Introduction: Uncertainty is omnipresent in cancer care, including the ambiguity of diagnostic tests, efficacy and side effects of treatments, and/or patients' long-term prognosis. During second opinion consultations, uncertainty may be particularly tangible: doubts and uncertainty may drive patients to seek more information and request a second opinion, whereas the second opinion in turn may also affect patients' level of uncertainty. Providers are tasked to clearly discuss all of these uncertainties with patients who may feel overwhelmed by it. The aim of (...) this study was to explore how oncologists communicate about uncertainty during second opinion consultations in medical oncology.Methods: We performed a secondary qualitative analysis of audio-recorded consultations collected in a prospective study among cancer patients who sought a second opinion in medical oncology. We purposively selected 12 audio-recorded second opinion consultations. Any communication about uncertainty by the oncologist was double coded by two researchers and an inductive analytic approach was chosen to allow for novel insights to arise.Results: Seven approaches in which oncologists conveyed or addressed uncertainty were identified: specifying the degree of uncertainty, explaining reasons of uncertainty, providing personalized estimates of uncertainty to patients, downplaying or magnifying uncertainty, reducing or counterbalancing uncertainty, and providing support to facilitate patients in coping with uncertainty. Moreover, oncologists varied in their choice of words/language to convey uncertainty.Discussion: This study identified various approaches of how oncologists communicated uncertain issues during second opinion consultations. These different approaches could affect patients' perception of uncertainty, emotions provoked by it, and possibly even patients' behavior. For example, by minimizing uncertainty, oncologists may consciously steer patients toward specific medical decisions). Future research is needed to examine how these different ways of communicating about uncertainty affect patients. This could also facilitate a discussion about the desirability of certain communication strategies. Eventually, practical and evidence-based guidance needs to be developed for clinicians to optimally inform patients about uncertain issues and support patients in dealing with these. (shrink)

This study was designed to investigate the trust relationship between parents and teachers in first grade. Additional research questions were whether trust was related to ethnicity and reading performance. The five facets of trust; benevolence, reliability, competence, honesty and openness, were measured on a 4-point Likert scale. Reading performance was measured by the three-minute test. Parents were found to have more trust in the reliability, competence and honesty of teachers than teachers in parents. Native-Dutch and immigrant parents have the same (...) trust level towards their children?s teacher. However, teachers reported lower trust levels on all five facets of trust for immigrant parents. Our findings indicated that ethnicity has no influence on parents trust in teachers, but ethnicity may explain teachers? trust in parents. Some support was found for the assumption that teachers? trust plays a role in reading performance. Children were found to have higher reading performance when teachers reported higher trust in the benevolence and openness of parents. (shrink)

This volume collects Late Ancient, Byzantine and Medieval appropriations of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, addressing the logic of inquiry, concept formation, the question whether metaphysics is a science, and the theory of demonstration.

When talking about decisionmaking for children with a life-threatening condition, the death of children with brain tumors deserves special attention. The last days of the lives of these children can be particularly harsh for bystanders, and raise questions about the suffering of these children themselves. In the Netherlands, these children are part of the group for whom a wide range of end-of-life decisions are discussed, and questions raised. What does the end-of-life for these children look like, and what motivates physicians (...) and parents to make decisions that may affect the life and death of these children? This article highlights the story of the parents of the sisters Roos and Noor. When both their daughters were diagnosed with a hereditary brain tumor, they had to make similar decisions twice. Their story sheds light on the suffering of children in the terminal phase, and how this suffering may motivate parents and physicians to make decisions that influence the end of life of these children’s lives.We argue that complete knowledge about suffering in the terminal phase of children with brain tumors is impossible. However, by collecting experiences like those of Roos and Noor, we can move toward an experienced-based understanding and better guide parents and physicians through these hardest of decisions. (shrink)

This article offers a critical reading of three major biographies of the British novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch. It considers in particular how a limited concern for gender issues has hampered their portrayals of Murdoch as a creator of images and ideas. The biographies are then contrasted to a biographical sketch constructed from Murdoch's philosophical writing. The assessment of the biographies is set against the larger background of the relation between women and philosophy. In doing so, the paper offers a (...) critical response to Sally Haslanger's recent “Musings” (Haslanger 2008), which is contrasted to Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929) and Michèle Le Doeuff's Hipparchia's Choice (2007). (shrink)

