This text analyzes the concept of philosophical superstition according to Joseph Maria Bocheński. It specifies sufficient conditions for beliefs and statements to be a philosophical superstition. Philosophical superstitions consist in specific contradictions in beliefs or statements: (a) Superstitions assume or contain contradictory beliefs or statements or/and (b) they are inconsistent with direct experiences or (c) beliefs of their followers, or/and (d) without sufficient reasons superstitions contradict what has already been sufficiently justified or/and (e) they contradict semantic rules of reference of (...) a language in which they are formulated. (shrink)

The study’s main thesis is that respect for some moral values is a condition for methodologically rational decisions, namely, decisions which do not satisfy the condition are either not methodologically rational at all, or not fully rational. The paper shows supporting arguments for the thesis in terms of the philosophical theories by Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Max Weber, Jean-Paul Sartre and some other thinkers. Their presentation undergoes phenomenological analysis of the phenomenon of decision making.

The study discusses the three roles of normative assumption in the theory and practice of innovation management: (1) they define the value of innovation, (2) specify its luck, and (3) determine some goals and methodologies of managing the luck of innovations. The crucial questions of the investigation are as follows: What does ‘luck’ mean in theories of innovation management?, and What is luck in the practice of innovation management? The conceptual analyses present logical links which occur between the normative premises (...) of some canonical theories of metaethics and definitions of luck. In the context of these analyses the study discusses some prerequisites for responsible decisions relating to innovations. The paper illustrates some ways of using philosophical methods in the theory of innovation management. (shrink)

Collected and edited by Noah Levin -/- Table of Contents: -/- UNIT ONE: INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY ETHICS: TECHNOLOGY, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, AND IMMIGRATION 1 The “Trolley Problem” and Self-Driving Cars: Your Car’s Moral Settings (Noah Levin) 2 What is Ethics and What Makes Something a Problem for Morality? (David Svolba) 3 Letter from the Birmingham City Jail (Martin Luther King, Jr) 4 A Defense of Affirmative Action (Noah Levin) 5 The Moral Issues of Immigration (B.M. Wooldridge) 6 The Ethics of our (...) Digital Selves (Noah Levin) -/- UNIT TWO: TORTURE, DEATH, AND THE “GREATER GOOD” 7 The Ethics of Torture (Martine Berenpas) 8 What Moral Obligations do we have (or not have) to Impoverished Peoples? (B.M. Wooldridge) 9 Euthanasia, or Mercy Killing (Nathan Nobis) 10 An Argument Against Capital Punishment (Noah Levin) 11 Common Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob) 12 Better (Philosophical) Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob) -/- UNIT THREE: PERSONS, AUTONOMY, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND RIGHTS 13 Animal Rights (Eduardo Salazar) 14 John Rawls and the “Veil of Ignorance” (Ben Davies) 15 Environmental Ethics: Climate Change (Jonathan Spelman) 16 Rape, Date Rape, and the “Affirmative Consent” Law in California (Noah Levin) 17 The Ethics of Pornography: Deliberating on a Modern Harm (Eduardo Salazar) 18 The Social Contract (Thomas Hobbes) -/- UNIT FOUR: HAPPINESS 19 Is Pleasure all that Matters? Thoughts on the “Experience Machine” (Prabhpal Singh) 20 Utilitarianism (J.S. Mill) 21 Utilitarianism: Pros and Cons (B.M. Wooldridge) 22 Existentialism, Genetic Engineering, and the Meaning of Life: The Fifths (Noah Levin) 23 The Solitude of the Self (Elizabeth Cady Stanton) 24 Game Theory, the Nash Equilibrium, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Douglas E. Hill) -/- UNIT FIVE: RELIGION, LAW, AND ABSOLUTE MORALITY 25 The Myth of Gyges and The Crito (Plato) 26 God, Morality, and Religion (Kristin Seemuth Whaley) 27 The Categorical Imperative (Immanuel Kant) 28 The Virtues (Aristotle) 29 Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche) 30 Other Moral Theories: Subjectivism, Relativism, Emotivism, Intuitionism, etc. (Jan F. Jacko). (shrink)

Unlike the bulk of electronic media the computer game or video game is a distinctly gendered medium. All investigations confirm that we are dealing with a medium which almost exclusively appeals to and is used by, boys and young men. Therefore, the video games and computer games are very suited for investigating the form of entertainment, the pleasure, that appeals to men, i.e. the specific ‘masculine pleasure’.The paper deals with questions such as: What do computer games mean? What does violence (...) in computer games signify? Why do computer games, especially the violent ones, mean something special to a certain group of men? These questions are discussed from the perspective of semiotics, media and control studies.Finally, the paper discusses the connections between women and the male dominated video games, and attempts to explain why, nevertheless, some girls and women do play these games. (shrink)

