§ 1. Introduction. In this communication we present some recent results on the classification of Polish metric spaces up to isometry and on the isometry groups of Polish metric spaces. A Polish metric space is a complete separable metric space.Our first goal is to determine the exact complexity of the classification problem of general Polish metric spaces up to isometry. This work was motivated by a paper of Vershik [1998], where he remarks : “The classification of Polish spaces up to (...) isometry is an enormous task. More precisely, this classification is not ‘smooth’ in the modern terminology.” Our Theorem 2.1 below quantifies precisely the enormity of this task.After doing this, we turn to special classes of Polish metric spaces and investigate the classification problems associated with them. Note that these classification problems are in principle no more complicated than the general one above. However, the determination of their exact complexity is not necessarily easier.The investigation of the classification problems naturally leads to some interesting results on the groups of isometries of Polish metric spaces. We shall also present these results below.The rest of this section is devoted to an introduction of some basic ideas of a theory of complexity for classification problems, which will help to put our results in perspective. Detailed expositions of this general theory can be found, e.g., in Hjorth [2000], Kechris [1999], [2001]. (shrink)

Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten gilt mit Fug und Recht als der selbstandigste aller Wolffianer. Doch hat man kaum je systematisch untersucht, worin - uber die Begrundung der Asthetik hinaus - seine denkerische Originalitat besteht. Im vorliegenden Band wird der fur Kant wichtigste Schulautor als Erkenntnistheoretiker, Psychologe und Moralphilosoph erstmals prononciert aus dem Schatten Wolffs herausgeholt. Nach der jungsten Pionierubersetzung der Metaphysica ins Deutsche folgt hier eine interpretatorisch wegweisende Detailstudie zu philosophischen Schlusselthemen des fruhvollendeten Hochaufklarers - gerade recht zu den anstehenden (...) Jubilaen. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten is regarded justifiably as the most independent of all Wolffians. Up to now however there have been very few systematic studies examining his intellectual originality, apart from his founding of aesthetics. In this volume, the author who was most important for Kant during his school years finally steps out of Wolff's shadow and is revealed to be an epistemologist, a psychologist and moral philosopher. After the recent translation of the Metaphysica into German, a pioneering achievement, what follows here is an interpretively groundbreaking detailed study of the key philosophical subjects of the philosopher of the High Enlightenment, just in time for the current anniversaries. (shrink)

Research on the history of ethics has ignored Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten miserably. And that even though Kant based his lectures on moral philosophy on Baumgarten's text books over the course of decades. This article takes up the cudgels for this "in ethicis" most independent follower of Wolff. In addition to Baumgarten's epistemological elevation of perception, which is known to have resulted in the new foundation of aesthetics as an independent discipline, his reception of two lines of tradition was primarily (...) decisive for an original further development of Wolff's basic approach. First, Baumgarten gave his practical philosophy a strong legal flavor through orienting it toward the natural law theory of his Jena teacher Heinrich Köhler. This legal character can be seen mainly in the then resulting predominance of the concept of obligation. Second, Baumgarten secularized the heritage of pietism in Halle by emphasizing the need for lively perception in order to act morally. Both with his orientation toward an ethics of duty, as well as with his highlighting of motivation, he laid the foundation for Kant's seminal transformations in this field.Die ethikgeschichtliche Forschung hat Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten bisher sträflich vernachlässigt, obgleich Kant über Jahrzehnte hinweg dessen Handbücher seiner Vorlesung über Moralphilosophie zugrundegelegt hat. Demgegenüber möchte der vorliegende Beitrag eine Lanze für den auch 'in ethicis' selbständigsten Wolffianer brechen. Neben der erkenntnistheoretischen Aufwertung der Sinnlichkeit, die sich bekanntlich in der Neubegründung der Ästhetik als einer eigenen Disziplin niederschlug, war vor allem die Rezeption zweier Traditionslinien für eine originelle Fortentwicklung des Wolffschen Grundansatzes maßgeblich: Zum einen verlieh Baumgarten seiner praktischen Philosophie durch die Orientierung am Naturrecht seines Jenenser Lehrers Heinrich Köhler ein stark juridisches Gepräge, wie dies vor allem an der nunmehrigen Vorherrschaft des Verbindlichkeitsbegriffs abzulesen ist. Zum anderen säkularisierte er das Erbe des Halleschen Pietismus, wenn er etwa die Notwendigkeit lebendiger Erkenntnis für das sittliche Handeln unterstrich. Sowohl mit der pflichtethischen Ausrichtung als auch mit der Akzentuierung des Motivationsproblems hat er Kants epochemachenden Umwälzungen auf diesem Gebiet entscheidend vorgearbeitet. (shrink)

