If I look from the outside at the practices of a discipline—any discipline—and see some members declaring themselves to be upholders of one “ism,” or labeling others’ views as representatives of some other failed or flawed “ism,” then I would frankly form the suspicion that this is an immature profession, not quite developed. It has tendencies to fall into modes of discourse that are more characteristic of religious or political fealty and factionalism.

How can we ensure that players in the National Football League receive excellent health care they can trust from providers who are as free from conflicts of interest as realistically possible? NFL players typically receive care from the club's own medical staff. Club doctors are clearly important stakeholders in player health. They diagnose and treat players for a variety of ailments, physical and mental, while making recommendations to the player concerning those ailments. At the same time, club doctors have obligations (...) to the club, namely to inform and advise clubs about the health status of players. While players and clubs share an interest in player health—both of them want players to be healthy so they can play at peak performance—there are several areas where their interests can diverge, and the divergence presents legal and ethical challenges. The current structure forces club doctors to have obligations to two parties—the club and the player—and to make difficult judgments about when one party's interests must yield to another's. None of the three parties involved should prefer this conflicted approach. We propose to resolve the problem of dual loyalty by largely severing the club doctor's ties with the club and refashioning that role into one of singular loyalty to the player-patient. The main idea is to separate the roles of serving the player and serving the club and replace them with two distinct sets of medical professionals: the Players' Medical Staff and the Club Evaluation Doctor. We begin by explaining the broad ethical principles that guide us and that help shape our recommendation. We then provide a description of the role of the club doctor in the current system. After explaining the concern about the current NFL player health care structure, we provide a recommendation for improving this structure. We then discuss how the club medical staff fits into the broader microenvironment affecting player health. (shrink)

