In this article, we extend the research on the public interest to non-audit engagements performed by accounting firms and public accountants. Our thesis is that non-audit engagements, as private goods, require a distinct approach to the public interest than auditing. We suggest that a public value perspective can be used conceptually to provide substantial criteria for designing non-audit engagements conducive to public value creation and greater accountability. We illustrate the applicability and consequences of a public value perspective by analyzing and (...) contrasting the decision of two judicial opinions deciding whether Deloitte and the lead partner of a consulting engagement failed to act in the public interest in engineering the sale of collapsed British carmaker MG Rover. We advocate for a significant change in ethical codes of conduct by defining public interest obligations, not only in terms of professional attributes, but also in terms of outcomes. Our approach also suggests a requirement regarding planning a non-audit engagement, including establishing a public value proposition detailing the planned nature of the engagement, and extent of the assessment of the intended public value creation. We discuss the aspirational function of codes of conduct to provide accountability other than in terms of technical output, and to maintain the legitimacy and purpose of the profession. (shrink)

Researchers studying health systems in low-income countries face a myriad of ethical challenges throughout the entire research process. In this article, we discuss one of the greatest ethical challenges that we encountered during our fieldwork in West Africa: the difficulty of protecting the confidentiality of participants while locally disseminating results of health systems research to stakeholders. This reflection is based on experiences of authors involved in conducting evaluative research of interventions aimed at improving health systems in West Africa. Our observation (...) and collaboration with the research projects’ stakeholders informed our analysis. Examples from two research projects illustrate the issues raised. We found that in some cases there is a risk that local stakeholders may be able to identify research participants, or at least groups of participants, during the dissemination of results, even if they are anonymized. Four factors can interact and influence this challenge: 1) hierarchical structure, 2) small milieu, 3) immersion in a few sites, and 4) vested interests of decision-makers. For example, local stakeholders can sometimes find out when and where the data were collected. Moreover, health systems, especially rural healthcare centres, in West African countries can be small settings, so people often know each other. Some types of participants have unique characteristics or positions in the health system that may make them more easily identifiable by local stakeholders familiar with the environment. We identified a number of potential strategies that can help researchers minimize this difficulty and improve ethical research practices. These strategies pertain to the development of the study design, the process of obtaining informed consent, the dissemination of results, and the researchers’ reflexivity. Researchers must develop and adopt strategies that enable them to respect their promise of confidentiality while effectively disseminating sometimes sensitive results. Reflections surrounding ethical issues in global health research should be deepened to better address how to manage competing ethical responsibilities while promoting valuable research uptake. (shrink)

Moral or ethical questions are vital because they affect our daily lives: what is the best choice we can make, the best action to take in a given situation, and ultimately, the best way to live our lives? Health ethics has contributed to moving ethics toward a more experience-based and user-oriented theoretical and methodological stance but remains in our practice an incomplete lever for human development and flourishing. This context led us to envision and develop the stance of a “living (...) ethics”, described in this inaugural collective and programmatic paper as an effort to consolidate creative collaboration between a wide array of stakeholders. We engaged in a participatory discussion and collective writing process known as instrumentalist concept analysis. This process included initial local consultations, an exploratory literature review, the constitution of a working group of 21 co-authors, and 8 workshops supporting a collaborative thinking and writing process. First, a living ethics designates a stance attentive to human experience and the role played by morality in human existence. Second, a living ethics represents an ongoing effort to interrogate and scrutinize our moral experiences to facilitate adaptation of people and contexts. It promotes the active and inclusive engagement of both individuals and communities in envisioning and enacting scenarios which correspond to their flourishing as authentic ethical agents. Living ethics encourages meaningful participation of stakeholders because moral questions touch deeply upon who we are and who we want to be. We explain various aspects of a living ethics stance, including its theoretical, methodological, and practical implications as well as some barriers to its enactment based on the reflections resulting from the collaborative thinking and writing process. (shrink)

