According to the doctrine of Super-Humeanism, the world’s mosaic consists only of permanent matter points and changing spatial relations, while all the other entities and features figuring in scientific theories are nomological parameters, whose role is merely to build the best law system. In this paper, I develop an argument against Super-Humeanism by pointing out that it is vulnerable to and does not have the resources to solve the well-known problem of immanent comparisons. Firstly, I show that it cannot endorse (...) a fundamentalist solution à la Lewis, since its two pillars—a minimalist ontology and a best system account of lawhood—would generate, together, a tedious problem of internal coherence. Secondly, I consider anti-fundamentalist strategies, proposed within Humeanism, and find them inapplicable to the Super-Humean doctrine. The concern is that, since it is impossible to choose the best law system within Super-Humeanism, this doctrine may be charged with incoherence. (shrink)

This article offers a philosophic understanding of dissidence. We present a conceptual analysis of dissidence as connected to a net of other philosophic concepts such as ‘virtue’ and ‘truth’. ‘Dissidence’, like ‘right’ and ‘liberty’, is used both in precise philosophic discourse and with greater variations of meaning in ordinary language. Our discussion springs from a philosophic discourse of dissidence that flourished in Czechoslovakia in the seventies and eighties, during the ‘normalization’ period between the Soviet invasion of 1968 and the Velvet (...) Revolution of 1989. During that period, a small section of Czechoslovak society found itself in a situation that was commonly referred to by the word ‘dissidence’. Since some dissidents were philosophers by inclination, education, or approach, they understood their situation by drawing on their philosophic background. The towering figure of dissident philosophy was Jan Patocka, one of the first spokespersons of Charter 77 on human rights and a student of Husserl. Of his students, Václav Havel and Petr Rezek made significant contributions to the philosophical discourse of the meaning of dissidence. Though emerging out of a particular historical context, post-Stalinist Communism, the discourse itself attempted to understand dissidence in universal philosophical terms. (shrink)

We show that in the Maxwell–Lorentz theory of classical electrodynamics most initial values for fields and particles lead to an ill-defined dynamics, as they exhibit singularities or discontinuities along light-cones. This phenomenon suggests that the Maxwell equations and the Lorentz force law ought rather to be read as a system of delay differential equations, that is, differential equations that relate a function and its derivatives at different times. This mathematical reformulation, however, leads to physical and philosophical consequences for the ontological (...) status of the electromagnetic field. In particular, fields cannot be taken as independent degrees of freedom, which suggests that one should not add them to the ontology. (shrink)

Do numbers exist? Carnap (1956 [1950]) famously argues that this question can be understood in an “internal” and in an “external” sense, and calls “external” questions “non-cognitive”. Carnap also says that external questions are raised “only by philosophers” (p. 207), which means that, in his view, philosophers raise ”non-cognitive” questions. However, it is not clear how the internal/external distinction and Carnap’s related views about philosophy should be understood. This paper provides a new interpretation. I draw attention to Carnap’s distinction between (...) purely external statements, which are independent from all frameworks, and pragmatic external statements, which concern which framework one should adopt, and argue that the latter express noncognitive mental states. Specifically, I argue that “frameworks” are systems of rules for the assessment of statements, which are utterances of ordinary language sentences. Pragmatic external statements express noncognitive dispositions to follow only certain rules of assessment. For instance, “numbers exist” understood as a pragmatic external statement expresses a noncognitive disposition to use only rules of assessment according to which numbers do exist. Carnap can thereby be understood as proposing a distinctive form of noncognitivism about ontology that is in some respects analogous to norm-expressivism in metaethics. (shrink)

