Modal agnosticism is the view that we must be agnostic about whether things could have turned out differently. I argue that claims about unrealised possibilities are not justified by our modal intuitions, nor are they justified by any of the means proposed by philosophers. It follows that we do not have merely metaphysical modal knowledge, and that we must adopt modal agnosticism.

In The Art of Living, Alexander Nehamas argues that Michel de Montaigne, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault undertook a particularist art of living—a unique project of self‐construction. In so doing, argues Nehamas, they based their lives on the life of Socrates, that quintessentially ironic character. To this list of self‐fashioning philosophers, I add Fernando Pessoa, the twentieth‐century Portuguese writer. I argue that Pessoa, via the writings of his heteronyms, also took Socrates as the model for constructing a self. Moreover, Pessoa (...) employed all three kinds of irony that Nehamas argues is present in Plato’s writing, and did so not just to investigate the nature of the self, but to question its very existence. This is Pessoa’s formulation of the problem of the self. But Pessoa also borrowed from Nietzsche’s views on multiplicity, redeploying them in order to fabricate multiple selves. Pessoa’s solution to the problem of the self thus consists in the heteronymic device, which acts as a deus ex machina, unifying the disparate fictional voices and establishing Pessoa as a new, authentic self. Accordingly, Pessoa borrows from both Platonism and anti‐Platonism, distinguishing himself from both, so as to contrive—and simultaneously exemplify—an original art of living. (shrink)

BackgroundObtaining informed consent for intravenous thrombolysis in acute ischemic stroke can be challenging, and little is known about if and how the informed consent procedure is performed by neurologists in clinical practice. This study examines the procedure of informed consent for intravenous thrombolysis in acute ischemic stroke in high-volume stroke centers in the Netherlands.MethodsIn four high volume stroke centers, neurology residents and attending neurologists received an online questionnaire concerning informed consent for thrombolysis with tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA). The respondents were (...) asked to report their usual informed consent practice for tPA treatment and their considerations on whether informed consent should be obtained.ResultsFrom the 203 invited clinicians, 50% (n = 101) completed the questionnaire. One-third of the neurology residents (n = 21) and 21% of the neurologists (n = 8) reported that they always obtain informed consent for tPA treatment. If a patient is not capable of providing informed consent, 30% of the residents (n = 19) reported that they start tPA treatment without informed consent. In these circumstances, 53% of the neurologists (n = 20) reported that the resident under their supervision would start tPA treatment without informed consent. Most neurologists (n = 21; 55%) and neurology residents (n = 45; 72%) obtained informed consent within one minute. None of the respondents used more than five minutes for informed consent. Important themes regarding obtaining informed consent for treatment were patients’ capacity, and medical, ethical and legal considerations.ConclusionThe current practice of informed consent for thrombolysis in acute ischemic stroke varies among neurologists and neurology residents. If informed consent is obtained, most clinicians stated to obtain informed consent within one minute. In the future, a shortened information provision process may be applied, making a shift from informed consent to informed refusal, while still considering the patient’s capacity, stroke severity, and possible treatment delays. (shrink)

