You find yourself in a court of law, accused of having hit someone. What can you do to avoid conviction? You could simply deny the accusation: 'No, I didn't do it'. But suppose you did do it. You may then give a different answer. 'Yes, I hit him', you grant, 'but it was self-defence'; or 'Yes, but I was acting under duress'. To answer in this way-to offer a 'Yes, but...' reply-is to hold that your particular wrong was committed in (...) exceptional circumstances. Perhaps it is true that, as a rule, wrongdoers ought to be convicted. But in your case the court should set the rule aside. You should be acquitted. Within limits, the law allows for exceptions. Or so we tend to think. In fact, the line between rules and exceptions is harder to draw than it seems. How are we to determine what counts as an exception and what as part of the relevant rule? The distinction has important practical implications. But legal theorists have found the notion of an exception surprisingly difficult to explain. This is the longstanding jurisprudential problem that this book seeks to solve. The book is divided into three parts. Part I, Defeasibility in Question, introduces the topic and articulates the core puzzle of defeasibility in law. Part II, Defeasibility in Theory, develops a comprehensive proof-based account of legal exceptions. Part III, Defeasibility in Action, looks more closely into the workings of exceptions in accusatory contexts, including the criminal trial. (shrink)

Forty years after his death, Hans Kelsen (1881-1973) remains one of the most discussed and influential legal philosophers of our time. This collection of new essays takes Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law as a stimulus, aiming to move forward the debate on several central issues in contemporary jurisprudence. The essays in Part I address legal validity, the normativity of law, and Kelsen's famous but puzzling idea of a legal system's 'basic norm'. Part II engages with the difficult issues raised by (...) the social realities of law and the actual practices of legal officials. Part III focuses on conceptual features of legal systems and the logical structure of legal norms. All the essays were written for this volume by internationally renowned scholars from seven countries. Also included, in English translation, is an important polemical essay by Kelsen himself. (shrink)

More than 50 years after it was first published, The Concept of Law remains the most important work of legal philosophy in the English-speaking world. In this volume, written for both students and specialists, 13 leading scholars look afresh at Hart's great book. Unique in format, the volume proceeds sequentially through all the main ideas in The Concept of Law: each contributor addresses a single chapter of Hart's book, critically discussing its arguments in light of subsequent developments in the field. (...) Four concluding essays assess the continued relevance for jurisprudence of the 'persistent questions' identified by Hart at the beginning of The Concept of Law. The collection also includes Hart's 'Answers to Eight Questions', written in 1988 and never before published in English. Contributors include Timothy Endicott, Richard HS Tur, Pavlos Eleftheriadis, John Gardner, Grant Lamond, Nicos Stavropoulos, Leslie Green, John Tasioulas, Jeremy Waldron, John Finnis, Frederick Schauer, Pierluigi Chiassoni and Nicola Lacey. (shrink)

Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld's account of legal rights is now 100 years old. It has been much discussed, and remains very influential with philosophers and lawyers alike. Yet it is still sometimes misunderstood in crucial respects. This article offers a rigorous exposition of Hohfeld's framework; discusses its claims to comprehensiveness and fundamentality, reviewing recent work on the topic; and highlights the argumentative uses of Hohfeld's most important distinction.

Can there be a non-reductivist, source-based explanation of the use of normative language in statements describing the law and legal situations? This problem was formulated by Joseph Raz, who also claimed to have solved it. According to his well-known doctrine of ‘detached’ statements, normative legal statements can be informatively made by speakers who merely adopt, without necessarily sharing, the point of view of someone who accepts that legal norms are justified and ought to be followed. In this paper I defend (...) two theses. I argue, first, that the notion of a detached statement cannot be made to work, and that Raz’s problem is thus not thereby solved. But the problem itself, I also suggest, is a false one. (shrink)

Most philosophers of criminal law agree that between criminal offences and defences there is a significant, substantial difference. It is a difference, however, that has proved hard to pin down. In recent work, Duff and others have suggested that it mirrors the distinction between criminal answerability and liability to criminal punishment. Offence definitions, says Duff, are—and ought to be—those action-types ‘for which a defendant can properly be called to answer in a criminal court, on pain of conviction and condemnation if (...) she cannot offer an exculpatory answer’; and defences are ‘exculpatory answers’ that ‘block the transition from responsibility to liability’. I criticise this answerability-based account of the offence/defence divide. It is descriptively false, I claim, as well as normatively unappealing. (shrink)

