The field of health care ethics continues to grow as the ethics structures in health care organizations become well established. While the literature is saturated with reports on clinical ethics consultation services, very little is known about the development and success of ethics programs. The following describes the development and growth of an ethics program at the largest health care provider in Georgia. With a focus on nine key components of an ethics program, the paper reviews what one system did (...) on its path to a flourishing program and what others can learn from it. (shrink)

Music critics find difficulty in substantiating their claims. They tend to use rhetoric in order to compensate for the lack of evidence. These rhetorical devices have not been scrutinized yet. Thus it seems useful to deal with them.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Forms of Knowledge and Sensibility: Ernst Cassirer and the Human Sciences and: Dilthey und Cassirer: Die Deutung der Neuzeit als Muster von Geistesund KulturgeschichteSebastian LuftGunnar Foss and Eivind Kasa, editors. Forms of Knowledge and Sensibility: Ernst Cassirer and the Human Sciences. Kristiansand: HøyskoleForlaget, 2002. Pp. 223. Paper, $25.00.Thomas Leinkauf, editor. Dilthey und Cassirer: Die Deutung der Neuzeit als Muster von Geistesund Kulturgeschichte. Hamburg: Meiner, 2003. Pp. (...) 170. Paper, € 34,80.These two new anthologies on Cassirer attest to the new attention that is being paid to what has often been referred to as "the last neo-Kantian." While interest in Cassirer's oeuvre as a whole, specifically his draft of a philosophy of symbolic forms as a philosophy of culture, has awoken again in the last decade on the European continent—mainly in Germany, but also in France and Italy—it is a pleasant surprise to see him also being well received in the Nordic European countries, as the volume edited by Foss and Kasa demonstrates. Both volumes—successfully, it should be noted—make the case that Cassirer can and in fact ought to play an important role for what goes on in contemporary philosophy and its projects, be they historical, hermeneutical, sociological, linguistic or other. These two books do a good job of demonstrating that Cassirer was unrightfully forgotten and deserves to be reconsidered, especially now that his complete works have and continue to become accessible in critical edition. This novel scholarship is not only about a reassessment of Cassirer's original achievements, as attempted in Foss/Kasa, but also about placing him in the context of twentieth-century philosophy. Leinkauf's volume, in particular, attempts to take stock of the history of philosophy and its meaning for us today—projects that were of paramount interest to Cassirer. It is only logical, hence, to compare his method to Dilthey's, whose manner of doing historiography is framed as a critique of historical reason.Leinkauf's anthology appears in the already well-established Cassirer-Forschungen with Meiner Publishers; as is known, Meiner also edits the critical Cassirer edition and the Collected [End Page 504] Works. Foss's and Kasa's volume, however, is an entirely novel venture into a philosopher who has been only little acknowledged in the Scandinavian countries—perhaps with the exception of Sweden to which the Cassirers emigrated and (after a brief stay in England) became naturalized after the Nazis' seizure of power. This seeming unfamiliarity with Cassirer also explains why the articles in the Norwegian volume are more general and intended to orient Cassirer in the intellectual landscape of these Northern countries that have traditionally been more inclined towards Anglo-American and Eastern-European philosophy. This, however, by no means diminishes the importance of this volume. Indeed, in terms of systematic philosophical approaches presented here, the essays in this volume are, with few exceptions, somewhat more lively and fresher than some of the rather staid historical studies of the German anthology. To be fair, the Leinkauf volume has a decidedly more specific agenda, namely, to locate Cassirer's attempts to interpret modernity, especially his studies of the Renaissance period, in a larger project of a historiography of modernity as a whole; a project that has been so much at the forefront in many philosophical endeavors in the late-twentieth and beginning twenty-first century. Cassirer is contrasted, as the title indicates, with another influential attempt at the same task, namely by Wilhelm Dilthey. This is especially interesting since Dilthey, being a generation older, took no notice of Cassirer's work, and Cassirer, in turn, gave only little attention to Dilthey's work, since his writings on the subject were published later. Thus, the anthology closes a gap both in Cassirer and