According to Iris Murdoch, the chief experience in morality is the recognition of others, and this is the experience of loving attention. Love is an independent source of moral authority, distinct from the authority of reason. It is independent because it can be attained through moral experiences that are not certified by reason and cannot be achieved by rational deliberation. This view of love calls into question a cluster of concepts, such as rational agency and principled action, which figure prominently (...) in the Kantian characterization of the moral experience and resound through Kant’s account of virtue as an endured but never-ending struggle. But it would be a mistake to conclude that Murdoch’s philosophical project opposes Kant’s without further qualifications. In this chapter, I illustrate some convergence between Kant and Murdoch at the methodological level, in their polemic against reductivism. They both oppose reductivist empiricism on epistemological and moral grounds, because they define the standard of proof in relation to the experience of morality. In Murdoch’s words, the philosophical proof, if there is one, is the same as the moral proof (Murdoch 1997: 361). This is where Kant and Murdoch part ways. While Kant argues that the moral experience is the experience of the impact of reason, which provides self-discipline by constraint, Murdoch holds that the moral standard of proof is love. The transformative power of love allows us to engage with reality and recognize others for what they are, that in which consists the primal moral experience. Murdoch’s argument against Kant’s appeal to principles brings to the fore a crucial issue, which concerns the source of moral authority and the possibility of practical reason. Some of her most popular arguments against Kant are based on an oversimplified view of the impact of reason in moral life, and perhaps they owe part of their fortune to this oversimplification. I shall argue that such arguments miss their intended target, but I also hope to show that Murdoch sketches a distinctive model of the moral proof, which establishes a genuine alternative both to theories of practical reason and to reductivist accounts of the mind and its activities. (shrink)

According to Iris Murdoch, the chief experience in morality is loving attention. Her view calls into question the Kantian account of the standard of moral authority, and ultimately denies that reason might provide moral discernment, validate moral experience or drive us toward moral progress. Like Kant, Murdoch defines the moral experience as the subjective experience of freedom, which resists any reductivist approach. Unlike Kant, she thinks that this free agency is unprincipled. Some of her arguments are based on an oversimplified (...) account of Kant’s theory of reflective agency and discount the discipline of reason, thereby nullifying its practical import. However, Murdoch’s work offers a distinctive view of the standard of proof as a ‘moral proof’, which rehabilitates the transformative power of love and represents a genuine alternative to theories of practical reason as well as to reductivist empiricist views of the mind. (shrink)

Neoliberal ideology and exclusionary policies based on racialized identities characterize the current contexts in North America and Western Europe. Nursing knowledge cannot be abstracted from social, political and historical contexts; the task of examining the influence of race and racial ideologies on disciplinary knowledge and inquiry therefore remains an important task. Contemporary analyses of the role and responsibility of the discipline in addressing race‐based health and social inequities as a focus of nursing inquiry remain underdeveloped. In this article, we examine (...) nursing's engagement with ideas about race and racism and explore the ways in which nursing knowledge and inquiry have been influenced by race‐based ideological discourses. Drawing on Henry and Tator's framework of democratic racism, we consider how strategic discursive responses—the discourses of individualism, multiculturalism, colour‐blindness, political correctness and denial—have been deployed within nursing knowledge and inquiry to reinforce the belief in an essentially fair and just society while avoiding the need to acknowledge the persistence of racist discourses and ideologies. Greater theoretical, conceptual and methodological clarity regarding race, racialization and related concepts in nursing inquiry is needed to address health and social inequities. (shrink)

We present an axiomatic approach for a class of finite, extensive form games of perfect information that makes use of notions like “rationality at a node” and “knowledge at a node.” We distinguish between the game theorist's and the players' own “theory of the game.” The latter is a theory that is sufficient for each player to infer a certain sequence of moves, whereas the former is intended as a justification of such a sequence of moves. While in general the (...) game theorist's theory of the game is not and need not be axiomatized, the players' theory must be an axiomatic one, since we model players as analogous to automatic theorem provers that play the game by inferring (or computing) a sequence of moves. We provide the players with an axiomatic theory sufficient to infer a solution for the game (in our case, the backwards induction equilibrium), and prove its consistency. We then inquire what happens when the theory of the game is augmented with information that a move outside the inferred solution has occurred. We show that a theory that is sufficient for the players to infer a solution and still remains consistent in the face of deviations must be modular. By this we mean that players have distributed knowledge of it. Finally, we show that whenever the theory of the game is group-knowledge (or common knowledge) among the players (i.e., it is the same at each node), a deviation from the solution gives rise to inconsistencies and therefore forces a revision of the theory at later nodes. On the contrary, whenever a theory of the game is modular, a deviation from equilibrium play does not induce a revision of the theory. (shrink)