This paper discusses the first incarnation of what came to be known as the “Frege-Geach” point. The point was made by Peter Geach in his 1960 essay “Ascriptivism”, and developed in “Assertion”, a 1965 piece. Geach’s articles launch a wholesale attack on theories of non-descriptive performances advanced by “some Oxford philosophers” whom he accuses of ignoring “the distinction between calling a thing ‘P’ and predicating ‘P’ of a thing”. One view that Geach specifically targets is H. L. A. Hart’s claim (...) that sentences of the form “X φ-ed” are not primarily descriptive but ascriptive of responsibility for actions. Hart explicitly accepted Geach’s criticism, and disowned his essay. I argue that he was wrong to do so. Perhaps the essay was worth retracting, but not because of Geach’s objections. I begin by restating and refining Geach’s arguments, in order to bring out the flaw he claimed to have detected in the “pattern of philosophising” that he took Hart’s essay to exemplify. I go on to argue that Geach’s original point poses no obstacle either to non-descriptivism in general, or to Hart’s sui generis non-descriptivist claim in particular. (shrink)

Can there be a non-reductivist, source-based explanation of the use of normative language in statements describing the law and legal situations? This problem was formulated by Joseph Raz, who also claimed to have solved it. According to his well-known doctrine of ‘detached’ statements, normative legal statements can be informatively made by speakers who merely adopt, without necessarily sharing, the point of view of someone who accepts that legal norms are justified and ought to be followed. In this paper I defend (...) two theses. I argue, first, that the notion of a detached statement cannot be made to work, and that Raz’s problem is thus not thereby solved. But the problem itself, I also suggest, is a false one. (shrink)

The distinction between 'conduct norms' and 'sanction norms' is widely assumed to be an essential tool for any correct understanding of criminal responsibility. Conduct norms (often also called 'primary') are referred to with the language of 'prohibitions', and it is normally accepted that a crime is by definition a 'prohibited' human behaviour, in the sense that it is always an infraction of a 'conduct norm'. I mean to discuss and criticize this rather consensual assumption. Modern criminal codes don't usually incorporate (...) a catalogue of prohibitions, but this is considered to be of no consequence when it comes to discuss whether the law prohibits those behaviours whose performance may lead to the application of a criminal sanction: there is no question that sanction norms may be properly read out of the special parts of our criminal codes, and from a sanction norm it is always possible to infer the correspondent prohibition. Or so the current understanding goes. I shall first try to make some sense of this common idea, which I call the inference thesis. I will then proceed to show why it is wrong. The inference thesis is necessarily committed to an understanding of conduct norms as prescriptive norms addressed to citizens, and the relevant notion of a prescriptive norm has to be characterized in some detail. Having done so, I will argue that such a prescriptive understanding of 'conduct norms' is incompatible with several aspects common to most modern systems of criminal law and unquestionably essential to the concept of a crime. (shrink)

: In this paper we examine two challenges to the orthodox understanding of the fallacy of denying the antecedent. One challenge is to say that passages thought to express the fallacy can usually be given an interpretation on which they express valid arguments, entitling us to query whether the fallacy is commonly, if ever, committed at all. We discuss this claim in Section 1. The second challenge comes from those who think that there are legitimate uses of denying the antecedent (...) that have traditionally been overlooked. In Section 2 we propose a general test for claims of this sort, and assess three versions of this view. (shrink)

In his essay “Pre-Conventions: A Fragment of the Background”, Bruno Celano seems to endorse three claims about what he calls ‘pre-conventions’: that such ‘entities’ exist; that they are neither rules nor de facto regularities; and that their ‘character’ is at once factual and normative: that pre-conventions are “literally, ‘normative facts’.” I suggest that and are not particularly striking claims, and that Celano’s case for is unpersuasive.

