A common feature of all standard theories of the laws of nature is that they are "absolutist": They take laws to be either all metaphysically necessary or all contingent. Science, however, gives us reason to think that there are laws of both kinds, suggesting that standard theories should make way for "non-absolutist" alternatives: theories which accommodate laws of both modal statuses. In this paper, we set out three explanatory challenges for any candidate non-absolutist theory and discuss the prospects of the (...) two extant candidates in light of these challenges. We then develop our own non-absolutist theory, the essentialist DTA account, which combines the nomic-necessitation or DTA account with an essentialist approach to metaphysical modality in order to meet the three explanatory challenges. Finally, we argue that the distinction between kinematical and dynamical laws found in physical theories supports both non-absolutism in general and our proposed essentialist DTA view in particular. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Tuomas Tahko has argued for a hybrid view of the laws of nature, according to which some physical laws are metaphysically necessary, while others are metaphysically contingent. In this paper, we show that his criterion for distinguishing between these two kinds of laws — which crucially relies on the essences of natural kinds — is on its own unsatisfactory. We then propose an alternative way of drawing the metaphysically necessary/contingent distinction for laws of physics based on (...) the central kinematical/dynamical distinction used in physical theorising, and argue that the criterion can be used to amend Tahko’s own account, but also that it can be combined with different metaphysical views about the source of necessity. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that necessity comes in different varieties, often called ‘kinds’: metaphysical necessity, logical necessity, natural necessity, conceptual necessity, moral necessity, to name but a few – and the same goes for the varieties of possibility. What is usually not fully appreciated, however, is that modal variety is not simply ‘unidimensional’: it does not only involve one main variable – kind, whose values are the particular kinds of necessity. Rather, I argue, it is ‘bidimensional’, involving two distinct variables (...) – domain and strength. In the first part of the paper, I introduce and develop the proposed bidimensional picture of modal variety, defending it against the common, unidimensional one. In the second part, I consider how the main available accounts of necessities and their relations rely, at least to a significant extent, on the latter picture, pointing out important limitations that they face as a result. I also show how, accordingly, alternative accounts based on a clear and systematic distinction between domain and strength would overcome those limitations. I conclude that, beyond the particular bidimensionalist view defended, our understanding of the modal realm may benefit from more direct debate on whether and how it is multidimensional. (shrink)

An important task for metaphysicians and philosophers of science is to account for laws of nature – in particular, how they distinguish themselves from ‘mere’ regularities, and the modal force they are endowed with, ‘natural necessity’. Dispositional essentialism about laws is roughly the view that laws distinguish themselves by being grounded in the essences of natural entities. This paper does not primarily concern how essentialism compares to its main rivals – Humeanism and Armstrongeanism. Rather, it distinguishes and comparatively assesses various (...) brands of essentialism – which mainly differ as to where exactly they take laws to find their essentialist sources, and what they take to be the targets of laws, namely what they apply to. Yet, this internal comparison is not unrelated to the more general debate about laws: the main criteria with which I compare these essentialist views concern how they can deal with some of the main objections faced by essentialism in general, and how they can keep what is arguably the main intuitive advantage of essentialism over its rivals. Thus, the paper also concerns the relative position of essentialism in the larger debate about laws – ultimately bringing support to it. (shrink)

Do causes necessitate their effects? Causal necessitarianism is the view that they do. One major objection—the “monotonicity objection”—runs roughly as follows. For many particular causal relations, we can easily find a possible “blocker”—an additional causal factor that, had it also been there, would have prevented the cause from producing its effect. However—the objection goes on—, if the cause really necessitated its effect in the first place, it would have produced it anyway—despite the blocker. Thus, CN must be false. Though different (...) from Hume’s famous attacks against CN, the monotonicity objection is no less important. In one form or another, it has actually been invoked by various opponents to CN, past and present. And indeed, its intuitive appeal is quite powerful. Yet, this paper argues that, once carefully analysed, the objection can be resisted—and should be. First, I show how its success depends on three implicit assumptions concerning, respectively, the notion of cause, the composition of causal factors, and the relation of necessitation. Second, I present general motivations for rejecting at least one of those assumptions: appropriate variants of them threaten views that even opponents to CN would want to preserve—in particular, the popular thesis of grounding necessitarianism. Finally, I argue that the assumption we should reject is the one concerning how causes should be understood: causes, I suggest, include an element of completeness that excludes blockers. In particular, I propose a way of understanding causal completeness that avoids common difficulties. (shrink)