Le mot anagogia, « anagogie » serait une mauvaise traduction latine du grec a. L'équivalent latin serait, selon les philologues, sursumductio. D'abord conçue comme un voyage, l'anagogie prendra le sens d'ascension, de montée. Le mot anagogie est plus fréquemment employé pour désigner le quatrième sens de l'Écriture, le terme s'inscrit dans l'histoire de l'exégèse sacrée et plus généralement de l'herméneutique.Les études qui composent cet ouvrage (sur l'obscénité, Alfred Jarry, Georges Bataille, René Daumal, Pierre Klossowski, Maurice Blanchot, Pierre Guyotat, Jean-Noël Vuarnet (...) ou Platon) traitent, de près ou de loin, de cette ascension, souvent entendue ici comme transgression : l'esprit sursoit aux limites de la matière, dont il ne s'émancipe jamais totalement, dans un mouvement vers le sommet (mort, rire divin, « communication », révélation, soleil). (shrink)

Resumen: El espacio dramático de Michel Tremblay, “tesoro nacional” de Quebec, está poblado por personajes que se enfrentan casi siempre a la alienación y al deseo de encontrar, o incluso de crear, su propia identidad. Los héroes tremblayanos, cualquiera que sea su orientación sexual y posición en la sociedad, realizan un paso desde la inactividad hasta la acción para desgajarse del orden preestablecido. A veces incapaces de cambiar su situación, a veces felices al poder, por fin, contestar a la (...) pregunta “¿quién soy yo?”, los personajes del teatro de Tremblay siguen siendo representativos de la sociedad quebequense que, durante el período de la llamada Revolución tranquila, se vio sometida a unos profundos cambios identitarios. A lo largo de la evolución social del Quebec de los años sesenta y setenta del pasado siglo, se fueron estableciendo paralelismos entre la toma de conciencia identitaria de la sociedad y la de los personajes dramáticos de Trembley. Así, estos últimos se convertirían en alegorías de la estructura social en por lo menos dos dimensiones, moral y cultural, en el caso de Belles-Sœurs y À toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou, donde se incuban las frustraciones propias de unas heroínas abrumadas por la cultura patriarcal (impotente en todos los ámbitos y ante todo el sexual), representada a su vez por la pieza Hosanna, a la que se la puede considerar como el símbolo de la expresión social de la homosexualidad y de la identidad sexual en general. En consecuencia, la finalidad de este artículo sería la reflexión misma acerca de unas (r)evoluciones teatrales que reflejarían las llevadas a cabo por la Revolución tranquila dentro de toda la sociedad. Abstract: Michel Tremblay's dramatic space, Quebec’s “national treasure”, is populated by characters who are almost always confronted with alienation and the desire to rediscover, and even to create, their own identity. The heroes of Tremblay, whatever their sexual orientation and social positions are, have the story of a passage from inaction till the act of tearing themselves away from the pre-established order. Sometimes incapable of changing their situation, sometimes happy to finally be able to answer the question “Who am I?”, the characters in the Tremblayan theatre are at all times representatives of the Quebec society, which, during the Quiet Revolution, suffered profound changes in identity. Throughout the social evolution in Quebec in the 1960s and 1970s, the awareness of the identity of the society and that of the dramatic characters are two matters that coexist in parallel manner. Thus, the latter become allegories of the social structure on at least two levels: moral and cultural, in the case of the Belles-Sœurs and À toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou representing several frustrations: of the heroines, overwhelmed by the powerless patriarchal culture; sexual, represented for example by Hosanna being the symbol of the social expression of homosexuality and sexual identity in general; and finally, actional, as in the case of Sainte Carmen de la Main, which constitutes a message to Québécois to take their destiny in their hands. The main objective of the article is to bring some reflections on theatrical (r)evolutions which reflected the changes of the Quiet Revolution within the entire society. (shrink)

La figure et l’œuvre de Françoise d’Aubigné, veuve Scarron et marquise de Maintenon, se sont trouvées longtemps prisonnières des mythes qu’ont inspirés dès le xviie siècle la vie romanesque et le destin exceptionnel de l’épouse morganatique du Roi-Soleil. La Palatine, Saint-Simon, Michelet ont bâti la légende noire, les Dames de Saint-Louis, Mme de Caylus et Mlle d’Aumale, puis La Beaumelle en ont édifié l’hagiographie, Voltaire et Sainte-Beuve tracé des portraits plus nuancés, mais insuffisa...