Dilthey scholarship.What both books have outwardly in common, however, is the fact that they both are collections of papers given at conferences, in Potsdam and Trondheim, respectively. The contributors of the German volume are St. Otto, R. A. Makkreel, M. Mulsow, G. Cacciatore, E. Rudolph, H. Holzhey, U. Renz, G. Scholtz, and G. Hartung. It is no surprise to find some of these well-established authors in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Forms of Knowledge and Sensibility: Ernst Cassirer and the Human Sciences and: Dilthey und Cassirer: Die Deutung der Neuzeit als Muster von Geistesund KulturgeschichteSebastian LuftGunnar Foss and Eivind Kasa, editors. Forms of Knowledge and Sensibility: Ernst Cassirer and the Human Sciences. Kristiansand: HøyskoleForlaget, 2002. Pp. 223. Paper, $25.00.Thomas Leinkauf, editor. Dilthey und Cassirer: Die Deutung der Neuzeit als Muster von Geistesund Kulturgeschichte. Hamburg: Meiner, 2003. Pp. (...) 170. Paper, € 34,80.These two new anthologies on Cassirer attest to the new attention that is being paid to what has often been referred to as "the last neo-Kantian." While interest in Cassirer's oeuvre as a whole, specifically his draft of a philosophy of symbolic forms as a philosophy of culture, has awoken again in the last decade on the European continent—mainly in Germany, but also in France and Italy—it is a pleasant surprise to see him also being well received in the Nordic European countries, as the volume edited by Foss and Kasa demonstrates. Both volumes—successfully, it should be noted—make the case that Cassirer can and in fact ought to play an important role for what goes on in contemporary philosophy and its projects, be they historical, hermeneutical, sociological, linguistic or other. These two books do a good job of demonstrating that Cassirer was unrightfully forgotten and deserves to be reconsidered, especially now that his complete works have and continue to become accessible in critical edition. This novel scholarship is not only about a reassessment of Cassirer's original achievements, as attempted in Foss/Kasa, but also about placing him in the context of twentieth-century philosophy. Leinkauf's volume, in particular, attempts to take stock of the history of philosophy and its meaning for us today—projects that were of paramount interest to Cassirer. It is only logical, hence, to compare his method to Dilthey's, whose manner of doing historiography is framed as a critique of historical reason.Leinkauf's anthology appears in the already well-established Cassirer-Forschungen with Meiner Publishers; as is known, Meiner also edits the critical Cassirer edition and the Collected [End Page 504] Works. Foss's and Kasa's volume, however, is an entirely novel venture into a philosopher who has been only little acknowledged in the Scandinavian countries—perhaps with the exception of Sweden to which the Cassirers emigrated and (after a brief stay in England) became naturalized after the Nazis' seizure of power. This seeming unfamiliarity with Cassirer also explains why the articles in the Norwegian volume are more general and intended to orient Cassirer in the intellectual landscape of these Northern countries that have traditionally been more inclined towards Anglo-American and Eastern-European philosophy. This, however, by no means diminishes the importance of this volume. Indeed, in terms of systematic philosophical approaches presented here, the essays in this volume are, with few exceptions, somewhat more lively and fresher than some of the rather staid historical studies of the German anthology. To be fair, the Leinkauf volume has a decidedly more specific agenda, namely, to locate Cassirer's attempts to interpret modernity, especially his studies of the Renaissance period, in a larger project of a historiography of modernity as a whole; a project that has been so much at the forefront in many philosophical endeavors in the late-twentieth and beginning twenty-first century. Cassirer is contrasted, as the title indicates, with another influential attempt at the same task, namely by Wilhelm Dilthey. This is especially interesting since Dilthey, being a generation older, took no notice of Cassirer's work, and Cassirer, in turn, gave only little attention to Dilthey's work, since his writings on the subject were published later. Thus, the anthology closes a gap both in Cassirer and Dilthey scholarship.What both books have outwardly in common, however, is the fact that they both are collections of papers given at conferences, in Potsdam and Trondheim, respectively. The contributors of the German volume are St. Otto, R. A. Makkreel, M. Mulsow, G. Cacciatore, E. Rudolph, H. Holzhey, U. Renz, G. Scholtz, and G. Hartung. It is no surprise to find some of these well-established authors in... (shrink)

