The modal -calculus extends basic modal logic with second-order quantification in terms of arbitrarily nested fixpoint operators. Its satisfiability problem is EXPTIME-complete. Decision procedures for the modal -calculus are not easy to obtain though since the arbitrary nesting of fixpoint constructs requires some combinatorial arguments for showing the well-foundedness of least fixpoint unfoldings. The tableau-based decision procedures so far also make assumptions on the unfoldings of fixpoint formulas, e.g., explicitly require formulas to be in guarded normal form. In this paper (...) we present a tableau calculus for deciding satisfiability of arbitrary, i.e., not necessarily guarded -calculus formulas. It is based on a new unfolding rule for greatest fixpoint formulas which allows unguarded formulas to be handled without an explicit transformation into guarded form, thus avoiding a exponential blow-up in formula size. We prove soundness and completeness of the calculus, and compare it empirically to using guarded transformation instead. The new unfolding rule can also be used to handle nested star operators in PDL formulas correctly. (shrink)

Schools of economic ethics inspired by Buchanan propose viewing ethical conflicts as prisoners’ dilemmas to facilitate solutions based on Pareto-improving institutional changes. Given that healthcare is determined by complex institutional arrangements, it has been claimed that this approach is also suitable for business ethics in healthcare. To scrutinize this claim, this research systematically searched for studies reporting PD structures in healthcare. PubMed, EconLit, and EconBiz were searched to find articles in German and English. Study type, characteristics of the game, and (...) the proposed means to overcome the dilemma were extracted and analyzed for aspects supporting or challenging the claim. Across 53 studies, 68 descriptions of various dilemmas in healthcare and public health were identified. Many authors successfully developed proposals for institutional change to overcome these dilemmas. However, many of these analyses exhibited limitations such as oversimplifications or inconsistencies. Also, the quality of evidence on both the characteristics of dilemmas and the effectiveness of proposed solutions was very poor. The subsamples of studies that explicitly cited the ethical approach were disjunct from those that applied empirical methods to analyze the dilemmas. The large number of identified PDs indicates that economic ethics is relevant to healthcare. However, there is a need for further evidence to substantiate both the descriptive and prescriptive claims of this ethical theory. It should thus be seen as a complement that needs justification, rather than a substitute superior to other ethical frameworks. (shrink)

How may feelings of love and hate impact people’s attention? We used a modified Attentional Blink (AB) task in which 300 participants were asked to categorise a name representing a person towards whom they felt either hate, love, or neutral (first target) plus identify a number word (second target), both embedded in a rapidly presented stream of other words. The lag to the second target was systematically varied. Contrary to our hypothesis, results revealed that both hated and loved names resulted (...) in higher accuracy for the second target than neutral names, which was largely independent of lag. Also, there we observed no sustained transfer effects of love and hate onto neutral name trials. The findings differ from prior research on attentional blink and transient, non-personal, stimulus-driven emotions, suggesting that interpersonal feelings activate different attention-relevant mechanisms. Relevant to future research, we speculate that love and hate are motivators of goal-directed behaviour that facilitate subsequent information processing. (shrink)

Bd 1. Haupt- und Abendvorträge, Sektion 1 -- Bd. 2. Sektionen 2-6 -- Bd. 3. Sektionen 7-9 -- Bd. 4. Sektionen 10-12.

Philosophische Texte sind alles andere als leichte Gutenachtlektüre. Kein Wunder, denn hier kommt es buchstäblich auf jeden Buchstaben an. Transzendent ist noch lange nicht transzendental! Und absolut nicht absolutistisch! Zum Glück gibt es einen Wegweiser im Dschungel des Fachchinesisch. "Philosophische Grundbegriffe für Dummies" liefert Definitionen und Erläuterungen von A bis Z und in verständlicher Sprache. Finden Sie heraus, warum die Fetzen fliegen, wenn ein Rationalist und ein Empirist sich streiten!