The central aim of this article is to specify the ontological nature of constitutive mechanistic phenomena. After identifying three criteria of adequacy that any plausible approach to constitutive mechanistic phenomena must satisfy, we present four different suggestions, found in the mechanistic literature, of what mechanistic phenomena might be. We argue that none of these suggestions meets the criteria of adequacy. According to our analysis, constitutive mechanistic phenomena are best understood as what we will call ‘object-involving occurrents’. Furthermore, on the basis (...) of this notion, we will clarify what distinguishes constitutive mechanistic explanations from etiological ones. 1 Introduction 2 Criteria of Adequacy 2.1 Descriptive adequacy 2.2 Constitutive–etiological distinction 2.3 Constitution 3 The Ontological Nature of Constitutive Mechanistic Phenomena 3.1 Phenomena as input–output relations 3.2 Phenomena as end states 3.3 Phenomena as dispositions 3.4 Phenomena as behaviours 4 Phenomena as Object-Involving Occurrents 4.1 What object-involving occurrents are and why we need them 4.2 The object in the phenomenon 4.3 The adequacy of option 5 Conclusion. (shrink)

Leuridan (2011) questions whether mechanisms can really replace laws at the heart of our thinking about science. In doing so, he enters a long-standing discussion about the relationship between the mech-anistic structures evident in the theories of contemporary biology and the laws of nature privileged especially in traditional empiricist traditions of the philosophy of science (see e.g. Wimsatt 1974; Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005; Bogen 2005; Darden 2006; Glennan 1996; MDC 2000; Schaffner 1993; Tabery 2003; Weber 2005). In our view, Leuridan (...) misconstrues this discussion. His weak positive claim that mechanistic sciences appeal to generalizations is true but uninteresting. His stronger claim, that all causal claims require laws, is unsupported by his arguments. Though we proceed by criticizing Leuridan’s arguments, our greater purpose is to embellish his arguments in order to show how thinking about mechanisms enriches and transforms old philosophical debates about laws in biology and provides new insights into how generalizations afford prediction, explanation and control. (shrink)

In the contemporary life sciences more and more researchers emphasize the “limits of reductionism” (e.g. Ahn et al. 2006a, 709; Mazzocchi 2008, 10) or they call for a move “beyond reductionism” (Gallagher/Appenzeller 1999, 79). However, it is far from clear what exactly they argue for and what the envisioned limits of reductionism are. In this paper I claim that the current discussions about reductionism in the life sciences, which focus on methodological and explanatory issues, leave the concepts of a reductive (...) method and a reductive explanation too unspecified. In order to fill this gap and to clarify what the limits of reductionism are I identify three reductive methods that are crucial in the current practice of the life sciences: decomposition, focusing on internal factors, and studying parts in isolation. Furthermore, I argue that reductive explanations in the life sciences exhibit three characteristics: first, they refer only to factors at a lower level than the phenomenon at issue, second, they focus on internal factors and thus ignore or simplify the environment of a system, and, third, they cite only the parts of a system in isolation. (shrink)

This paper examines the adequacy of causal graph theory as a tool for modeling biological phenomena and formalizing biological explanations. I point out that the causal graph approach reaches it limits when it comes to modeling biological phenomena that involve complex spatial and structural relations. Using a case study from molecular biology, DNA-binding and -recognition of proteins, I argue that causal graph models fail to adequately represent and explain causal phenomena in this field. The inadequacy of these models is due (...) to their failure to include relevant spatial and structural information in a way that does not render the model non-explanatory, unmanageable, or inconsistent with basic assumptions of causal graph theory. (shrink)

