Finland is internationally known as one of the leading centers of twentieth century analytic philosophy. This volume offers for the first time an overall survey of the Finnish analytic school. The rise of this trend is illustrated by original articles of Edward Westermarck, Eino Kaila, Georg Henrik von Wright, and Jaakko Hintikka. Contributions of Finnish philosophers are then systematically discussed in the fields of logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, history of philosophy, ethics and social philosophy. Metaphilosophical reflections on (...) the nature of philosophy are highlighted by the Finnish dialogue between analytic philosophy, phenomenology, pragmatism, and critical theory. (shrink)

Central topics in medieval logic are here treated in a way that is congenial to the modern reader, without compromising historical reliability. The achievements of medieval logic are made available to a wider philosophical public then the medievalists themselves. The three genres of logica moderna arising in a later Middle Ages are covered: obligations, insolubles and consequences - the first time these have been treated in such a unified way. The articles on obligations look at the role of logical consistence (...) in medieval disputation techniques. Those on insolubles concentrate on medieval solutions to the Liar Paradox. There is also a systematic account of how medieval authors described the logical content of an inference, and how they thought that the validity of an inference could be guaranteed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Concordance to Descartes’ “Meditationes de Prima Philosophia.” by Katsuzo Murakami, Meguru Sasaki, Tetsuichi NishimuraTuomo Aho and Mikko YrjönsuuriKatsuzo Murakami, Meguru Sasaki, and Tetsuichi Nishimura. Concordance to Descartes’ “Meditationes de Prima Philosophia.” Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann, 1995. Pp. v + 355. Cloth, DM 198.00.This is a product from the Descartes database of Tokyo University scholars. It gives an account of the occurrences and contexts of words in the Meditationes (the (...) main text only), aiming at a complete survey of vocabulary. The work keeps strictly to the form of a lexical concordance; in addition to the word lists, there is only a brief instruction. (A bibliographical note about editions might be useful.) Technical realization is excellent. But concordances like this are big and expensive books; could they possibly be published more easily in electronic format?Most words of Descartes’s text are included in the main concordance. There they are listed following the alphabetic order of standard dictionaries, and in each entry the total amount of occurrences of the word is announced. Then every occurrence is quoted in its context (one line = approximately two in the Adam-Tannery standard edition). Quotes within each entry are arranged and their places identified by digits showing the page and line in AT edition.Some function words and most indeclinables are placed in an index which gives only the numbers and locations of their occurrences. In most cases this is certainly reasonable, but some choices are problematic. For example, why have the 638 + 36 occurrences of qui in its two senses (‘who’, ‘what’; ‘how’, ‘whereby’) been printed with full contexts, while the philosophically interesting adverb plane (‘plainly’, 55 times) is to be found merely in the index?Concordances are uncommon for modern philosophy, but they are familiar and valuable tools in work with ancient texts. Obviously they function in linguistic research, and even the present Descartes book has largely the same goal: to serve the study of neo-Latin language. Undoubtedly, a rigorous case study like this is important for such [End Page 135] investigations. (There remains, however, a difficulty, as the editors point out, because the AT text differs from original editions, mainly in matters of orthography and punctuation.) But also a completely nonlinguistic philosopher can benefit from this material. It is useful to see all occurrences of a word together and at once; many careless generalizations could be avoided by checking from a concordance.One can make amusing observations at random. Thus some terms have remarkably low frequencies (notitia, qualitas occur 4 times; materia 3 times; absolutus, principium 2 times; abstractus, definire, dispositio, species 1 time; intentio, possibile not at all). On the other hand, there is an overwhelming concentration on the semantic family round cogitare, cognoscere, comprehendere, concipere, percipere. Descartes has some idiosyncratic favorites, like advertere/animadvertere. One also notices his strong liking for words of seeing and light (15 arguments from lumen naturale!). It hardly is a surprise that his most cherished favorite is ego (492 times).Tuomo Aho and Mikko Yrjönsuuri University of HelsinkiCopyright © 1998 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc... (shrink)

The paper considers two kinds of medieval obligational disputations and the medieval genre of sophismata in relation to the kinds of inferences accepted in them. The main texts discussed are the anonymous Obligationes parisienses from the early 13th century and Richard Kilvington’s Sophismata from the early 14th century. Four different kinds of warranted transition from an antecedent to a consequent become apparent in the medieval discussions: the strong logical validity of basic propositional logic, analytic validity based on conceptual containment, merely (...) semantic impossibility of the antecedent being true without the consequent, and intuitively true counterfactual conditionals. As these different kinds of consequences are spelled out by means of obligational disputations, it appears that the genre of obligations is indeed useful for the “knowledge of consequences,” as the anonymous Obligationes parisienses claims. (shrink)