BackgroundIn Pakistan, drug promotion practices, ethical or unethical, have rarely been in the spotlight. We aimed to assess the perception and barriers of medical representatives (MRs) and doctors (MDs) regarding ethical promotion of pharmaceuticals in Pakistan.MethodsA cross sectional survey was conducted in seven major cities of Pakistan for 6-months period. Self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. Logistic regression and five-point Likert scale scoring was used to estimate the perceptions and barriers.ResultsCompared to national companies (NCs), the medical representatives (MRs) of (...) multinational companies (MNCs) strongly believed that their companies follow World Health Organization (WHO) (OR; 5.31, p = 0.0005), International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA) (OR; 6.45, p = 0.0005) and national codes of ethics (OR; 5.84, p = 0.0005). MNCs trained their MRs (OR; 6.68, p = 0.0005), provide accurate and valid scientific data (OR; 4.01, p = 0.007) with adequate system of accountability and controls on product samples (OR; 1.96, p = 0.047), while, NCs sponsor social or entertainment activities, seminars and conferences, and all sort of facilitation in form of gifts of their choice and clinic renovation for medical doctors (MDs). MDs perceptions were similar to MRs mentioned above, yet strongly agreed that companies offer cash payments or equivalents to MDs. The MRs of NCs/mncs and MDs agreed/strongly agreed that no external accountability, profiteering, pressure on sale targets, job insecurity, condoning unethical promotion by high-ups’ and business promotion by junior MDs were the predominant barriers.ConclusionIn conclusion, MRs of MNCs and MDs believed that MNCs follow certain codes of ethics in the promotion of pharmaceuticals, while NCs tend to be more profit oriented and even condone unethical promotion. All stakeholders, MRs, MDs and companies, might pose certain barriers, intentionally or unintentionally, in ethical promotion. (shrink)

The Visser rules form a basis of admissibility for the intuitionistic propositional calculus. We show how one can characterize the existence of covers in certain models by means of formulae. Through this characterization, we provide a new proof of the admissibility of a weak form of the Visser rules. Finally, we use this observation, coupled with a description of a generalization of the disjunction property, to provide a basis of admissibility for the intermediate logics BD2 and GSc.

Consumer buying behavior is an important aspect in every marketing strategy to produce maximum output from the market. This study aims to determine how advertisement affects consumer buying behavior and brand loyalty by considering a mediator between brand awareness and the moderating role of perceived quality. For this purpose, this study targets the rising cosmetics industry. This study used the purposive sampling technique to collect data from 300 respondents with the help of an online survey method via Google doc. The (...) partial least squares structural equation modeling PLS-SEM was applied to verify the hypotheses relationships. The findings have confirmed that advertisements substantially predicted brand awareness, brand loyalty, and consumer buying behavior. Furthermore, brand awareness partially mediated the association of advertisement with brand loyalty and consumer buying behavior. Also, perceived quality is significantly moderated on the association of brand awareness with brand loyalty and consumer buying behavior. Based on such findings, this study has contributed to the literature and provided new insights into the practical implications alongside the future roadmap of the survey. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the logical structure of arithmetical theories. We survey results concerning logics and admissible rules of constructive arithmetical theories. We prove a new theorem: the admissible propositional rules of Heyting Arithmetic are the same as the admissible propositional rules of Intuitionistic Propositional Logic. We provide some further insights concerning predicate logical admissible rules for arithmetical theories.

Reflection Principles are commonly thought to produce only strong axioms of infinity consistent with V = L. It would be desirable to have some notion of strong reflection to remedy this, and we have proposed Global Reflection Principles based on a somewhat Cantorian view of the universe. Such principles justify the kind of cardinals needed for, inter alia , Woodin’s Ω-Logic.

In this paper we describe a framework for the construction of entities that can serve as interpretations of arbitrary contiguous chunks of text. An important part of the paper is devoted to describing stacking cells, or the proposed meanings for bracket-structures.

In this paper we examine various requirements on the formalisation choices under which self-reference can be adequately formalised in arithmetic. In particular, we study self-referential numberings, which immediately provide a strong notion of self-reference even for expressively weak languages. The results of this paper suggest that the question whether truly self-referential reasoning can be formalised in arithmetic is more sensitive to the underlying coding apparatus than usually believed. As a case study, we show how this sensitivity affects the formal study (...) of certain principles of self-referential truth. (shrink)

With the advancement of artificial intelligence and humanoid robotics and an ongoing debate between human rights and rule of law, moral philosophers, legal and political scientists are facing difficulties to answer the questions like, “Do humanoid robots have same rights as of humans and if these rights are superior to human rights or not and why?” This paper argues that the sustainability of human rights will be under question because, in near future the scientists (considerably the most rational people) will (...) be the biggest critics of the human rights. Whereas to make artificial intelligence sustainable, it is very important to reconcile it with human rights. Above all, there is a need to find a consensus between human rights and robotics rights in the framework of our established legal systems. (shrink)