In this paper we apply the idea of Revision Rules, originally developed within the framework of the theory of truth and later extended to a general mode of definition, to the analysis of the arithmetical hierarchy. This is also intended as an example of how ideas and tools from philosophical logic can provide a different perspective on mathematically more “respectable” entities. Revision Rules were first introduced by A. Gupta and N. Belnap as tools in the theory of truth, and they (...) have been further developed to provide the foundations for a general theory of (possibly circular) definitions. Revision Rules are non-monotonic inductive operators that are iterated into the transfinite beginning with some given “bootstrapper” or “initial guess.” Since their iteration need not give rise to an increasing sequence, Revision Rules require a particular kind of operation of “passage to the limit,” which is a variation on the idea of the inferior limit of a sequence. We then define a sequence of sets of strictly increasing arithmetical complexity, and provide a representation of these sets by means of an operator G(x, φ) whose “revision” is carried out over ω2 beginning with any total function satisfying certain relatively simple conditions. Even this relatively simple constraint is later lifted, in a theorem whose proof is due to Anil Gupta. (shrink)

It has been observed that whereas painters and musicians are likely to be embarrassed by references to the beauty in their work, mathematicians instead like to engage in discussions of the beauty of mathematics. Professional artists are more likely to stress the technical rather than the aesthetic aspects of their work. Mathematicians, instead, are fond of passing judgment on the beauty of their favored pieces of mathematics. Even a cursory observation shows that the characteristics of mathematical beauty are at variance (...) with those of artistic beauty. For example, courses in art appreciation are fairly common; it is however unthinkable to find any mathematical beauty appreciation courses taught anywhere. The purpose of the present paper is to try to uncover the sense of the term beauty as it is currently used by mathematicians. (shrink)

An application of Narrative Knowledge Representation Language (NKRL) techniques on (declassified) ‘terrorism in Southern Philippines’ documents has been carried out in the context of the IST Parmenides project. This paper describes some aspects of this work: it is our belief, in fact, that the Knowledge Representation techniques and the Intelligent Information Retrieval tools used in this experiment can be of some interest also in an ‘Ontological Modelling of Legal Events and Legal Reasoning’ context.

In the paper it is argued that bridging the digital divide may cause a new ethical and social dilemma. Using Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons, we show that an improper opening and enlargement of the digital environment (Infosphere) is likely to produce a Tragedy of the Digital Commons (TDC). In the course of the analysis, we explain why Adar and Huberman's previous use of Hardin's Tragedy to interpret certain recent phenomena in the Infosphere (especially peer-to-peer communication) may not be entirely (...) satisfactory. We then seek to provide an improved version of the TDC that avoids the possible shortcomings of their model. Next, we analyse some problems encountered by the application of classical ethics in the resolution of the TDC. In the conclusion, we outline the kind of work that will be required to develop an ethical approach that may bridge the digital divide but avoid the TDC. (shrink)

While foregrounding the historiography of HIV and AIDS in the South African context, this article analyses AIDS as simultaneously existing in three spheres: first, virtually – as the subject matter of electronically measurable research; second, academically – as a topic of research in the discipline of History; and third, actually – as a complex health concern and signifier that, via the field of Medical and Health Humanities, could allow for new collaborations between historians and others interested in understanding AIDS. Throughout, (...) the central focus is the discipline of History and the global trends that become evident when examining metrics about AIDS research, particularly those that show the hierarchies of knowledge ‘production’, the reinforcement of disciplinary boundaries, and the discrepancy between the amount of research ‘produced’ by scientific and humanities disciplines. Overall, the article suggests that ‘post-AIDS’ is not currently helpful to health historians working on South African and other majority world contexts. More specifically, the article reflects on what AIDS histories still need to be written, and I argue that Medical and Health Humanities could provide a space for historians to work within and across disciplinary boundaries given the ever evolving remit of AIDS histories, temporalities, and narratives. (shrink)

Offers a glimpse into the world of science and technology between 1950 and 1990 as seen through the eyes of a mathematician, and debunks various myths of scientific philosophy. Portrays some of the great scientific personalities of the period, including Stanislav Ulam, who patented the hydrogen bomb, and Jack Schwartz, one of the founders of computer science. Also discusses phenomenology of mathematics, and philosophy and computer science. Includes book reviews. For students and academics. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, (...) OR. (shrink)