This paper analyses the gender pay determinants between top and lower level of Portuguese employees. A relatively large data pool, for 2003, covering business functions hitherto neglected, sheds a new light into the factors that lead to the earnings of men and women. Our analysis combines human capital with internal-labour-markets theories. Our findings allow the identification of jobsegregation as one important source of the gender pay gap. Moreover, they confirm that earnings are determined by different factors and suggest a reasonable (...) opportunity for women to combine career and family. (shrink)

Successful accounts of analogy in law have two burdens to discharge. First, they must reflect the fact that the conclusion of an argument by analogy is a normative claim about how to decide a certain case. Second, they must not fail to accord relevance to the fact that the source case was authoritatively decided in a certain way. We argue in the first half of this paper that the common view of the structure of analogical arguments in law cannot overcome (...) these hurdles. In the second half we develop an original account that aims to succeed where others failed. (shrink)

Our paper has three parts. In Part 1, we discuss John Gardner’s thesis that the non-elliptical ascription of agency to law is a necessary and irreducible part of any adequate explanation of the activities of legal officials. We consider three explananda which might conceivably necessitate this ascription, and conclude that none in fact does so. In Part 2, we discuss two other theses of Gardner’s: that it makes no sense to ascribe to law the claim that there are legal obligations (...) , and that law’s claim is the claim that there are moral obligations . We take issue with Gardner’s arguments for , and suggest that is unwarranted in the absence of an argument that law makes any claims at all. In Part 3, we briefly argue that, insofar as it issues requirements, there are certain claims that law cannot but make. We conclude that if Gardner is right that law’s claims are those of certain of its officials, it is law-making and not law-applying officials who make law’s claim. (shrink)

I propose and defend a proof-based account of legal exceptions. The basic thought is that the characteristic behaviour of exceptions is to be explained in terms of the distinction, relative to some given decision-type C in some decision-making context, between two classes of relevant facts: those that may, and those that may not, remain uncertain if a token decision C is to count as correctly made. The former is the class of exceptions. A fact F is an exception relative to (...) some decision-type C, I claim, if (i) the ascertainment of F is sufficient for a token decision C not to count as correctly made, and (ii) the ascertainment of the negation of F is not necessary for a token decision C to count as correctly made. I also recuperate, reconstruct and discuss some of HLA Hart’s early views on defeasible judicial decisions. These two projects are closely connected: the latter is a vehicle for the former. (shrink)

This short paper addresses a well‐known difficulty in the Pure Theory of Law: the definition of a legal wrong. Kelsen was unable to offer a suitable one, critics say. I agree. But the critics misdiagnosed the problem, and prescribed for it a fruitless solution. The reason for Kelsen’s failure, the critics say, was that he thought the law consists only of sanction‐stipulating norms addressed to officials, and does not comprise duty‐imposing norms addressed to citizens. But the critics are wrong, exegetically (...) as well as substantively. Kelsen did not—and indeed could not—deny that there are such duty‐imposing norms; and it is not the case, in any event, that the admission that there are such norms would enable us to explain the notion of a legal wrong. Kelsen failed to provide an adequate characterization of the notion of a legal wrong, yes, but for a different reason. (shrink)

Resenha de Chaisemartin, N.; Theodorescu, D. Le théâtre d’Aphrodisias : les structures scéniques. Aphrodisias 8.