Can there be grounding without necessitation? Can a fact obtain wholly in virtue of metaphysically more fundamental facts, even though there are possible worlds at which the latter facts obtain but not the former? It is an orthodoxy in recent literature about the nature of grounding, and in first-order philosophical disputes about what grounds what, that the answer is no. I will argue that the correct answer is yes. I present two novel arguments against grounding necessitarianism, and show that grounding (...) contingentism is fully compatible with the various explanatory roles that grounding is widely thought to play. (shrink)

English summary: During his time inWurzburg from 1803 to 1806 Schelling read his lectures on the System der gesammten Philosophie und der Naturphilosophie insbesondere several times. They are the only complete exposition of Schellings identity philosophy, which comprises the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of mind. The articles discuss the Wurzburger System in the context of problem history and in light of the history of Schellings works and of the history of debates concerning them. With contributions by Christopher Arnold, (...) Ulrich Barth, Christoph Binkelmann, Christian Danz, Georg Essen, Michael Hackl, Patrick Leistner, Jan Rohls, Alexander Schuhbach, Sebastian Schwenzfeuer, Clemens Tangerding and Paul Ziche. German description: In seiner Wurzburger Zeit von 1803 bis 1806 hat Schelling mehrfach sein System der gesammten Philosophie und der Naturphilosophie insbesondere vorgetragen. Hierbei handelt es sich um die einzige Gesamtdarstellung der identitatsphilosophischen Konzeption, welche sowohl Natur- als auch Geistphilosophie umfasst. Die Beitrage des Bandes thematisieren das Wurzburger System vor seinem werk- und problemgeschichtlichen Hintergrund sowie in seinem debattengeschichtlichen Kontext. Mit Beitragen von Christopher Arnold, Ulrich Barth, Christoph Binkelmann, Christian Danz, Georg Essen, Michael Hackl, Patrick Leistner, Jan Rohls, Alexander Schubach, Sebastian Schwenzfeuer, Clemens Tangerding und Paul Ziche.Mit Beitragen von Christopher Arnold, Ulrich Barth, Christoph Binkelmann, Christian Danz, Georg Essen, Michael Hackl, Patrick Leistner, Jan Rohls, Alexander Schuhbach, Sebastian Schwenzfeuer, Clemens Tangerding und Paul Ziche. (shrink)

For a novice this book is a mathematically-oriented introduction to modal logic, the discipline within mathematical logic studying mathematical models of reasoning which involve various kinds of modal operators. It starts with very fundamental concepts and gradually proceeds to the front line of current research, introducing in full details the modern semantic and algebraic apparatus and covering practically all classical results in the field. It contains both numerous exercises and open problems, and presupposes only minimal knowledge in mathematics. A specialist (...) can use the book as a source of references. Results and methods of many directions in propositional modal logic, from completeness and duality to algorithmic problems, are collected and systematically presented in one volume. (shrink)

Grounding and explanation are said to be intimately connected. Some even maintain that grounding just is a form of explanation. But grounding and explanation also seem importantly different—on the face of it, the former is ‘worldy’ or ‘objective’ while the latter isn’t. In this paper, we develop and respond to an argument to the effect that there is no way to fruitfully address this tension that retains orthodox views about grounding and explanation but doesn’t undermine a central piece of methodology, (...) namely that explanation is a guide to ground. (shrink)

Fine is widely thought to have refuted the simple modal account of essence, which takes the essential properties of a thing to be those it cannot exist without exemplifying. Yet, a number of philosophers have suggested resuscitating the simple modal account by appealing to distinctions akin to the distinction Lewis draws between sparse and abundant properties, treating only those in the former class as candidates for essentiality. I argue that ‘sparse modalism’ succumbs to counterexamples similar to those originally posed by (...) Fine, and fails to capture paradigmatic instances of essence involving abundant properties and relations. (shrink)