This paper examines various ways in which philosophy of science can be interdisciplinary. It aims to provide a map of relations between philosophy and sciences, some of which are interdisciplinary. Such a map should also inform discussions concerning the question “How much philosophy is there in the philosophy of science?” In Sect. 1, we distinguish between synoptic and collaborative interdisciplinarity. With respect to the latter, we furthermore distinguish between two kinds of reflective forms of collaborative interdisciplinarity. We also briefly explicate (...) how complexity triggers interdisciplinarity. In Sect. 2, we apply the distinctions of Sect. 1 to philosophy of science and analyze in which sense different styles of philosophy of science are interdisciplinary. The styles that we discuss are a synoptic-general, a reflective-general, a reflective-particular, a particular-embedded and a descriptive or normative style. (shrink)

The topic of this special issue of Synthese is hyperintensionality. This introduction offers a brief survey of the very notion of hyperintensionality followed by a summary of each of the papers in this collection. The papers are foundational studies of hyperintensionality accompanied by ample philosophical applications.Hyperintensionality concerns the individuation of non-extensional entities such as propositions and properties, relations-in-intension and individual roles, as well as, for instance, proofs and judgments and computational procedures, in case these do not reduce to any of (...) the former. Hyperintensional individuation is frequently also referred to as ‘fine-grained’ or sometimes simply ‘intensional’ individuation, when ‘intensional’ is not understood in the specific sense of possible-world semantics or in the pejorative sense of flouting various logical rules of extensional logic. A principle of individuation qualifies as hyperintensional as soon as it is finer than necessary .. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a new account of the philosophical motivations for Descartes’s theory of judgment. The theory needs explanation because the idea that judgment, or belief, is an operation of the will seems problematic at best, and Descartes does not make clear why he adopted what, at the time, was a novel view. I argue that attending to Descartes’s conception of the will as the active, free faculty of mind reveals that a general concern with responsibility motivates his (...) theory of judgment. My account avoids some unappealing features of the standard interpretation, renders the theory more plausible than many have suggested, and explains why his theory does not fall neatly into any current-day position on the issue of the control we have over belief. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that it is finally time to move beyond the Nagelian framework and to break new ground in thinking about epistemic reduction in biology. I will do so, not by simply repeating all the old objections that have been raised against Ernest Nagel’s classical model of theory reduction. Rather, I grant that a proponent of Nagel’s approach can handle several of these problems but that, nevertheless, Nagel’s general way of thinking about epistemic reduction in terms of (...) theories and their logical relations is entirely inadequate with respect to what is going on in actual biological research practice. (shrink)

This dissertation aims to construct a non-dogmatic defence of common sense. It tries to show why the absence of justification for the judgements of common sense, which the sceptic reveals, does not invalidate them.

Biology and history are often viewed as closely related disciplines, with biology informed by history, especially in its task of charting our evolutionary past. Maximizing the opportunities for cross-fertilization in these two fields requires an accurate reckoning of their commonalities and differences-precisely what this volume sets out to achieve. Specially commissioned essays by a team of recognized international researchers cover the full panoply of topics in these fields and include notable contributions on the correlativity of evolutionary and historical explanations, applying (...) to history the latest causal-mechanical approach in the philosophy of biology, and the question of generalized laws that might pertain across the two subjects. The collection opens with a vital interrogation of general issues on explanation that apart from potentially fruitful areas of interaction (could the etiology of the causal-mechanical perspective in biology account for the historical trajectory of the Roman Empire?) this volume also seeks to chart relative certainties distinguishing explanations in biology and history. It also assesses techniques such as the use of probabilities in biological reconstruction, deployed to overcome the inevitable gaps in physical evidence on early evolution. Methodologies such as causal graphs and semantic explanation receive in-depth analysis. Contributions from a host of prominent and widely read philosophers ensure that this new volume has the stature of a major addition to the literature. (shrink)

This is a contribution to the encyclopedia of systems biology on complexity.