In this paper, Ockham's theory of an ideal language of thought is used to illuminate problems of interpretation of his theory of truth. The twentieth century idea of logical form is used for finding out what kinds of atomic sentences there are in OckhamÕs mental language. It turns out that not only the theory of modes of supposition, but also the theory of supposition in general is insufficient as a full theory of truth. Rather, the theory of supposition is a (...) theory of reference, which can help in the determination of truth values within the scope of simple predications. Outside this area, there are interesting types of sentences, whose truth does not depend on whether the terms supposit for the same things or not for the same things. (shrink)

The essays in this book give the first comprehensive picture of the medieval development of philosophical theories concerning the nature of emotions and the influence they have on human choice.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 98-99 [Access article in PDF] Henrik Lagerlund and Mikko Yrjönsuuri, editors. Emotions and Choice from Boethius to Descartes. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. Pp. xi + 342. Paper $38.00. This book contains twelve essays that work together to trace a variety of theories of emotion, intellect, and will, specifically connected to the possibility of moral decision and action, that (...) run from the late ancient period to the early modern period. Though some essays are more history than philosophy, the collection nevertheless balances out and brings to the reader an in-depth study of what the editors rightly describe as a neglected field of research. Contributors are: Calvin Normore, Simo Knuuttila, Risto Saarinen, Mikko Yrjonsuuri, John Boler, Vesa Hirvonen, Henrik Lagerlund, Lorenzo Casini, Peter King, Deborah Brown, and Lilli Alanen.It is clear from the editors' introduction that the idea behind the collection is the piecing together of a complex patchwork of theories, showing how they form a single, coherent intellectual history from Boethius to Descartes. Time will tell whether the story told holds up. Several of the essays bring to light previously ignored philosophers of the medieval and scholastic periods who are seen as important players in the history being worked out. And, several essays (Brown's and Alanen's, e.g.) forward new and interesting—though arguably controversial—takes on philosophers well known to many (in their cases, Descartes). So, there is much worth looking at here.There are a few philosophical landmines. For example, in places authors seem unconcerned about potential problems arising from the way in which a view is stated. For instance, in explaining how a human being wills, the view that the willing is done via a faculty inherent in the soul is developed. This, of course, is all well and good. But, the author goes on to say, "If whatever the will wills is attained..." (18), which makes the will the subject of willing, not the human being. The will is also said to have passions, and the rational part of the soul an appetitive faculty (ibid.). So, is it that human beings do not will and do not have passions, but the wills will and have passions? Doesn't such a 'theory' simply push back what it is that needs to be explained? For, how does the will will? Does it have a faculty that wills, and so on? The trouble is that the reader is not sure whether the landmine is inherent in the view being discussed, an artifact of the text, or something invented by an author in the exegesis itself. [End Page 98]The river is high with respect to the readings. And so, it is not recommended to those coming, for example, to the topics of rational choice, free will, or weakness of will for the first time. However, it is highly recommended to those whose research deals with such topics, or is in the field of the history of philosophy of mind. Kurt Smith Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania... (shrink)

Philosophers widely agree that emotions may have or lack appropriateness or fittingness, which in the emotional domain is an analogue of truth. I defend de Sousa's account of emotional truth by arguing that emotions have cognitive content as digitalized evaluative perceptions of the particular object of emotion, in terms of the relevant formal property. I argue that an emotion is true if and only if there is an actual fit between the particular and the formal objects of emotion, and the (...) emotion's propositional content is semantically satisfied, or the target of the emotion exists. Emotions meet the syntactic and disciplinary requirements of minimally truth-apt states. Appropriate fit occurs when lower-level properties of particular objects of emotion provide sufficient warrant to make ascription of the relevant formal properties superassertable. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to analyse Hobbes’s understanding of democracy. The first part of the article analyses the role of democracy in the social contract. It aims to show how there exists a democratic element at the beginning of the process of social contract, in which the multitude is transformed into a people. However, after the first social contract is made, Hobbes aims to reduce the power of the people by leading the process of social contract on to (...) another level, on which the power of the people is assigned to a representative of the sovereign power, for example a monarch. The second part of the article aims to explain the practical reasons, provided by Hobbes in different parts of his political theory, for his aversion to a democratic form of government. Main reason for this, it is argued, is that democratic government is closest to the unwanted multitude. Thus, in his political theory Hobbes uses democracy to build sovereign power, but does not trust it as a form of government. (shrink)