In terms of classical tafsir literature, it is possible that the speeches made to a person or group in the Qurʾān carry messages for other individuals or groups. According to some approaches that emerged in the modern period, when the speech was made and to whom it was directed not only determine the meaning, but also limits it. This dilemma has to be based on the theoretical dimension. The most obvious example of the transition of the speech from direct counterpart (...) to the other is the transition of the speeches made to the unbelievers to the believers. Therefore, in this study, the possibility of the transcendence of the speech in the Qurʾān will be handled in the context of the messages for believers in the speeches directed to the unbelievers. One aspect of the issue of the transcendence of the speech in the Qurʾān can be explained by the style that the Qurʾān follows. However, the subject should also be based on linguistic aspects. As a matter of fact, the expansion of the speech can sometimes be related to the meanings of words and sometimes with the possibilities and literary aspects of language, and sometimes with an analytical effort. In this study, the related examples will be analyzed and it will be revealed that the transition between the speeches in the Qurʾān is possible in terms of the style of the Qurʾān. In the study, the methodological findings related to the linguistic aspects of the issue will also be studied.Summary: The discourse that the Qurʾān is an address by God makes different associations in terms of classical literature and some modern methods of understanding. In the works of classical method and rhetoric, a theoretical framework is drawn around the nature, arbitrariness, conditions and types of the book. In this context, the varieties, indications and scopes of the addresses in the Qurʾān are discussed. While it is emphasized that the Qurʾān is an address in modernist contextualist approaches, it is stated that understanding the address requires having contextual information, therefore reading the address as a book evaporates meaning. Because, according to these approaches, the meaning is sought in the text with the transformation of address to book (verbal culture to written culture), thus the Qurʾān is converted from a literal meaning into a system. Knowing what the Qurʾān tells and why it tells that, depends on the comprehension of all the contextual elements of the Qurʾān, which was sent as an address. In fact, knowledge of when, where and when the Qurʾān was sent about what events and to whom it is addressed, is the data that is primarily considered in the comprehension of the verses, as emphasized by the classical interpretation literature. However, the perception of the classical interpretation evaluates these data in different categories in terms of the integrity of religion, judgment and experience. For example, the narrations on the reason of sending and the Makki-Madani information are only examples of the meanings of the verses. They sometimes serve as elements that contribute to the comprehension of the verses, while sometimes with the help of other chapters they can narrow the meanings of the verses. The realist-methodological basis of the method science provides the emergence of this holistic-categorical perspective.It is difficult to justify the claim that there is an absolute relationship between the address and the addressee in terms of the classical literature. In the classical literature, the expressions, which come in the form of an address and have a mandatory relationship with addressees, are dealt with the concept of direct address. Direct addresses are binding for the first addressees. Because when an address is mentioned, it is mandatory to have an addressee. It can be assumed that this discourse has the same position with the context theories considering its premises. However, it is not possible to compare these theories with each other in terms of the scope of the address. Classical theories of reasoning consider that direct addresses cover indirect addressees by methods, such as shar’i (legal) necessity or analogy (qiyas), while contextualists and historians can convert the text beyond the virtual level by identifying what a command means within the context of the address-addressee relationship. When the Qurʾān is completely considered as an address, or when direct addresses are taken into consideration, it is very difficult for the modern period's comprehension methods that the verses, which mention or address the disbelievers-polytheists, can also address Muslims. In fact, the dialectic of the address-addressee requires this. Moreover, the addressees (polytheists-Muslims) who are spoken within the context of the verses have two different beliefs that cannot be dealt with at the same time and mentioned in the same verse. Therefore, it is not possible to direct the messages given to the polytheists to the believers and to attribute the qualities in these verses to Muslims.However, the classical literature did not even consider as a problem to address Muslims with the verses that directly addressing unbelievers-polytheists. It is because both linguistics and facts requires this. The method practitioners and interpreters discussed this issue in a very wide range. They examined the transitivity of the book between parties, such as people of the book-Muslims, Muslims-unbelievers, Prophet-ummah. In the context of the interpretation literature and the perception of modern-day interpretation, the possibility of the transitivity of the book can be clarified in the context of the inclusiveness of a verse that speaks of polytheists-disbelievers to include Muslims, or the conversion of an address to polytheists-unbelievers to Muslims. Classical literature explains this point sometimes with the literal indication (circularization) and the circumstance of literary use of language (rhetoric) and sometimes with the possibility of the address (stylistic features).In verses and hadiths, belief bases categorical classes, such as believers, unbelievers, polytheists, hypocrites, people of the book are mentioned, as well as descriptions of the characteristic-practical dimensions of these classes. In this context, commands sometimes refer to the practices that need to be performed in order to be a believer, sometimes works that must not be performed by the believer, and sometimes matters that might put the believer's faith-practice integrity at risk when it is done. In the Qurʾān, in some of the addresses to the believers, it is apparent that they are prohibited from being like unbelievers or having unbeliever-like qualities. Moreover, sometimes negative results that may arise for Muslims when they act like unbelievers are cited in the verses. Sometimes at the end of the verses that address and mention Muslims, information is included on situations involving unbelievers and the torment they will encounter. In addition, in cases where adjectives belonging to opposing belief profiles are mentioned, the address to non-Muslims expresses warning, evaluation, gratitude and perseverance in faith for Muslims, while the address to Muslims contains elements of incentive and opportunity for non-Muslim groups. It is possible to justify this matter with the style of the Qurʾān. However, it can be said that the transitivity of the address in the Qurʾān takes place in two theoretical aspects. The first of these is related to linguistic-rhetoric premises and it is used in antithesis, allusion, metaphor etc. The second one is the similitude-comparison. Here, the comparison is a phenomenon that occurs in the mind without the need for propositions. Because when the mind hears these statements, it can instantly reach a stronger meaning than the literal wording. In this study, it is discussed whether it is possible to transition from direct addresses to indirect addressees, with reference to the problems of the modern period. In this context, the study primarily focuses on the fact that the Qurʾān sometimes transmits its messages and teachings to addressees through opposing belief systems. Thus, the manner adopted by the Qurʾān while directing certain commands and negations, not directly but through the opposing side, has been presented. In this study, the possibility of the verses that only mentions polytheists-unbelievers to also addressing Muslims was analyzed and these verses were compared with addresses to Muslims on the same matters. In the last part of the study, a theoretical framework was drawn on the subject and the method of interdisciplinary transitivity was determined. (shrink)

Does theism make a difference to whether there are moral facts? In this paper I suggest that, despite how much uptake this question gets in philosophical literature, it is not well formed. “Theism” leaves too indeterminate what God is like for us to discern what difference God’s existence would make to moral facts. Arguments like the explanans-driven argument for theistic moral realism and the explanationist argument for naturalist moral realism both require extra substantive assumptions about God in order (...) to be valid and compelling. Specifically, the arguments must take a stand on whether God is personal or a-personal, and how this affects God’s relation to the natural world. (shrink)

William James’s interest in psychical phenomena spanned his entire career as a scholar, yet is has been largely neglected. Few if any have adequately incorporated this quirky side of James into their critical studies of his scholarly contributions, not only in religious studies but also in philosophy and psychology. Psychical research was nevertheless very much part of James’s intellectual endeavors and, as this article shall argue, sheds light on an evolving, complex, and contradictory Jamesian cosmological realism. I will contextual (...) James’s widely discussed Varieties of Religious Experience, relying on his voluminous correspondence, and will explore various articulations of pragmatism, vis-à-vis James, John Dewey, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty, particularly as those articulations apply to scholarship in religious studies and as they shed light on a Jamesian cosmology. I will then conclude with a discussion of psychical research as it relates to epistemology and the (scientific) study of that cosmos. (shrink)