Background The field of bioethics examines the moral and ethical dilemmas that arise in the biological sciences, healthcare, and medical practices. There has been a rise in medical negligence cases, complaints against healthcare workers, and public dissatisfaction with healthcare professionals, according to reports from the Indian Medical Council and other healthcare associations. We intend to assess the level of knowledge, attitude, and practice of bioethics among the registered healthcare professionals (HCPs) of Maharashtra, India. Methods A State-level online survey was conducted (...) among the registered HCPs (n = 2143) casing all five regions of the Maharashtra state using a pre-tested self-administered questionnaire. The responses were expressed as mean, and proportions with their standard deviation and 95% CI respectively. Binary logistic regression and a multivariate logistic model were used to determine factors associated with knowledge, attitude, and practice of bioethics. Results Of the 2143 registered HCPs in Maharashtra included in this study, most of them (65.2%) had adequate knowledge of bioethics. Adequate knowledge was associated with lower age, profession (nurses and dentists), employment in the private sector, HCPS at Marathwada and Pune, and higher educational attainment. About 3 in 5 HCPs (59.4%) had a favorable attitude towards the ethical practice of bioethics, and was associated with profession, place of work, region of practice, and work experience. The distribution of unethical bioethics practices among 10 items was proportionally high, and only 34.4% reported good/fair practice. The common unethical practices in the state were allowing patients to be examined by interns, and not informing them about professional misconduct to the regulatory bodies. Conclusion Most HCPs had adequate knowledge of bioethics, which is encouraging and would favor the laying foundation for forming a good bioethics framework. Only 3/5 HCPs demonstrated a favorable attitude, and the observed unethical practice is alarmingly common. A serious consideration to evaluate the compliance level of bioethics practice periodically and measures to educate, sensitize, and train bioethics among HCPs in Maharashtra is warranted. (shrink)

ObjectiveCochlear explantation for purely elective (e.g. psychological and emotional) reasons is not well studied. Herein, we aim to provide data and expert commentary about elective cochlear implant (CI) removal that may help to guide clinical decision-making and formulate guidelines related to CI explantation.Data sourcesWe address these objectives via three approaches: case report of a patient who desired elective CI removal; review of literature and expert discussion by surgeon, audiologist, bioethicist, CI user and member of Deaf community.Review methodsA systematic review using (...) three scientific online databases was performed. Included articles addressed the benefits and/or complications of cochlear implantation in young children, CI explantation with or without revision surgery and the ethical debate between the medical and Deaf communities on cochlear implantation and explantation.ConclusionsThe medical and audiological perspectives identify a host of risks related to implant removal without reimplantation, including risk from surgery, general anaesthesia, cochlear ossification and poor audiometric outcomes. The member of the deaf community and bioethicist argue that physicians need to guide the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence and patient autonomy. Taken together, patient desires should be seen as paramount, if the patient is otherwise fit for surgery and well informed.Implications for practiceSimilar to the case of device implantation, device explantation should be a multidisciplinary and collaborative decision with the patient and the family’s desires at the centre. While every case is different, we offer a CI explantation discussion to assist in clinical decision-making, patient counselling and education. (shrink)

Inicialmente, considera-se como as possibilidades de relações entre a psicanálise e a filosofia de Peirce têm sido objeto de trabalhos de filósofos e psicanalistas. São destacadas as noções de Winnicott sobre os objetos e fenômenos transicionais e o brincar, como uma área de particular interesse para o estudo dessas relações, dadas suas ligações com a filosofia de Peirce. É, então, indicado como Winnicott faz referência às relações da simbolização com os objetos e fenômenos transicionais e indica como um “full understanding” (...) dos processos de simbolização podem contribuir para o conhecimento desses fenômenos. Considerando essa manifestação de Winnicott, é examinado de que modo a semiótica de Peirce contém elementos que auxiliam o entendimento do que é chamado de “simbolização”, por Winnicott. Assim,, também permitindo a discriminação dos aspectos semióticos presentes nos objetos e fenômenos transicionais e no brincar, permitindo, assim, uma ampliação de algumas dimensões da significação das concepções de Winnicott. As questões referidas são examinadas amplamente nos casos clínicos de “Edmund” e “Diana”, citados por Winnicott e em outras duas situações clínicas apresentadas pelo autor. (shrink)

Ce travail concerne la régulation morale de la Personne dans Je contexte du Brésil des années vingt aux années quarante, à partir de l'analyse des intenses rapports tissés dans cette période entre lanthropologie et la psychanalyse. Il décrit les conditions dans lesquelles s'établit Je dialogue entre ces deux savoirs, dans Je cadre des projets de «civilisation» du pays, entre les initiatives d'éducation et d'hygiénisation de l'État central et les débats médicaux et intellectuels sur les rapports entre l'héritage «africain» et la (...) possibilité de dépasser la condition culturelle « arriérée » du pays. (shrink)

Humanity Divided focuses on the multiple challenges associated with the concept of Israel's divine election, especially as reflected in the thought of Martin Buber and other Modern Jewish thinkers such as Franz Rosenzweig, Hermann Cohen, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, David Hartman, Hannah Arendt, and Aviezer Ravitzky. Particular attention is given to the practical application of Israel's chosenness to Jewish nationalism, Zionism, and political Messianism.