Background:Nurses frequently face ethically demanding situations in their work, and these may lead to stress of conscience. Working life is currently accelerating and job demands are intensifying. These intensified job demands include (1) work intensification, (2) intensified job-related planning demands, (3) intensified career-related planning demands, and (4) intensified learning demands. At the same time, many healthcare organizations are implementing major organizational changes that have an influence on personnel.Aim:The aim of the study was to investigate the association between intensified job demands (...) and stress of conscience, and whether their association is moderated by organizational change experiences among nurses. Experiences of organizational change may expose employees to stress of conscience or serve as a buffer because employees appraise, involve, and cope with changes differently.Research design:Questionnaires measuring stress of conscience, intensified job demands, and organizational change experiences were completed by nurses (n = 511) in a healthcare district undergoing a major organizational change.Ethical considerations:Throughout, the study procedures were implemented according to the guidelines of the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity and the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments. According to the Finnish regulations, because participation was voluntary, informed consent was requested, and participants were advised of their right to withdraw from the study at will. No permission from an ethics committee was necessary.Findings:Work intensification and personal worry considering organizational change were associated with more severe stress of conscience among nurses. Nurses’ experiences of managements’ competent handling of organizational change buffered the association between work intensification and stress of conscience.Conclusions:During organizational changes, management may alleviate nurses’ stress of conscience by proper communication and support procedures. (shrink)

It is this demand to address questions emerging from these experiential and normative perspectives to which this book on emotions, ethics, and authenticity ...

On one day in 2009, in 38 countries around the world, 4,000 ordinary citizens gathered to discuss the future of climate policy. This project, 'WWViews', was the first-ever global democratic deliberation - an attempt to enable normal people to reach informed decisions on and impact the global policy process.This book, written by the international practitioners and scholars who facilitated the project, analyses the experiences and lessons from this ground-breaking event. Despite the apparent success of the individual deliberations, the recommendations had (...) little impact within the media or the policy process at Copenhagen. The authors examine these successes and failures, and the challenges and opportunities of such deliberative events. Through this they explore important themes for participatory approaches from the local to the global: the role of deliberation within global governance; methodology and practice; participant selection; policy impacts; engaging the media; how policy culture affects deliberation uptake; capacity building and knowledge transfer; process evaluation; content and argumentation analysis; and gender, race and class aspects.The global aims of the WWViews project, along with the opportunity to evaluate the same process in different national and cultural contexts, makes this a hugely valuable and informative study for all those interested in democratic deliberation and environmental governance from the small to the international scale. (shrink)

The on-going space settlement debate has raised questions whether it is possible to settle other planets, and if it was, is it something humans should do. The problem with this space ethical discussion is that it can easily become too vague. To avoid this problem, we suggest a framework for identifying relevant variables that affect the feasibility constraints and desirability factors of establishing space settlements. The variables we focus on include the settlement stage, scale and time frame. Based on the (...) relevant literature, we take mission cost, survival, habitation, water, in situ resources for food, oxygen and fuel energy and dependence on Earth as feasibility constraints that are relevant for the framework. None of them are hard constraints, but rather soft feasibility constraints that make it difficult to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars in the near- to medium-term future. However, in the past, humanity has achieved goals that first seemed infeasible. To justify the costs and effort, the goal must be highly morally desirable. We discuss five different desirability factors that could help justify the effort but as each framework has unique feasibility constraints, not all of these factors are sufficient or necessary to justify this effort. We argue that some of the desirability factors prominent in space ethical literature are not sufficient or necessary in our framework, and thus, we conclude that the normative grounds for establishing a permanent Mars settlement in the foreseeable future are weak. (shrink)