Higher-order representation (HOR) theories posit that the contents of lower-order brain states enter consciousness when tracked by a higher-order brain state. The nature of higher-order monitoring was examined in light of current scientific knowledge, primarily in experimental perceptual psychology. The most plausible candidate for higher-order state was found to be conceptual short-term memory (CSTM), a buffer memory intimately connected with a semantic engine operating in the medium of the language of thought (LOT). This combination meets many of the requirements of (...) HOR theories, although falling short in some significant respects, most notably the inability of higher- order states to represent more than a small fraction of the information contained in primary states, especially in vision. A possible way round this obstacle is suggested, involving the representation of visual detail by means of ensemble concepts. (shrink)

I evaluate two new objections to an infinitist account of epistemic justification, and conclude that they fail to raise any new problems for infinitism. The new objections are a refined version of the finite-mind objection, which says infinitism demands more than finite minds can muster, and the normativity objection, which says infinitism entails that we are epistemically blameless in holding all our beliefs. I show how resources deployed in response to the most popular objection to infinitism, the original finite-mind (...) objection, can be redeployed to address the two new objections. (shrink)

Darstellung des Noema in 12 Thesen.\nverwendete Textstellen: Ideen 1: S. 203, 22-23; S. 204, 20-21; S. 357, 19-20: Handlungen sind zielgerichtet. Dabei bedarf eines keines physischen Objekts. Husserl setzt and diese Stelle das Noema. Somit wird auch zielgerichtetes Handeln aufgrund einer Halluzination m{ö}glich, Zielgerichtet zu sein bedeutet ein Noema zu haben.\n1. Follesdal´sche These: Noema ist eine intensionale Entit{ä}t, eine Generalisierung des Begriffs Sinn/Bedeutung.\n2. These: Das Noema hat zwei Bestandteile, a) der noematische Sinn, der allen thetischen Handlungen (erinnern, sich vorstellen usw.) (...) gem{ä}{ß} desselben Objekts mit denselben Eigenschaften in derselben Gerichtetheit gemeinsam ist und b) die Gegebenheitsweise (hat auch Sinncharakter), die sich unterscheidet in Handlungen mit verschiedenem thetischen Charakter.\n3. These: Der noematische Sinn ergibt sich aus der Art und Weise, wie Bewu{ß}tsein zum Objekt in Relation steht.\n!! 4. These: Das Noema einer Handlung ist nicht das Objekt dieser Handlung\n5. These: Das Objekt einer Handlung ist eine Funktion des noematischen Sinns, d.h. mit einem bestimmten Noema kann nur ein Objekt korrespondieren.\n6. These: Jedoch k{ö}nnen mit einem bestimmten Objekt verschiedene Noemata korrespondieren. (z.B. kann ein Objekt das Ziel verschiedener thetischer Handlunge sein, etwa erinnern, wahrnehmen, daher:)\n6. These a): Mit einem bestimmten Objekt korrespondieren verschiedene noematische Sinne.\n7. These: Jede Handlung besteht aus nur einem Noema. Sie wird durch dieses Noema charakterisiert. (Umgekehrt trifft dies nicht zu.)\n8. These: Noemata sind abstrakte Entit{ä}ten. (Sinne sind nicht real. Sie sind bezogen auf Handlungen in tempor{ä}ren Intervallen.)\n9. These: Noemata werden nicht durch unsere Sinnesorgane wahrgenommen.\n10. These: Noemata gelangen durch ph{ä}nomenologische Reflektion ins Bewu{ß}tsein.\n11. These: Eine ph{ä}nomenologische Reflektion kann iterativ geschehen (ann{ä}herungsweise; in Schritte gegliedert). Dies ist so, weil schon die Korrespondenz zwischen Sinn und Objekt wieder ein Objekt ergibt. Es folgt ein unendlicher Regress.\nPhysische Objekte sind transzendent in dem Sinne, dass sie unendlich viele Noemata haben. Sinn kann sie nie ersch{ö}pfend erfassen.\nNoemata k{ö}nnen andererseits ein physisches Objekt repr{ä}sentieren in der Form, dass mehr intendiert wird als gesehen wird. So denkt man sich etwa bei einem Stuhl, von dem man nur zwei Beine sieht, die beiden {ü}brigen hinzu.\n12. These: Diese Muster der Vorherbestimmung bilden zusammen mit den Gegebenheitsweisen das Noema (s. These 2). (shrink)

Commentators have shown a steady interest in the role of feeling in Kant’s moral and practical philosophy over the last few decades. Much attention has been given to the notion of ‘moral feeling’ in general, as well as to what Kant calls the ‘feeling of respect’ for the moral law. My focus in this essay is on the role of feeling in practical judgment. My claim in what follows is that the act of judging in the practical domain—i.e., determining what (...) one ought to do, or what action one ought to perform, in a specific case—crucially involves feeling. Put more simply: I argue that practical judgment has an essentially affective dimension. The upshot of the account I will give is that it provides us with a richer and more complex account of moral feeling than has previously been appreciated in the literature. While it is recognized that feeling plays a certain role in moral motivation, what I hope to demonstrate here is that feeling is involved much earlier in the exercise of moral agency. Far from entering only at the point at which we are trying to muster the strength of will to carry out what we know we ought to do, feeling is present the moment we begin to deliberate about what it is that we ought to do. (shrink)

ADDITIONAL ARGUMENTS ARE MUSTERED AGAINST MORREALL'S CONTENTION THAT BEING EFFECTED BY A PLEASANT PSYCHOLOGICAL "SHIFT" IS AN ESSENTIAL PROPERTY OF LAUGHTER.

So‐called nudge policies utilize insights from behavioral science to achieve policy outcomes. Nudge policies try to improve people's decisions by changing the ways options are presented to them, rather than changing the options themselves or incentivizing or coercing people. Nudging has been met with great enthusiasm but also fierce criticism. This paper provides an overview of the debate on the ethics of nudging to date. After outlining arguments in favor of nudging, we first discuss different objections that all revolve around (...) the worry that nudging vitiates personal autonomy. We split up this worry into different dimensions of autonomy, such as freedom of choice, volitional autonomy, rational agency, and freedom as nondomination. We next discuss worries that nudging is manipulative, violates human dignity, and prevents more important structural reform. Throughout, we will present responses that proponents of nudging can muster. On the whole, we conclude that the objections fail to establish that the nudge program as a whole should be rejected. At the same time, they give us important guidance when moving towards an ethical assessment of nudges on a case‐by‐case basis. Towards the end, we provide some possible ways forward in debates around the ethics of nudging. (shrink)