In this sequel toSelf-reference in arithmetic Iwe continue our discussion of the question: What does it mean for a sentence of arithmetic to ascribe to itself a property? We investigate how the properties of the supposedly self-referential sentences depend on the chosen coding, the formulae expressing the properties and the way a fixed point for the expressing formulae are obtained. In this second part we look at some further examples. In particular, we study sentences apparently expressing their Rosser-provability, their own${\rm{\Sigma (...) }}_n^0$-truth or their own${\rm{\Pi }}_n^0$-truth. Finally we offer an assessment of the results of both papers. (shrink)

Over the past decade land has again moved to the centre of resource conflicts, agrarian struggles, and competing visions over the future of food and farming. This renewed interest in land necessitates asking the seemingly simple, but pertinent, question ‘whatisland?’ To reach a more profound understanding of the uniqueness of land, and what distinguishes land from other resources, this symposium suggests the notion of ‘land imaginaries’ as a crucial lens in the study of current land transformations. Political-economy, and the particular (...) economic, financial, or political interests of various actors involved in land projects do not directly result in, or translate into, outcomes, such as dispossession and enclosure, increased commodification, financialization, and assetization, or mobilization and resistance. All these processes are informed by different imaginaries of land—the underlying understandings, views, and visions of what land is, can, and should be—and associated visions, hopes, and dreams regarding land. Drawing on a variety of case studies from across the world, crossing Global North/South and East/West, and including contemporary and historical instances of land transformation, this symposium addresses the multifaceted ways in which implicit, explicit, and emergent understandings of land shape current land transformations. (shrink)

In this paper, we study finitely axiomatizable conservative extensions of a theoryUin the case whereUis recursively enumerable and not finitely axiomatizable. Stanisław Krajewski posed the question whether there are minimal conservative extensions of this sort. We answer this question negatively.Consider a finite expansion of the signature ofUthat contains at least one predicate symbol of arity ≥ 2. We show that, for any finite extensionαofUin the expanded language that is conservative overU, there is a conservative extensionβofUin the expanded language, such that$\alpha (...) \vdash \beta$and$\beta \not \vdash \alpha$. The result is preserved when we consider eitherextensionsormodel-conservative extensionsofUinstead ofconservative extensions. Moreover, the result is preserved when we replace$\dashv$as ordering on the finitely axiomatized extensions in the expanded language by a relevant kind of interpretability, to witinterpretability that identically translates the symbols of the U-language.We show that the result fails when we consider an expansion with only unary predicate symbols for conservative extensions ofUordered by interpretability that preserves the symbols ofU. (shrink)

Studies in the neurobiological underpinnings of social information processing bypsychologists, neurobiologists, psychiatrists, radiologists, and neurologists, using methods thatrange from brain imaging techniques to comparative analyses.

In this note we compare propositional logics for closed substitutions and propositional logics for open substitutions in constructive arithmetical theories. We provide a strong example where these logics diverge in an essential way. We prove that for Markov's Arithmetic, that is, Heyting's Arithmetic plus Markov's principle plus Extended Church's Thesis, the logic of closed and the logic of open substitutions are the same.

In this paper, we show that the predicate logics of consistent extensions of Heyting's Arithmetic plus Church's Thesis with uniqueness condition are complete $\Pi _{2}^{0}$. Similarly, we show that the predicate logic of HA*, i.e. Heyting's Arithmetic plus the Completeness Principle (for HA*) is complete $\Pi _{2}^{0}$. These results extend the known results due to Valery Plisko. To prove the results we adapt Plisko's method to use Tennenbaum's Theorem to prove 'categoricity of interpretations' under certain assumptions.