Als geronnene Wiederholungen prägen Rituale unseren Alltag und unser Zusammenleben maßgeblich. Nicht von ungefähr galten sie lange Zeit als Inbegriff des Konservativen, Starren und Förmlichen. Eine gänzlich durchritualisierte Welt wäre zweifellos eine unfreie Welt. Im Zeitalter der Deregulierung, der Hyperaktivität und des Aufmerksamkeitsdefizits wird nun ihre Halt gebende und strukturierende Seite wiederentdeckt.Die AutorInnen reflektieren gesellschaftskritisch Theorien und psychoanalytische Erfahrungen rund um das Thema Rituale und widmen sich den folgenden Fragen: Werden Rituale zu Widerstandsnestern gegen die allgemeine Flüchtigkeit? Können sie (...) als Angelpunkte des Innehaltens und als Wegbahner unbeirrten Denkens eine neue kritische Potenz erhalten?Mit Beiträgen von Thomas Dietzel, Gesa Foken, Dirk Hofmeister, Katharina Lacina, Konrad Paul Liessmann, Nina Reis Saroldi, Elisabeth Rohr, Jochen Schade, Hans-Ernst Schiller, Edgar Weiß, Laura Wolf und Carsten Wonneberger. (shrink)

It has been known for over a century that there is an afferent, as well as an efferent, component to the visceral-atonomic nervous system. Despite the fundamental importance of bodily afferent information- sometimes called interoception- to central nervous system control of visceral organ function, emotional-motivational processes, and dysfunction of these processes, including psychosomatic disorders, its role did not receive much attention until quite recently. This is the first comprehensive review of this topic and it covers both neurobiological and psychobiological aspects. (...) The author first defines the issue and gives an historical background starting with the James-Lange theory of emotion, and addresses learning and motivation, roots in Pavlovian conditioning research, and operant conditioning of visceral function. In the second section he reviews recent scientific findings in the neural basis of visceral perception and studies in cardiovascular-respiratory and alimentary interoception. Finally, he discusses several related areas of research and theory including drug state issues, interoception and psychiatric disorders, and bodily consciousness, and suggests directions for future investigation. The book will be of interest to scientists in neurobiology, psychology, and brain imaging, to indivuals in related clinical fields such as psychiatry, neurology, cardiology, gastroenterology, and clinical psychology, and to their students and trainees. (shrink)

Der Gebrauch von Kennzahlen als Grundlage von Entscheidungsfindungen in Politik und Wirtschaft hat eine lange und eine kurze Geschichte. Die lange Geschichte ist so alt wie die der Zahlen selbst. Vor über 5000 Jahren tauchten in Mesopotamien die ersten Zahlzeichen der Alten Welt auf, und sie waren damit zugleich auch die ersten Schriftzeichen überhaupt.

Der Sammelband vereint Beitrage, die dem Andenken an den Philosophiehistoriker Thomas Ricklin gewidmet sind und an dessen Arbeit anschlieaen. Die Texte befassen sich mit der Erforschung der Philosophie- und Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters, der Renaissance und der Fruhen Neuzeit und bieten ein Panorama der verschiedenen Dimensionen dessen, was Weisheit und Philosophie in diesen Epochen bedeuteten. Im Zentrum stehen Dante und Boccaccio, wobei insbesondere deren Lehre vom "Schleier" der poetischen Sprache, unter dem die Wahrheit verhullt sei, in einer Reihe von Studien untersucht (...) wird. In diesem Kontext widmen sich weitere Beitrage den Konzepten einiger der wichtigsten Denker des Mittelalters, wie Boethius von Dacien, Roger Bacon, Johannes von Wales, Meister Eckhart und Pietro d'Abano, dessen "Differentia prima" hier zum ersten Mal in einer kritischen Edition vorgelegt wird. Auaerdem wird die Uberlieferung und Auslegung der antiken Exempla als viel zu lange vernachlassigter Teil der Philosophiegeschichte in den Fokus geruckt. Des Weiteren thematisieren die Beitrage Autoren und Texte, die philosophische Fragen verhandeln, ohne den paradigmatischen Formen des Kommentars oder der Summa zugerechnet werden zu konnen, weil sie Sprach- und Genregrenzen uberschreiten, wie Giordano da Pisa, Jodocus Eichmann und Henry More. Weitere Beitrage, die sich mit Philosophinnen und Historikerinnen der Renaissance und Fruhen Neuzeit beschaftigen, verschaffen den weiblichen Stimmen in von Mannern dominierten Diskursen Gehor. (shrink)

