This treatise on aesthetics criticizes various psychological theories of art, offers new theories and interpretations, and draws important inferences concerning ...

I am interested in extending modal calculi by adding propositional quantifiers, given by the rules for quantifier introduction: provided that p does not occur free in A.

this article is based on a paper that I presented during the annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, as a keynote speaker in the Coss Dialogue sessions. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that most participants of SAAP use the term "American" in its continental, rather than in the US-centric sense. I am glad that many of the philosophers of this community of knowledge have opened their dialogues to the voices and experiences south of the (...) Río Bravo. We are living during very difficult times in which cultures and practices of violence, as well as aggressive exclusion and intolerance, are affecting our communities on both sides of the border. In this context of multiple... (shrink)

R.I.G. Hughes presents a series of eight philosophical essays on the theoretical practices of physics. The first two essays examine these practices as they appear in physicists' treatises (e.g. Newton's Principia and Opticks ) and journal articles (by Einstein, Bohm and Pines, Aharonov and Bohm). By treating these publications as texts, Hughes casts the philosopher of science in the role of critic. This premise guides the following 6 essays which deal with various concerns of philosophy of physics such as laws, (...) disunities, models and representation, computer simulation, explanation, and the discourse of physics. (shrink)

We discuss five kinds of representations of rationales and provide a formal account of how they can alter disputation. The formal model of disputation is derived from recent work in argument. The five kinds of rationales are compilation rationales, which can be represented without assuming domain-knowledge (such as utilities) beyond that normally required for argument. The principal thesis is that such rationales can be analyzed in a framework of argument not too different from what AI already has. The result is (...) a formal understanding of rationales, a partial taxonomy, and a foundation for computer programs that represent and reason with rationales.The five kinds of rationales are as follows: (c)ompression and (s)pecialization, which yield rules, and (d)isputation, which yields a decision. These are modeled as potentially changing the focus of the dispute. Then there are (f)it, a rationale for rules, and (r)esolution, a rationale for decisions. These cannot be modeled as simply; they force disputation to a meta-level, at least temporarily. (shrink)

R K Elliott; Aestheticism, Imagination and Schooling: a reply to Ruby Meager, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 33–42.

It is a common complaint against moral philosophers that their abstract theorising bears little relation to the practical problems of everyday life. Professor Braithwaite believes that this criticism need not be inevitable. With the help of the Theory of Games he shows how arbitration is possible between two neighbours, a jazz trumpeter and a classical pianist, whose performances are a source of mutual discord. The solution of the problem in the lecture is geometrical, and is based on the formal analogy (...) between the logic of the situation and the geometry of a parabola. But an appendix provides the alternative algebraic treatment of a general two-person collaboration situation. (shrink)

A collection of critical essays by English and American scholars, including such controversial academic political theorists as Gutmann, Barry and Nussbaum, that raises questions about the current theoretical reassessment of political liberalism.

What kind of knowledge is medical knowledge? Can medicine be explained scientifically? Is disease a scientific concept, or do explanations of disease depend on values? What is ‘evidence-based’ medicine? Are advances in neuroscience bringing us closer to a scientific understanding of the mind? The nature of medicine raises fundamental questions about explanation, causation, knowledge and ontology – questions that are central to philosophy as well as medicine. In this book Paul R. Thompson and Ross E. G. Upshur introduce the fundamental (...) issues in philosophy of medicine for those coming to the subject for the first time. They introduce and explain the following key topics: Understanding the physician-patient relationship: the phenomenology of the medical encounter. Models and theories in biology and medicine: what role do theories play in medicine? Are they similar to scientific theories? Randomised controlled trials: can scientific experiments be replicated in clinical medicine? What are the philosophical criticisms levelled at RCTs? The concept of evidence in medical research: what do we mean by ‘Evidence-based medicine?’ Should all medicine be based on evidence? Causation in medicine What do advances in neuroscience reveal about the relationship between mind and body? Defining health and disease: are explanations of disease objective or do they depend on values? Evolutionary medicine: what is the role of evolutionary biology in understanding medicine? Is it relevant? Extensive use of empirical examples and case studies is made throughout the book. These include debates about smoking and cancer, the use of placebos in randomised controlled trials and controversies about research into the causes of HIV and autism. This is an indispendable introduction to those teaching philosophy of medicine and philosophy of science. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 71-73.