This new edition of Alexander Miller’s highly readable introduction to contemporary metaethics provides a critical overview of the main arguments and themes in twentieth- and twenty-first-century contemporary metaethics. Miller traces the development of contemporary debates in metaethics from their beginnings in the work of G. E. Moore up to the most recent arguments between naturalism and non-naturalism, cognitivism and non-cognitivism. From Moore’s attack on ethical naturalism, A. J. Ayer’s emotivism and Simon Blackburn’s quasi-realism to anti-realist and best opinion accounts (...) of moral truth and the non-reductionist naturalism of the ‘Cornell realists’, this book addresses all the key theories and ideas in this field. As well as revisiting the whole terrain with revised and updated guides to further reading, Miller also introduces major new sections on the revolutionary fictionalism of Richard Joyce and the hermeneutic fictionalism of Mark Kalderon. The new edition will continue to be essential reading for students, teachers and professional philosophers with an interest in contemporary metaethics. (shrink)

One powerful argument for dualism is provided by Chalmers: the ‘zombie’ or conceivability argument. This paper aims to establish that if one adopts the ‘Powerful Qualities’ account of properties developed by Martin and Heil, this argument can be resisted at the first premise: the claim that zombies are conceivable is, by the lights of Chalmers’ own account of conceivability, false. The Powerful Qualities account is outlined. Chalmers’ argument, and several distinctions which underlie it, are explained. It is argued that to (...) make sense of the claim that zombies are conceivable, some account of properties must be given. The paper’s central claim is presented and defended from potential responses: given the Powerful Qualities view, zombies are in fact inconceivable. Finally, an error theory is presented, which offers an explanation of why so many have taken the conceivability of zombies to be unproblematic, and the view is briefly contrasted with Russellian monism. (shrink)

The paper presents the first known evidence of the so called “late ancient philosophical curriculum” ethics, physics, theology, by demonstrating that this division of philosophy can be found already in the introduction of Aspasios’s commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics. It is argued that this text can be dated roundabout 70 years earlier than the earliest reliable testimony hitherto known in Clemens Alexandrinus. Furthermore, the paper presents some neglected evidence for this curriculum from different works of Alexander of Aphrodisias. (...) Based upon those texts and a new analysis of some already well-known passages, it proposes to regard the scheme ethics, physics, theology as an originally Aristotelian model, which has been later taken over by Platonists. This does not rule out the possibility that Platonic ideas have been influenced the scheme at a very early date. (shrink)

When doing metaphysics, it is frequently convenient and sometimes essential to rely upon various notions of fundamentality when articulating the problems, positions, and arguments at issue. But what it is, exactly, the relevant notions are supposed to track remains obscure. The goal of this dissertation is to develop and defend a theory about the metaphysics of fundamentality; by doing so, I clarify and vindicate the roles that notions of fundamentality play in metaphysics. At the theory’s core are two notions particularly (...) prevalent in metaphysical inquiry: something’s being ‘derived’ from or holding ‘wholly in virtue of’ something else (the notion of grounding), and something’s being ‘reducible’ to or ‘non-circularly definable’ in terms of something else (the notion of reductive analysis). -/- I begin by arguing that the notion of grounding ought to serve as a foundation for understanding the metaphysics of fundamentality more generally (“Grounding the Metaphysics of Fundamentality”). I then propose a novel account of reductive analysis that retains the traditional insight that a reductive analysis purports to describe the constituents of a property or fact and depict how they are structured together (“On What Consists in What”). I then argue that even though the two notions are distinct, facts about grounding can be understood wholly and without circularity in terms of a certain pattern of facts about reductive analysis (“Getting Grounded”). I conclude the dissertation by challenging a widespread assumption in both the literature on the metaphysics of fundamentality and in first-order disputes about what grounds what, according to which a fact is necessitated by the facts that ground it (“Against Grounding Necessitarianism”). (shrink)