The recent progress in the development of autonomous cars has seen ethical questions come to the forefront. In particular, life and death decisions regarding the behavior of self-driving cars in trolley dilemma situations are attracting widespread interest in the recent debate. In this essay we want to ask whether we should implement a mandatory ethics setting for the whole of society or, whether every driver should have the choice to select his own personal ethics setting. While the consensus view seems (...) to be that people would not be willing to use an automated car that might sacrifice themselves in a dilemma situation, we will defend the somewhat contra-intuitive claim that this would be nevertheless in their best interest. The reason is, simply put, that a PES regime would most likely result in a prisoner’s dilemma. (shrink)

The essays both represent a variety of epistemological approaches, including those of the humanities, social studies, natural science, sociology, psychology, and engineering sciences and reflect a diversity of philosophical traditions such ...

In this volume specialists of medieval music and philosophy put the medieval 'musica' into the context of ideas and institutions in which it existed. The significance of 'musica' cannot be understood from a modern point of view since 'music' does not match the medieval 'musica'.

This paper addresses the role of time scales in conceptualizing biological hierarchies. So far, the concept of hierarchies in philosophy of science has been dominated by the idea of composition and parthood, respectively. However, this view does not exhaust the diversity of hierarchical descriptions in the biosciences. Therefore, we highlight a type of hierarchy usually overlooked by philosophers of science. It distinguishes processes based on the different time scales (i.e. rates, frequencies, and rhythms) on which they occur. These time scale (...) hierarchies often are connected with assumptions defended in process ontology. Due to their ability to describe interlevel dynamics of various kinds, we call these hierarchies ‘dynamic hierarchies.’ In order to highlight and discuss their organization, explanatory roles, and epistemic virtues we focus on dynamic hierarchies in developmental biology and evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo). In these fields, dynamic hierarchies offer crucial complementary information to descriptions of compositional hierarchies. (shrink)

The nature of envy has recently been the subject of a heated debate. Some researchers see envy as a complex, yet unitary construct that despite being hostile in nature can lead to both hostile and...

The importance of the Low Countries as a centre for the study of foreign languages is well-known. The mutual relationship between the Dutch grammatical tradition and the Western European context has, however, been largely neglected. In this collection of papers on the history of linguistics in the Low Countries the editors have made an effort to present the Dutch tradition in connection with that of the neighbouring countries. Three articles by Claes, Dibbets and Klifman deal with the earliest stages of (...) the development of a grammar for the Dutch vernacular. Several important European figures worked in the Low Countries; their contribution to linguistics is discussed in articles on Vossius (Rademaker), Spinoza (Klijnsmit), and one of the most original phoneticians of European linguistics, Montanus (Hulsker). Vivian Salmon's article is a survey on the relations between English and Dutch linguistics in the field of foreign language teaching. In the 19th century Dutch linguistics had a special relationship with German general and historical linguistics; four articles deal with this period (Jongeneelen, van Driel, le Loux-Schuringa, Noordegraaf). Finally, there are three articles by Kaldewij, Hagen and van Els/Knops on the development of three branches of linguistics in the 20th century: structuralism, dialectology and applied linguistics. This volume should be of interest for all specialists in the history of linguistics in Europe, who are interested in the interdependence of the various traditions. (shrink)

The essays both represent a variety of epistemological approaches, including those of the humanities, social studies, natural science, sociology, psychology, ...

This chapter contains sections titled: History of Technology Technology and Science Technology and Philosophy Technology and Environment Technology and Politics Technology and Ethics Technology and the Future.

In recent years, tech evangelists have made headlines predicting that in the future manual driving will be outlawed. This essay will investigate the question whether a ban of human driven cars can be defended on moral grounds in a future scenario in which autonomous cars are going to be significantly safer than manually driven cars. This article will argue that in such a future scenario manually driven cars, for moral reasons, indeed should be banned from participating in regular traffic. Since (...) the moral argument for outlawing manually driven cars will likely be met by resistance by car-aficionados, in the final part of the paper, we are devising a proposal for reconciling the strong moral case for a ban of manually driven cars with the widespread fondness of manual driving. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Although managers spend over twenty percent of their time in conflict management, organization theorists have provided very few guidelines to help them do their job ethically. This paper attempts to provide some guidelines so that organizational members can use the styles of handling interpersonal conflict, such as integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding, and compromising, with their superiors, subordinates, and peers ethically and effectively. It has been argued in this paper that, in general, each style of handling interpersonal conflict is appropriate if (...) it is used to attain organization''s proper end. (shrink)