The defense of necessity, also known as the “choice of evils,” reflects popular moral intuitions and common sense: sometimes, breaking the rules is the right—indeed, the only—thing to do in order to avoid a greater evil. Citing a classic example, mountain climbers may break into a cabin to wait out a deadly snow storm and appropriate the owner’s provisions because their property violations are a lesser evil compared to the loss of life. At the same time, this defense contradicts the (...) fundamental principles of criminal responsibility in that it authorizes violation of rights of innocent bystanders. By allowing the mountain climbers to override the property rights of the cabin owner, the defense effectively forbids the cabin owner to use force in response—a different rule would perpetuate violence. This outcome is at odds with the basic criminal law doctrines. There is no general duty to rescue in Anglo-American law. Yet, by forbidding the cabin owner to use force, the defense of necessity essentially imposes on him the duty to forego his interests in favor of those of the mountain climbers. The paper explores the origins and boundaries of the defense of necessity. It argues that the existing public and private theories of necessity are unsatisfactory and concludes that a viable theory of necessity should be able to explain why it is sometimes permissible to override individual rights of citizens without their consent or fault. (shrink)

The main target of this study is to make a comparative analysis between the presence or absence of historical thinking competencies in the official curricula of Gymnasieskola (Sweden) and Bachillerato (Spain). To reach this goal, a mixed instrument was designed, both qualitative and quantitative, to analyze the offical documents. The results show a great presence of “historical consciousness” in the case of Sweden and the use of historical sources and evidences in the case of Spain.

Cognitive Science, Volume 45, Issue 11, November 2021.

This paper offers an overview of the parts of the Epinomis and of Aristotles’s works which seem to present common themes and a similar perspective. By analysing the cross-references detected by critics, I explore whether it is possible to assume that one author was influenced by the other. In order to do so, I explicate the similarities and dissimilarities between the two philosophers’ conceptual frameworks, highlighting the relevance of the Epinomis within Platonism. My aim is to explain why it is (...) not plausible to say that the author of Epinomis was directly influenced by Aristotle’s treatises or vice versa. I argue, instead, that the similarities between the two depend on a shared background and it is more reasonable to assume a common Platonic origin, which is justifiable on a chronological basis. (shrink)

This article seeks to expose some of the themes addressed in Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, especially those in which the authors use Marx’s work as a starting point for their own theses. I first present the thesis of history as mere contingency, defended by the authors from a new examination of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. I show how the authors choose some fragments of Marx’s work to support an anti-dialectical thesis, contrary to Marx’s, although they do not elaborate (...) a critique of the German philosopher. In the second place, I present the authors’ thesis with respect to the nature of capital and its development, making use of their reading of the law of tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Here too, the selective recourse to Marx results in an abandonment of the labor theory of value, with the thesis of machinic surplus value. This thesis contributes to the new ontology proposed by the authors, which dissolves the categories of subject and object, while equating and homogenizing all that exists, flattening the diversity of the social world. Finally, I critique the design of revolution proposed by the authors in close connection with their new ontology. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss whether the results of loop quantum gravity (LQG) constitute a fatal blow to Humeanism. There is at least a prima facie reason for believing so: while Humeanism regards spatiotemporal relations as fundamental, LQG describes the fundamental layer of our reality in terms of spin networks, which are not in spacetime. However, the question should be tackled more carefully. After explaining the importance of the debate on the tenability of Humeanism in light of LQG, and having (...) presented the Humean doctrine, I review two cases which present serious threats to Humeanism, one concerning the fundamentality of vectorial quantities and the other concerning quantum entanglement. In particular, I recall the strategies that are usually employed in these two cases in order to save Humeanism: in the first case, the strategy consists in amending the characterization of the Humean mosaic; in the second case, it consists in adopting a realist or nomological interpretation of the wave function. These solutions will turn out to be helpful in my discussion of LQG where, after describing LQG, I show that Humeans might save their doctrine either by endorsing a realist interpretation of spin networks, or by giving them a nomological status and, at the same time, by revisiting the characterization of the Humean mosaic. However, I conclude that both solutions are wanting. (shrink)

Using countable support iterations of S-proper posets, we show that the existence of a definable wellorder of the reals is consistent with each of the following: , and.

