Background Discussions on ethical aspects of life-and-death decisions within the hospital are often made in plenary. The prehospital physician, however, may be faced with ethical dilemmas in life-and-death decisions when time-critical decisions to initiate or refrain from resuscitative efforts need to be taken without the possibility to discuss matters with colleagues. Little is known whether these considerations regarding ethical issues in crucial life-and-death decisions are documented prehospitally. This is a review of the ethical considerations documented in the prehospital medical records (...) of patients in a Danish prehospital setting for whom the decision to resuscitate or not was made at the scene. Methods The study is based on discharge summaries of all patients subjected to crucial life-and-death decisions by the Mobile Emergency Care Unit in Odense in the years 2010 to 2014. The medical records with possible documentation of ethical issues were independently reviewed by two philosophers in order to identify explicit ethical or philosophical considerations pertaining to the decision to resuscitate or not. Results In total, 1275 patients were either declared dead at the scene without exhibiting layman’s reliable signs of death or admitted to hospital following resuscitation. In a total of 62 patients, 85 specific ethical issues related to resuscitation were documented. The expressions of the ethical considerations were generally vague or unclear and almost exclusively concerned the interests of the patient and not the relatives. In the vast majority of cases where an ethical content was identified, the ethical considerations led to a decision to terminate treatment. Conclusions A strengthened practice of documenting ethical considerations in prehospital life-and-death decision-making in the patient’s medical records is required. We suggest that a template be implemented in the prehospital medical records describing the basis for any ethical decisions. This template should contain information regarding the persons involved in the deliberations and notes on ethical considerations. The documentation should include considerations concerning the patient’s end-of-life wishes, the estimations of the quality of life before and after the incident, and a summary of other ethical concerns taken into account, such as the integrity of the patient and frame of mind of relatives. (shrink)

The dead are gone. They count for nothing. Yet, if we count the dead, their number is staggering. And they account for most of what is great about civilization. Compared to the greatness of the dead, the accomplishments of the living are paltry. Which is it then: are the dead still there tobe counted or not? And if they are still there, where exactly is "there"? We are confronted with the ancient paradox of nonexistence bequeathed us by Parmenides. The mystery (...) of death is the mystery of nonexistence.A successful attempt to provide a metaphysics of death, then, must resolve the paradox of nonexistence. That is the aim of this study. At the same time, the metaphysics of death, of ceasing to exist, must serve as an account of birth, of coming to exist; the primary thesis of this book is that thisdemands going beyond existence and nonexistence to include what underlies both, which one can call, following tradition, "being." The dead and the unborn are therefore objects that lack existence but not being. Nonexistent objects - not corpses, or skeletons, or memories, all of which are existentobjects - are what are "there" to be counted when we count the dead. (shrink)

Proponents of large-scale land acquisitions (LaSLA) argue that poor countries could benefit from foreign direct investment in land (World Bank 2011), while opponents argue that LaSLA is nothing more than neo-colonial theft of poor peasants’ livelihoods, i.e., land grabbing (Borras and Franco in Yale Hum Rights Dev L J, 13: 507–523, 2010a). To ensure responsible agricultural investments (RAI), a voluntary “code of conduct” for land acquisitions has been proposed by the World Bank (2011) and the FAO (2012). A critical reaction (...) to the “code of conduct” approach is the proposal for a set of minimum human rights principles, suggested by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, De Schutter (2009). Even more critical of the “code of conduct” approach are Borras and Franco in Yale Hum Rights Dev L J, 13(2): 507–523, 2010a, who propose empowering small-scale farmers by giving them land sovereignty so that they are assured control over their land. This paper is a review of the governance and ethics issues connected to LaSLA. It has four main objectives: First, it offers a critical presentation of three major governance approaches to LaSLA: the “liberal code of conduct” (FAO and the World Bank), the ‘critical liberal human rights’ approach (De Schutter) and the ‘Marxist’ approach (Borras and Franco). Second, it discusses the notion of a human right to land, with reference to John Locke’s theory of appropriating land. Third, it discusses the issue of ensuring an inclusive process in LaSLA. Finally, an argument is made for instituting a (global) obligation to refrain from participating in or benefitting from institutional schemes that facilitate negative land grabbing (Pogge in Politics as usual: what lies behind the pro-poor rhetoric? Polity Press, Cambridge 2010). (shrink)

Palle Yourgrau; XI*—The Path Back to Frege, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 87, Issue 1, 1 June 1987, Pages 169–210, https://doi.org/10.1093/ari.