Neben Gustav de Beaumont haben viele andere Freunde, Kollegen und Lehrer Tocqueville, zum Teil ein Leben lang, begleitet und geprägt.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Many philosophers argue that explanatoriness plays no special role in confirmation – that “inference to the best explanation” (IBE) incorrectly demands giving hypotheses extra credit for their potential explanatory qualities beyond the credit they already deserve for their predictive successes. This paper argues against one common strategy for responding to this thought – that is, for trying to fit IBE within a Bayesian framework. That strategy argues that a hypothesis’ explanatory quality (its “loveliness”) contributes either to its prior probability or (...) to its likelihood. This paper argues that this strategy fails because it must give different treatments to two hypotheses that are unlovely for the very same reason. The strategy therefore loses the insight into scientific reasoning that its reconstruction in terms of IBE is supposed to provide. The paper then provides a Bayesian account of the confirmatory role of explanatoriness that represents explanatory quality as having an impact in the same place for two hypotheses that are unlovely for the very same reason. This approach works by “putting explanation back into IBE” – that is, by invoking hypotheses that refer explicitly to scientific explanation and by invoking the agent's background opinions regarding the kind of explanation that the evidence is liable to have. On this approach, there is no list of “explanatory virtues” the possession of which always helps to make an explanation better. Rather, for different facts, there are different characteristics that our background knowledge of other explanations gives us some reason to expect the given fact's explanation to possess. (shrink)

Several foundational documents of bioethics mention the special obligation researchers have to vulnerable research participants. However, the treatment of vulnerability offered by these documents often relies on enumeration of vulnerable groups rather than an analysis of the features that make such groups vulnerable. Recent attempts in the scholarly literature to lend philosophical weight to the concept of vulnerability are offered by Luna and Hurst. Luna suggests that vulnerability is irreducibly contextual and that Institutional Review Boards (Research Ethics Committees) can only (...) identify vulnerable participants by carefully examining the details of the proposed research. Hurst, in contrast, defines the vulnerable as those especially at risk of incurring the wrongs to which all research ethics participants are exposed. We offer a more substantive conception of vulnerability than Luna but one that gives rise to a different rubric of responsibilities from Hurst's. While we understand vulnerability to be an ontological condition of human existence, in the context of research ethics, we take the vulnerable to be research subjects who are especially prone to harm or exploitation. Our analysis rests on developing a typology of sources of vulnerability and showing how distinct sources generate distinct obligations on the part of the researcher. Our account emphasizes that the researcher's first obligation is not to make the research participant even more vulnerable than they already are. To illustrate our framework, we consider two cases: that of a vulnerable population involved in international research and that of a domestic population of people with diminished capacity. (shrink)

We propose a ‘Moral Imagination’ methodology to facilitate a culture of responsible innovation for engineering and product teams in technology companies. Our approach has been operationalized over the past two years at Google, where we have conducted over 50 workshops with teams from across the organization. We argue that our approach is a crucial complement to existing formal and informal initiatives for fostering a culture of ethical awareness, deliberation, and decision-making in technology design such as company principles, ethics and privacy (...) review procedures, and compliance controls. We characterize some distinctive benefits of our methodology for the technology sector in particular. (shrink)

"... both an excellent introduction and a thoroughgoing analysis of Kristeva’s writing." —Signs "The book is a brilliant combination of a recuperative and a critical reading of Kristeva’s work." —Changes: An International Journal of Psychology & Psychotherapy "... a thorough, detailed, and critical analysis of the writings of Julia Kristeva." —Elizabeth Grosz "... the most involved and engaging study of Julia Kristeva’s work to date..." —The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory This first full-scale feminist interpretation of Kristeva’s work (...) situates her within the context of French feminism. Oliver guides her readers through Kristeva’s intellectual formation in linguistics, Freud, Lacan, and poetics. This comprehensive introduction to Kristeva makes accessible her important contributions to philosophy, linguistics, and psychoanalytic feminism. (shrink)