In this paper, we discuss some problems and prospects of interdisciplinary encounters by focusing on philosophy of science as a case study. After introducing the case, we give an overview about the various ways in which philosophy of science can be interdisciplinary in Section 2. In Section 3, we name some general problems concerning the possible points of interaction between philosophy of science and the sciences studied. In Section 4 we compare the advantages and risks of interdisciplinarity for individual researchers (...) and institutions. In Section 5, we discuss interdisciplinary PhD programs, in particular concerning two main problems: increased workload and the quality of supervision. In the final Section 6, we look at interdisciplinary careers beyond the PhD. (shrink)

This paper draws on the cultural-materialist paradigm articulated by Raymond Williams to offer a radical historicisation of identity and identity-politics in capitalist societies. A keywords analysis reveals surprisingly that identity, as it is elaborated in the familiar categories of personal and social identity, is a relatively novel concept in Western thought, politics and culture. The claim is not the standard one that people’s ‘identities’ became more important and apparent in advanced capitalist societies, but that identity itself came to operate as (...) a new and key mechanism for construing, shaping and narrating experiences of selfhood and grouphood in this period. From a cultural-materialist perspective, the emergence and evolution of this idea of identity can only be properly understood in relation to the social contexts of its use, namely, the new contexts of consumption of capitalist societies, and the development of new forms of group-based struggle from the 1960s. What the analysis shows is that it was the commercialisation and politicisation of older essentialist understandings of selfhood and grouphood in these contexts that has given rise to the concepts of personal and social identity as we know them today.By exploring the material conditions that have given rise to the contemporary powerful attachment to ‘identity’, this paper offers a new point of departure from which to pursue many issues of concern to critical theorists and radical activists today, including the conflict over identity politics in radical circles, the historical and social processes behind their development and at least partial co-option, and their relation to neoliberal political-economic formations today. (shrink)

This article explores the evolution of a major longitudinal ‘high risk for schizophrenia’ research programme, started over 50 years ago, which has been largely ignored in recent debates over ‘psychosis risk’ and early intervention. Studying mainly the offspring of individuals with schizophrenia, high-risk investigators aimed to identify a range of precursors of schizophrenia in the hope that the findings would eventually facilitate effective primary prevention. Specifically, the article examines the origins and impact of the pioneering Copenhagen High-Risk Project and thus (...) provides an important contribution to the sparse historical literature on schizophrenia research, including the study of milder conditions and at-risk states in the borderlands of psychosis. (shrink)