The theory of quantum mechanics has often been thought to show an affinity with logical empiricism: in both, observation plays a central role, and questions about what is unobservable are dismissed. However, there were also strong tensions between the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle and implications drawn from quantum physics. In the 1920s and 1930s, many physicists thought that quantum mechanics revealed a limit to what could be known scientifically, and this opened the door to a wide range of (...) speculations, in which quantum mechanics was connected with free will, organic life, psychology, and religion—speculations in which many leading quantum physicists were engaged. Members of the Vienna Circle, such as Frank and Schlick, looked at quantum mechanics for a confirmation of their empiricist views, but they were at the same time critical about these wider implications drawn from quantum mechanics, which in their eyes were connected with broader mystical and irrational trends in society. They engaged in particular with the views of Bohr and Jordan, both of whom expressed a sympathy for logical empiricism while at the same time arguing for claims that proved hard to reconcile with the scientific world conception of the Vienna Circle. (shrink)

One of the hardest questions to answer for a (Neo)platonist is to what extent and how the changing and unreliable world of sense perception can itself be an object of scientific knowledge. My dissertation is a study of the answer given to that question by the Neoplatonist Proclus (Athens, 411-485) in his Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus. I present a new explanation of Proclus’ concept of nature and show that philosophy of nature consists of several related subdisciplines matching the ontological stratification (...) of nature. Moreover, I demonstrate that for Proclus philosophy of nature is a science, albeit a hypothetical one, which takes geometry as its methodological paradigm. I also offer an explanation of Proclus’ view of what is later called the mathematization of physics, i.e. the role of the substance of mathematics, as opposed to its method, in explaining the natural world. Finally, I discuss Proclus’ views of the discourse of philosophy of nature and its iconic character. (shrink)

The goal of the present study was to investigate whether children’s cognitive strengths can compensate the accompanied weaknesses related to their specific learning difficulties. A Bayesian multigroup mediation SEM analysis in 281 fourth-grade children identified a cognitive compensatory mechanism in children with mathematical learning difficulties : Children with weak number sense, but strong rapid naming performed slightly better on mathematics compared to peers with weak rapid naming. In contrast, a compensatory mechanism was not identified for children with a comorbid mathematical (...) and reading difficulty. One explanation for the latter finding could relate to the lack of ability to compensate, because of the difficulties these children experience in both academic domains. These findings lead to a new direction in research on learning difficulties in mathematics and/or reading by suggesting that children with a learning disability each have a unique profile of interrelated cognitive strengths and weaknesses. Children might compensate with these strengths for their weaknesses, which could lead to learning gains in the affected domain. (shrink)

The recent discovery of an indeterministic system in classical mechanics, the Norton dome, has shown that answering the question whether classical mechanics is deterministic can be a complicated matter. In this paper I show that indeterministic systems similar to the Norton dome were already known in the nineteenth century: I discuss four nineteenth century authors who wrote about such systems, namely Poisson, Duhamel, Boussinesq and Bertrand. However, I argue that their discussion of such systems was very different from the contemporary (...) discussion about the Norton dome, because physicists in the nineteenth century conceived of determinism in essentially different ways: whereas in the contemporary literature on determinism in classical physics, determinism is usually taken to be a property of the equations of physics, in the nineteenth century determinism was primarily taken to be a presupposition of theories in physics, and as such it was not necessarily affected by the possible existence of systems such as the Norton dome. (shrink)

In our contemporary society one would be tempted to see solitude as the result of individualism. The most striking idea Barthes developed in Comment vivre ensemble was the way in which solitude could be lived as a collective experience. This collective enterprise was not the result of a selfish retreat devoted to personal preoccupations. It fulfilled itself rather as an action dedicated to the other. In front of this singular way of seeing, the question arises how Barthes conceived this culture (...) of distance as a ‘social’ action. Is it correct to present this ideological pathway as a form of courtesy, implying that others do not need to be confronted with the inner life of the individual? Taking these preliminary thoughts as a keystone, my article explores the content Barthes gives to his so-called socialisme des distances and how texts of early mystical societies develop this notion of distance. (shrink)

Proclus was one of the last great philosophers of Antiquity. His legacy in the cultural history of the west can hardly be overestimated. This book is the most comprehensive guide to Proclus' life, thought and legacy that is currently available.