It is a widely known but little considered fact that Albert Einstein and Kurt Gödel were best friends for the last decade and a half of Einstein's life. The two walked home together from Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study every day; they shared ideas about physics, philosophy, politics, and the lost world of German science in which they had grown up. By 1949, Gödel had produced a remarkable proof: In any universe described by the Theory of Relativity, time cannot exist (...) . Einstein endorsed this result-reluctantly, since it decisively overthrew the classical world-view to which he was committed. But he could find no way to refute it, and in the half-century since then, neither has anyone else. Even more remarkable than this stunning discovery, however, was what happened afterward: nothing. Cosmologists and philosophers alike have proceeded with their work as if Gödel's proof never existed -one of the greatest scandals of modern intellectual history. A World Without Time is a sweeping, ambitious book, and yet poignant and intimate. It tells the story of two magnificent minds put on the shelf by the scientific fashions of their day, and attempts to rescue from undeserved obscurity the brilliant work they did together. (shrink)

This book shows that cyberculture has been a long time coming.In Prefiguring Cyberculture, media critics and theorists, philosophers, and historians of science ...

This is an expansion of the author's 1991 work which investigates the implications of Gödel's writings on Einstein's theory of relativity as they relate to the fundamental questions of the nature of time and the possibilities for time travel.

In a recent essay, “Frege's Theory of Sense of Reference: Some Exegetical Notes”, Saul Kripke shows that in addition to being an astute critic of Frege, he is also an insightful interpreter. Kripke's Frege emerges as a closet Russellian, who, like Russell, relies heavily on a doctrine of acquaintance. Is Kripke right? Where exactly does his approach resemble, and where depart from earlier interpretations, and what should one take away about whether or not Frege really was a Russellian and the (...) effect this has on his theory? (shrink)

This is a book about the philosophy of time, and in particular the philosophy of the great logician Kurt Godel (1906-1978). It evaluates Godel's attempt to show that Einstein has not so much explained time as explained it away. Unlike recent more technical studies, it focuses on the reality of time. The book explores Godel's conception of time, existence, and truth with special reference to Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Frege. In the light of this investigation an attempt is made to (...) shed light on such issues as the precise sense in which Godel believed in the possibility of time travel, the relationship of the reality of time to the objectivity of temporal becoming, and the significance of time for human existence.This is a book about the philosophy of time, and in particular the philosophy of the great logician Kurt Godel (1906-1978). It evaluates Godel's attempt to show that Einstein has not so much explained time as explained it away. Unlike recent more technical studies, it focuses on the reality of time. The book explores Godel's conception of time, existence, and truth with special reference to Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Frege. In the light of this investigation an attempt is made to shed light on such issues as the precise sense in which Godel believed in the possibility of time travel, the relationship of the reality of time to the objectivity of temporal becoming, and the significance of time for human existence. (shrink)

The aim of this series is to bring together important recent writings in major areas of philosophical inquiry, selected from a variety of sources, mostly periodicals.

Traditionally, skeptics as well as their opponents have agreed that in order to know that p one must be able, by some preferred means, to rule out all the alternatives to p. Recently, however, some philosophers have attempted to avert skepticism not (merely) by weakening the preferred means but rather by articulating a subset of the alternatives to p — the so-called relevant alternatives — and insisting that knowledge that p requires only that we be able (by the preferred means) (...) to rule out members of the set. In this paper I argue that a precise formulation of this new approach reveals it inadequate as a solution to skepticism. (shrink)

Khora, as it figures in Plato’s Timaeus, as read by Jacques Derrida, poses a singular translation problem, not only for having more than one meaning, but also for having less than one. This might be thought of in terms of Derrida’s distinction between ‘polysemy’ and ‘dissemination’, in so far as any concept of translation will ‘re-mark’ a translation or reception of something like khora, the ‘all-receiving’. This means both that khora is untranslatable and that its translation into every language is (...) inevitable, which has implications for the question of a ‘politics of khora’, as becomes particularly apparent in Derrida’s unpublished seminar from 1985–86. (shrink)