Élie HALÉVY (1870-1937), philosophe et historien des idées, fut professeur à l'École libre des sciences politiques, l'ancêtre de l'actuel Sciences Po. Comme son autre grand ouvrage, l'Histoire du peuple anglais au XIXe siècle, paru en six tomes de 1913 à 1932, les trois tomes de La formation du radicalisme philosophique, parus en 1901 pour les deux premiers et en 1904 pour le troisième, reflètent pour partie ses enseignements de l'Ecole libre consacrés à l'histoire britannique. Le premier tome, La jeunesse de (...) Bentham 1776-1789, étudie la doctrine utilitariste non seulement chez celui qu'on regarde comme son fondateur principal, Jeremy Bentham, mais aussi chez les nombreux auteurs qui, en Grande-Bretagne et sur le continent, en dessinèrent avant lui les contours. Le deuxième tome, L’évolution de la doctrine utilitaire de 1789 à 1815, montre comment l'utilitarisme revêtit la forme non seulement d'une école de pensée, mais aussi d'un mouvement pour la réforme économique, sociale et politique. Le rôle coordonnateur nouveau de James Mill, ainsi qu'une convergence de vues avec les économistes, qui poussaient dans le sens des réformes, marquèrent notamment cette évolution. Le troisième tome, Le radicalisme philosophique, continue d'étudier la transformation de l'école en mouvement après la fin des guerres napoléoniennes, lorsque celle-ci commence à engranger ses premiers grands succès réformistes. Bentham, James Mill et les autres penseurs utilitaires sont alors réunis sous l'appellation de philosophic radicals. Le terme temporel de l'ouvrage est le Reform Act de 1932, première étape vers la modernisation du système électoral, que la propagande de ce groupe ne contribua pas peu à faire aboutir. Quoique l'ouvrage d'Halévy vaille en premier lieu par l'immense savoir qu'il déploie, et le nombre et l'excellence des citations qu'il propose, il comporte aussi des thèses historiques et philosophiques originales. On peut citer parmi les premières la thèse, qui relie les trois tomes, voulant que l'utilitarisme britannique trouve sa forme achevée dans l'intervention sur la société, lorsqu'il se mue en radicalisme philosophique, et parmi les secondes, la thèse, énoncée au début du premier tome, voulant qu'il existe trois modèles dominants de jonction des intérêts individuels (la fusion sympathique, l'identification naturelle et l'identification artificielle). Une autre grande thèse, à la fois historique et philosophique, affirme en substance que l'économie politique classique serait un département spécialisé de la pensée utilitaire. La question de savoir jusqu'à quel point Smith, Ricardo et Malthus ont pu adhérer au "principe d'utilité" de Bentham est toujours débattue. En même temps que les élucidations apportées à ce principe, elle contribue à expliquer l'intérêt que les historiens de la pensée économique continuent de porter à l'ouvrage. La réédition de La formation du radicalisme philosophique par les Presses Universitaires de France (P.U.F.) a impliqué un effort collectif. Monique Canto-Sperber en a conçu l'idée et assumé la direction, et l'ouvrage a paru en 1995 dans la collection Philosophie morale dont elle avait alors la responsabilité aux P.U.F. Chacun des trois tomes s'accompagne d'une postface, confiée au philosophe Jean-Pierre Dupuy pour le premier, au politologue Pierre Bouretz pour le second, et à l'économiste Philippe Mongin pour le troisième. Un travail de grande ampleur a été requis, d'une part, pour localiser les références de Halévy dans des sources plus récentes que celles dont il disposait, en particulier, s'agissant de Bentham, dans l'édition toujours en cours de ses œuvres, et d'autre part, pour traduire les très nombreux passages que Halévy citait en langue anglaise. Sophie Jallais et Mary Sokol se sont chargées de la première tâche et Jean-Pierre Cléro de la seconde. Prise après quelques années de circulation de l'ouvrage, la décision des P.U.F. d'en pilonner les exemplaires que ses responsables ne rachèteraient pas a semblé compromettre ce vaste travail. Mais grâce aux efforts du site québécois Les classiques des sciences sociales, et de son directeur Jean-Marie Tremblay, il est devenu possible d'accéder aux trois tomes électroniquement. Les adresses en sont : http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/halevy_elie/radicalisme_philo_t1/radicalisme_philo_t1.html http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/halevy_elie/radicalisme_philo_t2/radicalisme_philo_t2.html http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/halevy_elie/radicalisme_philo_t3/radicalisme_philo_t3.html Avant la réédition de 1995, l'ouvrage de Halévy n'était facilement accessible que grâce à la traduction anglaise plusieurs fois rééditée de Mary Morris, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, New York, Macmillan, 1928. (shrink)

Back cover: This book develops a philosophical account that reveals the major characteristics that make an explanation in the life sciences reductive and distinguish them from non-reductive explanations. Understanding what reductive explanations are enables one to assess the conditions under which reductive explanations are adequate and thus enhances debates about explanatory reductionism. The account of reductive explanation presented in this book has three major characteristics. First, it emerges from a critical reconstruction of the explanatory practice of the life sciences itself. (...) Second, the account is monistic since it specifies one set of criteria that apply to explanations in the life sciences in general. Finally, the account is ontic in that it traces the reductivity of an explanation back to certain relations that exist between objects in the world (such as part-whole relations and level relations), rather than to the logical relations between sentences. Beginning with a disclosure of the meta-philosophical assumptions that underlie the author’s analysis of reductive explanation, the book leads into the debate about reduction(ism) in the philosophy of biology and continues with a discussion on the two perspectives on explanatory reduction that have been proposed in the philosophy of biology so far. The author scrutinizes how the issue of reduction becomes entangled with explanation and analyzes two concepts, the concept of a biological part and the concept of a level of organization. The results of these five chapters constitute the ground on which the author bases her final chapter, developing her ontic account of reductive explanation. (shrink)