In this paper I show that Proclus is an adherent of the Classical Model of Science as set out elsewhere in this issue (de Jong and Betti 2008), and that he adjusts certain conditions of the Model to his Neoplatonic epistemology and metaphysics. In order to show this, I develop a case study concerning philosophy of nature, which, despite its unstable subject matter, Proclus considers to be a science. To give this science a firm foundation Proclus distills from Plato’s Timaeus (...) the basic concepts Being and Becoming and a number of basic propositions, among others the quasi-definitions of the basic concepts. He subsequently explains the use of these quasi-definitions, that are actually epistemic guides, in such a way that he obtains a connection between a rational and an empirical approach to the natural world. A crucial task in establishing the connection is performed by the faculty of doxa and by geometrical conversion. The result is that Proclus secures a universal, necessary and known foundation for all of philosophy of nature. (shrink)

"Initium ut esset, creatus est homo": Iris Murdoch on Authority and Creativity In 1970 the British novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch published both her thirteenth novel, A Fairly Honourable Defeat, and her best known work of philosophy, The Sovereignty of Good. Given the proximity of these publication dates, it does not surprise that there are many points of comparison between these two works. The novel features, for instance, a character writing a work of moral philosophy not unlike Murdoch's own The (...) Sovereignty of Good, while another character exemplifies her moral philosophy in his life.This article proposes a reading of the novel as a critical commentary on the philosophical work, focusing on the tension between creation and authority. While Murdoch considers humans to be first and foremost creative, she is at the same time wary of the misleading nature of any act of creation. For Murdoch, any creator and any creation—a beautiful picture as well as a watertight theory—may transmit a certain authority, and that authority may get in the way of acknowledging reality. It thus hinders the moral life, which for Murdoch should be thought of as a life of attention—to reality and ultimately to the Good—rather than a series of wilful creations and actions.A Fairly Honourable Defeat queries the possibility and danger of creation, through different characters as well as through images of cleanliness and messiness. Thus, the character whose book of moral philosophy is challenged and who is found wanting when putting his ideas to practice, likes ‘to get things clear’. Another character, whose interferences create the novel's drama, has a self-confessed ‘passion for cleanliness and order’. The saint of the story, in contrast, does not interfere unless by necessity, and resides in one of the filthiest kitchens in the history of literature. Yet, none of the main characters exemplifies a solution to the tension between creation and authority found in Murdoch's philosophy. An indication of a solution is found in a minor character, and in his creations of outrageous bunches of flowers, unusual meals, and absurd interiors. Yet, its location in a subplot suggests that this solution is not in any way final. It is concluded that any final solution should not be expected, not in the least because of the pervasive nature of the tension between creation and authority, which goes well beyond Murdoch's own authorship. (shrink)

Bohm’s interpretation of quantum mechanics has generally been received as an attempt to restore the determinism of classical physics. However, although this interpretation, as Bohm initially proposed it in 1952, does indeed have the feature of being deterministic, for Bohm this was never the main point. In fact, in other publications and in correspondence from this period, he argued that the assumption that nature is deterministic is unjustified and should be abandoned. Whereas it has been argued before that Bohm’s commitment (...) to determinism was connected to his interest in Marxism, I argue for the opposite: Bohm found resources in Marxist philosophy for developing a nondeterministic notion of causality, which is based on the idea of infinite complexity and an infinite number of levels of nature. From ca. 1954 onwards, Bohm’s conception of causality further weakened, as he developed the idea of a dialectical relation between causality and chance. (shrink)