One dimension of cognitive success concerns getting it right: having many true beliefs and no false ones. Another dimension of cognitive success concerns using the right concepts. For example, using a concept of a person that systematically excludes people of certain demographics from its extension is a sort of cognitive deficiency. This view, if correct, tasks inquirers with critically examining the concepts they are using and perhaps replacing those concepts with new and better ones. This task is often referred to (...) as “conceptual engineering”. However, so far it is unclear what exactly happens in cases of conceptual engineering. How does language change when we engineer a concept? This article offers an answer. I propose a view on which, when speakers assess the truth of propositions, they often rely on assumptions with regard to what is required for their truth. For example, when speakers assess whether unborn fetuses are people, they rely on assumptions with regard to what is required to be a person. Based on this idea, I develop a model of conceptual engineering according to which speakers “engineer concepts” when they change how they assess the truth of propositions. For example, speakers engineer the concept of a person when they change how they assess the truth of the proposition that unborn fetuses are people. (shrink)

Many arguments have been made against gene editing. This paper addresses the commonly invoked argument that gene editing violates human dignity and is ultimately a subversion of human nature. There are several drawbacks to this argument. Above all, the concept of what human dignity means is unclear. It is not possible to condemn a practice that violates human dignity if we do not know exactly what is being violated. The argument’s entire reasoning is thus undermined. Analyses of the arguments involved (...) in this discussion have often led to the conclusion that gene editing contravenes the principle of genetic identity (genetic immutability) thereby subverting a requisite of human dignity and ultimately threatening human nature. This paper refutes these arguments and shows that any opposition to gene editing cannot rely on the human dignity argument. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to analyze the meaning of examples in C. Hempel’s works. Hempel uses many examples referring to readings of magnetic hand, burning of white phosphorus, predictions of properties of some elements of the table of Mendeleev, to astrophysical hypotheses, terms of total solar eclipse, throwing of dice, as well as on unmarried men, on white and black swans, green mermaids, black crows and white shoes, blue roses, predictions of Jones’ recovery, the eruption of Vesuvius, the (...) assassination of Julius Caesar, and other “special cases” and “concrete facts”. The question is raised as to whether the case studies are mere illustrative material, a form of argumentation; a way of verifying Hempel’s ideas, their “demonstrable confirmation”, and in this sense a definite empirical basis for the study. The necessity of analyzing concrete examples in the context of Hempel’s theoretical research is shown, for which the examples turn out to be an occasion for investigating the logic of confirmation and the logic of explanation, for analyzing the structures of explanans and explanandum, for understanding the differences in inductive and deductive logical constructions, and for analyzing “quasi-induction”. The paper discusses Hempel’s famous example, the crow paradox, which is named in his honor and is a kind of logical provocation. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the problem of social exist- ence normativity. In the comparative analysis of the philosophy of law, humanities and social studies, the foundations of the ontological rootedness of the norm in human existence have been evidently found. The hypothesis of the study is that the norm is not a special way of regulating behavior, but is the main form of human existence. The ontological nature of the norm outside the semantic aspect of its individual manifestations is (...) revealed. For this purpose, the basis of the analysis is determined by the Decalogue, where for the first time an attempt was made to consolidate the “pure” norm. It is shown that the norm is born in the dialectic of pro- hibition and obligation in the reflexive processes of actions of a social subject. An attempt is made to comprehensively analyze the normativity of social existence. (shrink)

We show that is consistent with the existence of a -definable wellorder of the reals and a -definable ω-mad subfamily of [ω]ω.

Ontological expressivism is the view that ontological existence claims express non-cognitive mental states. I develop a version of ontological expressivism that is modeled after Gibbard’s (2003) norm-expressivism. I argue that, when speakers assess whether, say, composite objects exist, they rely on assumptions with regard to what is required for composition to occur. These assumptions guide their assessment, similar to how norms may guide the assessment of normative propositions. Against this backdrop, I argue that “some objects have parts”, uttered in the (...) context of an ontological disagreement, expresses a noncognitive disposition to assess the truth of propositions by using only rules of assessment according to which the proposition that some objects have parts is to be evaluated as true. (shrink)

