The first section of this paper asks why the notion of consensus has recently come to the fore in the medical humanities, and suggests that the answer is a function of growing technological and professional complexity. The next two sections examine the concept of consensus analytically, citing some of the recent philosophical literature. The fourth section looks at committee deliberations and their desirable outcomes, and questions the degree to which consensus serves those outcomes. In the fifth and last section it (...) is suggested that if I am to subscribe to a consensual outcome responsibly I must be personally committed to it, and that this requires a form of knowledge I call ‘fiduciary’, in this case knowledge of the competence and trustworthiness of other participants in deliberation whose expertise may have influenced my agreement. Keywords: collective decision-making, committees, consensus, fiduciary knowledge CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)
In this paper I propose to set out, and argue for, a theory of what makes acts morally permissible. The claims about morality that I shall be advancing will be minimalist. By this I mean that the scope of the theory will be restricted to as small a class of acts or courses of action as possible, and its bearing on the members of that class to as narrow a range of characteristics as possible. My starting point is that, as (...) Dostoevsky put it, 'everything is permitted'– unless there prove to be good reasons why it cannot be. (shrink)
It is argued that the search for meaning in life or in the universe as a whole is misguided, and rests on a confusion between significance and the signiferous systems that make it possible. The expectation that such global meanings are attainable and the belief that they are necessary exert, it is claimed, a damaging effect on the appreciation of more limited episodes of meaningful activity. Philosophy should therefore expose them as delusions, at,the same time pursuing the analysis of meaning (...) in the more limited contexts to which this view necessarily restricts it. (shrink)
On the back cover of the original French edition of Sartre's Le scénario Freud (The Freud Scenario), the promotional blurb poses the question: "Est-ce ici Sartre qui analyse Freud ou Freud qui analyse Sartre?" (Is Sartre analyzing Freud here, or is Freud analyzing Sartre?). We do not, for obvious reasons, have anything of Freud's on Sartre, but we do have quite a lot of Sartre on Freud, and great quantities of Sartre on Sartre. It has sometimes seemed to me that (...) reading through everything that Sartre wrote—not just the autobiographical material but everything, including the carnets and the cahiers and the letters—might be a bit like having him in analysis. The speed and apparent openness with which he produced his texts, page after page in that quick yet legible script that French writers seem to turn out so effortlessly, mimic some of the conditions of free association, and an analytically sensitive eye, like the analyst's ear in therapeutic sessions, could no doubt piece together a plausible account of the Sartrean unconscious. (shrink)
How is it possible to speak of structuralism at the end of the millennium, except in the past tense—historically? But has structuralism really sung its swan song? It is hard not to fall prey to the historicism that has been so pervasive in Western thought in the last two hundred years. Yet this is a congress of philosophy, not history nor sociology. What philosophy looks for in structuralism is quite different from what history, or sociology, or even anthropology may find. (...) Therefore, I begin from an avowedly ahistoricist stance since I am not interested in structuralism as a movement, but as a position, and I intend to discuss it as such. (shrink)
Definition is viewed in this paper as a cohesive element of theory, providing links between scientific constructs. The problem is approached first in terms of three orders--the historical, the logical, and the heuristic--in which the structure of science may be put together; a study of these is necessary if difficulties about priority of definition are to be resolved. The main part of the paper is devoted to an exercise in theory-construction which illustrates the five principal functions of definition--the grounding of (...) constructs in observation, their descriptive interrelation, the development of logico-mathematical calculi, the interpretation of these calculi, and the provision of precise, quasi-mathematical relations between the constructs themselves. Reference is made throughout to the many names for the defining process found in earlier works, and problems of contextual definition, reduction, stipulative and lexical definition, etc., are dealt with briefly. The theory thus constructed is represented diagrammatically. It is shown that the analysis may be simplified, in general terms, by the use of two new categories, "internal" and "external" definition; and that this innovation may prove helpful in clarifying some traditional obscurities, and in preserving a necessary balance between a purely logical and a purely empirical approach to the philosophy of science. (shrink)
The relations between simplicity and economy, and between simplicity and complexity, are briefly discussed, and it is suggested that an appearance of simplicity may arise out of the matching of two complexities, e.g. in the perception of a simple color. Following out this idea, it is shown that scientific activity may be regarded as a matching of theoretical complexity against the complexity of nature, which leads to an expectation of an optimum theoretical complexity for successful scientific work. Some senses of (...) "success" in this context are discussed, and the role of computing machines in helping to achieve it assessed. (shrink)
