This article describes and analyzes the design and functioning of the Statistical Ethics System (SETE) in Colombia’s National Statistical Office. It presents the methodology and general process of planning and implementation of the System, supported by a conceptual analysis of the requirements for an ethical functioning of official statistics. The general objective of the article is to make a practical contribution to the understanding of conceptual and practical features that ought to be considered in the implementation of an ethical system (...) in the operation of the public sector, particularly in the area of the production of official statistics. The text is divided into five parts. In the first part, we make a general introduction to the ethical value of official statistics. In the second and third parts, we make a presentation and analysis of the principles and risks that were selected as the basic ethical framework for the production of official statistics at the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE). The fourth section presents the conceptual and practical bases of how SETE operates. The fifth section we present some concluding remarks. (shrink)

Readers of this book are sure to view the ethics of incentives in a new light.

Connected Lives examines the account of human nature that is implicit in an ethics of care, a picture of human lives that emphasizes interdependency, embodiment, and social connectedness. The book makes important connections to the picture of human life found in theorists of love such as St. Augustine and Emmanuel Levinas, and shows that when care theory is articulated clearly, it provides resources for thinking through some of the difficult moral issues we face in the contemporary world, issues such as (...) assisted reproduction and the new genetic technologies. (shrink)

In view of a resurgence of concern about the measurement problem, it is pointed out that the Relativistic Transactional Interpretation remedies issues previously considered as drawbacks or refutations of the original TI. Specifically, once one takes into account relativistic processes that are not representable at the non-relativistic level, absorption is quantitatively defined in unambiguous physical terms. RTI therefore provides a well-defined terminus to what appears to be a necessary infinite regress concerning ‘absorption’ when only the non-relativistic level is considered. In (...) addition, specifics of the relativistic transactional model demonstrate that the Maudlin ‘contingent absorber’ challenge to the original TI cannot even be mounted: basic features of established relativistic field theories dictate that the ‘slow-moving offer wave’ required for the challenge scenario cannot exist. It is concluded that issues previously considered obstacles for TI are no longer legitimately viewed as such, and that reconsideration of the transactional picture is warranted in connection with solving the measurement problem. (shrink)

The biggest contemporary challenge to democratic legitimacy gravitates around the crisis of democratic representation.

The Hebrew text On the Heavens and the World, ascribed to Ibn S, is an interesting and intriguing composition. It dates from the 13th century and was quite influential. It is not a translation of any text of Ibn S known to us, but is related to the Latin De celo et mundo, which appears in the 1508 Venice edition of translations of Ibn S. The Latin and Hebrew texts differ widely and the relation between them is far from being (...) clear. Both are in sixteen chapters, the titles of the chapters are the same, but the texts are only roughly similar. The Hebrew text often offers short, incomplete summaries of the Latin arguments. On the other hand it includes many passages which have no parallel in the Latin. There are two possible explanations of the perplexing relationship between the two texts: either that there was more than one version of the Latin text, or that the translator, Shlomo ben Moshe of Laguiri wrote a kind of paraphrase. The paper shows that the second explanation is correct and offers a preliminary study of the sources and the aims of the Hebrew text. (shrink)

The book brings together social philosophy and educational theory. Liberalism's unresolved tensions between freedom and equality, public and private good, individual and state, etc., are illuminated by controversies in educational theory and policy.

Using the LDSNL model of utterance interpretation being developed by Gabbay and Kempson , this paper demonstrates how the dynamics of the proof process adopted explains configurational restrictions imposed on the interpretation of elliptical fragments. The blurring of traditional semantic and syntactic dichotomies in the LDSNL proof-theoretic reconstruction of interpretation successfully provides a basis for predicting the array of variation displayed by different elliptical forms. The logic adopted is a composite system of a type logic nested within a database logic. (...) Two resource-sensitive sub-types of Conditional Introduction form the basis for explaining the ellipsis data. The result is a demonstration of how the simple device of adding labels to an inference system can provide a useful tool not only at the meta-logic level of comparing alternative logic and grammar formalisms, but also at the level of explaining natural language data. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) war wohl der berühmteste deutsche Staatsrechtler seiner Generation. Wegen seines Engagements für die Nationalsozialisten, die ihn zum Preussischen Staatsrat ernannten, war er zugleich der berüchtigste. Er hat sich zeitlebens als Angehöriger der katholischen Kirche zu erkennen gegeben. Problemlos war dieses Verhältnis freilich nicht, wie etwa aus einer Tagebuchnotiz von 1948 hervorgeht: "Das ist das geheime Schlüsselwort meiner gesamten geistigen und publizistischen Existenz: das Ringen um die eigentliche katholische Verschärfung dots". Was meinte Carl Schmitt mit diesem Begriff, und (...) wie ist die auffallende Absenz gerade der katholischen Theologie in seinem Werk zu erklären? Mein Buch ist unter anderem der Versuch einer Antwort auf diese beiden Fragen. (shrink)