During the period 1860-1880, a number of physicists and mathematicians, including Maxwell, Stewart, Cournot and Boussinesq, used theories formulated in terms of physics to argue that the mind, the soul or a vital principle could have an impact on the body. This paper shows that what was primarily at stake for these authors was a concern about the irreducibility of life and the mind to physics, and that their theories can be regarded primarily as reactions to the law of conservation (...) of energy, which was used among others by Helmholtz and Du Bois-Reymond as an argument against the possibility of vital and mental causes in physiology. In light of this development, Maxwell, Stewart, Cournot and Boussinesq showed that it was still possible to argue for the irreducibility of life and the mind to physics, through an appeal to instability or indeterminism in physics: if the body is an unstable or physically indeterministic system, an immaterial principle can act through triggering or directing motions in the body, without violating the laws of physics. (shrink)

This chapter provides an analysis of the often mentioned but rarely explained ‘systematicity’ of Proclus’ version of Neoplatonism, and an introduction into the basics of his metaphysics. Starting from the assumption that any philosophical system stems from the desire for explanations, and that for Platonists this involved bridging the opposition between explanandum and explanans, it formulates a number of ensuing requirements, which lead to the construction of what is generally called a philosophical system. The authors then show how this pans (...) out in Proclus’ metaphysics, specifically the One, causality, and triads. Finally, they address the relevance of all this for human life, and briefly evaluate the downsides of Proclus’ systematicity and what sets him apart from predecessors. (shrink)

Making adaptive choices between solution strategies is a central element of contemporary mathematics education. However, previous studies signal that students make suboptimal choices between mental and written strategies to solve division problems. In particular, some students of a lower math ability level appear inclined to use mental strategies that lead to lower performance. The current study uses a pretest-training-posttest design to investigate the extent to which these students’ choices for written strategies and performance may be increased. Sixth graders of below-average (...) mathematics level (N = 147) participated in one of two training conditions: an explicit-scaffolding training designed to promote writing down calculations or a practice-only training where strategy use was not explicitly targeted. Written strategy choices and performance increased considerably from pretest to posttest for students in both training conditions, but not in different amounts. Exploratory results suggest that students’ strategy choices may also be affected by their attitudes and beliefs and the sociocultural context regarding strategy use. (shrink)

In late antiquity, logic developed into what Ebbesen calls the LAS, the Late Ancient Standard. This paper discusses the Neoplatonic use of LAS, as informed by epistemological and metaphysical concerns. It demonstrates this through an analysis of the late ancient debate about hypothetical and categorical logic as manifest in the practice of syllogizing Platonic dialogues. After an introduction of the Middle Platonist view on Platonic syllogistic as present in Alcinous, this paper presents an overview of its application in the syllogizing (...) practice of Proclus and others. That overview shows that the two types were considered two sides of the same coin, to be used for the appropriate occasions, and both relying on the methods of dialectic as revealing the structure of knowledge and reality. Pragmatics, dialectic, and didactic choices determine which type or combination is selected in syllogizing Plato. So even though there is no specific Neoplatonic logic, there is a specific Neoplatonic use of LAS. (shrink)

Besides offering opportunities in both clinical and non-clinical domains, the application of novel neuroimaging technologies raises pressing dilemmas. ‘Responsible Research and Innovation’ (RRI) aims to stimulate research and innovation activities that take ethical and social considerations into account from the outset. We previously identified that Dutch neuroscientists interpret “responsible innovation” as educating the public on neuroimaging technologies via the popular press. Their aim is to mitigate (neuro)hype, an aim shared with the wider emerging RRI community. Here, we present results of (...) a media-analysis undertaken to establish whether the body of articles in the Dutch popular press presents balanced conversations on neuroimaging research to the public. We found that reporting was mostly positive and framed in terms of (healthcare) progress. There was rarely a balance between technology opportunities and limitations, and even fewer articles addressed societal or ethical aspects of neuroimaging research. Furthermore, neuroimaging metaphors seem to favour oversimplification. Current reporting is therefore more likely to enable hype than to mitigate it. How can neuroscientists, given their self-ascribed social responsibility, address this conundrum? We make a case for a collective and shared responsibility among neuroscientists, journalists and other stakeholders, including funders, committed to responsible reporting on neuroimaging research. (shrink)

Philosophy is one of the least inclusive disciplines in the humanities and this situation is changing only very slowly. In this article I consider how one of the women of the Wartime Quartet, Iris Murdoch, can help to challenge this situation. Taking my cue from feminist and philosophical practices, I focus on Murdoch's experience of being a woman and a philosopher and on the role experience plays in her philosophical writing. I argue that her thinking is best characterised with the (...) notion of common sense orsensus communis. This term recognises her understanding of philosophy as based in experience and as a shared effort ‘to make sense of our life’, as Mary Midgley puts it. (shrink)