This paper provides ways of responding to critical students when teaching business ethics and corporate social responsibility. A common premise of teaching pedagogy is to approach students from their “zone of proximal development”. To get an understanding of students’ critical prior conceptions, the ideal type of the “liberal communist” is invoked as suggestive of how students might think about business ethics and CSR. Two pedagogical approaches are suggested to address students’ a priori scepticism of business ethics and CSR. First, a (...) framework of political views on CSR is presented. Second, approaching CSR by means of “problem based learning” is discussed. Finally, the paper reflects on the role of the business ethics teacher in light of tendencies towards commodification of education in the global economy. (shrink)

Frege's extension of his distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung to predicate terms is widely considered to be problematic. Interpreters generally assume that the notion of Bedeutung comprises the name/bearer relation as a prototype and that the extension is justified only in so far as the relation of predicate terms to their alleged referents is analogous to the relation of names to their bearers. However, interpreters have generally paid insufficient attention to Frege's own dealing with the issue. By examining the relevant (...) passages in Frege's writings, I show that the standard ways of talking about Frege's ascription of Bedeutung to predicates as optional, less evident than the ascription of Sinn, and in need of justification are not in accord with Frege's own conception of predicate reference. There is no textual evidence that the extension takes place for analogical reasons and, in particular, no evidence for the claim that the name/bearer relation is used as a prototype. Frege is visibly not concerned with the relation between predicate terms and their referents, but applies the notion of Bedeutung for reasons of principle. There is indeed the invocation of an analogy, but if we consider the argument in which it occurs it appears that it does not play the justificatory role interpreters attribute to it. In sum, Frege's ascription of Bedeutung to predicates does not imply any mysterious or dubious referentiality of predicate terms. (shrink)

Ce papier décrit la position de l’université au sein du monde contemporain et pose la question de son identité profonde à partir d’une analyse de l’activité universitaire. Cette dernière est considérée sous trois angles qui fournissent les critères selon lesquels elle peut être évaluée. L’accent est mis sur l’importance capitale de la communauté universitaire et les principes éthiques impliqués dans son développement. La responsabilité de l’université est discutée à la lumière d’une épistémologie des vertus et d’une distinction entre la pensée (...) quotidienne et la pensée académique. La vertu de cette dernière est la « pensée critique » qui se concentre sur la poursuite universelle de la compréhension et de la vérité. (shrink)

Ce papier décrit la position de l’université au sein du monde contemporain et pose la question de son identité profonde à partir d’une analyse de l’activité universitaire. Cette dernière est considérée sous trois angles qui fournissent les critères selon lesquels elle peut être évaluée. L’accent est mis sur l’importance capitale de la communauté universitaire et les principes éthiques impliqués dans son développement. La responsabilité de l’université est discutée à la lumière d’une épistémologie des vertus et d’une distinction entre la pensée (...) quotidienne et la pensée académique. La vertu de cette dernière est la « pensée critique » qui se concentre sur la poursuite universelle de la compréhension et de la vérité. (shrink)

Sets are multitudes which are also unities. It is surprising that the fact that multitudes are also unities leads to no contradictions: this is the main fact of mathematics.Kurt Gödel (Hao Wang,A Logical Journey: From Gödel to Philosophy)In what sense can something be at the same time one and many? The problem is familiar since Plato (for example,Republic524e). In recent times, Whitehead and Russell, inPrincipia Mathematica,have been struck by the difficulty of the problem: ‘If there is such an object as (...) a class, it must be in some senseoneobject, yet it is only of classes that many can be predicated. Hence, if we admit classes as objects, we must suppose that the same object can be both one and many, which seems impossible.' It is, however, in Frege's great work,The Foundations of Arithmetic(henceforth,Grundlagen),that many see the final resolution of the old question: how can something be at the same time one and many? (shrink)