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The present offers a pragmatic solution of the Heap Paradox, based on the idea that vague predicates are “indexical” in the sense that their denotation does not only depend on the context of their use, but it is a function of the context. The analysis is based on the following three claims. The borderlines of vague terms are undetermined in the sense that though they may be determined in some contexts, they may differ from one context to the next. Vagueness (...) serves the important communicative function, enabling speakers to identify entities as objects (as things we can talk about) in terms of some quantitative differences between the “object” and its background in the context. Thus, in some contexts we can naturally partition the group of men uniquely so as to distinguish the bald from the not-bald. Whether a man with a given hair number is among the bald in a given context depends not only on his own hair number but also on the hair number of others in that context. This provides the background for the claim that when we assert that John is bald, we presuppose that there is a unique demarcation to the bald in that context. I consider the truth of the Paradox’s statements in contexts where the presupposition is true and in contexts where it is false. The analysis yields that the contradiction is avoided because though each of the statements is often true, never are all the sentences in the Paradox true together. (shrink)

ABSTRACT How are educational theory and practice to respond to the problem of the fragmentation of value, characteristic of modernity? This paper criticises Susan Mendus' recent examination of three different arguments for revaluing past traditions. While endorsing her rejection of proposals to return to the past, the paper challenges the converse proposal that education should rely on the development of critical understanding. Such a proposal attends to only one of two features of modern consciousness which are of central relevance to (...) education. The paper further argues that liberal education's theoretical framework itself impedes a more adequate response to this and to related questions of individual and social development. (shrink)

Results of studies that cast doubt on the safety of genetically modified crops have been published since the first GM crop approval for commercial release. These ‘alarming studies’ challenge the dominant view about the adequacy of current risk assessment practice for genetically modified organisms. Subsequent debates follow a similar and recurring pattern, in which those involved cannot agree on the significance of the results and the attached consequences. The standard response from the government—a reassessment by scientific advisory bodies—seems insufficient to (...) bring the debate to a satisfactory closure. The recurrence of the same debate every time an alarming study is published shows that science alone cannot solve the problem. We believe that further analysis is needed to investigate if and how we can prevent this repetitive cycle that creates frustration amongst all stakeholders. In this paper, we analyse the dynamics behind discussions which occur following alarming studies. We will use a selection of representative alarming GMO case studies to underpin our claim that it is likely that there will be a permanent difference in view of opinion that cannot be solved with more data or new facts. The current strategy of more research is a pitfall that is unlikely to solve this issue. Instead, the focus of the GM crop discussion should shift towards managing permanent different viewpoints and providing a platform for a broader conversation on agriculture and food production. (shrink)

Max Stirner pioneered a radically existentialist thinking in which the ego or the Unique One is able to appropriate its “predicates” or determinations as objects of consumption. In this sense the singular event is privileged over the intellectual “spooks” that express the predicate’s independence from and mastery over its subject. Karl Marx’s thinking was decisively altered by his encounter with Stirner, to whom he replied at length in The German Ideology. I propose that Marx and Engels’s critique and appropriation of (...) Stirner provides the basis for what I call “communist existentialism,” and that this is the proper standpoint for radical philosophy today. After giving an account of this position, I briefly adopt it to critique two of the communist standpoints associated with “communization,” those of Tiqqun and Theorie Communiste. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Untersuchung setzt sich mit jenen Werken auseinander, die im frühen 18. Jahrhundert hermeneutische Problemgehalte ansprechen. Gleichsam als Vorbotin einer Kritik der Verstandeserkenntnis wird in der rationalistischen Aufklärung eine Bewegung spürbar, die geschichtshermeneutische, erkenntnis- und moralkritische Ansätze hervorbringt und in Opposition zu allgegenwärtigen nomologischen Vorstellungen die Frage nach dem ganzen Menschen neu formuliert. Diese ästhetisch-hermeneutische Kritik bezieht sich nicht nur auf die Gesetzeswissenschaften, sondern auch auf geschichtliche Problemstellungen, so daß die hier thematisierten Diskussionen über Gemeinsinn, empfindsame Moralkritik und ästhetische (...) Erkenntniskritik gleichsam Momente eines umfassenden Zusammenhangs verkörpern. (shrink)