I consider here several versions of finitism or conceptions that try to work around postulating sets of infinite size. Restricting oneself to the so-called potential infinite seems to rest either on temporal readings of infinity (or infinite series) or on anti-realistic background assumptions. Both these motivations may be considered problematic. Quine’s virtual set theory points out where strong assumptions of infinity enter into number theory, but is implicitly committed to infinity anyway. The approaches centring on the indefinitely large and the (...) use of schemata would provide a work-around to circumvent usage of actual infinities if we had a clear understanding of how schemata work and where to draw the conceptual line between the indefinitely large and the infinite. Neither of this seems to be clear enough. Versions of strict finitism in contrast provide a clear picture of a (realistic) finite number theory. One can recapture standard arithmetic without being committed to actual infinities. The major problem of them is their usage of a paraconsistent logic with an accompanying theory of inconsistent objects. If we are, however, already using a paraconsistent approach for other reasons (in semantics, epistemology or set theory), we get finitism for free. This strengthens the case for paraconsistency. (shrink)

cognitive, neuropsychological, and neurophysiological studies of both memory and consciousness. Before proceeding further, some discussion of terminology is necessary. It comes as no surprise to state that "consciousness" is one of the ...

Among the available metaethical views, it would seem that moral realism—in particular moral naturalism—must explain the possibility of moral progress. We see this in the oft-used argument from disagreement against various moral realist views. My suggestion in this paper is that, surprisingly, metaethical constructivism has at least as pressing a need to explain moral progress. I take moral progress to be, minimally, the opportunity to access and to act in light of moral facts of the matter, whether they are (...) mind-independent or -dependent. For the metaethical constructivist, however, I add that moral progress ought also mean that agents come to be or could come to be motivated to act in light of the right kind of moral judgments. Together I take this to mean that, for all forms of constructivism, moral progress must be explained as a form of moral improvement, or agents aspiring to be better sorts of moral agents. In what moral improvement consists differs for various forms of constructivism. Here I distinguish between three different versions of metaethical constructivism: Humean constructivists as represented by Street, Kantian constitutivist constructivists as represented by Korsgaard, and constructivists about practical reason as represented by Carla Bagnoli. I conclude by showing that only constructivism as a view about practical reason can fully account for moral progress qua the opportunity for moral improvement. (shrink)

In a previous paper, I argued that the later Wittgenstein did not endorse a realist account of ethics, where a realist account is understood to involve a claim to truth as well as objectivity. In this paper, I respond to a number of critical questions that Benjamin De Mesel raises about that interpretation. I agree with him that just as there are uses for expressions such as “truth”, “fact” and “reality” in ethics, there are uses for expressions such as “objectivity” (...) that do not involve a deeper realist commitment. But I uphold and reinforce my claim that objectivity in ethics as the realist conceives it is ruled out by Wittgenstein, who describes the correspondence between ethical expressions and reality in an entirely different way. (shrink)

Although there are some common underlying mechanisms for many nonhuman behavioural asymmetries, the evidence at present is not compelling for commonalities in cerebral organisation across vertebrates. Phylogenetic analysis of detour behaviour in fish suggests that more closely related species are not particularly similar in the direction of turning; contingency and demands of ecological niches may better explain such asymmetries.

In a previous paper, I argued that the later Wittgenstein did not endorse a realist account of ethics, where a realist account is understood to involve a claim to truth as well as objectivity. In this paper, I respond to a number of critical questions that Benjamin De Mesel raises about that interpretation. I agree with him that just as there are uses for expressions such as “truth”, “fact” and “reality” in ethics, there are uses for expressions such as “objectivity” (...) that do not involve a deeper realist commitment. But I uphold and reinforce my claim that objectivity in ethics as the realist conceives it is ruled out by Wittgenstein, who describes the correspondence between ethical expressions and reality in an entirely different way. (shrink)

In recent work, William Blattner claims that Heidegger is an empirical realist, but not a transcendental idealist. Blattner argues that, unlike Kant, Heidegger holds that thinking beyond human life warrants no judgment about nature's existence. This poses two problems. One is interpretive: Blattner misreads Kant's conception of the beyond-life as yielding the judgment that nature does not exist, for Kant shares Heidegger's view that such a judgment must lack sense. Another is programmatic: Blattner overstates the gap between Kant's and Heidegger's (...) positions, for both are ontological, not ontic. I solve these problems by showing that Heidegger's analysis of Dasein contains the core of Kant's argument for transcendental idealism: the apriority of space and time. I conclude that Heidegger exemplifies Kant's view that empirical realism just is transcendental idealism. (shrink)

