(2006). BOOK REVIEW: Perspectives on Policy: Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban Education, and a New Social Movement, by Jean Anyon. Educational Studies: Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 322-327.
Zemach's arguments have gone to show that terms might be rigid designators in ordinary language even though they are not natural kind terms. It has been argued that his argument is inconclusive. However it has been claimed that Putnam's argument is much too strong for it would preclude interesting scientific hypotheses about identity between what appear to be different substances, solely on the grounds of modal necessity.It has been shown that rigid designators can be disjunctive but that this possibility is (...) not a foregone conclusion, as Zemach would have us believe. We have to allow for differences between how wesingled out the extension of a natural kind termin the past and how we intend to single out such extensionin the future. Language is not inherently conservative. There is much room for reformist manoevres. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A0985038 00002. (shrink)
The concepts of social capital are important in improving the quality of life. However, the effects of social capital accumulated in the economic, social and political spheres can be both positive and negative. Article brings the specificity of trust as a key variety of social capital and it's status among the Poles. Indicated are also differences between the suspicion, mistrust and functional substitutes for trust. The whole is complemented by breakdown of bottom-up methods of social capital building. ** Koncepcje kapitału (...) społecznego mają istotne znaczenie w podnoszeniu jakości życia. Niemniej skutki oddziaływania nagromadzonego kapitału społecznego w sferach ekonomicznej, społecznej i politycznej mogą być zarówno pozytywne, jak i negatywne. Artykuł przybliża specyfikę zaufania jako kluczowej odmiany kapitału społecznego i jego stan wśród Polaków. Wskazane zostają też różnice między nieufnością, brakiem zaufania i funkcjonalnymi substytutami zaufania. Całość uzupełnia zestawienie oddolnych metod budowania kapitału społecznego. (shrink)
Niniejszy artykuł traktuje o możliwościach i powinnościach procesu nauczania fonetyki na polskich uczelniach wśród studentów germanistyki. Zważywszy na bardzo dobrą podstawę poprawnej wymowy, jaką jest korzystna baza artykulacyjna Polaków, jak też rónorodność metod, które powinny być stosowane podczas uczenia fonetyki, nie ulega wątpliwości, że studenci są w stanie sprostać bardzo wysokim wymaganiom stawianym przez wykładowców. Zawarta w artykule baza pojęciowa jest jedną z metod, które winno się wykorzystywać, aby osiągnąć rzeczony cel. A zatem obok nader świadomej artykulacji niemieckich głosek na (...) zajęciach fonetyki na kierunku germanistyki jest również miejsce dla dwóch kolejnych zdecydowanie bardziej praktycznych metod. Chodzi tu oczywiście o metodę werbo-tonalną oraz metodę zmierzającą do automatyzacji jedynie okazyjnie poprawnie artykułowanych głosek. (shrink)
Stosunek do Innego rzutuje i będzie rzutował na konkretne wybory i losy polskiego społeczeństwa.Podejmując dyskusję znanej uwagi J.T. Grossa, łączącej podejście do imigrantówz nieprzepracowanym problemem polskich „marginesów Zagłady”, autor próbuje umieścićją w kontekście kwestii upodmiotowienia Polaków jako zbiorowości. Stawia tezę, że historycznieuwarunkowana, słaba umiejętność zbiorowego podejmowania odpowiedzialności zatrudne sprawy w podobny sposób określa oba zagadnienia. Tak wzięcie odpowiedzialnościza przeszłość, jak podjęcie jej za teraźniejsze wybory, wymaga bowiem takiej zbiorowejumiejętności. Słabość w tej sferze ogranicza samą możliwość praktykowania zalecanej przezJacques’a Derridę „gość-inności”.
PREFACE This essay developed from ideas in my doctoral thesis submitted to the Hebrew University in 1977. Chapter three has been amended as regards one of ...