This paper proposes an account of why proof is the only way to acquire knowledge of some mathematical proposition’s truth. Admittedly, non-deductive arguments for mathematical propositions can be strong and play important roles in mathematics. But this paper proposes a necessary condition for knowledge that can be satisfied by putative proofs (and proof sketches), as well as by non-deductive arguments in science, but not by non-deductive arguments from mathematical evidence. The necessary condition concerns whether we can justly expect that if (...) the mathematical proposition is actually false, despite the evidence for its truth, then this fact has an explanation. (shrink)

Many philosophers endorse the Transparency Thesis, the claim that by introspection one cannot become aware of one's experience. Recently, some authors have suggested that the Transparency Thesis is challenged by introspective states reached under mindfulness. We label this the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis. The present paper develops the hypothesis in important new ways. First, we motivate the hypothesis by drawing on recent clinical psychology and cognitive science of mindfulness. Secondly, we develop the hypothesis by describing the implied shift in experiential perspective, (...) the scope of introspectable qualities, and the level of skill. Thirdly, we defend the hypothesis against various philosophical arguments. We conclude that the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis is empirically and theoretically well motivated and supported. (shrink)

Critically engaging the work of Immanuel Kant, Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida together with her own observations on contemporary politics, environmental degradation, and the pursuit of a just and sustainable world, Kelly Oliver lays the groundwork for a politics and ethics that embraces otherness without exploiting difference. Rooted firmly in human beings' relationship to the planet and to each other, Oliver shows peace is possible only if we maintain our ties to earth and world. Oliver (...) begins with Immanuel Kant and his vision of politics grounded on earth as a finite surface shared by humans. She then incorporates Hannah Arendt's belief in plural worlds constituted through human relationships; Martin Heidegger's warning that alienation from the Earth endangers not only politics but also the very essence of being human; and Jacques Derrida's meditations on the singular worlds individuals, human and otherwise, create and how they inform the reality we inhabit. Each of these theorists, Oliver argues, resists the easy idealism of world citizenship and globalism, yet they all think about the earth against the globe to advance a grounded ethics. They contribute to a philosophy that avoids globalization's totalizing and homogenizing impulses and instead help build a framework for living within and among the world's rich biodiversity. (shrink)

Why do relationships of friendship and love support partiality, but not relationships of hatred or commitments of racism? Where does partiality end and why? I take the intuitive starting point that important cases of partiality are meaningful. I develop a view whereby meaning is understood in terms of transcending self-limitations in order to connect with things of external value. I then show how this view can be used to distinguish central cases of legitimate partiality from cases of illegitimate partiality and (...) how it puts pressure on the traditional way of thinking about partiality. (shrink)

An increasing number of regulations propose the notion of ‘AI audits’ as an enforcement mechanism for achieving transparency and accountability for artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Despite some converging norms around various forms of AI auditing, auditing for the purpose of compliance and assurance currently have little to no agreed upon practices, procedures, taxonomies, and standards. We propose the ‘criterion audit’ as an operationalizable compliance and assurance external audit framework. We model elements of this approach after financial auditing practices, and argue (...) that AI audits should similarly provide assurance to their stakeholders about AI organizations’ ability to govern their algorithms in ways that mitigate harms and uphold human values. We discuss the necessary conditions for the criterion audit, and provide a procedural blueprint for performing an audit engagement in practice. We illustrate how this framework can be adapted to current regulations by deriving the criteria on which ‘bias audits’ for hiring algorithms can be performed, as required by the recently effective New York City Local Law 144 of 2021. We conclude by offering critical discussion on the benefits, inherent limitations, and implementation challenges of applying practices of the more mature financial auditing industry to AI auditing where robust guardrails against quality assurance issues are only starting to emerge. Our discussion as informed by experiences in performing these audits in practice highlights the critical role that an audit ecosystem plays in ensuring the effectiveness of such methodology. (shrink)

