations (first-layer data) are available. We introduce a family of graphical models that allows the scientist to represent such a partial specification of the SCM in a cognitively meaningful and parsimonious way. Finally, we investigate an inferential system known as docalculus, showing how it can be sufficient, and in many cases necessary, to allow inferences across PCH’s layers. We believe that connecting with the essential dimensions of human experience as delineated by the PCH is a critical step towards creating the next generation of AI systems that will be safe, robust, human-compatible, and aligned with the social good. (shrink)

College cheating represents a major ethical problem facing students and educators, especially in colleges of business. The current study surveys 666 business students in three universities to examine potential determinants of cheating perceptions. Anti-intellectualism refers to a student's negative view of the value and importance of intellectual pursuits and critical thinking. Academic selfefficacy refers to a student's belief in one's ability to accomplish an academic task. As hypothesized, students high in anti-intellectualism attitudes and those with low academic self-efficacy were least (...) likely to perceive college cheating as unethical. Considering that college cheating has been found as a predictor of workplace cheating, the results urge business instructors to reduce anti-intellectualism among students and to encourage them to put forth their best efforts. The results also serve employers by focusing attention on these two psychological variables during the hiring and promotion processes. (shrink)

Objective: To assess the knowledge of four groups of individuals regarding who is legally authorised to consent to health care or research involving older patients.Design: A provincewide postal survey.Setting: Province of Quebec, Canada.Participants: Three hundred older adults, 434 informal caregivers of cognitively impaired individuals, 98 researchers in aging and 136 members of research ethics boards .Measurements: Knowledge was assessed through a pretested postal questionnaire comprising five vignettes that describe hypothetical situations involving an older adult who requires medical care or is (...) solicited for research. The respondent had to identify the person who is legally authorised to provide consent.Results: Nearly 80% of all respondents provided the correct answer when the hypothetical scenario depicted a person who was competent to consent or incompetent but legally represented. Knowledge was worse for the scenario describing a research situation that involved an incompetent adult without a legal guardian.Conclusion: The observed lack of knowledge raises doubts about the ability of current legislation to truly protect the rights of older adults with diminished decision making capacity. It points to the need for educational programmes aimed at increasing public awareness of the legislation put in place for those requiring special protection. (shrink)

Two theses figure centrally in work on the epistemology of disagreement: Equal Weight (‘EW’) and Uniqueness (‘U’). According to EW, you should give precisely as much weight to the attitude of a disagreeing epistemic peer as you give to your own attitude. U has it that, for any given proposition and total body of evidence, some doxastic attitude is the one the evidence makes rational (justifies) toward that proposition. Although EW has received considerable discussion, the case for U has not (...) been critically evaluated. Endorsing U, we argue, commits one to the highly controversial thesis that whatever fixes your rational attitudes can do so only by fixing what evidence you have. This commitment imposes a relatively demanding requirement on justified belief in U, one that we argue is not satisfied by what is currently the strongest available case for U, due to Roger White [2005]. Our challenge to U makes more trouble for its proponents than do the worries about U expressed by Gideon Rosen [2001] and Thomas Kelly [2010]. Moreover, if Kelly [2010] is correct in thinking that EW “carries with it a commitment to” U—a claim which we accept for reasons similar to Kelly’s but is beyond this paper’s scope (but see Ballantyne and Coffman [forthcoming])—then our challenge to U bears importantly on EW: to the extent that our challenge to U succeeds, EW also suffers. (shrink)

I identify an inconsistency in Jago’s theory of truth. I show that Jago is committed to the identity of the proposition that the proposition that A is true and the proposition that A. I show that Jago is committed to the proposition that A being true because A if the proposition that A is true. I show that these two commitments, given the rest of Jago’s theory, entail a contradiction. I show that while the latter commitment follows from Jago’s theory (...) of truth, even by Jago’s own lights he should not be committed to the identity of the proposition that the proposition that A is true and the proposition that A. (shrink)

Una profesora de secundaria narra en tres momentos distintos los sucesos que han marcado su devenir como mujer, madre y enseñante durante la pandemia por COVID-19. En un recorrido que transcurre entre la sorpresa, la incertidumbre y el desencanto, emerge la reflexión de que la escuela ya no es ni será la misma, no solo por la diferencia entre la educación presencial y a distancia, sino porque las vidas de todos y todas se han transformado, porque muchos escolares han dejado (...) la escuela, más de cinco millones de niños, niñas y jóvenes. Afirma con contundencia ¡Este bicho tiene aporofobia! en alusión a la desigualdad social y la afectación a las personas en situación de pobreza. Reflexiona en torno a las distintas respuestas del profesorado y del sistema educativo, haciendo una fuerte crítica a la viabilidad y resultados del modelo “aprende en casa”. De ninguna manera es ajena a los efectos de la pandemia en los planos económico, laboral y educativo, pero se muestra renuente a dar credibilidad y adoptar soluciones que ubican la problemática solo en el plano de la voluntad y esfuerzo personal, sin reconocer que se trata de una crisis sistémica, que abarca a las instituciones sociales en conjunto. La expresión de emociones, vivencias y aprendizajes no esperados ante la ruptura de lo cotidiano, así como la experiencia del confinamiento por más de año y medio, permiten avizorar una nueva subjetividad en los actores de la educación, que deberá ser tomada en cuenta en el eventual regreso a los planteles escolares. (shrink)