Many of my first students at Anzaldúa’s alma mater read Borderlands/La Frontera and concluded that Anzaldúa was not a philosopher. Hostile comments suggested that Anzaldúa’s intimately personal and poetic ways of writing were not philosophical. In response, I created “American Philosophy and Self-Culture” using backwards course design and taught variations of it in 2013, 2016, and 2018. Students spend nearly a month exploring Anzaldúa’s works, but only after reading three centuries of U.S.-American philosophers who wrote in deeply personal and literary (...) ways about self-transformation, community-building, and world-changing. The sections of this chapter: 1) describe why my first students rejected Anzaldúa as a philosopher in terms of the discipline’s parochialism; 2) present Anzaldúa’s broader understanding of herself as a philosopher; 3) summarize my reconstructed Anzaldúa-inspired American Philosophy course and outline some assignments; 4) discuss how my students respond to Borderlands/La Frontera when we read it through the lens of self-culture; and 5) explain my attempt to shape the subdiscipline of American Philosophy by teaching Anzaldúa to specialists at the 2017 Summer Institute in American Philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kategorische und andere Imperative: Zur Entwicklung von Kants praktischer Philosophie his 1785Heiner F. KlemmeClemens Schwaiger. Kategorische und andere Imperative: Zur Entwicklung von Kants praktischer Philosophie his 1785. Forschungen und Materialien zur deutschen Aufklärung. Hrsg. von Norbert Hinske und Clemens Schwaiger. Abt. 2, Monographien, vol. 14. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 1999. Pp. 252. Cloth, DM 88.00.Diese Studie zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der praktischen Philosophie Kants, die den Zeitraum von 1762 bis (...) zur Publikation der Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten untersucht, orientiert sich an der in Abschnitt II der Schrift von 1785 vorgenommenen Einteilung aller Imperative in problematische, assertorische und apodiktische. Da diese Einteilung in besonderem Maße geeignet ist, "die Architektonik von Kants praktischer Philosophie insgesamt zu erhellen" (S. 19), wird man durch den behutsamen Nachvollzug ihrer Ausdifferenzierung erwarten dürfen, neue Einsichten in die Entwicklung von Kants Denken zu gewinnen. Damit ist für den Interpreten keine leichte Aufgabe gestellt. Ohne philologische Umsicht, breite Kenntnis der zeitgenössischen Literatur, des Kantischen Oeuvres und der internationalen Sekundärliteratur sowie ein Gespür für Fragen der Datierung und Gewichtung von Kants Reflexionen und den studentischen Nachschriften seiner Vorlesungen, ist ein derartiges Unterfangen von vornherein zum Scheitern verurteilt. Schwaiger verfügt über diese Fähigkeiten und Kenntnisse.Nach einer informativen Einleitung, in der Stellung bezogen wird zum Stand der Forschung, der Kantischen Dreigliederung der Praxis als dem Leitfaden der Untersuchung, zur Methodik und den erzielten Ergebnissen, wendet sich Schwaiger in Teil I zunächst Kants moralphilosophischen Texten bis einschließlich 1770 zu. Mit Blick auf die 1762 verfasste und 1764 publizierte Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral weist Schwaiger den entscheidenden Einfluss von Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (vgl. S. 43) auf Kant nach, wohingegen seiner Einschätzung nach die Bedeutung von Crusius in der Literatur bei weitem überschätzt worden ist. Der moralphilosophische Ansatz von Baumgarten ist vor allem auch deshalb für Kant so wichtig, weil dieser Ansatz am Begriff der Verbindlichkeit ausgerichtet ist (vgl. S. 50). Kant übernimmt von Baumgarten den von diesem bereits verbindlichkeitstheoretisch gedeuteten Terminus des Imperativs, nicht ohne jedoch darauf hinzuweisen, dass Baumgartens moralische Grundregeln tautologisch sind (vgl. S. 166 f.). Als weitere mögliche Quelle für Kants strengen Begriff der moralischen Verbindlichkeit verweist Schwaiger auch auf eine Abhandlung von Elie de Joucourts, die in David Fordyce´ Anfangsgründe der moralischen Weltweisheit (Zürich, 1757) erschien (vgl. S. 59 f.).Die Ausdifferenzierung des Baumgartenschen Praxisbegriffs in Kants ´Bemerkungen´ in den Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen ist nach Schwaiger als eine genuin Kantische Leistung anzusehen, auf die Rousseau, wie einige Autoren meinten, keinen Einfluss gehabt hat. Die Inauguraldissertation von 1770 gibt schließlich Kants Gedanken einer Metaphysik der Sitten einen neuen Gehalt. Schwaiger vertritt gegenüber Josef Schmucker und Dieter Henrich die wohlbegründete These, dass Kants Ethik nicht schon um 1765 in ihren wesentlichen Grundzügen vorliegt. Erst nach der [End Page 443] "´platonischen Revolution´" (S. 25) von 1770 sind die Voraussetzungen für den Weg zur Grundlegung geschaffen, erst nach 1770 verwendet Kant beispielsweise den Terminus ´Imperativ´. Hätte Kant bereits in der Mitte der sechziger Jahre eine Metaphysik der Sitten publiziert, wäre der Anteil der empirischen Moral sicherlich sehr umfangreich gewesen (vgl. S. 80).Auch die in Teil II vorgelegten Resultate sprechen für eine allmähliche Ausbildung der kritischen Ethik, die nicht geradlinig verlaufen ist. Die 1770er Jahre sind nach Schwaiger durch Kants Bemühen gekennzeichnet, die im Bereich der Logik gewonnene Unterscheidung zwischen problematischen, assertorischen und apodiktischen Urteilen auch auf praktische Sätze anzuwenden. Des weiteren findet sich erst in den siebziger Jahren, nach Kants Wende zur reinen Moralphilosophie, die Unterscheidung zwischen einem Dijudikations- und einem Exekutionsprinzip (vgl. S. 91 ff.).Schwaigers Studie zeigt eindrucksvoll, dass quellengestützte begriffsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen für die Erforschung der Entwicklungsgeschichte der Kantischen praktischen Philosophie unverzichtbar sind. Aber sie scheint in dieser methodischen Einseitigkeit auch mit einigen Mängeln behaftet zu sein. Ich möchte drei Gründe für dieses Urteil nennen. Erstens wird nicht recht deutlich, dass die Kenntnisnahme der entwicklungsgeschichtlichen Aspekte für das philosophische Verständnis von Kants Einteilung der Imperative, so wie sie... (shrink)