Esse estudo apresenta os conceitos de documento e documentação propostos por Paul Otlet (1868-1944) presentes no âmbito da Revista do Serviço Público (RSP). Publicada desde 1937, a RSP contempla artigos nas áreas de Administração e Gestão pública, Políticas públicas e Economia do setor público, sendo considerada um importante veículo de informação no Brasil, contemporâneo ao período de efervescência do pensamento de Otlet. A pesquisa consiste numa Revisão Sistemática de Literatura (RSL) com análise documental da RSP no período entre 1951 e (...) 1975. Como procedimento de seleção dos artigos, utiliza o protocolo de pesquisa RSL elaborado por Valentim (2020). A partir do corpus de análise dos textos recuperados identifica os artigos que apresentam os conceitos de “documento” e “documentação” segundo Otlet, bem como os elementos constitutivos sobre o cenário da documentação no Brasil, na perspectiva da publicação de autores brasileiros na RSP, concluindo que os trabalhos analisados contemplam e ampliam a temática da Documentação com importantes reflexões de Otlet para a Ciência da Informação no Brasil. (shrink)

Some of the foundations of Heyes’ radical reasoning seem to be based on a fractional selection of available evidence. Using an ethological perspective, we argue against Heyes’ rapid dismissal of innate cognitive instincts. Heyes’ use of fMRI studies of literacy to claim that culture assembles pieces of mental technology seems an example of incorrect reverse inferences and overlap theories pervasive in cognitive neuroscience.

This article explores twelve short narrative films created by women and trans people living with disabilities and embodied differences. Produced through Project Re•Vision, these micro documentaries uncover the cultures and temporalities of bodies of difference by foregrounding themes of multiple histories: body, disability, maternal, medical, and/or scientific histories; and divergent futurities: contradictory, surprising, unpredictable, opaque, and/or generative futures. We engage with Alison Kafer's call to theorize disability futurity by wrestling with the ways in which “the future” is normatively deployed in (...) the service of able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, a deployment used to render bodies of difference as sites of “no future”. By re-storying embodied difference, the storytellers illuminate ongoing processes of remaking their bodily selves in ways that respond to the past and provide possibilities for different futures; these orientations may be configured as “dis-topias” based not on progress, but on new pathways for living, uncovered not through evoking the familiar imaginaries of curing, eliminating, or overcoming disability, but through incorporating experiences of embodied difference into time. These temporalities gesture toward new kinds of futures, giving us glimpses of ways of cripping time, of cripping ways of being/becoming in time, and of radically re-presencing disability in futurity. (shrink)

Research on children’s ability to attribute false mental states to others has focused exclusively on false beliefs. We developed a novel paradigm that focuses instead on another type of false mental state: false perceptions. From approximately 4 years of age, children begin to recognize that their perception of an illusory object can be at odds with its true properties. Our question was whether they also recognize that another individual viewing the object will similarly experience a false perception. We tested 33 (...) preschool children with a task in which distorting lenses caused a small object to appear large and a large object to appear small. To succeed, children needed to recognize that a naive agent would falsely perceive the relative size of the objects and to correctly anticipate the agent’s actions on that basis. Children performed significantly better than chance in our false perception test, and there was a developmental progression in performance from 4 to 5 years of age similar to that seen in standard false belief tests. Our findings demonstrate that preschool children are capable of understanding that other individuals will be perceptually misled by illusory objects and that these false perceptions will influence their actions in predictable ways. (shrink)

This essay examines phrenological tools as instruments of matchmaking and focuses on the personal ad as a site for producing and exchanging knowledge about individuals. It shows how cranial measurement produced character profiles for the purpose of judging suitable marriage partners and how users integrated those profiles into personal advertisements published in the Water-Cure Journal. A popular but contested science of the mind, phrenology maintained that one could truly know others and oneself through measuring “organs” of the mind via protrusions (...) on the skull. While much has been written about phrenology, less attention has been paid to its focus on marriage and mating and to how users enrolled phrenology to find and judge the viability of a mate. Focused on the American context in the 1850s, this essay will show that notions of race and gender, heredity, and marital “relations” were embedded in the shorthand of phrenological measurements and personal ads. (shrink)