Esse artigo tem por objetivo analisar um conjunto de onze [11] cartas trocadas entre Jerônimo de Estridão (347 -420 d. C.) e Agostinho de Hipona (354-430 d. C.) e reconhecer que mesmo em meio a divergências de pensamento, os dois teólogos defenderam a fé cristã e os ensinamentos de Jesus Cristo como modelo a ser seguido pelo homem. Por meio dessas epístolas é possível perceber a autoridade eclesial mantida por Jerônimo e Agostinho em defesa das concepções e projetos cristãos. É (...) verdade que ambos não apresentaram o mesmo “rigor” acerca de determinados temas. Apesar das divergências constatadas e das relações conturbadas, eles se tratavam nas cartas como pessoas reunidas por Deus. As cartas que Jerônimo e Agostinho trocaram demonstram a firmeza e o posicionamento em defesa da fé cristã. As cartas selecionadas evidenciam um embate entre dois dos principais autores da patrística. Para realizarmos nossas reflexões acerca desse embate recorremos, teoricamente, à história social e ao conceito de longa duração, uma vez que as cartas nos permitem compreender um momento histórico no qual estava em curso um projeto de formação humana pautado na doutrina cristã que se efetivou e manteve-se por pelo menos dez séculos. (shrink)

Resumo: Este texto discute a hipótese de que a crise das democracias contemporâneas é indissociável de dois fenômenos políticos distintos, porém correlatos, analisados a partir das teorizações de Michel Foucault sobre a biopolítica e o neoliberalismo: a) a crescente disseminação de atos e discursos de violência, de ódio e de preconceito contra populações vulneráveis, obedecendo à lógica biopolítica da proteção da vida de alguns ao custo da exposição à morte de vastas parcelas da população; b) a disseminação de políticas neoliberais (...) para a gestão da vida de populações vulneráveis. Considera-se que a articulação entre biopolítica e neoliberalismo produz o paradoxo de uma democracia sem demos, no sentido da desvalorização das lutas políticas coletivas por direitos iguais e por melhores condições de vida. Na conclusão, sugere-se que a reinvenção da democracia exige repensar o poder do demos, isto é, repolitizar o poder político de categorias sociais sujeitas a processos históricos de vulneração. Palavras-chave: Crise da democracia. Biopolítica. Neoliberalismo. Foucault. Butler. Democracy in crisis: biopolitics and neoliberal government of populations: This text discusses the hypothesis that the crisis of contemporary democracy relates to two distinct political phenomena, however correlated, analyzed thru Michel Foucault’s concepts about biopolitics and neoliberalism: a) the ascending dissemination of acts and discourses of hate, violence and prejudgment against vulnerable populations, according to the biopolitical logics of protecting the life of some at the expense of exposing the life of others to death; b) the dissemination of neoliberal policies to administrate the life of vulnerable populations. I argue that both phenomena seem to imply the paradox of a democracy without the demos, in the sense of the devaluation of collective political struggles for equal rights and for better life conditions. At the conclusion, it is suggested that the reinvention of democracy requires rethinking the power of the demos in the sense of re-politicizing the political power of social categories subjected to historical process that render them vulnerable. Keywords: Crisis of democracy. Biopolitics. Neoliberalism. Foucault. Butler. Démocratie en crise : biopolitique et gouvernement néolibéral de populations Résumé : On discute l’hypothèse que la crise de la démocratie contemporaine est associée à deux phénomènes politiques distinctes, mais corrélâtes, analysés par les concepts de Foucault sur la biopolitique et le néolibéralisme : a) la vague accrue d’actes et de mots de violence, haine et pré-jugements contre des populations vulnérables, selon la logique biopolitique de la protection de la vie de quelques-uns au prix du rejet à la morte de la vie des autres ; b) la dissémination des politiques néolibéraux vouées à la gestion de la vie des populations vulnérabilisées. L’articulation entre biopolitique et néolibéralisme semble impliquer le paradoxe d’une démocratie sans demos, au sens de la dévaluation des luttes politiques collectives pour des droits égaux et pour des meilleures conditions de vie. Finalement, on considère la réinvention de la démocratie par la ré-politisation du pouvoir du demos en tant que pouvoir des catégories sociales soumises à la vulnération. Mots-clés: Crise de la démocratie. Biopolitique. Néolibéralisme. Foucault. Butler. (shrink)