Kelly Trogdon [2009] argues that priority monism—here, the view that only the world as a whole has fundamental properties—conflicts with the best extant accounts of intrinsicality. He then proposes an alternative account that is designed to be not only compatible with this view, but also independently plausible. But his account conflicts with priority monism as well, and incorrectly classifies various non-intrinsic properties.

Mark Jago has presented a dilemma for truthmaker non-maximalism—the thesis that some but not all truths require truthmakers. The dilemma arises because some truths that do not require truthmakers by the non-maximalist’s lights (e.g., that Santa Claus does not exist) are necessitated by truths that do (e.g., that Barack Obama knows that Santa Claus does not exist). According to Jago, the non-maximalist can supply a truthmaker for such a truth only by conceding the primary motivation for the view: that it (...) allows one to avoid positing strange ‘negative’ entities without adopting a non-standard account of the necessary features of ordinary things. In this paper, I sketch out and defend two plausible non-maximalist proposals that evade Jago’s dilemma. (shrink)

As the USA contends with another surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitals may soon need to answer the unresolved question of who lives and dies when ventilator demand exceeds supply. Although most triage policies in the USA have seemingly converged on the use of clinical need and benefit as primary criteria for prioritisation, significant differences exist between institutions in how to assign priority to patients with identical medical prognoses: the so-called ‘tie-breaker’ situations. In particular, one’s status as a frontline healthcare worker (...) has been a proposed criterion for prioritisation in the event of a tie. This article outlines two major grounds for reconsidering HCW prioritisation. The first recognises trust as an indispensable element of clinical care and mistrust as a hindrance to any public health strategy against the virus, thus raising concerns about the outward appearance of favouritism. The second considers the ways in which proponents of HCW prioritisation deviate from the very ‘ethics frameworks’ that often preface triage policies and serve to guide resource allocation—a rhetorical strategy that may undermine the very ethical foundations on which triage policies stand. By appealing to trust and consistency, we re-examine existing arguments in favour of HCW prioritisation and provide a more tenable justification for adjudicating on tie-breaker events during crisis standards of care. (shrink)

Alexander George’s lucid interpretation of Hume’s “Of Miracles” provides fresh insights into this provocative text, explaining the concepts and claims involved. He also shows why Hume’s argument fails to engage with committed religious thought and why philosophical argumentation so often proves ineffective in shaking people’s deeply held beliefs.