When this work was first published in 1960, it immediately filled a void in Kantian scholarship. It was the first study entirely devoted to Kant's _Critique of Practical Reason_ and by far the most substantial commentary on it ever written. This landmark in Western philosophical literature remains an indispensable aid to a complete understanding of Kant's philosophy for students and scholars alike. This _Critique_ is the only writing in which Kant weaves his thoughts on practical reason into a unified argument. (...) Lewis White Beck offers a classic examination of this argument and expertly places it in the context of Kant's philosophy and of the moral philosophy of the eighteenth century. (shrink)
Since it was first published, Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell has quickly established itself as the most accessible and comprehensive introduction to this profound and deeply fascinating area of theoretical physics. Now in this fully revised and expanded edition, A. Zee covers the latest advances while providing a solid conceptual foundation for students to build on, making this the most up-to-date and modern textbook on quantum field theory available. -/- This expanded edition features several additional chapters, as well as (...) an entirely new section describing recent developments in quantum field theory such as gravitational waves, the helicity spinor formalism, on-shell gluon scattering, recursion relations for amplitudes with complex momenta, and the hidden connection between Yang-Mills theory and Einstein gravity. Zee also provides added exercises, explanations, and examples, as well as detailed appendices, solutions to selected exercises, and suggestions for further reading. (shrink)
The understanding of decision-making systems has come together in recent years to form a unified theory of decision-making in the mammalian brain as arising from multiple, interacting systems (a planning system, a habit system, and a situation-recognition system). This unified decision-making system has multiple potential access points through which it can be driven to make maladaptive choices, particularly choices that entail seeking of certain drugs or behaviors. We identify 10 key vulnerabilities in the system: (1) moving away from homeostasis, (2) (...) changing allostatic set points, (3) euphorigenic signals, (4) overvaluation in the planning system, (5) incorrect search of situation-action-outcome relationships, (6) misclassification of situations, (7) overvaluation in the habit system, (8) a mismatch in the balance of the two decision systems, (9) over-fast discounting processes, and (10) changed learning rates. These vulnerabilities provide a taxonomy of potential problems with decision-making systems. Although each vulnerability can drive an agent to return to the addictive choice, each vulnerability also implies a characteristic symptomology. Different drugs, different behaviors, and different individuals are likely to access different vulnerabilities. This has implications for an individual's susceptibility to addiction and the transition to addiction, for the potential for relapse, and for the potential for treatment. (shrink)
Probabilistic support is not transitive. There are cases in which x probabilistically supports y , i.e., Pr( y | x ) > Pr( y ), y , in turn, probabilistically supports z , and yet it is not the case that x probabilistically supports z . Tomoji Shogenji, though, establishes a condition for transitivity in probabilistic support, that is, a condition such that, for any x , y , and z , if Pr( y | x ) > Pr( y (...) ), Pr( z | y ) > Pr( z ), and the condition in question is satisfied, then Pr( z | x ) > Pr( z ). I argue for a second and weaker condition for transitivity in probabilistic support. This condition, or the principle involving it, makes it easier (than does the condition Shogenji provides) to establish claims of probabilistic support, and has the potential to play an important role in at least some areas of philosophy. (shrink)
A graph-theoretic account of logics is explored based on the general notion of m-graph (that is, a graph where each edge can have a finite sequence of nodes as source). Signatures, interpretation structures and deduction systems are seen as m-graphs. After defining a category freely generated by a m-graph, formulas and expressions in general can be seen as morphisms. Moreover, derivations involving rule instantiation are also morphisms. Soundness and completeness theorems are proved. As a consequence of the generality of the (...) approach our results apply to very different logics encompassing, among others, substructural logics as well as logics with nondeterministic semantics, and subsume all logics endowed with an algebraic semantics. (shrink)
Payment for research participation has raised ethical concerns, especially with respect to its potential for coercion. We argue that characterising payment for research participation as coercive is misguided, because offers of benefit cannot constitute coercion. In this article we analyse the concept of coercion, refute mistaken conceptions of coercion and explain why the offer of payment for research participation is never coercive but in some cases may produce undue inducement.