DAVID KAPLAN HAS ARGUED THAT RUSSELL'S THEORY OF\nDESCRIPTIONS IN EFFECT EXPLAINS AWAY THE VERY IDEA OF\nDEMOTING. IN THIS PAPER I TRY TO SHINE SOME LIGHT ON THE\nPUZZLE KAPLAN HAS UNCOVERED, AND IN THE PROCESS SHOW THAT\n1) RUSSELL DID NOT HIMSELF FULLY REALIZE EXACTLY WHAT HIS\nTHEORY ACCOMPLISHED, AND 2) IN EFFECT, RUSSELL'S THEORY IS,\nSURPRISINGLY, A KIND OF DEFINITIONAL VARIANT OF FREGE'S.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume and Davidson on Pride Pall S. krdal In reading the Treatise one has to be alive to the fact that Hume gives certain crucial words new meanings. He does not always draw the reader's attention to this and sometimes explicitly claims to be using terms with their ordinarymeaningswhen heis clearlygiving the words special technical uses by expanding or contracting their usual meanings. "Passion," "love," "hatred," "pride," and "humility" (...) have special meanings in Hume's psychological scheme. He also sometimes uses important terms with more than one meaning, as in the case of "justice." The word "justice" both is the title of Book 3, Part 2 of the Treatise, which deals with a number ofartificial virtues, and alsorefers to the much narrower concept ofthe respectfor property. The following two questions should be borne in mind: "What did Hume have to say about what he calls justice, passion, love, etc.?" and "What did Hume have to say about what we refer to by the same terms?" Thus, Books 2 and 3 of the Treatise may be described as attempting to show how unbiased evaluations are possible, in spite ofthe fact that our passions are naturally biased and judgments of virtue and vice are passions. This clearly involves a discussion of how we can do justice to our own and other peoples' qualities ofmind or character. Hume, therefore, had something very important to say about what we call justice, but his contribution to issues involving what we call justice today is obscured by his terminology. In what follows I shall be claiming that Hume's account of pride throws light upon what we call pride although he clearly was not aiming to do so. Donald Davidson, in a footnote to "Hume's Cognitive Theory of Pride," points out that there is a close similarity between his reading ofHume on pride andmy own treatment ofprideinPassionand Value. Since the two accounts were arrived at completely independently, each ofus can see the other'sinterpretation as some confirmation ofhis own. The accounts are not identical, however, and without aiming at a comprehensive comparison, I shall attempt to decide whether one or two ofthe apparent differences between our accounts indicate substantial disagreement. I shall try not to confuse the following four questions: "What did Hume thinkconstitutes pride?""Whatlesson do I, and whatlesson does Davidson think one could learn from Hume's account?" and finally, "What constitutes pride?" Davidson and I agree that a lesson is to be Volume XV Number 2 387 PALL ARDAL learned from Hume's account, but disagree about the nature of this lesson because of a disagreement about the nature of pride. Both Davidson and I think that Hume's claim that pride is a simple impression is an embarrassment to him. It does not have any immediate appeal and also leads him to clearly misrepresent the relation between pride and its object. Pride has self as its object in the sense that it is a form of self-evaluation. Hume misrepresents this relation as a causal relation between pride and the thoughtofoneself. Whenever one is proud, one's thought is drawn to oneself, but according to Hume it couldhave been otherwise. Itjust so happens that the feeling ofpride makes one think of oneself, that when you are already proud your thought turns to yourself. Hume, it is true, does not always represent the relation between the object of pride and the passion itself as contingent. Much ofwhathe says suggests the more plausible view that pride is essentially a form of self-evaluation, but the lesson we can learn from Hume we can learn in spite ofhis atomism, so let us follow Davidson and disregard the atomism, while admitting its presence in Hume's account. Davidson points out that the pride Hume is talking about is pride for a reason. I follow Hume in talking about the cause ofpride, or what makes one proud, but the two accounts seem to me to be very similar on this issue. The two accounts are alsoin agreement thatHume should have said that the proud person must see the cause of pride as having value rather than as an independent source of pleasure, but we are... (shrink)

'You ask me about the idiosyncrasies of philosophers? There is their lack of historical sense, their hatred of even the idea of becoming, their Egyptianism. They think they are doing a thing honour when they dehistoricize it, sub specie aeternitatis — when they make a mummy of it.'Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols.