In Brazil, the CNPq provides grants, funds and fellowships to productive scientists to support their investigations. They are ranked and categorized into four hierarchical levels ranging from PQ 1A to PQ 1D. Few studies, however, report and analyse scientific productivity in different sub-fields of Biomedical Sciences, e.g., Biochemistry, Pharmacology, Biophysics and Physiology. In fact, systematic comparisons of productivity among the PQ 1 categories within the above sub-fields are lacking in the literature. Here, the scientific productivity of 323 investigators receiving PQ (...) 1 fellowships in these sub-fields of BS was investigated. The Scopus database was used to compile the total number of articles, citations, h-index values and authorship positions in the most cited papers by researchers granted CNPq fellowships. We found that researchers from Pharmacology had the best performance for all of the parameters analysed, followed by those in Biochemistry. There was great variability in scientific productivity within the PQ 1A level in all of the sub-fields of BS, but not within the other levels. Analysis of the most cited papers of PQ 1 researchers in Pharmacology revealed that the citations of researchers in the 1C and 1D levels were associated with publications with their senior supervisors, whereas those in the 1B level were less connected with their supervisors in comparison to those in 1A. Taken together, these findings suggest that the scientific performance of PQ 1A researchers in BS is not homogenous. In our opinion, parameters such as the most cited papers without the involvement of Ph.D. and/or post-doctoral supervisors should be used to make decisions regarding any given researcher’s fellowship award level. (shrink)

In Brazil, the CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) provides grants, funds and fellowships to productive scientists to support their investigations. They are ranked and categorized into four hierarchical levels ranging from PQ 1A (the highest) to PQ 1D (the lowest). Few studies, however, report and analyse scientific productivity in different sub-fields of Biomedical Sciences (BS), e.g., Biochemistry, Pharmacology, Biophysics and Physiology. In fact, systematic comparisons of productivity among the PQ 1 categories within the above sub-fields are lacking (...) in the literature. Here, the scientific productivity of 323 investigators receiving PQ 1 fellowships (A to D levels) in these sub-fields of BS was investigated. The Scopus database was used to compile the total number of articles, citations, h-index values and authorship positions (first-, co- or last-listed author) in the most cited papers by researchers granted CNPq fellowships. We found that researchers from Pharmacology had the best performance for all of the parameters analysed, followed by those in Biochemistry. There was great variability in scientific productivity within the PQ 1A level in all of the sub-fields of BS, but not within the other levels (1B, 1C and 1D). Analysis of the most cited papers of PQ 1(A–D) researchers in Pharmacology revealed that the citations of researchers in the 1C and 1D levels were associated with publications with their senior supervisors, whereas those in the 1B level were less connected with their supervisors in comparison to those in 1A. Taken together, these findings suggest that the scientific performance of PQ 1A researchers in BS is not homogenous. In our opinion, parameters such as the most cited papers without the involvement of Ph.D. and/or post-doctoral supervisors should be used to make decisions regarding any given researcher’s fellowship award level. (shrink)

Este pequeno texto é uma singela homenagem que dedico para o meu exprofessor da graduação em Filosofia e meu orientador no mestrado em Ética e Epistemologia da UFPI. Trata-se de um texto rememorativo e de agradecimentos pela convivência e aprendizagem que tive com o professor Dr. José Sérgio D. da Fonseca. A grata oportunidade de conhecer o professor Dr. José Sérgio ocorreu-me por volta do ano 2009 em uma disciplina de seminário, na qual o professor José Sérgio ministrou um curso (...) sobre filosofia da mente, se minha memória não falha. (shrink)

Selon plusieurs témoignages, l'éducation féminine au Brésil laissait à désirer au XIXe siècle. Les voyageurs Kidder et Fletcher, en visite dans ce pays en 1851, affirmaient que les Brésiliennes ne possédaient pas de connaissances très variées pour rendre leur conversation agréable et instructive, mais parlaient de choses insignifiantes toujours d'une façon agréable. Par ailleurs, ils admettaient que certaines écoles étaient excellentes. Mais les parents en retiraient leurs filles à l'â...