Recent publications have argued that practical wisdom is increasingly important for medical practices, particularly in complex contexts, to stay focused on giving good care in a moral sense to each individual patient. Our empirical investigation into an ordinary medical practice was aimed at exploring whether the practice would reveal practical wisdom, or, instead, adherence to conventional frames such as guidelines, routines and the dominant professional discourse. We performed a thematic analysis both of the medical files of a complex patient and (...) her daughter’s diary. We did find practical wisdom, but only sporadically, whereas it has proved to be essential for professional care. This deficit appeared to result from several factors like: the organization of the practice; established routines; a hierarchical culture; and a traditional medical discourse. Moreover, we discerned various negative consequences. More empirical research into practical wisdom in everyday medical practices is needed for the benefit of professional and morally good care for every patient. (shrink)

Aristotle described the scientific explanation of universal or general facts as deducing them through scientific demonstrations, that is, through syllogisms that met requirements he first formulated of logical validity and explanatoriness. In Chapters 19-23, he adds arguments for the further logical restrictions that scientific demonstrations can neither be indefinitely long nor infinitely extendible through the interposition of new middle terms. Chapters 24-26 argue for the superiority of universal over particular demonstration, of affirmative over negative demonstration, and of direct negative demonstration (...) over demonstration to the impossible. Chapters 27 34 discuss different aspects of sciences and scientific understanding, allowing us to distinguish between sciences, and between scientific understanding and other kinds of cognition, especially opinion. Philoponus' comments on these chapters are interesting especially because of his metaphysical analysis of universal predication and his understanding of the notion of subordinate sciences. We learn from his commentary that Philoponus believed in Platonic Forms as inherent in, and posterior to, the Divine Intellect, but ascribed to Aristotle an interpretation of Plato's Forms as independent substances, prior to the Demiurgic Intellect. A very important notion from Aristotle's Posterior Analytics is that of the 'subordination' of sciences, i.e. the idea that some sciences depend on 'higher' ones for some of their principles. Philoponus goes beyond Aristotle in suggesting a taxonomy of sciences, in which the subordinate science is the same in genus as the superordinate, but different in species. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that the development of Feyerabend’s philosophical ideas in the 1950s and 1960s largely took place in the context of debates on quantum mechanics. In particular, he developed his influential arguments for pluralism in science in discussions with the quantum physicist David Bohm, who had developed an alternative approach to quantum physics which (in Feyerabend’s perception) was met with a dogmatic dismissal by some of the leading quantum physicists. I argue that Feyerabend’s arguments for theoretical pluralism (...) and for challenging established theories were connected to his objections to the dogmatism and conservatism he observed in quantum physics. However, as Feyerabend gained insight into the physical details and historical complexities which led to the development of quantum mechanics, he gradually became more modest in his criticisms. His writings on quantum mechanics especially engaged with Niels Bohr; initially, he was critical of Bohr’s work in quantum mechanics, but in the late 1960s, he completely withdrew his criticism and even praised Bohr as a model scientist. He became convinced that however puzzling quantum mechanics seemed, it was methodologically unobjectionable – and this was crucial for his move towards ‘anarchism’ in philosophy of science. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the foundations of Laplace's famous statement of determinism in 1814, and argue that rather than derived from his mechanics, this statement is based on general philosophical principles, namely the principle of sufficient reason and the law of continuity. It is usually supposed that Laplace's statement is based on the fact that each system in classical mechanics has an equation of motion which has a unique solution. But Laplace never proved this result, and in fact he (...) could not have proven it, since it depends on a theorem about uniqueness of solutions to differential equations that was only developed later on. I show that the idea that is at the basis of Laplace's determinism was in fact widespread in enlightenment France, and is ultimately based on a re-interpretation of Leibnizian metaphysics, specifically the principle of sufficient reason and the law of continuity. Since the law of continuity also lies at the basis of the application of differential calculus in physics, one can say that Laplace's determinism and the idea that systems in physics can be described by differential equations with unique solutions have a common foundation. (shrink)