In this paper we mainly deal with first-order languages without equality and introduce a weak form of equality predicate, the so-called Leibniz equality. This equality is characterized algebraically by means of a natural concept of congruence; in any structure, it turns out to be the maximum congruence of the structure. We show that first-order logic without equality has two distinct complete semantics (fll semantics and reduced semantics) related by the reduction operator. The last and main part of the paper contains (...) a series of Birkhoff-style theorems characterizing certain classes of structures defined without equality, not only full classes but also reduced ones. (shrink)

In Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, R. Zachary Manis examines in detail the several facets of the problem of hell, considers the reasons why the usual responses to the problem are unsatisfying, and suggests how an adequate solution to the problem can be constructed.

This collection of original essays, by some of the best known contemporary criminal law theorists, tackles a range of issues about the criminal law's 'special part' - the part of the criminal law that defines specific offences. One of its aims is to show the importance, for theory as well as for practice, of focusing on the special part as well as on the general part which usually receives much more theoretical attention. Some of the issues covered concern the proper (...) scope of the criminal law, for example how far should it include offences of possession, or endangerment? If it should punish only wrongful conduct, how can it justly include so-called 'mala prohibita', which are often said to involve conduct that is not wrongful prior to its legal prohibition? Other issues concern the ways in which crimes should be classified. Can we make plausible sense, for instance, of the orthodox distinction between crimes of basic and general intent? Should domestic violence be defined as a distinct offence, distinguished from other kinds of personal violence? Also examined are the ways in which specific offences should be defined, to what extent those definitions should identify distinctive types of wrongs, and the light that such definitional questions throw on the grounds and structures of criminal liability. Such issues are discussed in relation not only to such crimes as murder, rape, theft and other property offences, but also in relation to offences such as bribery, endangerment and possession that have not traditionally been subjects for in depth theoretical analysis. (shrink)

Arrian's enthusiasm for Ptolemy's account of Alexander has often been echoed in modern times. With much justification it is generally agreed that Arrian's account of Alexander, through its reliance on the works of Ptolemy and Aristobulus, is our best and, on the whole, most reliable account of Alexander. Recent work, however, has illuminated Ptolemy's weaknesses, and we can no longer regard Ptolemy as utterly reliable in every important respect. His version of the Alexander story is centred on Alexander, therefore Alexander (...) is depicted out of the close context of the Macedonian court. It is only through the information preserved in other writers—traditionally, but undiscriminatingly, considered unreliable—that, for instance, the picture of Alexander's struggle with his Macedonian nobles has begun to emerge. And in matters of this kind Ptolemy's version is so much the court ‘official’ version that it cannot be regarded as trustworthy. (shrink)