The phrase ‘mathematical foundation’ has shifted in meaning since the end of the nineteenth century. It used to mean a consistent general theory in mathematics, based on basic principles and ideas to which the rest of mathematics could be reduced. There was supposed to be only one foundational theory and it was to carry the philosophical weight of giving the ultimate ontology and truth of mathematics. Under this conception of ‘foundation’ pluralism in foundations of mathematics is a contradiction.More recently, the (...) phrase has come to mean a perspective from which we can see, or in which we can interpret, much of mathematics; it has lost the realist-type metaphysical, essentialist importance. The latter has been replaced with an emphasis on epistemology. The more recent use of the phrase shows a lack of concern for absolute ontology, truth, uniqueness and sometimes even consistency. It is only under the more modern conception of ‘foundation’ that pluralism in mathematical foundations is conceptually possible.Several problems beset the pluralist in mathematical foundations. The problems include, at least: paradox, rampant relativism, loss of meaning, insurmountable complexity and a rising suspicion that we can say anything meaningful about truth and objectivity in mathematics. Many of these are related to each other, and many can be overcome, explained, accounted for and dissolved by concentrating on crosschecking, fixtures and rigour of proof. Moreover, apart from being a defensible position, there are a lot of advantages to pluralism in foundations. These include: a sensitivity to the practice of mathematics, a more faithful account of the objectivity of mathematics and a deeper understanding of mathematics.The claim I defend in the paper is that we stand to learn more, not less, by adopting a pluralist attitude. I defend the claim by looking at the examples of set theory and homotopy type theory, as alternative viewpoints from which we can learn about mathematics. As the claim is defended, it will become apparent that ‘pluralism in mathematical foundations’ is neither an oxymoron, nor a contradiction, at least not in any threatening sense. On the contrary, it is the tension between different foundations that spurs new developments in mathematics. The tension might be called ‘a fruitful meta-contradiction’.I take my prompts from Kauffman’s idea of eigenform, Hersh’s idea of thinking of mathematical theories as models and from my own philosophical position: pluralism in mathematics. I also take some hints from the literature on philosophy of chemistry, especially the pluralism of Chang and Schummer. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the nature of photographs by comparing them to hand-made paintings, as well as by comparing traditional film photography with digital photography, and I concentrate on the question of realism. Several different notions can be distinguished here. Are photographs such that they depict the world in a 'realist' or a 'factive' way ? Do they show us the world as it is with accuracy and reliability other types of pictures don't posses ? Do they allow (...) us, as some have suggested, to literally see the world through them ? Below, I will distinguish three kinds of realism about photographs, reject two, and partly endorse one. Indeed, the label "realism", when concerning photographs, can stand for a variety of very different claims. The first (and quite obvious) distinction to start with concerns what the realist thesis is about : the claim that somehow photographs are more accurate or more reliable or that they somehow depict the world better than hand-made pictures can be a claim about the photographic image itself or alternatively a claim about the way in which photographs are produced. In the former case, realism is a thesis about how photographs look and what sort of information they contain, while in the latter case realism is a claim about the process of production of photographs. It is the latter claim that is the most discussed in the philosophical literature about photography. I will concentrate on this type of realism, of which I shall examine two varieties. (shrink)

We prove that the equational theory of a semigroups becomes undecidable if we add a semilattice structure with a ‘touch of symmetric difference’. As a corollary we obtain that the variety of all Boolean algebras with an associative binary operator has a ‘hereditarily’ undecidable equational theory. Our results have implications in logic, e.g. they imply undecidability of modal logics extending the Lambek Calculus and undecidability of Arrow Logics with an associative arrow modality.

It is a traditional empiricist doctrine that natural laws are universal truths. In order to overcome the obvious difficulties with this equation most empiricists qualify it by proposing to equate laws with universal truths that play a certain role, or have a certain function, within the larger scientific enterprise. This view is examined in detail and rejected; it fails to account for a variety of features that laws are acknowledged to have. An alternative view is advanced in which laws are (...) expressed by singular statements of fact describing the relationship between universal properties and magnitudes. (shrink)

The modern debate around scientific structuralism has revealed the need to reassess the standing and role of both structure and objects in the metaphysics of physics. Ontic structural realism recommends that metaphysics be purged of objects. Nonetheless, its proponents have failed to specify what it means for properties to be relational and structural, and, consequently, to show how the elementary objects postulated by our best theories can be re-conceptualized in structural terms or altogether eliminated. In this paper, I draw (...) from modern physics in order to untangle various types of relational properties and propose a definition for structural properties. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to advance a certain non-traditional approach to epistemology. My method of introducing this approach is to compare and contrast it with more familiar epistemological orientations. Thus, the format of the paper is a survey – admittedly not exhaustive – of a variety of tasks and perspectives that epistemologists have undertaken and might undertake.

