In the most recent edition of Language, Truth and Logic , Professor A. J. Ayer still maintains that pure mathematics is analytic, being in fact merely a vast system of tautology. He is much more confident about this than are most contemporary professional mathematicians who have investigated the foundations of their subject. Following the breakdown of the efforts both of Frege and of Russell and Whitehead to derive pure mathematics from logic, i.e. to prove that the denial of any one (...) proposition of mathematics would necessarily be self-contradictory, Hilbert attempted to prove the more modest thesis that pure mathematics is consistent, i.e. that no two propositions of mathematics can contradict each other; but in 1931 Gödel discovered that even this thesis was undecidable according to the “rules of the game.” As Weyl has recently lamented, “From this history one thing should be clear: we are less certain than ever about the ultimate foundations of mathematics.” The sense in which Ayer uses the terms analytic and tautology implies also that in his view the activities of pure mathematicians lead to nothing new. It is true that he remarks that “there is a sense in which analytic propositions do give us new knowledge. They call attention to linguistic usages of which we might otherwise not be conscious, and they reveal unsuspected implications in our assertions and beliefs.” But, he continues, “we can also see that there is a sense in which they may be said to add nothing to our knowledge. For they may be said to tell us what we know already. ” This denial of novelty in mathematics is as typical of contemporary positivism as the prophecy of Comte that the composition of the stars would never be revealed to us and the objections of Mach to the atomic hypothesis were characteristic of nineteenth century positivism. Indeed, one wonders why the term positivism should have been appropriated by successive philosophers whose common outlook could be so much more fittingly described as negativism. (shrink)

There is great skepticism about the admittance of expert normative ethics testimony into evidence. However, a practical analysis of the way ethics testimony has been used in courts of law reveals that the skeptical position is itself based on assumptions that are controversial. We argue for an alternative way to understand such expert testimony. This alternative understanding is based on the practice of clinical ethics.

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

In this paper an assessment will be made of the state of Business Ethics as an academic discipline as well as on the extent to which theory on Business Ethics has been translated into practice within the South African society. First the way in which Business Ethics is defined will be examined. Then the issues within the field of Business Ethics that is considered to be most important will be addressed, as well as the reasons why it is believed to (...) be important to address them. From there the attention will be shifted to the way in which Business Ethics has been institutionalised at tertiary education level. An overview of important initiatives taken by the business sector themselves will also be reviewed. Then co-operation between business and academia on Business Ethics will be discussed. Finally an assessment will be made of what can be learned from Business Ethics elsewhere in the world and what can be offered in this regard. Also some future prospects of Business Ethics in South Africa will be explored. (shrink)

A gas in a box is perhaps the most important model system studied in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Usually, studies focus on the gas, whereas the box merely serves as an idealized confinement. The present article focuses on the box as the central object and develops a thermodynamic theory by treating the geometric degrees of freedom of the box as the degrees of freedom of a thermodynamic system. Applying standard mathematical methods to the thermody- namics of an empty box allows (...) equations with the same structure as those of cosmology and classical and quantum mechanics to be derived. The simple model system of an empty box is shown to have interesting connections to classical mechanics, special relativity, and quantum field theory. (shrink)

In this article the validity of transferring the Principle of Double Effect from the just war tradition to the domain of business is critically reviewed. If a case can be built for sufficient analogies between war and business, the principle of double effect can legitimately be transferred from war to business. If, on the other hand it can be shown that there are aspects in which business differs substantially from just war, then the transfer to business of a principle developed (...) within the context of war becomes more problematic. After exploring the nature of arguments of analogy and fallacious arguments of weak analogy some important disanalogies between war and business are highlighted. Given these disanalogies it is then contended that the just war background of the Principle of Double Effect had some bearing on both the content and manner of application of the Principle of Double Effect. Finally it is argued that these disanalogies require some revisions to the Principle of Double Effect with regard to both its content and its manner of application before it can be applied meaningfully to foreseeable negative side-effects of business. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.22(3) 2003: 236–246. (shrink)

Kant was among the first philosophers to recognize that modalities come in many varieties, and that there are systematic connections among them--an insight which has since been confirmed by the multitude of applications of the basic techniques of formalized modal logic. In particular, He recognized an affinity among what are now called doxastic and epistemic logics, As well as with a logic of judging which has not exact counterpart in contemporary thought. This paper will be concerned with the explication of (...) the theory of judgment in its relation to the logics of belief and knowledge. It will seek to show that there is a clear and consistent way to translate Kant's notions of modality into modern symbolic terminology, And that the relations he took to hold among them are well-grounded in his philosophy of logic. (shrink)

The King Report on Corporate Governance (1994) evoked unprecedented interest in corporate governance in South Africa. This does not mean that corporate governance was not an issue of concern before the release of this historical report. To the contrary, corporate governance in its broader sense has been at stake since the inception of the first publicly owned companies in South Africa. This article intends to give an overview of corporate governance in South Africa. It starts by making a distinction between (...) broad and narrow conceptions of corporate governance. Before applying this distinction to the practice of corporate governance in South Africa, a brief overview of the corporate landscape in South Africa is provided. Then the South African situation with regard to broad and narrow corporate governance respectively is analysed. The article ends with a discussion of the review of corporate governance that currently is in the making in South Africa. Throughout the article both the financial and ethical dimensions of corporate governance is attended to. (shrink)

This article focuses mainly on (1) the policy of Delft University of Technology since 1992 as regards the university-wide introduction of a compulsory course on ethics and engineering, and (2) the ideal structure of such a course, including the educational goals of the course.