When David Bohm published his alternative theory of quantum mechanics in 1952, it was not received well; a recurring criticism was that it formed a reactionary attempt to return to classical physics. In response, Bohm emphasized the progressiveness of his approach, and even turned the accusation of classicality around by arguing that he wanted to move beyond classical elements still inherent in orthodox quantum mechanics. In later years, he moved more and more towards speculative and mystical directions. This paper aims (...) to explain this discrepancy between the ways in which Bohm’s work on quantum mechanics has been received and the way in which Bohm himself presented it. I reject the idea that Bohm’s early work can be described as mechanist, determinist, and realist, in contrast to his later writings, and argue that there is in fact a strong continuity between his work on quantum mechanics from the early 1950s and his later, more speculative writings. In particular, I argue that Bohm was never strongly committed to determinism and was a realist in some ways but not in others. A closer look at Bohm’s philosophical commitments highlights the ways in which his theory of quantum mechanics is non-classical and does not offer a way to avoid all ‘quantum weirdness’. (shrink)

The reversibility problem (better known as the reversibility objection) is usually taken to be an internal problem in the kinetic theory of gases, namely the problem of how to account for the second law of thermodynamics within this theory. Historically, it is seen as an objection that was raised against Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases, which led Boltzmann to a statistical approach to the kinetic theory, culminating in the development of statistical mechanics. In this paper, I show that in the (...) late nineteenth century, the reversibility problem had a much broader significance - it was widely discussed and certainly not only as an objection to Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases. In this period, there was a conflict between mechanism and irreversibility in physics which was tied up with central issues in philosophy of science such as materialism, empiricism and the need for mechanistic foundations of physical theories, as well as with concerns about the heat death of the universe. I discuss how this conflict was handled by the major physicists of the period, such as Maxwell, Kelvin, Duhem, Poincaré, Mach and Planck, as well as by a number of lesser-known authors. (shrink)

This article starts from the observation that Socratic dialogues in the Nelson–Heckmann tradition can create a sense of belonging or community among participants. This observation has led me to the current argument that Socratic dialogue offers an alternative to more prominent forms of conversation, which I have called ‘discussion’ and ‘discourse of uncritical acceptance.’ I explain the difference between these forms of conversation by considering the role of experience in Socratic dialogue and the requirement that participants put themselves in each (...) other’s shoes. My argument is structured according to the different phases in a Socratic dialogue and placed within the literature on this method, as well as Hannah Arendt’s writing on imagination. (shrink)

If you ask people ‘What does a philosopher look like?’, their first response is often an image of an elderly man with a beard. This image can be explained by looking at philosophy's history, which has been dominated by a very select group of men. Yet, in recent years it has become obvious that the history of philosophy is not as monochrome as is often assumed. In this article, I consider how the inclusion of different voices in the history of (...) philosophy should impel us to rethink the ways in which the history of philosophy is told. (shrink)

BackgroundThe emphasis on impact factors and the quantity of publications intensifies competition between researchers. This competition was traditionally considered an incentive to produce high-quality work, but there are unwanted side-effects of this competition like publication pressure. To measure the effect of publication pressure on researchers, the Publication Pressure Questionnaire (PPQ) was developed. Upon using the PPQ, some issues came to light that motivated a revision.MethodWe constructed two new subscales based on work stress models using the facet method. We administered the (...) revised PPQ (PPQr) to a convenience sample together with the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and the Work Design Questionnaire (WDQ). To assess which items best measured publication pressure, we carried out a principal component analysis (PCA). Reliability was sufficient when Cronbach’s alpha > 0.7. Finally, we administered the PPQr in a larger, independent sample of researchers to check the reliability of the revised version.ResultsThree components were identified as ‘stress’, ‘attitude’, and ‘resources’. We selected 3 × 6 = 18 items with high loadings in the three-component solution. Based on the convenience sample, Cronbach’s alphas were 0.83 for stress, 0.80 for attitude, and 0.76 for resources. We checked the validity of the PPQr by inspecting the correlations with the MBI and the WDQ. Stress correlated 0.62 with MBI’s emotional exhaustion. Resources correlated 0.50 with relevant WDQ subscales. To assess the internal structure of the PPQr in the independent reliability sample, we conducted the principal component analysis. The three-component solution explains 50% of the variance. Cronbach’s alphas were 0.80, 0.78, and 0.75 for stress, attitude, and resources, respectively.ConclusionWe conclude that the PPQr is a valid and reliable instrument to measure publication pressure in academic researchers from all disciplinary fields. The PPQr strongly relates to burnout and could also be beneficial for policy makers and research institutions to assess the degree of publication pressure in their institute. (shrink)