This essay fills in some historical, conceptual, and pedagogical gaps that appear in the most visible and recent professional efforts to “revive” Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWOL). I present “American Philosophy and Self-Culture” as an advanced undergraduate seminar that broadens who counts in and what counts as philosophy by immersing us in the lives, writings, and practices of seven representative U.S.-American philosophers of self-culture, community-building, and world-changing: Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), William Ellery Channing (1780–1842), Henry David (...) Thoreau (1817–1862), Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), Henry Bugbee (1915–1999), and Gloria Anzaldúa (1942–2004). Students enter the class with preconceptions about who philosophers are, what they do, how they write, and the languages in which they write. Students walk out with new senses of self, place, and language that emerge through new ways of seeing, doing, and writing philosophy. (shrink)

This paper is a survey of results concerning embeddings of intuitionistic propositional logic and its extensions into various classical modal systems.

To understand the future of informed consent, we should pay attention to two ethical-legal sources in addition to the revised Common Rule. Physicians acting as investigators and patients serving as research subjects bring to that relationship a long history regarding consent to treatment, and everyone dealing with research ethics needs to be aware of the Nuremberg Code and other human-rights documents. These three streams make separate and distinctly different contributions to informed consent doctrine.

Despite the ever-changing field of artificial intelligence (AI) and its preponderance of pre-print articles, Cohen offers a timely, nuanced, and self-aware overview of ChatGPT and the world of Larg...

ObjectiveCo-morbid insomnia and sleep apnea is a common and debilitating condition that is more difficult to treat compared to insomnia or sleep apnea-alone. Emerging evidence suggests that cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia is effective in patients with COMISA, however, those with more severe sleep apnea and evidence of greater objective sleep disturbance may be less responsive to CBTi. Polysomnographic sleep study data has been used to predict treatment response to CBTi in patients with insomnia-alone, but not in patients with COMISA. (...) We used randomized controlled trial data to investigate polysomnographic predictors of insomnia improvement following CBTi, versus control in participants with COMISA.MethodsOne hundred and forty five participants with insomnia and sleep apnea [apnea-hypopnea index ≥ 15] were randomized to CBTi or no-treatment control. Mixed models were used to investigate the effect of pre-treatment AHI, sleep duration, and other traditional, and novel [quantitative electroencephalography ] polysomnographic predictors of between-group changes in Insomnia Severity Index scores from pre-treatment to post-treatment.ResultsCompared to control, CBTi was associated with greater ISI improvement among participants with; higher AHI, less wake after sleep onset, and less N3 sleep. No quantitative electroencephalographic, or other traditional polysomnographic variables predicted between-group ISI change.DiscussionAmong participants with COMISA, higher OSA severity predicted a greater treatment-response to CBTi, versus control. People with COMISA should be treated with CBTi, which is effective even in the presence of severe OSA and objective sleep disturbance. (shrink)

This paper discusses a non-state justice system (Sistema Comunitario de Seguridad, Justicia y Reeducación, hereafter: SCSJR) applied by some of the Afromexican and Indigenous communities of the Guerrero state in Mexico as an example of a maximalist restorative justice system. Restorative justice is presented here as an alternative to criminal justice. While it responds to similar moral concerns as retributive justifications do, it offers more adequate mechanisms of dealing with certain crimes and aims to reduce coerciveness of justice when dealing (...) with lawbreaking. Restorative justice is also an approach that should be perceived as more legitimate when handling cases where the state lacks the moral standing to prosecute offenders. The SCSJR is used as an example to demonstrate the possibility of a justice system based on restorative principles to be effective in handling the entirety of lawbreaking in a community. In the case of the SCSJR this approach to justice has been proved to be effective even in the wake of high levels of criminal activity in the region. This paper discusses the SCSJR’s institutions and attitude toward lawbreaking and argues that they demonstrate an example of a justice system based on restorative justice. (shrink)

This paper is a survey of results concerning the disjunction property, Halldén-completeness, and other related properties of intermediate prepositional logics and normal modal logics containing S4.