This paper aims to map the different theoretical options related to the Precautionary Principle (PP). Great part of the literature on it can be systematized by answering to three different questions: is there a basic structure in the PP? If so, in which interpretation of the PP does this structure express itself? Finally, are its damage or knowledge conditions fixed or adjustable? The first question separates realist from non-realist approaches. The second question allows us to discriminate monist, dualist, or pluralist (...) positions in relation to the three interpretations of the PP: decision rule, procedural requirement, or epistemic rule. Finally, the third question distinguishes rigid from non-rigid formulations of the principle. Based on this mapping, one can not only navigate through the different formulations of the PP present both in official documents and in specialized literature, but also deflect some of its common objections, and understand Hans Jonas’ eventual connection with PP. Notwithstanding, this mapping does not capture other important themes attached to PP, which motivates a final distinction between narrow and broader forms of PP. (shrink)

Desde la tradición de los estudios de gubernamentalidad y sus resonancias en las sociologías políticas y de la educación, en este artículo se recuperan los debates vigentes en torno a las nociones de gubernamentalidad, gobierno y biopolítica desarrolladas en la vasta obra de Michel Foucault y sus continuadoras/es para enlazarlas con las discusiones sobre el objeto de estudio y el campo teórico de la política educativa, enfatizando el potencial analítico que ofrece su grilla de inteligibilidad para los fenómenos educativos propios (...) de las sociedades posdisciplinares. En esa dirección, este trabajo esboza una serie de propuestas epistemológicas, teóricas y metodológicas producidas a partir de una investigación empírica recientemente finalizada (Aguirre, 2022), de corte descriptivo y de carácter cualitativo. En vistas a estos propósitos, se producen diálogos interdisciplinares a la vez que se tensionan y discuten algunos supuestos clásicos y tradicionales de la política educativa, para incitar una renovación analítica que posibilite el estudio de las relaciones sociales de autogobierno y gobierno de las/os otras/os en tanto articulaciones históricas entre el saber, el poder y la subjetividad. Finalmente, se exponen algunos indicios y propuestas para el abordaje sociológico de los fenómenos educativos contemporáneos, que convocan y promueven la necesidad de producir ciertos desplazamientos epistemológicos en el campo teórico de la política educativa, así como invitan a la reconfiguración de sus objetos de estudio en el marco de la adscripción a un enfoque posestructuralista. (shrink)

Frege claims that sentences of the form ‘A’ are equivalent to sentences of the form ‘it is true that A’ (The Equivalence Thesis). Frege also says that there are fictional names that fail to refer, and that sentences featuring fictional names fail to refer as a result. The thoughts such sentences express, Frege says, are also fictional, and neither true nor false. Michael Dummett argues that these claims are inconsistent. But his argument requires clarification, since there are two ways The (...) Equivalence Thesis has been formulated, according as the thesis equates the senses or the referents of the relevant sentences. -/- I have two aims in this paper. The first is to demonstrate that a sameness of sense thesis is inconsistent with Frege’s other theses. The second is to argue that a sameness of reference thesis is consistent with them. Thus, all else being equal, Frege ought to endorse a sameness of reference, rather than a sameness of sense thesis. (shrink)

The concept of truth arguably plays a central role in many areas of philosophical theorizing. Yet, what seems to be one of the most fundamental principles governing that concept, i.e. the equivalence between P and , is inconsistent in full classical logic, as shown by the semantic paradoxes. I propose a new solution to those paradoxes, based on a principled revision of classical logic. Technically, the key idea consists in the rejection of the unrestricted validity of the structural principle of (...) contraction. I first motivate philosophically this idea with the metaphysical picture of the states-of-affairs expressed by paradoxical sentences as being distinctively . I then proceed to demonstrate that the theory of truth resulting from this metaphysical picture is, in many philosophically interesting respects, surprisingly stronger than most other theories of truth endorsing the equivalence between P and (for example, the theory vindicates the validity of the traditional laws of excluded middle and of non-contradiction, and also vindicates the traditional constraint of truth preservation on logical consequence). I conclude by proving a cutelimination theorem that shows the consistency of the theory. (shrink)