Bohr’s work in quantum mechanics posed a challenge to philosophers of science, who struggled with the question of whether and to what degree his theories and methods could be considered rational. This paper focuses on Popper, Feyerabend, Lakatos and Kuhn, all of whom recognized some irrational, dogmatic, paradoxical or even inconsistent features in Bohr’s work. Popper, Feyerabend, and Lakatos expressed strong criticism of Bohr’s approach to quantum physics, while Kuhn argued that such criticism was unlikely to be fruitful: progress in (...) science is generally not made through philosophical reflection. Feyerabend’s criticism of Bohr gradually weakened, as he gained a more detailed understanding of the development of Bohr’s views on quantum mechanics, and this went together with an increasingly critical view of normative philosophy of science and was instrumental to his conversion to ‘anarchism’. This paper aims to show that quantum mechanics played a central role in their debates and disagreements on the rationality of science and the possibility of a normative philosophy of science. (shrink)

According to Ernest Nagel, determinism is central to the scientific enterprise. Faced with the claim that determinism fails in quantum mechanics, Nagel proposed a notion of determinism which does not rely on a fundamental level of description, and can play a role in different scientific disciplines irrespective of their reducibility to physics. Nagel argues that determinism ultimately plays the role of a guiding principle in scientific research. In this way, Nagel argues that determinism has an enduring relevance in all domains (...) of science, from quantum physics to the social sciences. (shrink)

In the mid-eighteenth century, it was usually taken for granted that all curves described by a single mathematical function were continuous, which meant that they had a shape without bends and a well-defined derivative. In this paper I discuss arguments for this claim made by two authors, Emilie du Châtelet and Roger Boscovich. I show that according to them, the claim follows from the law of continuity, which also applies to natural processes, so that natural processes and mathematical functions have (...) a shared characteristic of being continuous. However, there were certain problems with their argument, and they had to deal with a counterexample, namely a mathematical function that seemed to describe a discontinuous curve. (shrink)

The development of rigorous foundations of differential calculus in the course of the nineteenth century led to concerns among physicists about its applicability in physics. Through this development, differential calculus was made independent of empirical and intuitive notions of continuity, and based instead on strictly mathematical conditions of continuity. However, for Boltzmann and Poincaré, the applicability of mathematics in physics depended on whether there is a basis in physics, intuition or experience for the fundamental axioms of mathematics—and this meant that (...) to determine the status of differential equations in physics, they had to consider whether there was a justification for these mathematical continuity conditions in physics. For this reason, their ideas about continuity and discreteness in nature were entangled with epistemology and philosophy of mathematics. They reached opposite conclusions: Poincaré argued that physicists must work with a continuous representation of nature, and thus with differential equations, while Boltzmann argued that physicists must ultimately take nature to be discrete. (shrink)

Footnotes to Plato. A plea for writing philosophical dialogues This article aims to encourage writing philosophical dialogues. Its main focus is education. Writing philosophical dialogues introduces students to a genre that was once widely practiced. It can teach philosophical skills, such as the ability to put oneself in the position of another. Yet, writing philosophical dialogues is not as common as it used to be and this creates difficulties when teaching students to write such dialogues. In order to deal with (...) these difficulties I first consider reasons for the contemporary scarcity of philosophical dialogues. I then provide possible ways to help students write philosophical dialogues. I show that writing philosophical dialogues today can benefit from working with other disciplines, especially creative writing and it thus has the additional benefit of encouraging reflection on philosophical practices. My argument is based on my own experience of writing (and failing to write) philosophical dialogues and as well as the experience of teaching philosophical dialogue writing to students. (shrink)