Human beings, like other organisms, are the products of evolution. Like other organisms, we exhibit traits that are the product of natural selection. Our psychological capacities are evolved traits as much as are our gait and posture. This much few would dispute. Evolutionary psychology goes further than this, claiming that our psychological traits -- including a wide variety of traits, from mate preference and jealousy to language and reason -- can be understood as specific adaptations to ancestral Pleistocene conditions. In (...) Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology, Robert Richardson takes a critical look at evolutionary psychology by subjecting its ambitious and controversial claims to the same sorts of methodological and evidential constraints that are broadly accepted within evolutionary biology. The claims of evolutionary psychology may pass muster as psychology; but what are their evolutionary credentials? Richardson considers three ways adaptive hypotheses can be evaluated, using examples from the biological literature to illustrate what sorts of evidence and methodology would be necessary to establish specific evolutionary and adaptive explanations of human psychological traits. He shows that existing explanations within evolutionary psychology fall woefully short of accepted biological standards. The theories offered by evolutionary psychologists may identify traits that are, or were, beneficial to humans. But gauged by biological standards, there is inadequate evidence: evolutionary psychologists are largely silent on the evolutionary evidence relevant to assessing their claims, including such matters as variation in ancestral populations, heritability, and the advantage offered to our ancestors. As evolutionary claims they are unsubstantiated. Evolutionary psychology, Richardson concludes, may offer a program of research, but it lacks the kind of evidence that is generally expected within evolutionary biology. It is speculation rather than sound science -- and we should treat its claims with skepticism. (shrink)

Human beings, like other organisms, are the products of evolution. Like other organisms, we exhibit traits that are the product of natural selection. Our psychological capacities are evolved traits as much as are our gait and posture. This much few would dispute. Evolutionary psychology goes further than this, claiming that our psychological traits -- including a wide variety of traits, from mate preference and jealousy to language and reason -- can be understood as specific adaptations to ancestral Pleistocene conditions. In (...) Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology, Robert Richardson takes a critical look at evolutionary psychology by subjecting its ambitious and controversial claims to the same sorts of methodological and evidential constraints that are broadly accepted within evolutionary biology. The claims of evolutionary psychology may pass muster as psychology; but what are their evolutionary credentials? Richardson considers three ways adaptive hypotheses can be evaluated, using examples from the biological literature to illustrate what sorts of evidence and methodology would be necessary to establish specific evolutionary and adaptive explanations of human psychological traits. He shows that existing explanations within evolutionary psychology fall woefully short of accepted biological standards. The theories offered by evolutionary psychologists may identify traits that are, or were, beneficial to humans. But gauged by biological standards, there is inadequate evidence: evolutionary psychologists are largely silent on the evolutionary evidence relevant to assessing their claims, including such matters as variation in ancestral populations, heritability, and the advantage offered to our ancestors. As evolutionary claims they are unsubstantiated. Evolutionary psychology, Richardson concludes, may offer a program of research, but it lacks the kind of evidence that is generally expected within evolutionary biology. It is speculation rather than sound science -- and we should treat its claims with skepticism. (shrink)

The last few decades have witnessed the birth and growth of both virtue epistemology and the situationist challenge to virtue ethics. It seems only natural that eventually we would see the situationist challenge to virtue epistemology. This article articulates one aspect of that new challenge by spelling out an argument against the responsibilist brand of virtue epistemology. The trouble can be framed as an inconsistent triad: many people know quite a bit; knowledge is true belief acquired and retained through the (...) exercise of intellectual virtue; most people do not possess the intellectual virtues countenanced by responsibilism. Non‐skepticism is a Moorean platitude we should aim to preserve at most if not all costs. I muster evidence from cognitive and social psychology to argue for epistemic situationism. If my argument is correct, responsibilism must be revised or rejected, and reliabilists should avoid incorporating responsibilist components into their theories. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 122-164, May 2022. I argue that the consensus view that one must never level down to equality gives rise to a dilemma. This dilemma is best understood by examining two parallel cases of leveling down: one drawn from the economic domain, the other from the political. In the economic case, both egalitarians and non-egalitarians have resisted the idea of leveling down wages to equality. With no incentives for some people to work (...) hard social productivity will likely decline, further lowering people's wages and thus leaving everybody all-things-considered worse off as a result—hence “never level down.” On the other hand, however, the argument against leveling down does not appear to pass muster in the political sphere: denying political equality in the form of “one person, one vote”, for example, by giving a higher share of voting power to people with, say, more education seems straightforwardly objectionable, even if such a voting scheme would improve the outcomes of all people, including those who are ultimately left with fewer votes. Thus, a fundamental tension arises: we can either endorse the widely-affirmed “never-level-down” thesis, which says that sacrificing people's well-being exclusively for the sake of promoting equality can never be the right thing to do, or we can endorse the principle of “one person, one vote.” But we cannot do both. I defend this dilemma against a view I call the compatibility view: roughly, that because OPOV is strictly necessary to advance some weighty, non-egalitarian interest people have, accepting OPOV as a principle of justice is compatible with one's rejection of leveling down. (shrink)

A contextualist account of modal assertions is sketched that makes their truth sensitive to the presuppositions of the conversation. Support for the account is mustered by considering its application to the context-sensitivity of assertions of subjunctive conditional sentences, explanation sentences, and knowledge sentences.