This paper examines the culture, the dynamics and the financial underpinnings that determine how medical research is being conducted on children in the United States. Children have increasingly become the subject of experiments that offer them no potential direct benefit but expose them to risks of harm and pain. A wide range of such experiments will be examined, including a lethal heartburn drug test, the experimental insertion of a pacemaker, an invasive insulin infusion experiment, and a fenfluramine "violence prediction" experiment. (...) Emphasis, however, is given to psychoactive drug tests because of the inherent ethical and diagnostic problems involved in the absence of any objective, verifiable diagnostic tool. Effort is made to provide readers comprehensive reference sources to evidence-based reports about the serious risks these drugs pose for adults and children so that the reader may judge whether the benefits (if any) outweigh the risks for children. The first ethical issue raised by these experiments is: did the severity of illness in these children justify their exposure to short and long-term risks? The ethics of the experiments will be evaluated by referring to existing codes of medical research ethics-the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki, and the federal Code of Regulations. The thirteen cases presented will demonstrate that children are being used in ever more speculative experiments, often in the absence of a therapeutic intent, but a significant chance for causing harm and / or discomfort. Some of the experiments were designed to explore the mechanisms of pathology and pharmacological interventions, or the response of neurological brain receptors to chemical provocation ("challenge"). Others were designed to test the safety or efficacy of new drugs, even to test these drugs on healthy children who were hypothesized to be "at risk." Children and adolescents have been subjected to "forced dose titration" experiments that induced a spectrum of severe adverse effects, including insomnia, extreme restlessness, agitation, (akathisia) and self-injurious behavior. FDA reports show that suicide is a significant issue in psychotropic drug trials-in pediatric trials the problem is even greater. The paper aims to demonstrate how the enactment of the Better Pharmaceuticals for Children Act (incorporated into the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act, FDAMA), set in motion a radical shift in public policy by providing huge financial incentives to pharmaceutical companies to test new or patented drugs in children. Federal policy shifted from one aimed at protecting children by setting limits on permissible research risks, to a policy aimed at broadening the inclusion of children as test subjects. It will be shown how the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services lifted regulatory restrictions to permit research involving greater than minimal risk to be conducted on healthy children, claiming that all children are potentially "at risk" of a future condition. Children were in this way deprived of regulatory protections. An argument will be made that the approval of nontherapeutic, harmful experiments-such as exposure of toddlers to lead poison-under the current gate keeping system raises serious doubts about the sustainability of institutional review boards (IRBs) as protectors of human research subjects. Children, who are precluded from exercising the adult human's right to informed consent, are being exploited as commodities for commercial ends. It is the position of the author that nothing less than the enactment of a federal law mandating a radical overhaul of the current research review system, with independent checks and balances, will provide children the legal protections they need. Ten specific recommendations are offered to protect children from harmful experiments. (shrink)

In previous research, acoustic characteristics of the male voice have been shown to signal various aspects of mate quality and threat potential. But the human voice is also a medium of linguistic communication. The present study explores whether physical and vocal indicators of male mate quality and threat potential are linked to effective communicative behaviors such as vowel differentiation and use of more salient phonetic variants of consonants. We show that physical and vocal indicators of male threat potential, height and (...) formant position, are negatively linked to vowel space size, and that height and levels of circulating testosterone are negatively linked to the use of the aspirated variant of the alveolar stop consonant /t/. Thus, taller, more masculine men display less clarity in their speech and prefer phonetic variants that may be associated with masculine attributes such as toughness. These findings suggest that vocal signals of men’s mate quality and/or dominance are not confined to the realm of voice acoustics but extend to other aspects of communicative behavior, even if this means a trade-off with speech patterns that are considered communicatively advantageous, such as clarity and indexical cues to higher social class. (shrink)

We study two ideals which are naturally associated to independent families. The first of them, denoted \, is characterized by a diagonalization property which allows along a cofinal sequence of stages along a finite support iteration to adjoin a maximal independent family. The second ideal, denoted \\), originates in Shelah’s proof of \ in Shelah, 433–443, 1992). We show that for every independent family \, \\subseteq \mathcal {J}_\mathcal {A}\) and define a class of maximal independent families, to which we refer (...) as densely maximal, for which the two ideals coincide. Building upon the techniques of Shelah we characterize Sacks indestructibility for such families in terms of properties of \\) and devise a countably closed poset which adjoins a Sacks indestructible densely maximal independent family. (shrink)