The purpose of this article, which takes the form of a dialogue between a vegetarian and a meat eater, is twofold. On the one hand, we argue for a general characterisation of moral value in terms of well-being and suffering. On the other hand, on the basis of this characterisation, we argue that, in most cases, the moral value attached to the choice of eating meat is negative; in particular, we defend this claim against a number of objections concerning the (...) nature of animal suffering, its moral value, and the moral responsibility of meat eaters. (shrink)

This paper investigates whether accounting professionals’ ethical judgment is influenced by the disciplinary system established by the accounting profession in France and the United States. Our study first attempts to determine whether there is a link between the EJ of accounting professionals and the disciplinary context, in each country. It then performs a comparative analysis of the two nations. Our findings indicate that the judgment of American accounting professionals is correlated with the disciplinary decisions of the accountancy board. By contrast, (...) the judgment of French accounting professionals is independent of the disciplinary context. Whereas cross-national studies have thus far attributed differences among nations mainly to cultural distance, current research shows that non-cultural national factors should also be considered. In line with this perspective, our study suggests that institutional factors, in particular the disciplinary system, may also account for the differences between French and American accounting professionals’ ethical perceptions. We support these results by highlighting some characteristics of the countries’ respective legal systems, which may explain the divergences observed. We conclude by identifying implications for the independence of accounting professionals’ EJ and the risks associated with dissuasive disciplinary systems. (shrink)

This article examines how employees form their perceptions of managerial responsibility in a concrete organizational setting. Drawing on negotiated order theory, it shows that these perceptions are the result of complex processes of social construction and negotiation, rather than the application of predetermined ethics models or norms. Employees’ perceptions appear to be unstable; they are subject to constant alterations, fluctuating with the organizational circumstances, and are likely to create considerable organizational perturbations, especially when managers make complex and ambiguous decisions. This (...) process is illustrated through an ethnographic study that analyzed the evolution of employee perceptions during a three-year crisis—one that led managers to repeatedly postpone salary payments to save jobs. The process approach adopted by the study highlights important dynamics that traditional business ethics approaches overlook, such as the fragility of the construct of managerial responsibility, which cannot be coherent unless it is constantly renegotiated among an organization’s various employee groups. (shrink)

Creation, collection and retention of knowledge in digital communities is an activity that currently requires being explicitly targeted as a secure method of keeping intellectual capital growing in the digital era. In particular, we consider it relevant to analyze and evaluate the empathetic cognitive personalities and behaviors that individuals now have with the change from face-to-face communication to computer-mediated communication online. This document proposes a cyber-humanistic approach to enhance the traditional SECI knowledge management model. A cognitive perception is added to (...) its cyclical process following design thinking interaction, exemplary for improvement of the method in which knowledge is continuously created, converted and shared. In building a cognitive-centered model, we specifically focus on the effective identification and response to cognitive stimulation of individuals, as they are the intellectual generators and multiplicators of knowledge in the online environment. Our target is to identify how geographically distributed—digital—organizations should align the individual’s cognitive abilities to promote iteration and improve interaction as a reliable stimulant of collective intelligence. The new model focuses on analyzing the four different stages of knowledge processing, where individuals with sympathetic cognitive personalities can significantly boost knowledge creation in a virtual social system. For organizations, this means that multidisciplinary individuals can maximize their extensive potential, by externalizing their knowledge in the correct stage of the knowledge creation process, and by collaborating with their appropriate sympathetically cognitive remote peers. (shrink)

Multiple sequence alignment is one of the major problems that can be encountered in the bioinformatics field. MSA consists in aligning a set of biological sequences to extract the similarities between them. Unfortunately, this problem has been shown to be NP-hard. In this article, a new algorithm was proposed to deal with this problem; it is based on a quantum-inspired cuckoo search algorithm. The other feature of the proposed approach is the use of a randomized progressive alignment method based on (...) a hybrid global/local pairwise algorithm to construct the initial population. The results obtained by this hybridization are very encouraging and show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed solution. (shrink)

Salim Kemal clarifies the nature of aesthetic judgements and their epistemological status, and examines the scope of Kant's justification of their validity.