Kelâm âlimleri “mûcize” kavramını iki farklı şekilde tarif etmişlerdir. Bunlardan ilkinde mûcize “Peygamber olduğunu ileri süren kimsenin elinde, onun doğruluğunu kanıtlamak için meydana gelen hârikulâde olay” şeklinde tanımlanmıştır. İkinci tarife göre ise mûcize: “Peygamberlik iddia eden bir zâtın elinde, inkârcılara meydan okuduğu bir sırada, kendisini doğrular mâhiyette, başkalarının benzerini yapamadıkları, Allah tarafından yaratılan, olağanüstü olay”lara verilen addır. Tanımlardan da anlaşılacağı üzere “mûcize” kelimesiyle genel olarak “hissî mûcize”lere işaret edilmektedir. Zaten “mûcize” teriminin kelâmî metinlerde yer almaya başladığı IV. yy. dan itibaren (...) genelde Hz. Peygamber’in (s) hissî mucizelerinin bulunup bulunmağı temelinde tartışmalar yaşanmıştır. Hatta Kur’ân’da yer verilen geçmiş peygamberlere ait hissî mucize örneklerinden hareketle mesele zaman zaman peygamberlerin hissî mucizelerinin birbiriyle yarıştırılması boyutuna kadar taşınmıştır. Tüm bu tartışma safahatında geçmişte ve günümüzde ihmal edilen, gözden kaçırılan ya da yeteri kadar değer verilmeyen -bizce en önemli ve bugün de gözle görülür, dost, düşman, insaf sahibi herkesin takdirle karşıladığı- mûcize örneği ise Hz. Peygamber’in topyekûn dinî ve siyasî alanda sergilediği insanları dönüştürme kabiliyetidir. Kaldı ki Hz. Peygamber’in bu türden sergilediği mûcize örnekleri geçmişte bir noktada yaşanmış ve misyonunu tamamlayarak tarihin dehlizlerinde kaybolmuş da değildir. Aksine bu dönüştürme ameliyesi nebevî prensiplerin ikâmesi ile asr-ı saadette ve sonrasında olduğu gibi günümüzde ve kıyamete kadar devam edecek olan zaman dilimlerinde de örnekliğini sürdürmeye ve fonksiyonunu icra etmeye devam edecektir. Hz. Peygamber’in başta Bedir Savaşı ve Hudeybiye Antlaşması olmak üzere birçok siyasî alanda yine bireysel ve toplumsal olarak içinde yaşadığı toplumun yüceltilip yükseltilmesinde olağanüstü bir başarı sağladığı yadsınamaz bir gerçektir. Elde ettiği başarıların kendisini hiçbir şekilde asıl hedefinden, tevhid merkezli yaşantısından uzaklaştırmaması, günün sonunda yine “rabbine şükreden bir kul” vasfını koruması onun şahsî kemâlinin ve vahye muhatap oluşunun en büyük göstergelerindendir. John William Draper (ö. 1882) gibi Batılı bilim insanlarına şu türden cümleleri kurduran en mühim sâik de kuşkusuz Hz. Peygamber’in sözünü ettiğimiz o eşsiz dönüştürme kabiliyetidir: “Tüm insanlar arasında, insan ırkına en fazla tesir eden kişi, Justinianus'un ölümünden dört yıl sonra Mekke’de, Arabistan'da doğan kişidir. Pek çok imparatorluğun manevî ve dinî lideri olmak, insan ırkının üçte birinin günlük hayatını yönlendirmek, belki de ‘Allah'ın Elçisi’ unvanının gerçek olduğunun delilidir.” İşte “Bir Mûcize Örneği Olarak Hz. Peygamber’in İnsanları Dönüştürme Kabiliyeti” başlığını taşıyan bu makale, müslüman toplumun kendi ekseninde yükselmesi ve yücelmesi adına hayatî önemi hâiz, günümüz insanının hayat felsefesine yön vermesi açısından da son derece kıymetli ve yol gösterici olan Son Elçi’nin bireyi, toplumu ve insanlığı dönüştürme kabiliyetini onun vahye muhatap kimliği ve tevhid eksenli hayatı çerçevesinde ortaya koymayı hedeflemektedir. (shrink)

İ‘câzü’l-Kur’ân literatürüne bakıldığında ilim adamlarının i‘câzın ne anlama geldiği, tehaddînin mâhiyeti ve bu olgunun ne şekilde tahakkuk ettiği konusunda birtakım çözüm yolları bulmaya çalıştıkları; bu konuyu nazm, fesâhat ve belâgatla ilişkilendirerek çok sayıda teori ortaya koydukları görülmektedir. Bu bağlamda Kur’ân metninin ne kadarının mu‘ciz olduğu, muârızlarına müteveccih tehaddînin asgari miktarı meselesinde serdedilen görüşlerden biri, Kur’ân’ın iç düzenin en küçük birimi olan âyetle tehaddîdir. İslâm düşünce tarihinin klasik ve modern dönemlerinde savunucusu bulunan bu yaklaşıma göre Kur’ân’ın en küçük birimi olan âyet (...) veya âyet eczâsı, mu‘ciz olmakta ve muarızlara bunlarla meydan okunmaktadır. Konuya ilişkin daha önce bir çalışmanın yapılmamış olmasından hareketle i‘câzü’l-Kur’ân literatürüne katkı sunmayı amaçlayan bu çalışmada, tehaddînin âyetle tahakkuk ettiğini belirten ilim adamlarının istidlâl yöntemleri önce deskriptif bir üslupla aktarılmakta, akabinde bunlar analitik bir bakış açısıyla irdelenmektedir. Son olarak da âyetle tehaddî teorisinin Kur’ân’ın bütünlüğüne riayet ilkesine uyup uymadığı test edilmekte ve bu bağlamda i‘câz olgusunun mâhiyeti incelenmektedir. Sonuç olarak mezkûr ilke esas alındığında fesâhat ve belâgat yönlerinin her âyette eşit düzeyde tahakkuk ettiğini söylemek mümkün gözükmemektedir. Zira Kur’ân’da iki harften ya da tek kelimeden oluşan âyetlerin tehaddîye veya mu‘cizeye konu olduğunu aklen ileri sürmek mümkün değildir. Bu durumda tehaddînin kısa veya uzun olmasına bakılmaksızın âyet veya âyet parçacıklarında değil de her bir sûrenin bütünlüğünde gerçekleştiğini savunmanın daha isabetli bir yaklaşım olduğu kanaatine ulaşılmaktadır. (shrink)