Easy Ontologists, most notably Thomasson (2015), argue that ontological questions are shallow. They think that these questions can either be answered by using our ordinary conceptual competence—of course tables exist!—or are meaningless, or else should be answered through conceptual re-engineering. Ontology thus is “easy”, requiring no distinctively metaphysical investigation. This paper raises a two-stage objection to Easy Ontology. We first argue that questions concerning which entities exist are inextricably bound up with “ontological category questions”, which are questions concerning the identity (...) of and differences between kinds of entities. We then argue that ontological category questions do not have trivial answers, are meaningful, and cannot be answered through conceptual re-engineering. Easy Ontology hence does not constitute a comprehensive ontological methodology. While some of ontology might be easy, category questions form a central part of ontology and are not answered easily. (shrink)

We extend the work of Fischer et al. [6] by presenting a method for controlling cardinal characteristics in the presence of a projective wellorder and 2ℵ0>ℵ2. This also answers a question of Harrington [9] by showing that the existence of a Δ31 wellorder of the reals is consistent with Martinʼs axiom and 2ℵ0=ℵ3.

We study the set of possible sizes of maximal independent families to which we refer as spectrum of independence and denote \\). Here mif abbreviates maximal independent family. We show that:1.whenever \ are finitely many regular uncountable cardinals, it is consistent that \\); 2.whenever \ has uncountable cofinality, it is consistent that \=\{\aleph _1,\kappa =\mathfrak {c}\}\). Assuming large cardinals, in addition to above, we can provide that $$\begin{aligned} \cap \hbox {Spec}=\emptyset \end{aligned}$$for each i, \.

Health care often involves ethically difficult situations that may disquiet the conscience. The purpose of this study was to develop a questionnaire for identifying various perceptions of conscience within a framework based on the literature and on explorative interviews about perceptions of conscience (Perceptions of Conscience Questionnaire). The questionnaire was tested on a sample of 444 registered nurses, enrolled nurses, nurses’ assistants and physicians. The data were analysed using principal component analysis to explore possible dimensions of perceptions of conscience. The (...) results showed six dimensions, found also in theory and empirical health care studies. Conscience was perceived as authority, a warning signal, demanding sensitivity, an asset, a burden and depending on culture. We conclude that the Perceptions of Conscience Questionnaire is valid for assessing some perceptions of conscience relevant to health care providers. (shrink)

Im Beitrag werden Veränderungen der Kommunikation durch digitale Medien, ihre psychischen Bedeutungen und Folgen, u. a. anhand von empirischen Befunden zu Social-Media-Praktiken von Jugendlichen und von Eltern thematisiert. Bezugsrahmen der Analyse sind dabei kulturelle Wandlungen sowie soziale und psychische Bedeutungen von Aufmerksamkeit: geteilte Aufmerksamkeit als ein Kern der Kommunikation, aber auch die für psychische Entwicklung notwendige geschenkte, für den anderen oder für anderes offene Aufmerksamkeit als ein wesentliches Moment der Zuwendung, Empathie und Bezogenheit – im Gegensatz zu selbstbezogener Aufmerksamkeit und (...) instrumenteller Aufmerksamkeitslenkung. Überdies werden Folgen fragmentierter Aufmerksamkeit, wie sie aus der Überlagerung von Online- und Offline-Kommunikation resultiert, für psychische Entwicklungen betrachtet. (shrink)

MARK LOŠONC, PREDRAG KRSTIĆ, HOLOKAUST I FILOZOFIJA, INSTITUT ZA FILOZOFIJU I DRUŠTVENU TEORIJU, BEOGRAD, 2018.Vera Mevorah.