Gregory Currie, arguing against recent psychoanalytic and semiotic film theory, has defended various realist theses about film. The strongest of these is that ‘weak illusionism’—the view that the motion of film images is an illusion—is false. That is, Currie believes film images really do move. In this paper I defend the common-sense position of weak illusionism, firstly by showing that Currie underestimates the power of some arguments for it, especially one based on the mechanics of projection, and secondly by showing (...) that film images exhibit neither garden-variety motion, nor a special response-dependent kind. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's Copernican Revolution explores the relation between language and reality without embracing Linguistic Realism and without courting any form of Linguistic Idealism either. It argues that this is precisely what Wittgenstein does. This book also examines some well known contemporary philosophers who have been concerned with this same question.

Proponents of the view that social structures are ontologically distinct from the people in whose actions they are immanent have assumed that structures can stand in causal relations to individual practices. Were causality to be no more than Humean concomitance correlations between structure and practices would be unproblematic. But two prominent advocates of the ontological account of structures, Bhaskar and Giddens, have also espoused a powers theory of causality. According to that theory causation is brought about by the activity of (...) particulars, in the social psychological case, individuals of some sort. Consistence would demand that structure be those individuals. But neither Giddens nor Bhaskar wish to reify structure to the extent that would fit it for a role as a powerful particular. If only human beings can be powerful particulars in these contexts, the only way that structures can be real must be as properties of conversational interactions. Human action is social just in so far as people direct themselves to engage well in joint activities with others. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Towards a PL-Metaphysics of Perception: In Search of the Metaphysical Roots of Constructivism” by Konrad Werner. Upshot: In his target article, Werner proposes a metaphysical foundation for a radical constructivist epistemology that is nonetheless claimed to reconcile constructivism with some sort of realism. While acknowledging his success in demonstrating that constructivism without an external/internal dualism is suitable for his purposes, I shall argue that rejecting a distinction between epistemological and ontological issues makes it (...) questionable whether PL-metaphysics can make constructivism compatible with realism. (shrink)

This collection brings together several essays which have been written between the years 197 5 and 1983. During that period I have been occupied with the attempt to find a satisfactory explicate for the notion of tnithlike ness or verisimilitude. The technical results of this search have partly appeared elsewhere, and I am also working on a systematic presentation of them in a companion volume to this book: Truthlikeness. The essays collected in this book are less formal and more philos (...) ophical: they all explore various aspects of the idea that progress in science is associated with an increase in the truthlikeness of its results. Even though they do not exhaust the problem area of scientific change, together they constitute a step in the direction which I find most promising in the defence of critical scientific realism. * Chapter 1 appeared originally in Finnish as the opening article of a new journal Tiede 2000 - a Finnish counterpart to journals such as Science and Scientific American. This explains its programmatic character. It tries to give a compact answer to the question 'What is science?', and serves therefore as an introduction to the problem area of the later chapters. Chapter 2 is a revised translation of my inaugural lecture for the chair of Theoretical Philosophy in the University of Helsinki on April 8, 1981. It appeared in Finnish inParnasso 31, pp. (shrink)

Recently Kenneth Kendler and Peter Zachar have raised doubts about the correspondence theory of truth and scientific realism in psychopathology. They argue that coherentist or pragmatist approaches to truth are better suited for understanding the reality of psychiatric disorders. In this article, I show that rejecting realism based on the correspondence theory is deeply problematic: It makes psychopathology categorically different from other sciences, and results in an implausible view of scientific discovery and progress. As an alternative, I suggest (...) a robustness-based approach that can accommodate the significance of coherence and pragmatic factors without rejecting scientific realism and the correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)

There is an apparent tension between the open-ended aspect of the ordinal sequence and the assumption that the set-theoretical universe is fully determinate. This tension is already present in Cantor, who stressed the incompletable character of the transfinite number sequence in Grundlagen and avowed the definiteness of the totality of sets and numbers in subsequent philosophical publications and in correspondence. The tension is particularly discernible in his late distinction between sets and inconsistent multiplicities. I discuss Cantor’s contrasting views, and I (...) conclude that his account of that distinction is only tenable if the definiteness of the set-theoretical universe is rejected. (shrink)

The prospects for realistic interpretation of the nature of initial mathematical truths and objects are considered in the article. The arguments of realism, reasons impeding its recognition among philosophers of mathematics as well as the ways to eliminate these reasons are discussed. It is proven that the absence of acceptable ontological interpretation of mathematical realism is the main obstacle to its recognition. This paper explicates the introductory positions of this interpretation and presents a realistic interpretation of the arithmetical (...) component of mathematics. In summary, we should like to note that such constructions, as it is shown to us, ought to bring the direct use not only for the philosophical foundation of mathematics but for mathematics itself. In the justification of the author’s conclusions based on the works of famous mathematicians of the twentieth century, interpreting their findings in a broad historical and philosophical context. To illustrate his point, the author gives examples of arithmetic and geometry - both Euclidean and non-Euclidean. (shrink)