In this paper I criticize libertarianism and skepticism about free will. The criticism of libertarianism takes some steps towards filling in an argument that is often mentioned but seldom developed in any detail, the argument that libertarianism is a scientifically implausible view. I say "take some steps" because I think the considerations I muster (at most) favor a less ambitious relative of that argument. The less ambitious claim I hope to motivate is that there is little reason to believe (...) that extant libertarian accounts satisfy a standard of naturalistic plausibility, even if they do satisfy a standard of naturalistic compatibility. The argument against skepticism about free will tries to show (1) perhaps the most prominent form of skeptical argument against the existence of free will does not work, and (2) there is a good general argument against skepticism about free will. (shrink)

Organic evolution, or change, among the diatoms has proceeded with considerable regularity. The origins, the extinctions, and the increases in numbers of species and genera, on the whole, have submitted to law and order, as rules-within-limits . The changes of evolution have followed from two sorts of phenomena — 1) the origin and extinction of shortlived or unstable species, in a proportion which has been more or less constant, but different in the two groups of diatoms, Centricae and Pennatae; these (...) short-lived species died out in the subperiod of their origin even under favourable enough environment or surrounding conditions, because of the innate instability of these particular species: and 2) the origin of new species which demonstrated their innate capacity for permanence by remaining in the living condition from their origins mostly up to the present time. The continued or continual additions of new and long-living species, in proportion to the number available as possible and parental species, has given the geometrical progressions.Consequently evolution in the diatoms has been monopodial, or one-stemmed, and not sympodial or not with many substitutions of one species after another in successions. The two kinds of species-durations are well-known in other classes of plants and animals. Exactly the same processes of additions, subtractions, and multiplications, particularly as found in the centric diatoms, are very probable in these classes of plants and animals which have given the same answer or arithmetical result for the whole of their previous histories, in the form of the frequency distribution of the present sizes of their genera.The rules-within-limits of this basic evolution are described, defined, and discussed in their relations to various theories of evolution which perhaps only concern the working of factors of superimposed modifications that reduce the results of the pattern or plan of basic evolution.Die phylogenetische Entwicklung wurde im Bereich der Kieselalgen von bestimmten Gesetzmässigkeiten beherrscht. Die Entstehung neuer Arten und Gattungen, ihr Wiederverschwinden und die Zunahme des Formenreichtums, resultierend aus der Zahl der neuentstandenen, vermindert um die der wieder verschwindenen Arten und Gattungen und vollzog sich nach Regeln , die durch folgende Phänomene gekennzeichnet sind: Zwischen der Zahl der neuentstehenden und der Zahl der in der gleichen geologischen Subperiode aus inneren Gründen wieder aussterbenden Arten besteht eine mehr oder wenig feste Beziehung. Diese ist für die Centricae und Pennatae verschieden. Ein bestimmter Anteil der neuentstandenen Arten und Gattungen erwies sich aus inneren Gründen als „ausdauernd” und blieb bis auf den heutigen Tag erhalten. Die Zunahme der Arten- Zahl durch das Hinzukommen langlebiger Formen war stetig und vollzog sich nach Massgabe geometrischer Progressionen.Diese Tatsachen führen zu dem Schluss, dass die phylogenetische Entwicklung der Kieselalgen nach monopodialem, und nicht nach sympodialem Muster vorsichging. Auch in andern Pflanzengruppen und im Tierreich durften die gleichen Gesetzmässigkeiten herrschend sein. Am klarsten gelangen sie bei den Centricae zum, Ausdruck und werden vom Autor als das Fazit von Additions-, Subtraktions-, und Multiplikationsprozessen aufgefasst. Die heutige Situation bezüglich Häufigkeit der Grössen der Gattungen, in Zahl der Arten, ist das Endergebnis der summativen Wirkung dieser Einzelprozesse.Diese als ‚rules-within-limits’ bezeichneten Gesetzmässigkeiten werden im einzelnen beschrieben, erklärt und zusammenfassend dargestellt. Zu andern Evolutionstheorien in Beziehung gebracht, werden sie schliesslich für Erörterung des Problems benutzt, inwieweit noch andere evolutionsgeschichtliche Prozesse als übergeordnete Faktoren in den vom Verfasser dargestellten Grundplan des Evolutionsgeschehens eingreifen können.L'évolution organique ou le changement parmi les Diatomées s'est effectué avec une régularité considérable. Les origines et les extinctions, et les accroissements des nombres des espèces et des genres, se sont soumis en tout aux lois et aux ordres, commes des régularités à l'intérieur de légères déviations. Le changement de l'évolution fut la conséquence de deux sortes de phénomène: l'origine et l'extinction des espèces éphémères dans une proportion plus ou moins déterminée mais différente pour les deux classes des Diatomées, Centricae et Pennatae; ces espèces éphémères moururent dans la subpériode de leur origines malgré le caractère assez favorable des circonstances environnantes, à cause de l'évanescence inhérente aux espèces particulières, et l'origine des espèces nouvelles qui démontrèrent leur qualité innée de permanence tout en continuant de vivre depuis leurs origines, pour la plupart, jusqu'à présent. Les additions continuelles d'espèces nouvelles et permanentes, en nombres proportionnés aux nombres disponibles comme espèces parentes et possibles, donnèrent des accroissements par progressions géométriques.Par conséquent, l'évolution parmi les Diatomées fut monopodiale et non pas sympodiale. Les deux sortes d'espèces-durées sont bien connues parmi beaucoup d'autres classes de plantes et d'animaux. Les mêmes procédés d'additions, de soustractions et de multiplications, particulièrement tels qu'on les trouve dans les Centricae, sont très probables pour ces classes de plantes et d'animaux qui ont donné un résultat le plus semblable pour la somme totale de leur histoire précédente, sous la forme de la répartition des fréquences de leurs grandeurs générique actuelles.Les régularités à l'intérieur de légères déviations de cette évolution fondamentale sont détaillées, définies et discutées dans leurs relations aux diverses théories touchant les autres méthodes de l'évolution qui jouent le rôle de facteurs modifiants superposés au dessin général ou au dessein de l'évolution fondamentale. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay is a critical study of Jason Brennan's Against Democracy. We make three main points. First, we argue that Brennan's proposal of a right to competent government only works if one considers the absence of government a viable proposition, something most of his opponents are not prepared to do. Second, we suggest that Brennan's account of competent decision-making is blind to forms of oligarchic power that work against the very ideals of justice and epistemic virtue that competence is (...) meant to safeguard. Third, we muster empirical evidence to argue that, in the real world, democracy is not just about making decisions and selecting policies, in which case Brennan's argument misses its mark. (shrink)