A definition of a property P is impredicative if it quantifies over a domain to which P belongs. Due to influential arguments by Ramsey and Gödel, impredicative mathematics is often thought to possess special metaphysical commitments. It seems that an impredicative definition of a property P does not have the intended meaning unless P already exists, suggesting that the existence of P cannot depend on its explicit definition. Carnap (1937 [1934], p. 164) argues, however, that accepting impredicative definitions amounts to (...) choosing a "form of language" and is free from metaphysical implications. This paper explains this view in its historical context. I discuss the development of Carnap’s thought on the foundations of mathematics from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s, concluding with an account of Carnap’s (1937 [1934]) non-Platonistic defense of impredicativity. This discussion is also important for understanding Carnap’s influential views on ontology more generally, since Carnap’s (1937 [1934]) view, according to which accepting impredicative definitions amounts to choosing a "form of language", is an early precursor of the view Carnap presents in "Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology" (1956 [1950]), according to which referring to abstract entities amounts to accepting a "linguistic framework". (shrink)

In a time marked by the development of innovative treatments in healthcare and the need for health professionals to deal with resulting ethical dilemmas in clinical practice, this study was developed to determine the influence of the bioethics teaching on the moral competence of medical and nursing students. The authors conduct a longitudinal study using the Moral Competence Test extended version before and after attending the ethics curricular unit, in three nursing schools and three medical schools of Portugal. In this (...) questionnaire the participant is confronted with three ethical dilemmas and asked to evaluate arguments for and against the attitude of the main character. For both nursing and medical students, C-score was lower after the attendance of the ethics curricular units, with a statistically significant decrease in the total score for nursing students and a decrease not statistically significant for medical students. A multivariate analysis did not find any association between this decrease and gender, course, or age. The phenomenon of moral segmentation was observed, with better performance in the worker and judge dilemma, than in the doctor dilemma. These results highlight the need to reflect on the curricular strategies that can be implemented for health professionals to better develop moral competence and decision-making, allowing for the provision of humanized health care. (shrink)

A new political practice, the ‘reason of state’, informed the ends and practices of natural study in the late sixteenth century. Informed by the study of the Roman historian Tacitus, political writers gathered ‘secrets of empire’ from both history and travel. Following the economic reorientation of ‘reason of state’ by Giovanni Botero (1544–1617), such secrets came to include bodies of useful particulars concerning nature and art collected by an expanding personnel of intelligencers. A comparison between various writers describing wide-scale collections, (...) such as Botero, Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Jakob Bornitz (1560–1625) and Matthias Bernegger (1582–1640), reveals that seventeenth-century natural intelligencers across Europe not only were analogous to political intelligencers, but also were sometimes one and the same. Those seeking political prudence cast themselves as miners, prying precious particulars from the recesses of history, experience and disparate disciplines, including mathematics, alchemy and natural philosophy. The seventeenth-century practice of combining searches for secrets of empire, nature and art contests a frequent historiographical divide between empirical science and Tacitism or reason of state. It also points to the ways political cunning shaped the management of information for both politics and the study of nature and art. (shrink)

Definition of the problemThe article addresses the relationship between reproduction, time and the good life. Services offered by reproductive medicine and conceptions of the good life in time influence each other reciprocally. This interaction is characterised by implicit and explicit normative settings and expectations of appropriate temporality.ArgumentsWe first discuss the significance of time for the life course and for parenthood from a sociological and social psychological perspective. Reproductive medicine can increase the options for becoming a parent and thus for life-time (...) autonomy. However, in the context of societal imperatives for optimisation and efficiency, it can also have opposite effects and increase heteronomy. Overall, this leads to changed forms of adaptation and self-determination, new dilemmas and ambivalences in the temporal optimisation of parenthood.ConclusionsAgainst this background, we explain how the ethics of reproductive medicine could benefit from interdisciplinary research that focuses on life in its temporal course. (shrink)

Popper’s ‘Situational Analysis’ (SA) constitutes his methodological proposal for the social sciences. We claim that the two hallmarks of SA are: (i) that scientists assume they possess a ‘wider’ view of the problem-situation than actors do, and (ii) use the model as an ideal ‘benchmark’ scenario to identify thedeviationof actors’ actual behaviour from the former. We argue that SA is not a generalization of the neoclassical theory of individual behaviour but captures instead the methodology adopted by modern behavioural economists. Last, (...) we argue that SA highlights a way of acquiring knowledge that has gone unnoticed in the literature. (shrink)