Artikkeli on kommentaari Elisa Aaltolan teoksesta Varieties of Empathy – Moral Psychology and Animal Ethics, joka käsittelee erilaisia empatian muotoja sekä niiden moraalisia ansioita ja rajoituksia etiikassa, erityisesti suhtautumisessa eläimiin. Totean aluksi olevani Aaltolan kanssa samaa mieltä teoksen pääasioista, ja keskityn kommenteissani kahteen sivuteemaan: kognitiivisen empatian moraaliseen statukseen ja reflektiivisen empatian sisältöön. Kognitiivisen empatian osalta pohdin ovatko narsistisista tai psykopaattisista persoonallisuushäiriöistä kärsivät henkilöt parhaita esimerkkejä affektiivisen empatian puutteen moraalisista vaikutuksista. Ehdotan että kognitiivisen empatian moraalista statusta voisi tutkia myös sellaisilla henkilöillä, (...) joiden hoidossa käytetään beetasalpaajia, jotka heikentävät tunteisiin kuuluvaa kehollista aktivaatiota ja siten oletettavasti myös affektiivista empatiaa. Reflektiivisen empatian osalta pohdin tarkkaavaisuuden roolia kriittisessä reflektiossa. Aaltola erittelee tarkkaavaisuutta mindfulness-ajattelun sekä Iris Murdochin ja Simone Weilin filosofioiden avulla. Tarkkaavaisuuteen myös kuuluu kriittinen näkökulma, sillä sen tarkoitus on paljastaa ja oikaista epäjohdonmukaisuudesta, puutteellisesta tiedosta tai ymmärryksestä tai puolueellisuudesta johtuvia virheitä empaattisessa suhtautumisessa muihin eläimiin ja ihmisiin. Totean, että Aaltolan esitys jättää kuitenkin avoimeksi, mistä tällainen kriittisen arvioinnin ja eettisen kultivoinnin näkökulma nousee, jos tarkkaavaisuus ei ole luonteeltaan analyyttista eikä ensisijaisesti rationaalistakaan. Näistä huomautuksista huolimatta suosittelen Aaltolan teosta kaikille empatiasta ja etiikasta kiinnostuneille. (shrink)

The Fable of the bees and the Treatise of human nature were written to define and dissect the essential components of a 'civil society'. How have early readings of the Fable skewed our understanding of the work and its author? To what extent did Mandeville's celebrated work influence that of Hume? In this pioneering book, Mikko Tolonen extends current research at the intersection of philosophy and book history by analysing the two parts of the Fable in relation to the (...) development of the Treatise. Focussing on the key themes of selfishness, pride, justice and politeness, Tolonen traces the evolution of Mandeville's thinking on human nature and the origins of political society to explore the relationship between his Fable and Hume's Treatise. Through a close examination of the publishing history of the Fable and F. B. Kaye's seminal edition, Tolonen uncovers hitherto overlooked differences between Parts I and II to open up new approaches in Mandeville scholarship. As the question of social responsibility dominates the political agenda, the legacy of these key Enlightenment philosophers is as pertinent today as it was to our predecessors. (shrink)

Existing scientific concepts of group or shared or collective emotion fail to appreciate several elements of collectivity in such emotions. Moreover, the idea of shared emotions is threatened by the individualism of emotions that comes in three forms: ontological, epistemological, and physical. The problem is whether or not we can provide a plausible account of ?straightforwardly shared? emotions without compromising our intuitions about the individualism of emotions. I discuss two philosophical accounts of shared emotions that explain the collectivity of emotions (...) in terms of their intentional structure: Margaret Gilbert's plural subject account, and Hans Bernhard Schmid's phenomenological account. I argue that Gilbert's view fails because it relegates affective experience into a contingent role in emotions and because a joint commitment to feel amounts to the creation of a feeling rule rather than to an emotion. The problems with Schmid's view are twofold: first, a phenomenological fusion of feelings is not necessary for shared emotions and second, Schmid is not sensitive enough to different forms of shared concerns. I then outline my own typology that distinguishes between weakly, moderately, and strongly shared emotions on the basis of the participants? shared concerns of different degree of collectivity, on the one hand, and the synchronization of their emotional responses, on the other hand. All kind of shared emotions in my typology are consistent with the individualism of emotions, while the question about ?straightforward sharing? is argued to be of secondary importance. (shrink)

Perceptual theories of emotion purport to avoid the problems of traditional cognitivism and noncognitivism by modelling emotion on perception, which shares the most conspicuous dimensions of emotion, intentionality and phenomenality. In this paper, I shall reconstrue and discuss four key arguments that perceptual theorists have presented in order to show that emotion is a kind of perception, or that there are close analogies between emotion and perception. These arguments are, from stronger to weaker claims: the perceptual system argument; the argument (...) from noninferential structure; the argument from epistemic role; and the argument from phenomenology. I argue that, while the arguments in favour of assimilating emotion to perception fail, the analogies between emotion and perception are not as close as perceptual theorists suggest even if some emotions resemble perception more than others, thanks to the two-levelled structure of emotional processing. (shrink)