This article starts from the observation that Socratic dialogues in the Nelson–Heckmann tradition can create a sense of belonging or community among participants. This observation has led me to the current argument that Socratic dialogue offers an alternative to more prominent forms of conversation, which I have called ‘discussion’ and ‘discourse of uncritical acceptance.’ I explain the difference between these forms of conversation by considering the role of experience in Socratic dialogue and the requirement that participants put themselves in each (...) other’s shoes. My argument is structured according to the different phases in a Socratic dialogue and placed within the literature on this method, as well as Hannah Arendt’s writing on imagination. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that before the introduction of quantum mechanics, determinism was a straightforward consequence of the laws of mechanics. However, around the nineteenth century, many physicists, for various reasons, did not regard determinism as a provable feature of physics. This is not to say that physicists in this period were not committed to determinism; there were some physicists who argued for fundamental indeterminism, but most were committed to determinism in some sense. However, for them, determinism was often not (...) a provable feature of physical theory, but rather an a priori principle or a methodological presupposition. Determinism was strongly connected with principles of causality and continuity and the principle of sufficient reason; this thesis examines the relevance of these principles in the history of physics. Moreover, the history of determinism in this period shows that there were essential changes in the relation between mathematics and physics: whereas in the eighteenth century, there were metaphysical arguments which lent support to differential calculus, by the early twentieth century the development of rigorous foundations of differential calculus led to concerns about its applicability in physics. The thesis consists of six papers. In the first paper, "On the origins and foundations of Laplacian determinism", I argue that Laplace, who is usually pointed out as the first major proponent of scientific determinism, did not derive his statement of determinism directly from the laws of mechanics; rather, his determinism has a background in eighteenth century Leibnizian metaphysics, and is ultimately based on the law of continuity and the principle of sufficient reason. These principles also provided a basis for the idea that one can find laws of nature in the form of differential equations which uniquely determine natural processes. In "The Norton dome and the nineteenth century foundations of determinism", I argue that an example of indeterminism in classical physics which has attracted attention in philosophy of physics in recent years, namely the Norton come, was already discussed during the nineteenth century. However, the significance which this type of indeterminism had back then is very different from the significance which the Norton dome currently has in philosophy of physics. This is explained by the fact that determinism was conceived of in an essentially different way: in particular, the nineteenth century authors who wrote about this type of indeterminism regarded determinism as an a priori principle rather than as a property of the equations of physics. In "Vital instability: life and free will in physics and physiology, 1860-1880", I show how Maxwell, Cournot, Stewart and Boussinesq used the possibility of unstable or indeterministic mechanical systems to argue that the will or a vital principle can intervene in organic processes without violating the laws of physics, so that a strictly dualist account of life and the mind is possible. Moreover, I show that their ideas can be understood as a reaction to the law of conservation of energy and to the way it was used in physiology to exclude vital and mental causes. In "The nineteenth century conflict between mechanism and irreversibility", I show that in the late nineteenth century, there was a widespread conflict between the aim of reducing physical processes to mechanics and the recognition that certain processes are irreversible. Whereas the so-called reversibility objection is known as an objection that was made to the kinetic theory of gases, it in fact appeared in a wide range of arguments, and was susceptible to very different interpretations. It was only when the project of reducing all of physics to mechanics lost favor, in the late nineteenth century, that the reversibility objection came to be used as an argument against mechanism and against the kinetic theory of gases. In "Continuity in nature and in mathematics: Boltzmann and Poincaré", I show that the development of rigorous foundations of differential calculus in the nineteenth century led to concerns about its applicability in physics: through this development, differential calculus was made independent of empirical and intuitive notions of continuity and was instead based on mathematical continuity conditions, and for Boltzmann and Poincaré, the applicability of differential calculus in physics depended on whether these continuity conditions could be given a foundation in intuition or experience. In the final paper, "Determinism around 1900", I briefly discuss the implications of the developments described in the previous two papers for the history of determinism in physics, through a discussion of determinism in Mach, Poincaré and Boltzmann. I show that neither of them regards determinism as a property of the laws of mechanics; rather, for them, determinism is a precondition for science, which can be verified to the extent that science is successful. (shrink)