Wide ranging and up to date, this is the single most comprehensive treatment of the most influential political philosopher of the 20th century, John Rawls. An unprecedented survey that reflects the surge of Rawls scholarship since his death, and the lively debates that have emerged from his work Features an outstanding list of contributors, including senior as well as “next generation” Rawls scholars Provides careful, textually informed exegesis and well-developed critical commentary across all areas of his work, including non-Rawlsian perspectives (...) Includes discussion of new material, covering Rawls’s work from the newly published undergraduate thesis to the final writings on public reason and the law of peoples Covers Rawls’s moral and political philosophy, his distinctive methodological commitments, and his relationships to the history of moral and political philosophy and to jurisprudence and the social sciences Includes discussion of his monumental 1971 book, _A Theory of Justice_, which is often credited as having revitalized political philosophy. (shrink)
We propose a causal model theory to explain asymmetries in judgments of the intentionality of a foreseen side-effect that is either negative or positive (Knobe, 2003). The theory is implemented as a Bayesian network relating types of mental states, actions, and consequences that integrates previous hypotheses. It appeals to two inferential routes to judgment about the intentionality of someone else's action: bottom-up from action to desire and top-down from character and disposition. Support for the theory comes from three experiments that (...) test the prediction that bottom-up inference should occur only when the actor's primary objective is known. The model fits intentionality judgments reasonably well with no free parameters. (shrink)
This is the first-ever critical history of sociology in Britain, written by one of the world's leading scholars in the field. A. H. Halsey presents a vivid and authoritative picture of the neglect, expansion, fragmentation, and explosion of the discipline during the past century. The book examines the literary and scientific contributions to the origin of the discipline, and the challenges faced by the discipline at the dawn of a new century.
The standard approach to treatment decision making for incapacitated patients often fails to provide treatment consistent with the patient’s preferences and values and places significant stress on surrogate decision makers. These shortcomings provide compelling reason to search for methods to improve current practice. Shared decision making between surrogates and clinicians has important advantages, but it does not provide a way to determine patients’ treatment preferences. Hence, shared decision making leaves families with the stressful challenge of identifying the patient’s preferred treatment (...) option. To address this concern, the present paper proposes to incorporate the use of a “Patient Preference Predictor” (PPP) into the shared decision-making process between surrogates and clinicians. A PPP would predict which treatment option a given incapacitated patient would most likely prefer, based on the individual’s characteristics and information on what treatment preferences are correlated with these characteristics. Use of a PPP is likely to increase the chances that incapacitated patients are treated consistent with their preferences and values and might reduce the stress and burden on their surrogates. Including a PPP in the shared decision-making process therefore has the potential to realize important ethical goals for making treatment decisions for incapacitated patients. The present paper justifies this approach on conceptual and normative grounds. (shrink)
Book Information A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition. By John Rawls. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 1999. Pp. xxii + 538. Hardback, £25.00. Paperback, £12.99.
Motor representations live a kind of double life. Although paradigmatically involved in performing actions, they also occur when merely observing others act and sometimes influence thoughts about the goals of observed actions. Further, these influences are content-respecting: what you think about an action sometimes depends in part on how that action is represented motorically in you. The existence of such content-respecting influences is puzzling. After all, motor representations do not feature alongside beliefs or intentions in reasoning about action; indeed, thoughts (...) are inferentially isolated from motor representations. So how could motor representations have content-respecting influences on thoughts? Our aim is to solve this puzzle. In so doing, we shall provide the basis for an account of how experience links the motoric with thought. Such an account matters for understanding how humans think about action: in some cases, we have reasons for thoughts about actions that we would not have if we were unable to represent those actions motorically. (shrink)
Moral distress is one of the core topics of clinical ethics. Although there is a large and growing empirical literature on the psychological aspects of moral distress, scholars, and empirical investigators of moral distress have recently called for greater conceptual clarity. To meet this recognized need, we provide a philosophical taxonomy of the categories of what we call ethically significant moral distress: the judgment that one is not able, to differing degrees, to act on one’s moral knowledge about what one (...) ought to do. We begin by unpacking the philosophical components of Andrew Jameton’s original formulation from his landmark 1984 work and identify two key respects in which that formulation remains unclear: the origins of moral knowledge and impediments to acting on that moral knowledge. We then selectively review subsequent literature that shows that there is more than one concept of moral distress and that explores the origin of the values implicated in moral distress and impediments to acting on those values. This review sets the stage for identifying the elements of a philosophical taxonomy of ethically significant moral distress. The taxonomy uses these elements to create six categories of ethically significant moral distress: challenges to, threats to, and violations of professional integrity; and challenges to, threats to, and violations of individual integrity. We close with suggestions about how the proposed philosophical taxonomy of ethically significant moral distress sheds light on the concepts of moral residue and crescendo effect of moral distress and how the proposed taxonomy might usefully guide prevention of and future qualitative and quantitative empirical research on ethically significant moral distress. (shrink)