Research on the phenomenology of agency for joint action has so far focused on the sense of agency and control in joint action, leaving aside questions on how it feels to act together. This paper tries to fill this gap in a way consistent with the existing theories of joint action and shared emotion. We first reconstruct Pacherie’s account on the phenomenology of agency for joint action, pointing out its two problems, namely the necessary trade-off between the sense of self- (...) and we-agency; and the lack of affective phenomenology of joint action in general. After elaborating on these criticisms based on our theory of shared emotion, we substantiate the second criticism by discussing different mechanisms of shared affect—feelings and emotions—that are present in typical joint actions. We show that our account improves on Pacherie’s, first by introducing our agentive model of we-agency to overcome her unnecessary dichotomy between a sense of self- and we-agency, and then by suggesting that the mechanisms of shared affect enhance not only the predictability of other agents’ actions as Pacherie highlights, but also an agentive sense of we-agency that emerges from shared emotions experienced in the course and consequence of joint action. (shrink)

Interdisciplinarity is widely considered necessary to solving many contemporary problems, and new funding structures and instruments have been created to encourage interdisciplinary research at universities. In this article, we study a small technical university specializing in green technology which implemented a strategy aimed at promoting and developing interdisciplinary collaboration. It did so by reallocating its internal research funds for at least five years to “research platforms” that required researchers from at least two of the three schools within the university to (...) participate. Using data from semi-structured interviews from researchers in three of these platforms, we identify specific tensions that the strategy has generated in this case: in the allocation of platform resources, in the division of labor and disciplinary relations, in choices over scientific output and academic careers. We further show how the particular platform format exacerbates the identified tensions in our case. We suggest that certain features of the current platform policy incentivize shallow interdisciplinary interactions, highlighting potential limits on the value of attempting to push for interdisciplinarity through internal funding. (shrink)

This paper seeks to establish that Bernard Mandeville's ideas on courage and honour shaped the Scottish debate about ancients and moderns by formulating a perspective how eighteenth-century civil societies grew large, luxurious and feminine without losing their ability to wage war. My focus is on Mandeville's positive influence on David Hume, whose writings were a springboard for many Mandevillean ideas in Scotland. In contrast to a recent claim in scholarship, Hume aimed to discredit, instead of developing, Shaftesburyan ideas of ancient (...) courage. The concluding part of the paper will discuss Andrew Millar and Adam Ferguson in this context. (shrink)

The philosophy of mechanisms has developed rapidly during the last 30 years. As mechanisms-based explanations are often seen as an alternative to nomological, law-based explanations, MBEs could be relevant in IS. We begin by offering a short history of mechanistic philosophy and set out to clarify the contemporary landscape. We then suggest that mechanistic models provide an alternative to variance and process models in IS. Finally, we highlight how MBEs typically contain deliberate misrepresentations. Although MBEs have recently been advocated as (...) critical realist accounts in IS, idealizations seem to violate some fundamental tenets of CR and research method principles for CR. Idealizations in MBEs, therefore, may risk being regarded as flawed in IS. If it turns out that CR cannot account for idealizations, naturalism can, and it does so without extra-philosophical baggage. (shrink)

While there are growing bodies of research examining both the differences between strongly and poorly socially performing firms, and the impact of firm leaders on other strategic outcomes, little has been done in examining the effect of firm leaders on corporate social performance (CSP). This study directly addresses this issue by using upper echelon theory, and the KLD Research Analytics CSP ratings, to show that observable CEO characteristics predict differences in CSP between firms, even when firm and industry characteristics are (...) controlled for. Using a sample of 650 public US firms I find that strong or exemplary CSP, as measured by the strengths categories of KLD's ratings, is positively related to the CEO having a bachelor's degree in humanities, having a breadth of career experience and being female. I find that KLD strength ratings are negatively related to the CEO having a bachelor's degree in economics and to their level of short-term compensation. Preliminary tests of causality support the assertion that these effects reflect CEO discretion rather than being an artifact of reverse causality. Significant relationships between the CEO characteristics and poor social performance as measured by the concerns categories of KLD's ratings are not found. This suggests that CEOs have more discretion in influencing strong and exemplary social performance than in impacting poor CSP. Implications, particularly for economics education, are discussed. While there are many fruitful directions for future research, the benefits and challenges to conducting similar studies in other countries is focused upon to correspond to the global nature of this special issue. (shrink)

Although the subjective expected utility (SEU) theory is more than 60 years old, it was recently discovered by Hartmann (Econometrica 88(1):203–205, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA17428) that one of the original seven postulates is redundant, i.e., it is implied by the other six postulates. In this brief communication, we show that this redundant axiom is the only one that is implied by the other axioms, thereby establishing that the remaining six postulates form an independent axiomatic system. This result further streamlines the preference assumptions (...) underlying the SEU theory. (shrink)

As artificial intelligence continues to have a fundamental impact in our world and lives, a crucial need arises for integrating ethical and constructivist principles in the design of AI ….