The paper concerns the Commentary on Aristotle's Poetics written by Avicenna. The paper is divided into two parts, the first of which examines Avicenna's account of poetic imagination and the use he makes of this concept in justifying a 'poetic syllogism' that accounts for aesthetic validity. The second part develops this account of the poetic syllogism to show that the completeness of the syllogistic requires us to consider the kind of commurlty and moral validity sustained by poetic validity. To explain (...) the first claim - for poetic syllogisms - the paper examines Avicenna's writings on logic and parts of his commentaries on the Prior and Posterior Analytics, linking these to issues in his commentary on the Poetics. To explain the relation of poetry to community, the paper develops issues from the commentary on the Poetics, especially Avicenna's use of the concept of 'themes'. (shrink)

The book considers the "critique of judgment" as well as kant's other writings, examining the three related conceptions of aesthetic necessity which kant uses. the author shows that to justify the demands made of subjects on the basis of the experience of beauty we must understand how kant associates beauty and fine art with a community between rational and feeling subjects. this association, in turn, requires us to examine kant's conceptions of genius, of the explanation of actions, of teleology, and (...) of culture. (shrink)

Critics deny that Kant's moral theory has the resources it needs to guide our actual actions. They reject the power of reason to establish moral rules and they propose alternative notions of person and project. This paper first develops aspects of Kant's moral theory, setting out briefly his notions of personality and the primacy of moral reason. Second it considers an alternative account that has been influential in recent Anglo-American philosophy to show that its understanding of persons and projects fails (...) to blunt the need for moral reasoning identified by Kant. (shrink)

Integrating Kant's ideas on aesthetics and morality, Dr. Kemal explains how Kant's theories emphasize that art is critical to the development of culture and community goals. He clarifies Kant's often obscure efforts to justify artistic judgements and demonstrates Kant's claim that they have their own necessity. Containing explanations of many difficult terms present in Kant's Critique of Judgment, this study is a valuable guide to understanding Kant's association of beauty and morality.

In his book The Intellectual Virtues and the Life of the Mind: On the Place of the Virtues in Contemporary Epistemology, Jonathan Kvanvig argues that there is an interchangeability of personal and doxastic justification, which ‘blocks the quick route to virtue epistemology’. To prove that personal justification is reducible to doxastic justification, he utilizes λ-calculus expressions that aim to show the logical equivalence of the two notions of justification. In this paper, I argue that he has made an illegitimate move (...) in his translation of the ordinary talk of personal justification into λ-expressions because his translation involves both an elimination from and an addition to the ordinary language. Pace Kvanvig, there is no logical equivalence of personal to doxastic justification. So, his argument for the reducibility of personal to doxastic justification founders. More importantly, since he has failed to disprove that personal justification is irreducibly primitive, he hasn’t shown that the prospects for virtue epistemology are ‘hopeless’. (shrink)

a relatively more sympathetic attitude among younger judges, many of them women, and among trainees, may reflect a historical evoluti.

The word Qalb Salīm contained in the Qur’an, often interpreted with the meaning of “a clean heart” by the commentators of the Qur’an. In fact, to express the meaning of a clean heart, the Qur’an has the equivalent own word that is “wa liyumaḥḥiṣa mā fī qulūbikum”. It makes the meaning of “a clean heart” is less appropriate to be used as the meaning of Qalb Salīm. Thus, in this paper will be carried out re-interpretation of the word Qalb Salīm (...) with the use of semantic Toshihiko Izutsu. Through the semantic Toshihiko Izutsu, will be known about basic meaning of Qalb Salīm, relational meaning of Qalb Salīm, and changes meaning of Qalb Salīm that occurs from period to period. In addition, it will be known also about the world view of the meaning of the word Qalb Salīm. So, it will be generated meaning of Qalb Salīm not only textually, but also contextually. (shrink)