Existing discussions of partiality have primarily examined special personal relationships between family, friends, or co-nationals. The negative analogue of such relationships – for example, the relationship of enmity – has, by contrast, been largely neglected. This chapter explores this adverse relation in more detail and considers the special reasons generated by it. We suggest that enmity can involve justified negative partiality, allowing members to give less consideration to each other’s interests. We then consider whether the negative partiality of enmity can (...) be justified through projects or the value inherent in the relationship, following two influential views about the justification of positive partiality. We argue that both accounts of partiality can be conceptually extended to the negative analogue, but doing so brings into focus the problems with such accounts of the grounds of partiality. (shrink)

According to Lange,?Really Statistical explanations? constitute an important kind of non-causalscientific explanation. However, Roski has argued that all alleged RS explanations are either causalexplanations or not explanations at all. In so arguing, Roski has invoked Kahneman?s interpretation of onealleged RS explanation. I employ Roski?s arguments as an opportunity to elaborate and defend RS explanations. Iargue that?RS explanations? genuinely explain rather than deny the presuppositions of why-questions. I argue thatthe RS model is not excessively permissive in allowing some explanations to (...) work purely statistically rather than bydescribing causal relations. I argue that Roski?s view that some?RS explanations? operate by describing causalrelations fails to capture the kind of explanatory insight that RS explanations provide. I elaborate the notion of a?characteristically statistical phenomenon? that figures in the RS model and thereby explain how an RS explanationreveals that its explanandum is independent of any causal facts or specific chances, but rather depends only on ageneric sort of arrangement of chances. Finally, I argue that Roski misinterprets Kahneman, who actually holds thatthe explanation he discusses is a non-causal explanation that nicely fits the RS model. RS explanations constitutean important kind of non-causal scientific explanation. (shrink)

We are, Julia Kristeva writes, strangers to ourselves; and indeed much of contemporary theory describes the human condition as one of alienation. Eloquently arguing that we cannot explain the developement of individuality or subjectivity apart from its social context, Kelly Oliver makes a powerful case for recognizing the social aspects of alienation and the psychic aspects of oppression.

Why do forces compose according to the parallelogram of forces? This question has been controversial; it is one episode in a longstanding, fundamental dispute regarding which facts are not to be explained dynamically. If the parallelogram law is explained statically, then the laws of statics are separate from and “transcend” the laws of dynamics. Alternatively, if the parallelogram law is explained dynamically, then statical laws become mere corollaries to the dynamical laws. I shall attempt to trace the history of this (...) controversy in order to identify what it would be for one or the other of these rival views to be correct. I shall argue that various familiar accounts of natural law not only make it difficult to see what the point of this dispute could have been, but also improperly foreclose some serious scientific options. I will sketch an alternative account of laws that helps us to understand what this dispute was all about. (shrink)

In a recent paper replying to the inductive sceptic, Samir Okasha says that the Humean argument for inductive scepticism depends on mistakenly construing inductive reasoning as based on a principle of the uniformity of nature. I dispute Okasha's argument that we are entitled to the background beliefs on which (he says) inductive reasoning depends. Furthermore, I argue that the sorts of theoretically impoverished contexts to which a uniformity-of-nature principle has traditionally been restricted are exactly the contexts relevant to the inductive (...) sceptic's argument, and (pace Okasha) are not at all remote from actual scientific practice. I discuss several scientific examples involving such contexts. (shrink)

This paper explores whether there is any relation between mathematical proofs that specify the grounds of the theorem being proved and mathematical proofs that explain why the theorem obtains. The paper argues that a mathematical fact’s grounds do not, simply by virtue of grounding it, thereby explain why that fact obtains. It argues that oftentimes, a proof specifying a mathematical fact’s grounds fails to explain why that fact obtains whereas any explanation of the fact does not specify its ground. The (...) paper offers several examples from mathematical practice to illustrate these points. These examples suggest several reasons why explaining and grounding tend to come apart, including that explanatory proofs need not exhibit purity, tend not to be brute force, and often unify separate cases by identifying common reasons behind them even when those cases have distinct grounds. The paper sketches an account of what makes a proof explanatory and uses that account to defend the morals drawn from the examples already given. (shrink)