As many cultural historians of the sciences have recently indicated, eighteenth-century illustrations of natural historical works represent an important source that can be used to explore the ways in which nature and the study of nature were regarded in the period. Naturalistic illustrations, however, are not the only genre of images that may help the historian in this investigation. Another interesting source is represented by images of nature and natural objects connected with fictional literature. Yet, little attention has been devoted (...) so far to this genre of images. In this paper I analyse some of the engravings which illustrate Retif de la Bretonne's imaginary voyage La Decouverte australe par un homme volant. My aim is to show that these illustrations convey a well-defined image of the natural universe, and that their analysis may contribute to our understanding of the various significances and roles attached to Nature in the period-particularly bringing to the fore its moral and political uses. Further, by analysing the ways in which they connect and integrate a variety of artistic and discursive traditions related to fiction, travel, and natural history, I hope to suggest some of the ways in which this genre of images may be used to shed light on the eighteenth-century interplay between spheres of knowledge later assigned to such distinct disciplines as 'science', 'literature', or 'art'. (shrink)

Sceptics have been accused of achieving their sceptical conclusions by an arbitrary (though usually implicit) redefinition of terms like “justified”, so that, while it may be true that no belief is justified in the sceptic’s new sense of the word, all the beliefs we have taken as justified remain so in the ordinary, standard meaning of the term. This paper defends scepticism against this charge. It is pointed out that there are several sorts of case where someone’s belief may be (...) properly termed justified in one “sense”, or from one “point of view”, but from another, equally properly termed unjustified. It is argued that the point of view of the sceptic, or the sense in which he uses the term, is one of the perfectly standard ones, and not some arbitrarily introduced new sense. In addition, an explanation that is not damaging to scepticism is provided of a sceptic’s own continued ascriptions of justifiedness in everyday contexts. (shrink)

Schizophrenia is usually described as a fragmentation of subjective experience and the impossibility to engage in meaningful cultural and intersubjective practices. Although the term schizophrenia is less than 100 years old, madness is generally believed to have accompanied mankind through its historical and cultural ontogeny. What does it mean to be “mad”? The failure to adopt social practices or to internalize cultural values of common sense? Despite the vast amount of literature and research, it seems that the study of schizophrenia (...) and of the psychoses is suffering from a generic disintegration. In this introduction, we offer an historical overview of the variety of theories and approaches to schizophrenia. We also provide an overview of how the authors in this volume attempt an integrative account where training, practice, theory and research are considered as parts of a larger whole. This is a varied and pluralistic volume, and it is up to the readers to make use of different chapters according to their own needs. (shrink)

The laws of social development are objective in content and, in contrast to the laws of nature, are manifested and function only through the activity of human beings. The development of all spheres of human activity, in turn, cannot be conceived of as independent of the will, consciousness, moods and beliefs, propensities and preferences of human beings, nor as independent of the effectiveness of forms of social organization, etc. The social specificity of laws of social development in turn defines another (...) feature of these laws, namely, their statistical nature. History and social practice persuasively demonstrate that the laws of social development in turn defines another feature of these laws, namely, their statistical nature. History and social practice persuasively demonstrate that the laws of social development, functioning either in all socioeconomic formations or in only some of them , or laws operating within only one of these formations are of a statistical nature. Even when the conditions of life of societies within a particular socioeconomic formation are the same, the results of the operation of any law of social development are never absolutely identical. This is graphically evident in an analysis of the operation of the law of surplus value, the laws of class struggle, or the law of social revolution, especially its operation under the conditions of the contemporary world revolutionary process. We need only point out the variety of nuances in the ultimate results of the operation of the law of social revolution after the Second World War, when socialist countries and countries with a socialist orientation emerged. (shrink)

In ‘The varieties of indispensability arguments’ Marco Panza and Andrea Sereni argue that, for any clear notion of indispensability, either there is no conclusive argument for the thesis that mathematics is indispensable to science, or the notion of indispensability at hand does not support mathematical realism. In this paper, I shall not object to this main thesis directly. I shall instead try to assess in a naturalistic spirit a family of objections the authors make along the way to (...) the use of indispensability premises in indispensability arguments. (shrink)