This encyclopedia article outlines the history of Latin American philosophy: the thinking of its indigenous peoples, the debates over conquest and colonization, the arguments for national independence in the eighteenth century, the challenges of nation-building and modernization in the nineteenth century, the concerns over various forms of development in the twentieth century, and the diverse interests in Latin American philosophy during the opening decades of the twenty-first century. Rather than attempt to provide an exhaustive and impossibly long list of scholars’ (...) names and dates, this article outlines the history of Latin American philosophy while trying to provide a meaningful sense of detail by focusing briefly on individual thinkers whose work points to broader philosophical trends that are inevitably more complex and diverse than any encyclopedic treatment can hope to capture. (shrink)

One recently popular way to characterise strong emergence is to say that emergent entities possess novel causal powers. However, there is little agreement concerning the nature of powers. One controversy involves whether powers are single- or multi-track; that is, whether each power has only one manifestation type, or whether a single power can be directed towards a number of distinct manifestations. Another concerns how powers operate: whether a lone power manifests when triggered by the presence of a suitable stimulus, or (...) whether powers operate mutually such that several powers must ‘work together’ to bring about a particular manifestation. This paper examines how these distinctions—which can be cross-combined to frame four distinct accounts of the nature of powers—bear on the debate between emergentists and reductionists. (shrink)

According to Immanuel Kant, legality means the quality of an action being merely and simply in conformity with a law. The article defends the significance of this notion and explains how it indicates the existence of a legal relation. The legal relation, in turn, is the result of resolving an antinomy between the social and the substantive dimension of moral judgment.

Context Informed consent is crucial in daily clinical practice and research in medicine and psychiatry. A recent neuroethical investigation explored the psychological factors that are crucial in determining whether or not subjects give consent. While cognitive functions have been shown to play a central role, the impact of empathy and emotions on subjects' decisions in informed consent remains unclear. Objective To evaluate the impact of empathy and emotions on subjects' decision in informed consent in an exploratory study. Design Decisional capacity (...) and informed consent to a subsequent imaging study were evaluated with the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool for Clinical Research (MacCAT-CR). Empathy and emotion recognition were measured with the Multifaceted Empathy Test (MET) and the Florida Affect Battery (FAB). Setting Psychiatric subjects were recruited from a general psychiatric hospital and a forensic state hospital. Patients A mixed group of 98 healthy men and forensic and non-forensic psychiatric subjects were investigated. Results Both empathy (MET) and emotion recognition (FAB) correlated with MacCAT-CR scores. Higher cognitive empathy and good emotion recognition (compared with low empathy and emotion recognition) were associated with increased decisional capacity and higher rates of refusal to give informed consent. Conclusions This study shows an empirical relationship between decision-making and informed consent, on the one hand, and emotions and empathy on the other. While this study is exploratory and preliminary, the findings of a relationship between informed consent, emotions and empathy raise important neuroethical questions with regard to an emotional-social concept of informed consent and potential clinical implications for testing informed consent. (shrink)

A general consensus has emerged in the scholarship on Latin American thought dating from the latter half of the nineteenth century through the first quarter of the twentieth. Latin American intellectuals widely adapted the European philosophy of positivism in keeping with the demands of their own social and political contexts, effectively making positivism the second most important philosophical tradition in the history of Latin America, after scholasticism. However, as thinkers across Latin America faced the challenges of the twentieth century, they (...) grew increasingly disappointed with positivism, so that “anti-positivism” stands out as a defining feature of Latin American philosophy in the early twentieth century. In this essay, I challenge or at least add nuance to this widely accepted narrative by demonstrating considerable continuity rather than simple rupture between positivism and “anti-positivism” in Latin America. I focus on Mexico, where both positivism and the reaction against it are generally taken to have been strongest, or at least most politically significant. After tracing the history of positivism’s transformations in Mexico from Auguste Comte (1798-1857) to Gabino Barreda (1818-1881) to Justo Sierra (1848-1912), I show how Mexico’s leading “anti-positivist” philosophers—José Vasconcelos (1882-1959) and Antonio Caso (1883-1946)—draw substantially upon their positivist predecessors. (shrink)

In an age of widespread cutbacks on social spending, the prospects of social policy generally appear to be grim. If noticeable progress has been recently made in the European Union, then it is in regard to rooting out discrimination. Indeed, anti-discrimination law and policy appears to be the one sphere of social policy whose success is causally connected to the European Union. But how successful can anti-discrimination law be? This book uses legal analysis in order to expose the intrinsic shortcomings (...) of common approaches. Anti-discrimination law fails to provide adequate legal guidance and therefore invites constant supplementation by pedagogical projects of social engineering. This book offers a genuinely leftist critique on anti-discrimination law, and concludes with a discussion of alternative models of solidarity in the Union. (shrink)