Batterman and Rice offer an account of “minimal model explanations” and argue against “common features accounts” of those explanations. This paper offers some objections to their proposals and arguments. It argues that their proposal cannot account for the apparent explanatory asymmetry of minimal model explanations. It argues that their account threatens ultimately to collapse into a “common features account.” Finally, it argues against their motivation for thinking that an explanation appealing to “common features” would have to explain the common features’ (...) own prevalence. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 99, Issue 3, Page 714-719, November 2019.

In a notable article entitled “What is the Theory of Relativity?” written at the request of The Times and published in its November 28, 1919 edition, Albert Einstein famously distinguished “theories of principle” from “constructive theories.” Einstein placed relativity theory among the principle theories. His distinction has recently received increased attention, especially as it relates to scientific explanation. In particular, there has been considerable discussion of how to explain why there obtain the Lorentz transformations as well as of how to (...) account for the Lorentz covariance of the dynamical laws. Some .. (shrink)

Many philosophers have believed that the laws of nature differ from the accidental truths in their invariance under counterfactual perturbations. Roughly speaking, the laws would still have held had q been the case, for any q that is consistent with the laws. (Trivially, no accident would still have held under every such counterfactual supposition.) The main problem with this slogan (even if it is true) is that it uses the laws themselves to delimit qs range. I present a means of (...) distinguishing the laws (and their logical consequences) from the accidents, in terms of their range of invariance under counterfactual antecedents, that does not appeal to physical modalities (or any cognate notion) in delimiting the relevant range of counterfactual perturbations. I then argue that this approach explicates the sense in which the laws possess a kind of necessity. (shrink)

A conservation law in physics can be either a constraint on the kinds of interaction there could be or a coincidence of the kinds of interactions there actually are. This is an important, unjustly neglected distinction. Only if a conservation law constrains the possible kinds of interaction can a derivation from it constitute a scientific explanation despite failing to describe the causal/mechanical details behind the result derived. This conception of the relation between “bottom-up” scientific explanations and one kind of “top-down” (...) scientific explanation is motivated by several examples from classical and modern physics. (shrink)

. A typical textbook explanation of a rocket’s motion when its engine is fired appeals to momentum conservation: the rocket accelerates forward because its exhaust accelerates rearward and the system’s momentum must be conserved. This paper examines how this explanation works, considering three challenges it faces. First, the explanation does not proceed by describing the forces causing the rocket’s motion. Second, the rocket’s motion has a causal-mechanical explanation involving those forces. Third, if momentum conservation and the rearward motion of the (...) rocket’s exhaust explain why the rocket accelerates forward, then presumably momentum conservation and the rocket’s forward motion likewise explain why the rocket emits exhaust rearward. Explanatory circularity threatens to follow from this pair of explanations. This paper examines how the conservation-law explanation works and how it is compatible with the causal-mechanical explanation. The paper argues that these two explanations do not explain precisely the same fact relative to the same contrast class. The paper interprets the two conservation-law explanations as non-causal and argues that they yield no explanatory circularity. (shrink)

This paper argues that in at least some cases, one proof of a given theorem is deeper than another by virtue of supplying a deeper explanation of the theorem — that is, a deeper account of why the theorem holds. There are cases of scientific depth that also involve a common abstract structure explaining a similarity between two otherwise unrelated phenomena, making their similarity no coincidence and purchasing depth by answering why questions that separate, dissimilar explanations of the two phenomena (...) cannot correctly answer. The connections between explanation, depth, unification, power, and coincidence in mathematics and science are compared. (shrink)