People are motivated by shared social values that, when held with moral conviction, can serve as compelling mandates capable of facilitating support for ideological violence. The current study examined this dark side of morality by identifying specific cognitive and neural mechanisms associated with beliefs about the appropriateness of sociopolitical violence, and determining the extent to which the engagement of these mechanisms was predicted by moral convictions. Participants reported their moral convictions about a variety of sociopolitical issues prior to undergoing functional (...) MRI scanning. During scanning, they were asked to evaluate the appropriateness of violent protests that were ostensibly congruent or incongruent with their views about sociopolitical issues. Complementary univariate and multivariate analytical strategies comparing neural responses to congruent and incongruent violence identified neural mechanisms implicated in processing salience and in the encoding of subjective value. As predicted, neuro-hemodynamic response was modulated parametrically by individuals’ beliefs about the appropriateness of congruent relative to incongruent sociopolitical violence in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and by moral conviction in ventral striatum. Overall moral conviction was predicted by neural response to congruent relative to incongruent violence in amygdala. Together, these findings indicate that moral conviction about sociopolitical issues serves to increase their subjective value, overriding natural aversion to interpersonal harm. (shrink)

Purpose: Often radical constructivists are confronted with arguments why radical constructivism is wrong. The present work presents a radical constructivist alternative to such arguments: a comparison of the results of two instructional practices, the standard, realist-based instruction and a radical constructivist-based instruction, both in physics courses. Design: Evidence from many studies of student conceptions in standard instruction (Duit 2004) is taken into account. In addition, diagnostic data, pre and post instruction, were collected from over 1,000 students in multiple institutions across (...) the U. S. over a period of about 15 years via an established diagnostic of conceptual understanding of motion and force. Findings: Evidence from many studies of student conceptions in standard instruction (Duit, 2004) is that little or no change in student conceptions happens in standard instruction. About half the students in the particular study reported, all science and engineering majors, experienced standard, realist-based instruction and show an average effect size of 0.6 standard deviations and an average normalized gain of 15%. The other half of the students, none of whom were science and engineering majors, experienced radical constructivist-based instruction and show an average effect size over 2.5 standard deviations and an average normalized gain over 60%. Diagnostic pre scores were nearly the same for both groups. Practical implications: The outcome, that students, neither science nor engineering majors, made changes in understanding foundational topics in physics far greater than science and engineering students, poses (1) an ethical challenge to the continued adherence to standard, realist-based instructional practices and (2) an intellectual challenge to the usefulness and appropriateness of the elitist-realist paradigm on which such standard instruction is based. Conclusion: This radical constructivist argument uses the effect of paradigms to judge their pragmatic value, not their truth-value. Based on pragmatic value, radical constructivism results in superior outcomes when applied to physics instruction. The approach to instruction can be applied generally in education. (shrink)

Intuitions play a critical role in analytical philosophical activity. But do they qualify as genuine evidence for the sorts of conclusions philosophers seek? Skeptical arguments against intuitions are reviewed, and a variety of ways of trying to legitimate them are considered. A defense is offered of their evidential status by showing how their evidential status can be embedded in a naturalistic framework.

Discovering laws of nature was a way to worship a law-giving God, during the Scientific Revolution. So why should we consider it worthwhile now, in our own more secularized science? For historical perspective, I examine two competing early modern theological traditions that related laws of nature to different divine attributes, and their secular legacy in views ranging from Kant and Nietzsche to Humean and ‘governing’ accounts in recent analytic metaphysics. Tracing these branching offshoots of ethically charged God-concepts sheds light on (...) how our ethical ideals and ideas of natural order can still be valuably integrated. Early modern intellectualists valued the law-governed order of nature as a sign of divine Reason. In turn, Reason traditionally ascribed to God has now been partly reclaimed for humans, reframing the value of natural order anthropocentrically, in terms of the value of our own intelligence. Alternatively, Reason may be reclaimed for nature itself, as in an ‘objective’ idealism or metaphysical rationalism. However, beyond divine Reason, an influential voluntarist tradition in theology stressed a connection between laws of nature and God’s Power or free Will. Tracking how divine Power has been reinvested in human beings provides a broader context for instrumentalism and related lineages of empiricism. But secularization can also transfer Power from God to the impersonal natural world. In this light, current scientific interest in lawlike order may also reflect the inherent value of brute necessity or inhuman causal power in nature: this is a deeper way to reject anthropocentrism and to show our respect for the environment. (shrink)

We show that the variety of n -dimensional weakly higher order cylindric algebras, introduced in Németi [9], [8], is finitely axiomatizable when n > 2. Our result implies that in certain non-well-founded set theories the finitization problem of algebraic logic admits a positive solution; and it shows that this variety is a good candidate for being the cylindric algebra theoretic counterpart of Tarski’s quasi-projective relation algebras.