In recent debates on phenomenal consciousness, a distinction is sometimes made, after Levine (2001) and Kriegel (2009), between the “qualitative character” of an experience, i.e. the specific way it feels to the subject (e.g. blueish or sweetish or pleasant), and its “subjective character”, i.e. the fact that there is anything at all that it feels like to her. I argue that much discussion of subjective character is affected by a conflation between three different notions. I start by disentangling the three (...) notions in question, under the labels of “for-me-ness”, “me-ness” and “mineness”. Next, I argue that these notions are not equivalent; in particular, there is no conceptual implication from for-me-ness to me-ishness or mineness. Empirical considerations based on clinical cases additionally suggest that the three notions may also correspond to different properties (although the claim of conceptual non-equivalence does not depend on this further point). The aim is clarificatory, cautionary but also critical: I examine four existing arguments from subjective character that are fuelled by an undifferentiated use of the three notions, and find them to be flawed for this reason. (shrink)

This is a contribution to the encyclopedia of systems biology on dispositions.

Book Review Philosophy of Microbiology MAUREEN A. O’MALLEY.

Early-career philosophers of science often find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place, facing conflicting demands. While they have to meet the rigorous standards of a career in philosophy, they are at the same time expected to possess detailed knowledge of the sciences they study. By pulling in different directions, these two poles can be difficult to bridge. Interdisciplinarily engaged philosophers of science face not just an increased workload but also institutional conditions that are not always supportive for (...) their engagement. For instance, while the need for interdisciplinary research is impressed upon young researchers by their advisers and by the subject matters of their research, universities and funding institutions, by contrast, still follow rather conservative and disciplinary policies when they fill positions or allocate funding. In March 2013, the interdisciplinarity of philosophy of science and the resulting situation for early career researchers was the subject of a workshop and a panel discussion funded by the Andrea von Braun Foundation. This paper takes up several of the issues that were controversially disputed at that event. (shrink)

This is a contribution to the encyclopedia of systems biology on reduction.

Abstract: Interpretations of the Tractatus divide into what might be called a metaphysical and an anti-metaphysical approach to the work. The central issue between the two interpretative approaches has generally been characterised in terms of the question whether the Tractatus is committed to the idea of ‘things’ that cannot be said in language, and thus to the idea of a distinctive kind of nonsense: nonsense that is an attempt to say what can only be shown. In this paper, I look (...) at this dispute from a different perspective, by focusing on the treatment of the concept of internal relations. By reference to the work of Peter Hacker, Hidé Ishiguro and Cora Diamond, I show how this concept is understood quite differently in each of the two interpretative traditions. I focus particularly on how Wittgenstein's idea of the ‘internal relation of depicting that holds between language and the world’ (Tractatus 4.014) might be understood within the two interpretative approaches. I offer some reasons in support of the anti-metaphysical treatment of the concept. (shrink)

Convincing disputes about explanatory reductionism in the philosophy of biology require a clear and precise understanding of what a reductive explanation in biology is. The central aim of this book is to provide such an account by revealing the features that determine the reductive character of a biological explanation. Chapters I-IV provide the ground, on which I can then, in Chapter V, develop my own account of explanatory reduction in biology: Chapter I reveals the meta-philosophical assumptions that underlie my analysis (...) of reduction, Chapter II introduces the previous debate about reduction in the philosophy of biology by pointing out the most crucial lessons one should learn from this debate, Chapter III critically discusses the two perspectives on explanatory reduction that have been proposed in the philosophy of biology so far, and Chapter IV clarifies in what ways the issue of reduction is entangled with the issue of explanation. In Chapter V I present my own account of explanatory reduction. My main claim is that reductive explanations in the biological sciences possess three main characteristics: they explain the behavior of a biological system S, first, exclusively in terms of factors that are located on a lower level of organization than S, second, by focusing on factors that are internal to S , and third, by describing the genuine parts of S only as “parts in isolation”. This account is ontic because it traces the reductivity of an explanation back to certain relations that exist in the world. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

This book examines the past, present, and future states of time-travel research, and also looks at the bizarre anomalies of time itself.