In this paper I argue, from the consideration of what I hope is the complete variety of a hearer’s approaches to a speaker’s utterance, that the speaker’s intention does not settle the meaning of her utterance and the hearer does not take a genuine interest in the speaker’s actual intention. The reason why the speaker’s intention does not settle utterance meaning is simply that no utterance meaning determination, as presupposed by intentionalists and anti-intentionalists alike, takes place. Moreover, in the regular (...) course of interpretation the hearer does not care about the speaker’s actual intention, but only about what the speaker presents as her intention: the hearer’s goal is to come up with an interpretation which the speaker will accept rather than an interpretation which corresponds to the speaker’s intention. In cases of accountability, suspicion and lying, the speaker’s actual intention is irrelevant; it is at most the speaker’s hypothetical intention which is at stake. (shrink)

This article examines the conventional Rehnist interpretation of active labor market policy in Sweden during the period from the war to the early 1970s and asks how it relates to the basic principles of evidence-based social science research.It is shown that the interpretation is misleading, reproducing and communicating material, stories, and images that were supplied bysome of the leading Swedish actors rather than producing an analysis based on the empirical examination of actual developments.The conclusion of the article offers suggestions for (...) an alternative evidencebased interpretation of the Swedish case. (shrink)

Proponents of using genetically modified (GM) crops and food in the developing world often claim that it is unjust not to use GMOs (genetically modified organisms) to alleviate hunger and malnutrition in developing countries. In reply, the critics of GMOs claim that while GMOs may be useful as a technological means to increase yields and crop quality, stable and efficient institutions are required in order to provide the benefits from GMO technology. In this debate, the GMO proponents tend to rely (...) on a simple utilitarian type of calculus that highlights the benefits of GMOs to the poor, but that overlooks the complex institutional requirements necessary for GMO production. The critics, recognizing the importance of institutional conditions, focus primarily on the negative impacts of institutional deficiencies, thereby overlooking the basically Rawlsian claim that institutions per se may generate claims to justice. This article investigates how GMOs might generate claims to global justice and what type of justice is involved. The paper argues that the debate on GMOs and global justice can be categorized into three views, i.e., the cosmopolitan, the pluralist, and the sceptic. The cosmopolitan holds that GMOs can and should be used for alleviating global hunger, whereas the sceptic rejects this course of action. I will argue here for a moderately cosmopolitan approach, relying on the pluralist view of institutions and the need to exploit the benefits of GMOs. This argument rests on the premise that global cooperation on GMO production provides the relevant basis for assessing the use of GMOs by the standard of global distributive justice. (shrink)

What matter who's speaking, someone said what matter who's speaking. Beckett, Texts for Nothing (in Stories and Texts for Nothing) 111 “What does it matter who is speaking”, someone said, “what d...

This book makes a reasoned & informed case for a critical reappraisal of many ideas that impact on the contemporary human situation. The text wanders through a series of disjointed philosophical, scientific & biographical themes, which present a unique cameo of an attempt to scrutinise the significance or insignificance of a human life.

Frege's definition of the natural number n in terms of the set of n-membered sets has been treated rudely by history. It has suffered not one but two crippling blows. The discovery of Russell's Paradox revealed a fatal flaw in the ‘naive’ conception of set. In spite of its intuitive appeal, Frege's Basic Law V turned out to be impermissible, leaving us only with the etiolated concept of set that survives in the axiomatic treatments initiated by Zermelo. The independence results, (...) however, of Godel and Cohen, concerning Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis, have left us adrift in choosing between Cantorian and non-Cantorian set theories, which has induced in some logicians a skepticism in regard to the very idea of set-theoretic platonism. (shrink)

Is a mathematical theorem proved because provable, or provable because proved? If Brouwer’s intuitionism is accepted, we’re committed, it seems, to the latter, which is highly problematic. Or so I will argue. This and other consequences of Brouwer’s attempt to found mathematics on the intuition of a move of time have heretofore been insufficiently appreciated. Whereas the mathematical anomalies of intuitionism have received enormous attention, too little time, I’ll try to show, has been devoted to some of the temporal anomalies (...) that Brouwer has invited us to introduce into mathematics. (shrink)

In this paper I argue, from the consideration of what I hope is the complete variety of a hearer’s approaches to a speaker’s utterance, that the speaker’s intention does not settle the meaning of her utterance and the hearer does not take a genuine interest in the speaker’s actual intention. The reason why the speaker’s intention does not settle utterance meaning is simply that no utterance meaning determination, as presupposed by intentionalists and anti-intentionalists alike, takes place. Moreover, in the regular (...) course of interpretation the hearer does not care about the speaker’s actual intention, but only about what the speaker presents as her intention: the hearer’s goal is to come up with an interpretation which the speaker will accept rather than an interpretation which corresponds to the speaker’s intention. In cases of accountability, suspicion and lying, the speaker’s actual intention is irrelevant; it is at most the speaker’s hypothetical intention which is at stake. (shrink)