Resumen: El presente trabajo intenta analizar los elementos críticos a la base de aquella suerte de prescripción que Edward Said formulara a los intelectuales bajo la célebre consigna de “decir las verdades al poder”, esto es, de interpelar públicamente al poder -político, económico, religioso, militar- frente a toda evidencia de injusticia, inconsistencia o turbia manipulación en su operar. En tanto tal, y a partir de nuestra lectura de Said, delimitamos cinco dilemas que el intelectual ha de resolver, en tanto requisitos (...) para decir las verdades al poder: orientación intramundana versus extramundana, rol profético versus sacerdotal, libertad universalista versus organicidad, racionalidad sustantiva versus instrumental y arrojo versus temor. Se comentan las implicaciones de estos dilemas a la luz de los desafíos y oportunidades que las sociedades contemporáneas -en particular, las latinoamericanas- presentan para el rol del intelectual.: This work analyzes the critical foundations of that quasi-rule posed by Edward Said to intellectuals through the famous motto “speaking truth to power”, that is, of publicly interpellating to power -political, economic, religious, military- whenever its exercise may involve injustice, inconsistency or underhanded manipulation. So, according to our interpretation of Said’s work, we identify five dilemmas the intellectual should resolve in order to be able to speak truth to power: a worldliness orientation versus an otherworldliness one, a prophetic role versus a priestly one, universalist freedom versus organic compromise, a substantive rationality versus an instrumental one, and courage versus fear. Involvements of these dilemmas are discussed according to the challenges and opportunities posed by current societies -in particular, the Latin American ones- to the intellectual’s role. (shrink)

The accounting profession has emphasized the need for ethics education in the accounting curriculum. The current study examines professional commitment and anticipatory socialization, operationalized by perception of financial reporting, as possible determinants of Accounting students' ethical perceptions and intentions. Accounting students with higher levels of professional commitment and higher perception of the importance of financial reporting were more likely to perceive questionable actions as unethical and less likely to engage in such actions compared to those students with lower commitment and (...) lower perception of financial reporting. The results have implications for accounting instructors and accounting employers as they socialize students in the accounting profession at this early stage. (shrink)

In 1817, in the preface to his Rein analytischer Beweis, Bernard Bolzano revealed that he had decided to postpone the publication of any subsequent instalment of his Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik because of the few and ‘superficial’ reviews of its first instalment, published in 1810. Bolzano’s transcriptions of the only two known reviews of this book are conserved at the Literární archiv Památníku národního písemnictví / Muzea literatury, in Prague, together with another manuscript on his Beyträge, the (...) provenance of which was unknown to Bolzano’s scholars until recently. In this paper it is shown that this latter manuscript is a draft of an announcement that was published at the time and that was indeed written at least to some extent by Bolzano himself. This hitherto unknown announcement of Bolzano’s Beyträge not only solves the mystery surrounding that manuscript, but also helps to date the publication of this book more precisely and provides an unusual insight into what we must take Bolzano himself to have considered most noteworthy about his work, namely his study on logic. The paper includes a transcription of the manuscript and an English translation of the announcement. (shrink)

Primeiramente, oferecemos uma apresentação teórica da representação do pensamento prático, começando pela distinção entre silogismo dialético e silogismo demonstrativo. Fazemos referência à crítica de Toulmin contra o dedutivismo dominante de seu tempo. Em seguida, fornecemos argumentos para apoiar a relevância heurística do modelo de Toulmin para entender a discussão sobre a inclusão da lógica padrão na representação do pensamento comum. Afirmamos que o projeto analítico toulmaniano permite entender, com clareza metódica, a derrotabilidade dos argumentos do senso comum por meio da (...) investigação da noção modal de probabilidade na linguagem comum. First, we offer theoretical resemblance of the representation of practical reasoning, beginning with the distinction between demonstrative and dialectical syllogism. We make reference to the Toulmin’s critique against to the dominant deductivism in his time. Then we give arguments to sustain the heuristic relevance of Toulmin’s model to understand the discussion about the inclusion of default logics in the representation of ordinary reasoning. We assert that the Toulminian analytic design allows to understand, with methodical clarity, the defeasibility of common sense arguments by means of the investigation of the modal notion of probability in ordinary language. (shrink)

Supervenience is one of the 'hot discoveries' of analytic philosophy, and this collection of essays on the topic represents an examination of it and its application to major areas of philosophy. The interest in supervenience has much to do with the flexibility of the concept. To say that x supervenes on y indicates a degree of dependence without committing one to the view that x can be reduced to y. Thus supervenience is a relationship that has the potential of replacing (...) the traditional notion of dependence, while performing at least part of the function reductive relationships were supposed to fulfil. Moreover, since it is a topic-neutral concept, supervenience has a wide range of applicability. (shrink)

Rather infamously, Kit Fine provided a series of counter‐examples which purport to show that attempts to understand essence in terms of metaphysical necessity are ‘fundamentally misguided’. Here, my aim is to put forward a new version of modalism that is, I argue, immune to Fine's counter‐examples. The core of this new modalist account is a sparseness restriction, such that an object's essential properties are those sparse properties it has in every world in which it exists. After first motivating this sparseness (...) restriction, I proceed to show how the resulting sparse modalism circumvents Fine's original counter‐examples. After dismissing a potential problem concerning the membership relation, I conclude that, as at least one form of modalism is viable, the project of understanding essence in terms of metaphysical necessity is not so fundamentally misguided after all. (shrink)