This paper is about the similarity between the appreciation of a piece of art, such as a cherished music album, and the loving appreciation of a person whom one knows well. In philosophical discussion about the rationality of love, the Qualities View (QV) says that love can be justified by reference to the qualities of the beloved. I argue that the oft-rehearsed trading-up objection fails to undermine the QV. The problems typically identified by the objection arise from the idea that (...) love-worthy qualities could be coarse-grained, when in fact they must be fine-grained. The analogy with appreciation of aesthetic qualities helps to draw out this point. Once the fine-grained nature of love-worthy qualities is properly understood, it is clear that critics of the QV cannot rely on the trading-up objection to motivate its rejection. Moreover, the paper’s core argument helps to illuminate the persistently aesthetic nature of interpersonal affections. (shrink)

Being able to ask others to do things, and thereby giving them reasons to do those things, is a prominent feature of our interpersonal lives. In this paper, I discuss the distinctive normative status of requests – what makes them different from commands and demands. I argue for a theory of this normative phenomenon which explains the sense in which the reasons presented in requests are a matter of discretion. This discretionary quality, I argue, is something that other theories cannot (...) accommodate, though it is a significant aspect of the relations that people stand in to one another, and the kinds of practical reasons that flow from those relations. (shrink)

A lineage of prominent philosophers who have discussed the second-person relation can be regarded as advancing structural accounts. They posit that the second-person relation effects one transformative change to the structure of practical reasoning. In this paper, I criticise this orthodoxy and offer an alternative, substantive account. That is, I argue that entering into second-personal relations with others does indeed affect one's practical reasoning, but it does this not by altering the structure of one's agential thought, but by changing what (...) reasons can become available. The importance of second-personal thought for action is heterogenous. Second-person relations make possible the emergence of a wide variety of different kinds of practical reasons: creating some, revealing others. Recognising this diminishes the appeal of the traditional, structural accounts of the practical significance of such second-personal relations. Moving away from structural accounts facilitates a more thorough understanding of the intersubjective form of action. (shrink)

The introduction of novel diagnostic techniques in clinical domains such as genomics and radiology has led to a rich ethical debate on how to handle unsolicited findings that result from these innovations. Yet while unsolicited findings arise in both genomics and radiology, most of the relevant literature to date has tended to focus on only one of these domains. In this article, we synthesize and critically assess similarities and differences between “scanning the body” and “sequencing the genome” from an ethical (...) perspective. After briefly describing the novel diagnostic contexts leading to unsolicited findings, we synthesize and reflect on six core ethical issues that relate to both specialties: terminology; benefits and risks; autonomy; disclosure of unsolicited findings to children; uncertainty; and filters and routine screening. We identify ethical rationales that pertain to both fields and may contribute to more ethically sound policies. Considerations of preserving public trust and ensuring that people perceive healthcare policies as fair also support the need for a combined debate. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Poverty violates fundamental human values through its impact on individuals and on human environments, and it goes against the core values of democratic societies. Drawing on numerous scientific studies as well as his own experience witnessing the systematic poverty in his home country of South Africa, H. P. P. [Hennie] Lötter presents a holistic profile of poverty and its effects on human lives all the while accounting for the complexity of each individual case. He argues that shared ethical values must (...) guide the planning and distribution of aid and that our society must reevaluate our notions of justice and reimagine the role of the state in order to enable collective human responsibility for poverty’s successful eradication. (shrink)

Dilthey is a figure of real importance in European philosophy and social theory. He exerted a significant influence on Husserl, Heidegger and Weber through his work on the nature of philosophy and the methodology and epistemology of human and social studies. He was also a distinguished and original historian of ideas and, indeed, many of his philosophical interests arose from the insights and practical difficulties he encountered as a historian. He produced a monumental biography of Schleiermacher, and a series of (...) shorter, but no less striking studies of Hegel, Dickens, Shakespeare, Schiller and many others. (shrink)

This handbook with exercises reveals the mathematical beauty of formalisms hitherto mostly used for software and hardware design and verification.

The relation between morality and religion has often been discussed. However, it is not always recognized that the relation varies greatly according to the variety of religions. I shall here be concerned solely with Christian theism in its traditional form. I take the latter to signify, essentially, belief in a morally perfect Creator who exists in the threefold form of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and who, in the person of the Son, became man in Christ for our salvation. I (...) thus exclude from consideration all non-theistic accounts of God or the Absolute. Also I shall consider, not simply bare theism of the kind that Christians share with Jews and Muslims, but also the distinctively Christian form of theism that is generated by distinctively Christian revelation. Many otherwise sound descriptions of the relation between morality and theism are defective because they fail to consider the distinctively Christian contribution to the theistic concept of God and of his relation to the world. (shrink)

Philosophic anthropology, Pursuing philosophy's traditional search for reflective self-Knowledge seeks to crystallize the ideas of man underpinning empirical research and moral ideals. Neither the claim that pure speculation can produce factual knowledge nor the contention that a higher synthesis of empirical findings can become philosophy is acceptable. Philosophic anthropology is, Therefore, Most usefully conceived as a critique which traces the necessary presuppositions of the study of man in its various forms of the more rules we apply.

A methodology of the human studies needs to settle the conflict between the two long-established truth-seeking approaches. To be scientific, like physics, promises system, precision, and practical applicability but ignores the significant peculiarity of the subject matter: People talk. Hermeneutics, the methodology of interpretation, confronts the difficulties of understanding what people mean, but is suspected of lacking rigor. However, the two approaches are not exclusive alternatives. Sharing common procedures, such as classification and deduction, they also supplement each other: Interpretation depends (...) on factual evidence and scientific objectivity depends on reliable communication. Successful research needs to combine scientific study of facts with methodical interpretation of meaning. (shrink)

This paper is a contribution toward developing a theory of expansions of semi-Heyting algebras. It grew out of an attempt to settle a conjecture we had made in 1987. Firstly, we unify and extend strikingly similar results of [ 48 ] and [ 50 ] to the (new) equational class DHMSH of dually hemimorphic semi-Heyting algebras, or to its subvariety BDQDSH of blended dual quasi-De Morgan semi-Heyting algebras, thus settling the conjecture. Secondly, we give a criterion for a unary expansion (...) of semi-Heyting algebras to be a discriminator variety and give an algorithm to produce discriminator varieties. We then apply the criterion to exhibit an increasing sequence of discriminator subvarieties of BDQDSH . We also use it to prove that the variety DQSSH of dually quasi-Stone semi- Heyting algebras is a discriminator variety. Thirdly, we investigate a binary expansion of semi-Heyting algebras, namely the variety DblSH of double semi-Heyting algebras by characterizing its simples, and use the characterization to present an increasing sequence of discriminator subvarieties of DblSH . Finally, we apply these results to give bases for “small” subvarieties of BDQDSH , DQSSH , and DblSH. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to resolve two paradoxes, which occur in quantum theory, by using the discussion of the theory of measurement presented in two earlier papers by the author [3], [4], [5]. The two paradoxes discussed will be the Schrödinger cat paradox and the Einstein, Podolski, Rosen paradox [2]. An introductory section will be included which summarizes the relevant results from the author's previous papers. Also a discussion will be made regarding the author's interpretation of the density (...) operator. (shrink)