This review studies the representation of director Louis Malle's experiences as a child in the Holocaust in the film Au Revoir les enfants. The film blurs the lines between the controversial categories of Holocaust participants as victims, bystanders, and perpetrators. This ambiguity and overlapping of roles in the film presents the question of treatment of Holocaust memory.

Philip Kitcher is one of the most distinguished philosophers of our days. Since the rise of philosophy of biology in the 1960s Kitcher has deeply influenced and inspired many of the debates in this field. Among his most important books are The Advancement of Science (1993), In Mendel’s Mirror: Philosophical Reflections on Biology (2003), and Science in a Democratic Society (2011). However, Kitcher’s philosophical interest is not restricted to the philosophy of science. Rather, he has also made groundbreaking contributions to (...) ethics, to the philosophy of religion, to the philosophy of literature, to the philoso-phy of mathematics, and, most recently, to pragmatism. From a general perspective, two features of Kitcher’s work are particu-larly noteworthy. First, in most of his writings it becomes apparent that he takes a naturalistic stance. Kitcher characterizes himself as having an “impulse to naturalism”, which means that he resists the expansionist tendency to invoke entities or processes that are quite different from those studied in the various branches of inquiry (like Platonic forms or other abstract entities, Cartesian egos, and faculties of pure reason). Kitcher has explicated his naturalistic stance in The Naturalists Return (1992) and refined it in various recent works. Second, the philosophical questions that always have urged Kitcher most are questions that matter to human lives. Just to mention a few examples, these are questions like “How do we reconcile our scientific picture of the world with religion?”, “In which way does social practice impact scientist’s search for knowledge?”, or “How do we understand and improve our moral practices?”. In recent years Kitcher has argued that his focus is not merely due to his personal interests. Rather, he thinks that the only philosophical problems that are significant are those whose solution makes a difference to contemporary human life. Philosophers would be wise to focus on these pragmatically relevant kinds of questions, rather than addressing questions that are isolated from real life. In defending this claim, Kitcher expresses his affinity to the pragmatist tradition of Dewey and others. Thus, the second major characteristic of Kitcher’s work is that he takes up a pragmatist stance. Although Kitcher’s naturalistic and pragmatist impulses are discernible in most of his writings, he has only lately started to explicitly defend what he now calls pragmatic naturalism. His work on pragmatic naturalism contains innovative insights into questions about naturalism and pragmatism, while at the same time providing a meta-philosophical, unificatory framework for his longstanding work in various philosophical fields. Kitcher’s paper that is printed in this volume is one of the first publications in which he sets out his idea of pragmatic naturalism. This volume is the result of the 15th Münster Lectures in Philosophy which were hosted by the Department of Philosophy of the University of Münster from the 27th to the 29th of October 2011. The basic idea of the Lectures is to give advanced students of the Department the opportunity to get into discus-sion with important philosophers of our days. In line with what has become by now a venerable tradition, Kitcher gave a lecture to a public audience on the first evening of the Lectures, and he participated in a colloquium on the following two days. At this colloquium, eight groups of advanced students and faculty members presented papers on a wide range of topics from Kitch-er’s work. Both the lecture and the papers are published in this volume. In addition, it contains Kitcher’s detailed replies to the colloquium papers. (shrink)

Elements of Ethics examines Meinong's value theory from an epistemological standpoint and gives a critical exposition of Meinong's first attempts at a deontic logic; special consideration is given to the Law of Omission. For that purpose his theory of the a priori is examined, which is entwined with his theory of objects. The book begins with an epistemological and ontological consideration and simplification of Meinong's universe. In consequence of the mathematical development of his time, especially non-Euclidean geometries, Meinong developed the (...) notion of precision objects and precision concepts. They are discussed along with the so-called `incomplete objects' and problems associated with them. These discussions are relevant for understanding various technical terms, particularly concepts of values and valuations. These discussions also assist in assessing the possibility of knowing these concepts a priori, and in understanding the logical relationships between them and actual valuations. We find in Meinong's ethical writings a mixture of experiential and a priori knowledge. A translation is included of the fragment Ethische Bausteine (Elements of Ethics), together with Meinong's own notes and those of the editors of the text. Vocabulary and Index are attached. (shrink)