The following three papers (by R.G.A. Dolby, R.N.D. Martin, and A. Thomson) were presented to the Science & Religion Forum at its annual meeting in Liverpool, Britain, in March 1988, under the general theme of Tradition & Authority in Science and Religion. An abbreviated version of the fourth paper given at that meeting re-entitled STS Perspective: Value Systems, by W.F. Williams, is printed on pp. 219-221 of this volume (Vol. 9, No. 4). A copy of the full version is available (...) from either the author or the editorial office. (shrink)

Background: Patient autonomy has been promoted as the most important principle to guide difficult clinical decisions. To examine whether practising physicians indeed value patient autonomy above other considerations, physicians were asked to weight patient autonomy against three other criteria that often influence doctors’ decisions. Associations between physicians’ religious characteristics and their weighting of the criteria were also examined. Methods: Mailed survey in 2007 of a stratified random sample of 1000 US primary care physicians, selected from the American Medical Association masterfile. (...) Physicians were asked how much weight should be given to the following: (1) the patient’s expressed wishes and values, (2) the physician’s own judgment about what is in the patient’s best interest, (3) standards and recommendations from professional medical bodies and (4) moral guidelines from religious traditions. Results: Response rate 51% (446/879). Half of physicians (55%) gave the patient’s expressed wishes and values “the highest possible weight”. In comparative analysis, 40% gave patient wishes more weight than the other three factors, and 13% ranked patient wishes behind some other factor. Religious doctors tended to give less weight to the patient’s expressed wishes. For example, 47% of doctors with high intrinsic religious motivation gave patient wishes the “highest possible weight”, versus 67% of those with low (OR 0.5; 95% CI 0.3 to 0.8). Conclusions: Doctors believe patient wishes and values are important, but other considerations are often equally or more important. This suggests that patient autonomy does not guide physicians’ decisions as much as is often recommended in the ethics literature. (shrink)

In _Sentient Flesh _R. A. Judy takes up freedman Tom Windham’s 1937 remark “we should have our liberty 'cause... us is human flesh" as a point of departure for an extended meditation on questions of the human, epistemology, and the historical ways in which the black being is understood. Drawing on numerous fields, from literary theory and musicology, to political theory and phenomenology, as well as Greek and Arabic philosophy, Judy engages literary texts and performative practices such as music and (...) dance that express knowledge and conceptions of humanity appositional to those grounding modern racialized capitalism. Operating as critiques of Western humanism, these practices and modes of being-in-the-world—which he theorizes as “thinking in disorder,” or “poiēsis in black”—foreground the irreducible concomitance of flesh, thinking, and personhood. As Judy demonstrates, recognizing this concomitance is central to finding a way past the destructive force of ontology that still holds us in thrall. Erudite and capacious, _Sentient Flesh _offers a major intervention in the black study of life. (shrink)

The paper reviews criteria which have been used to distinguish science from nonscience and from pseudo–science, and it examines the extent to which they can usefully be applied to “creation science.” These criteria do not force a clear decision, especially as creation science resembles important eighteenth–century forms of orthodox science. Nevertheless, the proponents of creation science may be accused of pious fraud in failing to concede in their political battles that their “science” is tentative and tendentious and will continue to (...) be so while it remains archaic and poorly integrated into the rest of science. (shrink)