This is my reply to five extended critical assessments of my book Law as a Leap of Faith, appearing together in a symposium issue of Law and Philosophy. The critics are Kevin Toh, Luís Duarte d’Almeida and James Edwards, Fábio Perin Shecaira, Cristina Redondo, and Matthew Smith. The topics include H.L.A. Hart’s philosophical legacy, the moral claims of law, the nature of legal reasoning, the doctrine of legal positivism, and the possibility of alienation from law.

Exposing Fake Logic by Avi Sion is a collection of essays written after publication of his book A Fortiori Logic, in which he critically responds to derivative work by other authors who claim to know better. This is more than just polemics; but allows further clarifications of a fortiori logic and of general logic. This collection includes essays on: a fortiori argument (in general and in Judaism); Luis Duarte D’Almeida; Mahmoud Zeraatpishe; Michael Avraham (et al.); an anonymous reviewer of BDD (...) (a Bar Ilan University journal); and self-publishing. (shrink)

The first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. This landmark work is the first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists that considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. With twenty-six chapters by leading researchers, the book connects and integrates findings from fields that range from philosophy of mind to sociology of sports. The chapters show not only that (...) sports can tell scientists how the human mind works but also that the scientific study of the human mind can help athletes succeed. Sports psychology research has always focused on the themes, notions, and models of embodied cognition; embodied cognition, in turn, has found striking confirmation of its theoretical claims in the psychological accounts of sports performance and athletic skill. Athletic skill is a legitimate form of intelligence, involving cognitive faculties no less sophisticated and complex than those required by mathematical problem solving. After presenting the key concepts necessary for applying embodied cognition to sports psychology, the book discusses skill disruption ; sensorimotor skill acquisition and how training correlates to the development of cognitive faculties; the intersubjective and social dimension of sports skills, seen in team sports; sports practice in cultural and societal contexts; the notion of “affordance” and its significance for ecological psychology and embodied cognition theory; and the mind's predictive capabilities, which enable anticipation, creativity, improvisation, and imagination in sports performance. Contributors Ana Maria Abreu, Kenneth Aggerholm, Salvatore Maria Aglioti, Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza, Duarte Araújo, Jürgen Beckmann, Kath Bicknell, Geoffrey P. Bingham, Jens E. Birch, Gunnar Breivik, Noel E. Brick, Massimiliano L. Cappuccio, Thomas H. Carr, Alberto Cei, Anthony Chemero, Wayne Christensen, Lincoln J. Colling, Cassie Comley, Keith Davids, Matt Dicks, Caren Diehl, Karl Erickson, Anna Esposito, Pedro Tiago Esteves, Mirko Farina, Giolo Fele, Denis Francesconi, Shaun Gallagher, Gowrishankar Ganesh, Raúl Sánchez-García, Rob Gray, Denise M. Hill, Daniel D. Hutto, Tsuyoshi Ikegami, Geir Jordet, Adam Kiefer, Michael Kirchhoff, Kevin Krein, Kenneth Liberman, Tadhg E. MacIntyre, Nelson Mauro Maldonato, David L. Mann, Richard S. W. Masters, Patrick McGivern, Doris McIlwain, Michele Merritt, Christopher Mesagno, Vegard Fusche Moe, Barbara Gail Montero, Aidan P. Moran, David Moreau, Hiroki Nakamoto, Alberto Oliverio, David Papineau, Gert-Jan Pepping, Miriam Reiner, Ian Renshaw, Michael A. Riley, Zuzanna Rucinska, Lawrence Shapiro, Paula Silva, Shannon Spaulding, John Sutton, Phillip D. Tomporowski, John Toner, Andrew D. Wilson, Audrey Yap, Qin Zhu, Christopher Madan. (shrink)