We use imperatives to refute a naïve analysis of update potentials (force-operators attaching to sentences), arguing for a dynamic analysis of imperative force as restrictable, directed, and embeddable. We propose a dynamic, non-modal analysis of conditional imperatives, as a counterpoint to static, modal analyses. Our analysis retains Kratzer's analysis of if-clauses as restrictors of some operator, but avoids typing it as a generalized quantifier over worlds (against her), instead as a dynamic force operator. Arguments for a restrictor treatment (but against (...) a quantificational treatment) are mustered, and we propose a novel analysis of update on conditional imperatives (and an independently motivated revision of the standard ordering-semantics for root modals that makes use of it). Finally, we argue that imperative force is embeddable under an operation much like dynamic conjunction. (shrink)

Philosophy in Africa has for more than a decade now been dominated by the discussion of one compound question, namely, is there an African philosophy, and if there is, what is it? The first part of the question has generally been unhesitatingly answered in the affirmative. Dispute has been primarily over the second part of the question as various specimens of African philosophy presented do not seem to pass muster. Those of us who refuse to accept certain specimens as (...) philosophy have generally been rather illogically said also to deny an affirmative answer to the first part of the question. In a paper presented at the International Symposium in Memory of Dr William Amo, the Ghanaian philosopher who taught in German universities in the early part of the eighteenth century, Professor Odera Oruka identified four trends, perhaps more appropriately approaches, in current African philosophy. (shrink)

SummaryLooking at proof theory as an attempt to ‘code’ the general pattern of the logical steps of a mathematical proof, the question of what kind of rules can make the meaning of a logical connective completely explicit does not seem to have been answered satisfactorily. The lambda calculus seems to have been more coherent simply because the use of ‘λ’ together with its projection 'apply' is specified by what can be called a 'reduction' rule: β‐conversion. We attempt to analyse the (...) role of proof rules, making use of a set of formal rules designed to capture both the notions of proof theory and those of the lambda‐calculus: Martin‐Löf's Intuitionistic Type Theory.RésuméSi on considère la théorie de la démonstration comme une tentative de ‘codifier’ les pas logiques d'une démonstration mathématique, on se rendra compte qu'on n'a pas répondu de façon satisfaisante à la question suivante: quelles sont les règies qui rendent complètement explicite le sens d'un connecteur logique? Le lambda‐calcul a été apparemment plus cohérent, tout simplement parce que l'utilisation du‘λ’ avec sa projection 'apply' est spécifiée par une regie de 'réduction': β‐conversion. Nous essayons d'analyser le rôle des règies de démonstration, en utilisant un système formel de règies conçu pour englober à la fois les notions de la théorie de la démonstration et celles du lambda‐calcul: la Théorie Intuitionniste des Types de Martin‐Löf.ZusammenfassungWenn man Beweistheorie als einen Versuch, ein allgemeines Muster der logischen Schritte in einem mathematischen Beweis zu kodifizieren, betrachtet, so scheint die Frage nach der Art von Regeln , die die Bedeutung von logischen Operatoren vollständig beschreiben, nicht zufriedenstellend beantwortet. Der Lambda‐Kalkül erscheint, kohärenter, einfach deshalb weil der Gebrauch von ‘λ’ zusammen mit dessen Projektion 'apply' durch Regeln bestimmt wird, die man 'Reduktions'‐Regeln nennen kann: β‐Konversion. Wir versuchen, die Rolle von Beweisregeln zu analysieren, indem wir ein Regelsystem verwenden, das sowohl die Begriffe der Beweistheorie als auch diejenigen des Lambda‐Kalküls erfasst, nämlich die Martin‐Löfsche Typentheorie. (shrink)