The problem that confronts us when we try to compare the structure of discourse and explanation in different domains of knowledge is that no one is an insider in more than one field, and insider information is essential. An observer who is not immersed in the practice of a particular scholarship and who wants to understand it is at the mercy of the practitioners. Yet those practitioners are themselves mystified by a largely unexamined communal myth of how scholarship is carried (...) on. R. G. Collingwood, although primarily a philosopher, was immersed in the community of historians and understood how history is done, so that he has had an immense influence on our ideas about historiography. Every historian knows The Idea of History.1 He was also a metaphysician, yet his influence on scientists’ understanding of nature, and of science, has been nil, and it is a rare scientist indeed who has ever heard of Collingwood or read The Idea of Nature.2 Collingwood’s views of the structure of science had to be constructed in large part from the elaborate fictions created by scientists and by an earlier generation of philosophers and historians of science who participated in the Baconian myth of the hypothetical-deductive scheme. 1. See R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History .2. See Collingwood, The Idea of Nature . R. C. Lewontin is Alexander Agassiz Professor at Harvard University. He is an experimental and theoretical evolutionary geneticist who has also worked extensively on epistemological issues in biology. He is the author of The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change and, with Richard Levins, of The Dialectical Biologist . His current research concerns the nature of genetic variation among individuals within species. (shrink)

Char et al. describe an interesting and useful approach in their paper, “Identifying ethical considerations for machine learning healthcare applications.” Their proposed framework, which see...

R W K Paterson; Towards an Axiology of Knowledge, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 13, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 91–100, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1.

New dimensions in different ethical scenarios following genetic information require new medical-ethical Action Guides for physician-patient interaction. This paper discusses the ambiguity in moral choice between a “right not to know” and “a duty to know”, regarding parental decisionmaking pro or contra selective abortion following prenatal screening for autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (Potter III) and related public policy issues.

Professor R. J. Getty has drawn attention to a tenth- or early eleventh-century manuscript of Statius’ Thebaid, hitherto examined only in Book I, namely Turonensis . Dr. Klotz, in his Teubner edition of 1908, gave citations from Book I, and wrote , ‘dolendum est sane de hoc codice primum tantum librum innotuisse, sed cum Roffensis libri maxime affinis accuratiorem notitiam haberemus, collatione quamvis -aegre careri posse nobis visum est.’ I have collated both T and Roffensis in full, and find firstly (...) that the citations of r by Klotz are far from accurate, especially in the last six books, and secondly that while it is indeed true thatT and r are very closely related, T is a much better representative than r of their common source. (shrink)

R S Peters; Education and Justification, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 11, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 28–38, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1.

History of Mongolian philosophy, intellectual life, and politics; covers until 14th century.

R M Hare; Value Education in a Pluralist Society, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 10, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 7–23, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.146.

The purpose of this study was to determine the development of moral judgement in first-year and senior baccalaureate nursing students. These students were enrolled in three separate nursing programmes, each of which differed significantly in ethical content. The sample totalled 180 students enrolled in three New England programmes. Programme A included an ethics course taught by a professor of ethics. Programme B integrated ethical issues into all nursing theory courses. Programme C did not include ethical content in theory courses. The (...) design was of a developmental cross-sectional study. The dependent variable was the development of moral judgement, as measured by Rest’s Defining Issues Test. The independent variable was the amount of ethics taught in the nursing programmes and the level of academic education. The senior nursing students from programme A scored significantly higher than the other senior groups on the Defining Issues Test. The conclusion is that an ethics course with group participation and a decision-making element significantly facilitated nursing students’ development of moral judgement. (shrink)

Some, notably Peter van Inwagen, in order to avoid problems with free will and omniscience, replace the condition that an omniscient being knows all true propositions with a version of the apparently weaker condition that an omniscient being knows all knowable true propositions. I shall show that the apparently weaker condition, when conjoined with uncontroversial claims and the logical closure of an omniscient being's knowledge, still yields the claim that an omniscient being knows all true propositions.