Everything we do relies on causation. We eat and drink because this causes us to stay alive. Courts tell us who causes crimes, criminology tell us what causes people to commit them. D.H. Mellor shows us that to understand the world and our lives we must understand causation. _The Facts of Causation_, now available in paperback, is essential reading for students and for anyone interested in reading one of the ground-breaking theories in metaphysics. We cannot understand the world and our (...) place in it without understanding causation. Yet a complete account of the nature and implications of causation does not exist. D.H Mellor's new book is that account. (shrink)

Everything we do relies on causation. We eat and drink because this causes us to stay alive. Courts tell us who causes crimes, criminology tell us what causes people to commit them. D.H. Mellor shows us that to understand the world and our lives we must understand causation. _The Facts of Causation_, now available in paperback, is essential reading for students and for anyone interested in reading one of the ground-breaking theories in metaphysics. We cannot understand the world and our (...) place in it without understanding causation. Yet a complete account of the nature and implications of causation does not exist. D.H Mellor's new book is that account. (shrink)

'Why did the window break when it was hit by the stone? Because the window is brittle and the stone is hard; hardness and brittleness are powers, dispositional properties or dispositions.' Dispositions are essential to our understanding of the world. This book is a record of the debate on the nature of dispositions between three distinguished philosophers - D. M. Armstrong, C. B. Martin and U. T. Place - who have been thinking about dispositions all their working lives. Their distinctive (...) accounts cover many of the issues surrounding dispositions such as the nature of mind, matter, universals, existence, laws of nature and causation. Dispositions illuminates this central topic in analytic philosophy and at the same time highlights deeper concerns of metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper argues that the concept and role of ‘institutional racism’ in contemporary discussions of race should be reconsidered. It starts by distinguishing between ‘intrinsic institutional racism’, which holds that institutions are racist in virtue of their constitutive features, and ‘extrinsic institutional racism’, which holds that institutions are racist in virtue of their negative effects. It accepts intrinsic institutional racism, but argues that a ‘disparate impact’ conception of extrinsic conception faces a number of objections, the most serious being that it (...) has no plausible account of what it is that makes extrinsically racist institutions racist. It also argues that claims about the explanatory indispensability of institutional racism are overstated (individual racism is at least as important), critiques structural approaches to racial inequality, and suggests that there is reason to doubt whether institutional reform can provide us with all that morality may require in the racial domain. (shrink)

Objective—To determine the prevalence of, and attitudes towards, observed and personal research misconduct among newly appointed medical consultants. Design—Questionnaire study.Setting—Mersey region, United Kingdom.Participants—Medical consultants appointed between Jan 1995 and Jan 2000 in seven different hospital trusts (from lists provided by each hospital's personnel department). Main outcome measures—Reported observed misconduct, reported past personal misconduct and reported possible future misconduct.Results—One hundred and ninety-four replies were received (a response rate of 63.6%); 55.7% of respondents had observed some form of research misconduct; 5.7% of (...) respondents admitted to past personal misconduct; 18% of respondents were either willing to commit or unsure about possible future research misconduct. Only 17% of the respondents reported having received any training in research ethics. Anaesthetists reported a lower incidence of observed research misconduct (33.3%) than the rest of the respondents (61.5%) (p<0.05). Conclusion—There is a higher prevalence of observed and possible future misconduct among newly appointed consultants in the UK than in the comparable study of biomedical trainees in California. Although there is a need for more extensive studies, this survey suggests that there is a real and potential problem of research misconduct in the UK. (shrink)

It was proposed that the data from Monte Carlo statistical investigations be subjected to analysis of variance methods rather than the conventional techniques of tabling, graphing, and inspecting the data. Two examples in which analysis of variance methods were applied to published Monte Carlo studies were presented. It was suggested that balanced factorial designs should be used whenever possible in Monte Carlo studies so that analysis of variance methods would be directly applicable. Finally, three advantages of analysis of variance methods (...) over conventional techniques were described and analysis of variance methods were contrasted with a possible alternative analytical method, multiple regression analysis. (shrink)