My concern in this paper is what, in Art and Illusion, Gombrich calls "the riddle of style". This is the problem of why people at different times and in different cultures have depicted objects in very different ways. An adequate solution to this problem will comprise an explanation of why depiction has a history. The problem seems intractable because of three common assumptions about the history of depiction that, while independently plausible, are inconsistent. First, we assume that this history is (...) a history of realism. Artists from a wide range of cultures and ages seem to have shared the common goal of capturing the visual appearances of the objects they depicted. Secondly, we assume that depictive styles differ from context to context in part because of features internal to the contexts in which they emerged. Finally, we are loathe to accept the claim that differences of style necessarily result from differences in technical capacity. However, these assumptions are in conflict. If artists throughout history sought to capture the appearances of the things they depicted and did not differ markedly in their technical capacities, then surely the pictures each produced should not depend on features internal to the contexts in which they emerged and should instead look more alike. -/- I argue that the history of style is not, in its entirety, a history of realism. Throughout history, pictures have been used to inform viewers about a wide variety of things other than their objects' appearances. Investigating the purposes for which pictures were used in particular historical and cultural contexts will help us to understand why certain styles were appropriate to those contexts. Nevertheless, it will not help us to understand why certain styles were appropriate to just one among a number of contexts in which pictures were used for a single purpose. To understand this, we need to know what cognitive environment was shared by the members of the relevant community. This will enable us to understand why, given the purpose for which pictures were used in that community, a certain style was more informative than another. In addition to cataloguing stylistic changes, therefore, the historian of art has two further tasks: to investigate both the various purposes for which pictures have been used and the cognitive environments of those who used them. (shrink)

In response to globalization, is there to be a single, homogeneous set of aesthetic values governing the production and consumption of art? I focus on a newcomer to globalized contemporary art, China, and argue that artworld art is far from the only art currently being produced. I describe four connected kinds of art currently made in China: Modernist, traditional, and avant-garde, which are artworld art, and mass commercial, which is not. Practices in all four conform to expectations globally that Chinese (...) art of all kinds should exemplify imitation, emulation, and copying. Such conformity entails what Winnie Wong has termed ‘staging Chineseness’. I conclude with an examination of this process in two recent exhibitions before proposing that a proliferation of a variety of values is unavoidable while contemporary artworld practitioners continue to introduce local concerns, and while the self-claimed high status of artworld art is progressively challenged by the vitality worldwide of non-artworld art. While some of these values are resistant to Western globalizing homogenization, others conform to it. (shrink)

Background:Surveillance technology such as tag and tracking systems and video surveillance could increase the freedom of movement and consequently autonomy of clients in long-term residential care settings, but is also perceived as an intrusion on autonomy including privacy.Objective:To explore how clients in residential care experience surveillance technology in order to assess how surveillance technology might influence autonomy.Setting:Two long-term residential care facilities: a nursing home for people with dementia and a care facility for people with intellectual disabilities.Methods:Ethnographic field study.Ethical considerations:The boards (...) representing clients and relatives/proxies of the clients were informed of the study and gave their written consent. The clients’ assent was sought through a special information leaflet. At any time clients and/or proxy were given the option to withdraw from the study. The research protocol was also reviewed by a medical ethics committee.Findings:Our findings show a pattern of two themes: (1) coping with new spaces which entailed clients: wandering around, getting lost, being triggered, and retreating to new spaces and (2) resisting the surveillance technology measure because clients feel stigmatized, missed the company, and do not like being “watched.”Conclusion:Client experiences of surveillance technology appear to entail a certain ambivalence. This is in part due to the variety in surveillance technology devices, with each device bringing its own connotations and experiences. But it also lies in the devices’ presupposition of an ideal user, which is at odds with the actual user who is inherently vulnerable. Surveillance technology can contribute to the autonomy of clients in long-term care, but only if it is set in a truly person-centered approach. (shrink)

I begin with some familiar conceptions of epistemic relativism. One kind of epistemic relativism is descriptive pluralism. This is the simple, non-normative thesis that many different communities, cultures, social networks, etc. endorse different epistemic systems (E-systems), i.e., different sets of norms, standards, or principles for forming beliefs and other doxastic states. Communities try to guide or regulate their members’ credence-forming habits in a variety of different, i.e., incompatible, ways. Although there may be considerable overlap across cultures in certain types of (...) epistemic norms (e.g., norms for perceptual belief), there are sharp differences across groups in other types of epistemic norms. (shrink)

Although scientific realism is the default position in the life sciences, philosophical accounts of realism are geared towards physics and run into trouble when applied to fields such as biology or neuroscience. In this paper, I formulate a new robustness-based version of entity realism, and show that it provides a plausible account of realism for the life sciences that is also continuous with scientific practice. It is based on the idea that if there are several independent (...) ways of measuring, detecting or deriving something, then we are justified in believing that it is real. I also consider several possible objections to robustness-based entity realism, discuss its relationship to ontic structural realism, and show how it has the potential to provide a novel response to the pessimistic induction argument. (shrink)