America’s COVID-19 pandemic has both devastated and disparately harmed minority communities. How can the allocation of scarce treatments for COVID-19 and similar public health threats fairly and legally respond to these racial disparities? Some have proposed that members of racial groups who have been especially hard-hit by the pandemic should receive priority for scarce treatments. Others have worried that this prioritization misidentifies racial disparities as reflecting biological differences rather than structural racism, or that it will generate mistrust among groups who (...) have previously been harmed by medical research. Still others complain that such prioritization would be fundamentally unjust. I argue that, to pass muster under current law, policymaking in this area must recognize a crucial distinction: prioritizing minority communities, such as hard-hit neighborhoods, without regard to individual race is typically legal, but prioritizing individuals on the basis of their racial identity faces is likely not. I also explain how prioritization on the basis of Native American status is allowable and legally distinct from prioritization on the basis of individual race. -/- In Part II, I provide a brief overview of current and proposed COVID-19 treatments and identify documented or likely scarcities and disparities in access. In Part III, I argue that randomly allocating scarce medical interventions, as some propose, will not effectively address disparities: it both permits unnecessary deaths and concentrates those deaths among people who are more exposed to infection. In Part IV, I explain why using individual-level racial classifications in allocation is precluded by current Supreme Court precedent. Addressing disparities will require focusing on factors other than race, or potentially considering race at an aggregate rather than individual level. I also argue that policies prioritizing members of Native American tribes can succeed legally even where policies based on race would not. In Part V, I examine two complementary strategies to narrow racial disparities. One would prioritize individuals who live in disadvantaged geographic areas or work in hard-hit occupations, potentially alongside race-sensitive aggregate metrics like neighborhood segregation. These approaches, like the policies school districts adopted after the Supreme Court rejected individualized racial classifications in education, would narrow disparities without classifying individuals by race. The other strategy would address the starkly disparate racial impact of deaths early in life by limiting the use of age-based exclusions from vaccine or treatment access that explicitly deprioritize the prevention of early deaths and so disparately exclude minorities, and by considering policies that prioritize the prevention of early deaths. (shrink)

Religioses Wissen dient in der Fruhen Neuzeit nicht nur der Bestimmung eines metaphysischen Erwartungshorizonts. Es stellt vielmehr das Fundament der Selbstthematisierung des Menschen in der religiosen Autobiographie und seiner normativen Beschreibung in der religiosen Anthropologie dar. Die Studie zeigt, dass die kulturgeschichtliche Dynamik der Sakularisierung fur das 17. und 18. Jahrhundert darin besteht, Spannungen zwischen erbaulichem und literarischem Schreiben, zwischen religioser und medizinischer Anthropologie und zwischen dem religiosen und profanen Leben zuallererst zu erzeugen. Die Autobiographie und der Bildungsroman ersetzen das (...) Religiose aus Grunden sozialer Evolution. Dies geschieht unter steter Rucksicht auf die sich wandelnden medialen Bedingungen, die die interaktiven Muster der Beobachtung durch schriftbasierte ersetzen.". (shrink)

Religiöses Wissen dient in der Frühen Neuzeit nicht nur der Bestimmung eines metaphysischen Erwartungshorizonts. Es stellt vielmehr das Fundament der Selbstthematisierung des Menschen in der religiösen Autobiographie und seiner normativen Beschreibung in der religiösen Anthropologie dar. Die Studie zeigt, dass die kulturgeschichtliche Dynamik der Säkularisierung für das 17. und 18. Jahrhundert darin besteht, Spannungen zwischen erbaulichem und literarischem Schreiben, zwischen religiöser und medizinischer Anthropologie und zwischen dem religiösen und profanen Leben zuallererst zu erzeugen. Die Autobiographie und der Bildungsroman ersetzen das (...) Religiöse aus Gründen sozialer Evolution. Dies geschieht unter steter Rücksicht auf die sich wandelnden medialen Bedingungen, die die interaktiven Muster der Beobachtung durch schriftbasierte ersetzen. (shrink)

This paper discusses the fragmentation of psychology and proposals for unification hitherto proffered. It is argued that unity will not be achieved until competing ideas regarding morality, ontology, epistemology, and so forth are critically examined and evaluated. Ideas that pass theoretical muster and that cohere with human moral interests will provide a theoretical starting point for unification efforts. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Taking Arthur Fine’s The Shaky Game as my inspiration, and the recent 25th anniversary of the publication of that work as the occasion to exercise that inspiration, I sketch an alternative to the “Naturalism” prevalent among philosophers of physics. Naturalism is a methodology eventuating in a metaphysics. The methodology is to seek the deep framework assumptions that make the best sense of science; the metaphysics is furnished by those assumptions and supported by their own support of science. The alternative presented (...) here, which I call “Locavoracity,” shares Naturalism’s commitment to making sense of science, but alters Naturalism’s methodology. The Locavore’s sense-making projects are piecemeal, rather than sweeping. The Locavore’s hypothesis is that the collection of local sense-making projects fails to issue a single overarching unifying framework deserving of the title “the metaphysics that makes the best sense of science.” I muster some examples supporting the Locavore hypothesis from the interpretation of quantum field theories. (shrink)

Positive emotions are highly valued and frequently sought. Beyond just being pleasant, however, positive emotions may also lead to long-term benefits in important domains, including work, physical health, and interpersonal relationships. Research thus far has focused on the broader functions of positive emotions. According to the broaden-and-build theory, positive emotions expand people’s thought–action repertoires and allow them to build psychological, intellectual, and social resources. New evidence suggests that positive emotions—particularly gratitude—may also play a role in motivating individuals to engage in (...) positive behaviors leading to self-improvement. We propose and offer supportive evidence that expressing gratitude leads people to muster effort to improve themselves via increases in connectedness, elevation, humility, and specific negative states including indebtedness. (shrink)