This article critically evaluates the possible impact of the Charter on the relationship between the Court of Justice of the European Union and national constitutional courts. While it is premature to provide a definitive assessment of the kind of collaboration that these courts will develop, it is crucial to identify a number of features of the new landscape that will influence the direction in which the relationship between the CJEU and constitutional courts will evolve. This article discusses several reasons that (...) may result in better or a higher number of judicial interactions, as well as factors that may create tension or cause problems in the relationship between the CJEU and national constitutional courts. As such, it offers a framework that may help us to understand future post-Charter judgments by these courts setting out how they conceive their engagement with their counterpart on fundamental rights issues. (shrink)

With direct-to-consumer advertisements (DTCA), pharmaceutical companies can market their prescription drugs directly to consumers. In order to properly study the argumentative aspect of these advertisements from a pragma-dialectical perspective, it is necessary to characterize DTCA as an ‘argumentative activity type’. This characterization shows that in DTCA, the advertiser combines two genres of communicative activity: promotion and consultation. The use of promotion stems from the advertiser’s commercial objective of selling products, while the use of consultation is a result of the legal (...) obligation to present a fair balance between arguments for and against the use of a drug. (shrink)

There is a “Pragmatist turn” visible in the field of organization science today, resulting from a renewed interest in the work of Pragmatist philosophers like Dewey, Mead, Peirce, James and others, and in its implications for the study of organizations. Following Wicks and Freeman, in the past decade Pragmatism has also entered the field of business ethics, which, however, has not been uniformly applauded in that field. Some scholars fear that Pragmatism may enhance already existing positivist and managerialist tendencies in (...) current business ethics, while others see more emancipatory potential in Pragmatism, arguing that it complements and supports stakeholder theory. In this paper, a comparison of the philosophical underpinnings of Pragmatist and Critical conceptions of business ethics is offered, concentrating on the Pragmatism of John Dewey and the Critical theory of the Frankfurt School, in particular of Axel Honneth. It is argued that these two developed along two converging lines. Along the first line, Dewey was far more skeptical and critical of capitalism than is often thought. Along the second line, the reactions to Pragmatism of Frankfurt School Critical theorists developed over time from generally hostile, to partially inclusive, to more fully integrative. At the crossroads of these converging lines a Pragmatist Critical perspective is developed and exemplified, and its implications for business ethics are outlined. (shrink)

A good place to start in assessing a theory of truth is to ask whether the theory under discussion is consistent with Aristotle’s commonsensical definition of truth from Metaphysics 4: “What is false says of that which is that it is not, or of that which is not that it is; and what is true says of that which is that it is, or of that which is not that it is not.”1 Philosophers of a realist bent will be delighted (...) to see that Anselm unambiguously adopts the Aristotelian commonplace. A statement is true, he says, “when it signifies that what‐is is.”2 But the theory of truth that Anselm builds on this observation is one that would surely have confounded Aristotle. For no matter what the topic, Anselm’s thinking always eagerly returns to God; and the unchallenged centrality of God in Anselm’s philosophical explorations is nowhere more in evidence than in his account of truth. Indeed, we see in the student’s opening question in De veritate that the entire discussion has God as its origin and its aim: “Since we believe that God is truth, and we say that truth is in many other things, I would like to know whether, wherever truth is said to be, we must acknowledge that God is that truth.”3 The student then reminds Anselm that in the Monologion he had argued from the truth of statements to an eternal Supreme Truth. Does this not commit Anselm (the student seems to be asking) to holding that God himself is somehow the truth of true statements? But what definition of truth could make sense of such an odd claim? Anselm is happy to take up the challenge of showing that his description of God as “Supreme Truth” is no mere metaphor, but the expression of the deepest insight into the nature of truth. An account of truth is just theology under a different name. This first distinctive characteristic of Anselm’s theory, the centrality of God as Supreme Truth, helps account for a second distinctive characteristic: its strong insistence on the unity of truth. All truth either is God or somehow reflects God; thus, one simple being provides the.... (shrink)