The word Qalb Salīm contained in the Qur’an, often interpreted with the meaning of “a clean heart” by the commentators of the Qur’an. In fact, to express the meaning of a clean heart, the Qur’an has the equivalent own word that is “wa liyumaḥḥiṣa mā fī qulūbikum”. It makes the meaning of “a clean heart” is less appropriate to be used as the meaning of Qalb Salīm. Thus, in this paper will be carried out re-interpretation of the word Qalb Salīm (...) with the use of semantic Toshihiko Izutsu. Through the semantic Toshihiko Izutsu, will be known about basic meaning of Qalb Salīm, relational meaning of Qalb Salīm, and changes meaning of Qalb Salīm that occurs from period to period. In addition, it will be known also about the world view of the meaning of the word Qalb Salīm. So, it will be generated meaning of Qalb Salīm not only textually, but also contextually. (shrink)

The word Qalb Salīm contained in the Qur’an, often interpreted with the meaning of “a clean heart” by the commentators of the Qur’an. In fact, to express the meaning of a clean heart, the Qur’an has the equivalent own word that is “wa liyumaḥḥiṣa mā fī qulūbikum”. It makes the meaning of “a clean heart” is less appropriate to be used as the meaning of Qalb Salīm. Thus, in this paper will be carried out re-interpretation of the word Qalb Salīm (...) with the use of semantic Toshihiko Izutsu. Through the semantic Toshihiko Izutsu, will be known about basic meaning of Qalb Salīm, relational meaning of Qalb Salīm, and changes meaning of Qalb Salīm that occurs from period to period. In addition, it will be known also about the world view of the meaning of the word Qalb Salīm. So, it will be generated meaning of Qalb Salīm not only textually, but also contextually. (shrink)

The word Qalb Salīm contained in the Qur’an, often interpreted with the meaning of “a clean heart” by the commentators of the Qur’an. In fact, to express the meaning of a clean heart, the Qur’an has the equivalent own word that is “wa liyumaḥḥiṣa mā fī qulūbikum”. It makes the meaning of “a clean heart” is less appropriate to be used as the meaning of Qalb Salīm. Thus, in this paper will be carried out re-interpretation of the word Qalb Salīm (...) with the use of semantic Toshihiko Izutsu. Through the semantic Toshihiko Izutsu, will be known about basic meaning of Qalb Salīm, relational meaning of Qalb Salīm, and changes meaning of Qalb Salīm that occurs from period to period. In addition, it will be known also about the world view of the meaning of the word Qalb Salīm. So, it will be generated meaning of Qalb Salīm not only textually, but also contextually. (shrink)

Este artigo analisa a trajetória do Jardim da Infância da Escola Normal de São Paulo idealizada por republicanos paulistas que tinha como projeto a organização e modernização da instrução pública do estado em fins do século XIX. Mesmo fazendo parte do complexo construído para atender a educação do povo, o prédio idealizado para o Jardim da Infância não resistiu às pressões políticas e econômicas, e foi demolido em 1939. As razões da demolição deste prédio que pôs por terra a estrutura (...) física e administrativa da instituição, que teria perdido relevância na história de sua constituição serão apontadas bem como os valores defendidos e praticados que indicavam a suntuosa arquitetura pensada para esta instituição. Razões que levaram ao desmonte dessa escola na década de 1930, com as possíveis consonâncias e dissonâncias entre as autoridades políticas estão indicadas e analisadas. As transformações urbanas e sociais a partir da Proclamação da República aceleraram o crescimento econômico o qual se traduziu em mais capacidade de investimento para a cidade e ajudou a consolidar o desejo da nova elite de produzir um novo espaço urbano para viver. A modernização da cidade acompanhou essa visão. O palco da nova vida devia ser moderno, confortável e bonito. Seduzido pela propaganda oficial estadonovista e fascinado pelas mensagens de progresso, o povo – sem perceber – aplaudiu a agonia da República e saiu às ruas para venerar Getúlio, pai dos pobres. As constantes reformulações do ensino, as transformações urbanísticas e verticalização da cidade possibilitaram a Prestes Maia dar prosseguimento ao seu Plano de Avenidas e ruir com o prédio original e monumental dessa instituição escolar pública de atendimento a primeira infância. (shrink)

The evolution of John von Neumann's scientific interests and a study of his writings show that von Neumann increasingly supported an empirical, computational method. This is in stark contrast with the extant view of von Neumann as a pure theorist.