This volume explores how Catholicism began and continues to open its doors to the wider world and to other confessions in embracing ecumenism, thanks to the vision and legacy of the Second Vatican Council. It explores such themes as the twentieth century context preceding the council; parallels between Vatican II and previous councils; its distinctively pastoral character; the legacy of the council in relation to issues such as church-world dynamics, as well as to ethics, social justice, economic activity. Several chapters (...) discuss the role of women in the church before, during, and since the council. Others discern inculturation in relation to Vatican II. The book also contains a wide and original range of ecumenical considerations of the council, including by and in relation to Free Church, Reformed, Orthodox, and Anglican perspectives. Finally, it considers the Council’s ongoing promise and remaining challenges with regard to ecumenical issues, including a groundbreaking essay on the future of ecumenical dialogue by Cardinal Walter Kasper. (shrink)

A frequentist confidence interval can be constructed by inverting a hypothesis test, such that the interval contains only parameter values that would not have been rejected by the test. We show how a similar definition can be employed to construct a Bayesian support interval. Consistent with Carnap’s theory of corroboration, the support interval contains only parameter values that receive at least some minimum amount of support from the data. The support interval is not subject to Lindley’s paradox and provides an (...) evidence-based perspective on inference that differs from the belief-based perspective that forms the basis of the standard Bayesian credible interval. (shrink)

Financial economics, and the calculations of time and uncertainty derived from it, are playing an increasingly important role in non-finance areas, such as monetary and environmental economics. In this 2001 book, Professors Le Roy and Werner supply a rigorous yet accessible graduate-level introduction to this subfield of microeconomic theory and general equilibrium theory. Since students often find the link between financial economics and equilibrium theory hard to grasp, they devote less attention to purely financial topics such as calculation of derivatives, (...) while aiming to make the connection explicit and clear in each stage of the exposition. Emphasis is placed on detailed study of two-date models, because almost all of the key ideas in financial economics can be developed in the two-date setting. In addition to rigorous analysis, substantial sections of discussion and examples are included to make the ideas readily understandable. (shrink)

In several recent experiments we have found that the eyes are often captured by the appearance of a sudden onset in a display, even though subjects intend to move their eyes elsewhere. Very brief fixations are made on the abrupt onset before the eyes complete their intended movement to the previously defined target. These results indicate concurrent programming of a voluntary saccade to the defined saccade target and an involuntary saccade to the sudden onset. This is inconsistent with the idea (...) that a single salience map determines the location of a saccade in a winner-take-all fashion. Other results indicate that subjects attend to more than one location in a display during saccade preparation, contrary to the claim that covert attentional scanning plays no role in saccade generation. (shrink)

The past 50 years have seen an accumulation of evidence suggesting that associative learning depends on high-level cognitive processes that give rise to propositional knowledge. Yet, many learning theorists maintain a belief in a learning mechanism in which links between mental representations are formed automatically. We characterize and highlight the differences between the propositional and link approaches, and review the relevant empirical evidence. We conclude that learning is the consequence of propositional reasoning processes that cooperate with the unconscious processes involved (...) in memory retrieval and perception. We argue that this new conceptual framework allows many of the important recent advances in associative learning research to be retained, but recast in a model that provides a firmer foundation for both immediate application and future research. (shrink)

Within the literature on emotion and behavioral action, studies on approach-avoidance take up a prominent place. Several experimental paradigms feature successful conceptual replications but many original studies have not yet been replicated directly. We present such a direct replication attempt of two seminal experiments originally conducted by Chen and Bargh (1999). In their first experiment, participants affectively evaluated attitude objects by pulling or pushing a lever. Participants who had to pull the lever with positively valenced attitude objects and push the (...) lever with negatively valenced attitude objects (i.e., congruent instruction) did so faster than participants who had to follow the reverse (i.e., incongruent) instruction. In Chen and Bargh's second experiment, the explicit evaluative instructions were absent and participants merely responded to the attitude objects by either always pushing or always pulling the lever. Similar results were obtained as in Experiment 1. Based on these findings, Chen and Bargh concluded that (1) attitude objects are evaluated automatically; and (2) attitude objects automatically trigger a behavioral tendency to approach or avoid. We attempted to replicate both experiments and failed to find the effects reported by Chen and Bargh as indicated by our pre-registered Bayesian data analyses; nevertheless, the evidence in favor of the null hypotheses was only anecdotal, and definitive conclusions await further study. (shrink)