Family Values shows how the various contradictions at the heart of Western conceptions of maternity and paternity problematize our relationships with ourselves and with others. Using philosophical texts, psychoanalytic theory, studies in biology and popular culture, Kelly Oliver challenges our traditional concepts of maternity which are associated with nature, and our conceptions of paternity which are embedded in culture. Oliver's intervention calls into question the traditional image of the oppositional relationship between nature and culture, maternal and paternal. Family (...) Values also undercuts recent returns to the rhetoric of a "battle between the sexes" by analyzing the conceptual basis of these descriptions in biological research and the presuppositions of such suggestions in philosophy and psychoanalysis. By developing a reconception of maternity and paternity, Family Values offers hope for peace in the battle of the sexes. (shrink)

Ethical approval must be obtained before medical research can start. We describe the differences in EA for an pseudonymous, non-interventional, observational European study. Sixteen European national coordinators of the international study on very old intensive care patients answered an online questionnaire concerning their experience getting EA. N = 8/16 of the NCs could apply at one single national ethical committee, while the others had to apply to various regional ECs and/or individual hospital institutional research boards. The time between applying for (...) EA and the first decision varied between 7 days and 300 days. In 9/16 informed consent from the patient was not deemed necessary; in 7/16 informed consent was required from the patient or relatives. The upload of coded data to a central database required additional information in 14/16. In 4/16 the NCs had to ask separate approval to keep a subject identification code list to de-pseudonymize the patients if questions would occur. Only 2/16 of the NCs agreed that informed consent was necessary for this observational study. Overall, 6/16 of the NCs were satisfied with the entire process and 8/16 were unsatisfied. 11/16 would welcome a European central EC that would judge observational studies for all European countries. Variations in the process and prolonged time needed to get EA for observational studies hampers inclusion of patients in some European countries. This might have a negative influence on the external validity. Further harmonization of ethical approval process across Europe is welcomed for low-risk observational studies. Getting ethical approval for low-risk, non-interventional, observational studies varies enormously across European countries. (shrink)

Some mathematical proofs explain why the theorems they prove hold. This paper identifies several challenges for any counterfactual account of explanation in mathematics (that is, any account according to which an explanatory proof reveals how the explanandum would have been different, had facts in the explanans been different). The paper presumes that countermathematicals can be nontrivial. It argues that nevertheless, a counterfactual account portrays explanatory power as too easy to achieve, does not capture explanatory asymmetry, and fails to specify why (...) certain proofs are explanatory and others are not. Greater informativeness about counterfactual dependence can even yield less explanatory power. (shrink)

As a linguist, Julia Kristeva has pioneered a revolutionary theory of the sign in its relation to social and political emancipation; as a practicing psychoanalyst, she has produced work on the nature of the human subject and sexuality, and on the "new maladies" of today's neurotic. _The Portable Kristeva_ is the only fully comprehensive compilation of Kristeva's key writings. The second edition includes added material from Kristeva's most important works of the past five years, including _The Sense and Non-Sense of (...) Revolt_, _Intimate Revolt_, and _Hannah Arendt_. Editor Kelly Oliver has also added new material to the introduction, summarizing Kristeva's latest intellectual endeavors and updating the bibliography. (shrink)

Rosenberg has recently argued that explanations supplied by (what he calls) functional biology are mere promissory notes for macromolecular adaptive explanations. Rosenberg's arguments currently constitute one of the most substantial challenges to the autonomy, irreducibility, and indispensability of the explanations supplied by functional biology. My responses to Rosenberg's arguments will generate a novel account of the autonomy of functional biology. This account will turn on the relations between counterfactuals, scientific explanations, and natural laws. Crucially, in their treatment of the laws' (...) relation to counterfactuals, Rosenberg's arguments beg the question against the autonomy of functional biology. This relation is considerably more subtle than is suggested by familiar slogans such as Laws support counterfactuals; accidents don't. (shrink)

has offered a lovely example to motivate the intuition that a successful prediction has a kind of confirmatory significance that an accommodation lacks. This paper scrutinizes Maher's example. It argues that once the example is tweaked, the intuitive difference there between prediction and accommodation disappears. This suggests that the apparent superiority of prediction to accommodation is actually a side effect of an important difference between the hypotheses that tend to arise in each case.