Kenneth Goodpaster has criticized ethicists like Feinberg and Frankena for too narrowly circumscribing the range of moral considerability, urging instead that “nothing short of the condition of being alive” is a satisfactory criterion. Goodpaster overlooks at least one crucial objection: that his own “condition of being alive” may aIso be too narrow a criterion of moral considerability, since “being in existence” is at least as plausible and nonarbitrary a criterion as is Goodpaster’s. I show that each of the arguments that (...) Goodpaster musters in support of his criterion can be used equally weIl to bolster “being in existence” as a test of moral considerability. Moreover, I argue that “being in existence” appears to be a stronger criterion overall, since it is broader. Until or unless a fuller justification is forthcoming of “being alive” as a satisfactory criterion of moral considerability-a justification which must demonstrate that “mere things,” included under the condition of “being in existence,” do not deserve moral consideration--Goodpaster’sthesis is confronted with a serious problem. (shrink)

“Access to medicines” is a broad concept. After a review of three authoritative frameworks that help to identify its constitutive components, this essay summarizes the actual situation on the ground in low- and middle-income countries on the basis of recent empirical work. An analysis of survey data from 36 countries concluded that developing countries should promote generic medicines as a key policy option for improving access to medicines. Taking an international perspective to that recommendation, this essay reviews the World Trade (...) Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and, particularly, how this agreement has been applied in practice. As shown by the experience of Thailand, Brazil, and the Philippines, in order to deal effectively with international pressures for an excessive application of the TRIPS Agreement, some sort of conversion experience appears to be required, which then leads to a switch from a private enterprise, supply-driven approach to a public health vision that insists on universal and affordable access. But moral conviction is not sufficient. In order to muster and sustain the political will to face down international forces, civil society and government offices must be able and ready to show the costs and other adverse consequences of the TRIPS-based model for medicines. This calculation needs to reach beyond the health sector and calls for new alliances, nationally as well as internationally. (shrink)

In Kidney for Sale by Owner: Human Organs, Transplantation, and the Market, I argued that the market is the most efficient and effective—and morally justified—means of procuring and allocating human organs for transplantation. This special issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy publishes several articles critical of this position and of my arguments mustered in its support. In this essay, I explore the core criticisms these authors raise against my conclusions. I argue that clinging to comfortable, but unfounded, notions (...) that human body parts are not commodities, that the physician-patient relationship transcends commercial practices, and that medicine rises above market-place morality (where “market-place morality” is presented rhetorically as a criticism) leads to a real failure adequately to appreciate the complex reality of modern medicine. Denying the illicit moral intuitions that commodification of body parts is immoral or that it necessarily violates human dignity would benefit donors and recipients alike, while also reinforcing virtuous transplantation practice and policy. Honestly acknowledging the medical marketplace would shed light on what is often a hazy and shrouded policy setting. At stake is not solely the efficiency of procuring human organs for transplantation but also the recognition of the moral authority of persons over themselves. (shrink)

John Mackie’s moral error theory is so closely associated in people’s minds with his arguments from relativity and from queerness that one might overlook the fact that there may be numerous other, and possibly better, ways of establishing that metaethical position. Perhaps, indeed, there are even further resources for arguing for a moral error theory to be unearthed in Mackie’s own book. I have in mind Mackie’s thesis of moral objectification: that the “objective prescriptivity” with which our moral judgments are (...) imbued is the result of our “tendency to read our feelings into their objects” (1977: 42). Mackie invokes Hume’s famous projectivist image of the human mind’s “great propensity to spread itself on external objects,” and, indeed, it is in his book-length analysis of Hume’s moral theory (Mackie 1980) that the topic receives a more careful discussion than in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. In both books he musters some considerations in favor of the thesis, and reveals to us that he thinks that “it is very largely correct” (1980: 72). (shrink)

The author of the present paper argues that while trying to explain the institutional success of the science and its broad social impact, it is worth throwing aside the arguments concerning the universal traits of human nature, changes in the human mentality, or transformation of the culture and civilization, such as the development of capitalism or bureaucratic power. In the 16th century no new man emerged, and no mutants with overgrown brains work in modern laboratories. So one must also reject (...) the Great Divide between the cultures of the scientific and pre-scientific and replace it with multiple, uncertain and unexpected ‘not-so-great divides’, which can be described in meticulous anthropological studies. Although the achievements of science are certainly spectacular, and the gap between scientific practice and other areas of activity is so obvious, this does not mean that one must look for the “great” reasons behind this situation. One should rather focus on quite down-to-earth practices and tools used by scientists. A significant part of their activities can be described by referring to the craft of writing, reading and transforming of various types of inscriptions , and broadly understood visualization – their combining, performing, interpreting, confronting, comparing, shifting, shuffling etc. The important role of these tools and methods is especially visible in situations of scientific controversy. It is so because scientific controversies are won by the one able to muster on the spot the largest number of well aligned and faithful allies, and the technology of writing, printing and visualizing play a special role in mobilizing them. These are necessary to ensure that certain factors can be mobile – easy to move from place to place, and yet, immutable – not undergoing deformation as a result of the movement. This way, scientists are able to not only diffuse different types of factors relevant to the dispute and the process of constituting science, but also concentrate them in the centers of calculation, where, through accumulation, one can take actions not available elsewhere. (shrink)