Background Ethical decision making in intensive care is a demanding task. The need to proceed to ethical decision is considered to be a stress factor that may lead to burnout. The aim of this study is to explore the ethical problems that may increase burnout levels among physicians and nurses working in Portuguese intensive care units . A quantitative, multicentre, correlational study was conducted among 300 professionals.Results The most crucial ethical decisions made by professionals working in ICU were related to (...) communication, withholding or withdrawing treatments and terminal sedation. A positive relation was found between ethical decision making and burnout in nurses, namely, between burnout and the need to withdraw treatments , to withhold treatments and to proceed to terminal sedation . This did not apply to physicians. Emotional exhaustion was the burnout subdimension most affected by the ethical decision. The nurses' lack of involvement in ethical decision making was identified as a risk factor. Nevertheless, in comparison with nurses , it was the physicians who more keenly felt the need to proceed to ethical decisions in ICU.Conclusions Ethical problems were reported at different levels by physicians and nurses. The type of ethical decisions made by nurses working in Portuguese ICUs had an impact on burnout levels. This did not apply to physicians. This study highlights the need for education in the field of ethics in ICUs and the need to foster inter-disciplinary discussion so as to encourage ethical team deliberation in order to prevent burnout. (shrink)

In this paper we show that the Gupta-Belnap systems S# and S* are П12. Since Kremer has independently established that they are П12-hard, this completely settles the problem of their complexity. The above-mentioned upper bound is established through a reduction to countable revision sequences that is inspired by, and makes use of a construction of McGee.

On Kant's view, the feeling of respect is the mark of moral agency, and is peculiar to us, animals endowed with reason. Unlike any other feeling, respect originates in the contemplation of the moral law, that is, the idea of lawful activity. This idea works as a constraint on our deliberation by discounting the pretenses of our natural desires and demoting our selfish maxims. We experience its workings in the guise of respect. Respect shows that from the agent's subjective perspective, (...) morality is the experience of being bound and necessitated, but also of being free and emancipated from inclinations. (shrink)

A generalized Onsager reciprocity theorem emerges as an exact consequence of the structure of the nonlinear equation of motion of quantum thermodynamics and is valid for all the dissipative nonequilibrium states, close and far from stable thermodynamic equilibrium, of an isolated system composed of a single constituent of matter with a finite-dimensional Hilbert space. In addition, a dispersion-dissipation theorem results in a precise relation between the generalized dissipative conductivity that describes the mutual interrelation between dissipative rates of a pair of (...) observables and the codispersions of the same observables and the generators of the motion. These results are presented together with a review of quantum thermodynamic postulates and general results. (shrink)

This article explores the production and consumption of phrenological knowledge for and by middle-class women in the USA during the early and middle decades of the 19th century. At a time when science itself had few boundaries, women became readers, consumers, proselytizers and practitioners of this knowledge system, outside of a scientific academy. This paper argues that phrenological beliefs about sex differences enabled and encouraged women to be users. Phrenology allowed women to negotiate gender and by encouraging followers to ‘know (...) thyself,’ phrenology blurred the lines of expertise, creating a fluid interplay between users and producers of knowledge. This article then shows how categories of women users–practitioners, consumers and feminists–implemented or rejected elements of phrenology as they sought to affirm or amend prescribed gender roles. As the industrial economy seemed to divide public and private, production and consumption, masculine and feminine, phrenology allowed women and men to stand within and between these binaries. At the same time, some women used phrenology to classify themselves and others in a socio-natural hierarchy and further engrained scientific racism in American culture. (shrink)

According to the standard objection, Kantian constructivism implicitly commits to value realism or fails to warrant objective validity of normative propositions. This paper argues that this objection gains some force from the special case of moral obligations. The case largely rests on the assumption that the moral domain is an eminent domain of special objects. But for constructivism there is no moral domain of objects prior to and independently of reasoning. The argument attempts to make some progress in the debate (...) by defending a robust conception of construction, which names a distinctive view of practical reasoning as transformative. (shrink)

Gian Aldo Antonelli and Cristina Bicchieri. Backwards Forwards Induction.

Gian Aldo Antonelli and Cristina Bicchieri. Forward Induction.

According to a widely accepted philosophical model, agent-regret is practically significant and appropriate when the agent committed a mistake, or she faced a conflict of obligations. I argue that this account misunderstands moral phenomenology because it does not adequately characterize the object of agent-regret. I suggest that the object of agent-regret should be defined in terms of valuable unchosen alternatives supported by reasons. This model captures the phenomenological varieties of regret and explains its practical significance for the agent. My contention (...) is that agent-regret is a mode of valuing: a way in which the agent expresses and confers value. (shrink)