Nicholas Rescher’s way of understanding process philosophy reflects the ambitions of his own philosophical project and commits him to a conceptually ideal interpretation of process. Process becomes a transcendental idea of reflection that can always be predicated of our knowledge of the world and of the world qua known, but not necessarily of reality an sich. Rescher’s own taxonomy of process thinking implies that it has other variants. While Rescher’s approach to process philosophy makes it intelligible and appealing to mainstream (...) analytic philosophy, it leaves behind the more daring ideas of Bergson, James, and Whitehead, all of whom envisioned the primordial reality of process in a radical ontology of becoming. This variant of process thought can be construed as coherent and self-consistent, but not without relinquishing the correspondence theory of truth and embracing challenging ideas that bring us in close proximity to existentialism, apophatic theology, and Buddhism. (shrink)

The essays in this volume represent the first steps by philosophers and artificial intelligence researchers toward explaining why it is necessary to add an ...

Since the publication of the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Wittgenstein’s interpreters have endeavored to reconcile his general constructivist/anti-realist attitude towards mathematics with his confessed anti-revisionary philosophy. In this article, the author revisits the issue and presents a solution. The basic idea consists in exploring the fact that the so-called “non-constructive results” could be interpreted so that they do not appear non-constructive at all. The author substantiates this solution by showing how the translation of mathematical results, given by the (...) possibility of translation between logics, can be seen as a tool for partially implementing the solution Wittgenstein had in mind. (shrink)

ABSTRACT According to Genevieve Lloyd, conatus is manifested in body as a fixed ratio of motion and rest and in mind as increasing adequate understanding. The commentary provides textual analysis to resolve the apparent paradox that bodily stability corresponds to intellectual growth. The activity of adequate ideas and passivity of inadequate ideas are identified as analogues of motion and rest in Spinoza’s philosophy of mind and these are put to work in exploring what is required for increasing one’s adequate understanding: (...) that one can acquire adequate ideas only by extending one’s receptivity to being affected and by forming inadequate ideas. Thus a mind’s ratio between adequate and inadequate ideas is maintained even as it gains and exercises greater power. This appreciation of Spinoza’s epistemology supports Lloyd’s characterisation of his philosophy as “thinking from within the totality of being”. (shrink)

APONTAMENTOS SOBRE A PESQUISA EM DIREITO NO BRASIL.

APONTAMENTOS SOBRE FUNÇÃO SOCIAL DOS PRINCÍPIOS.

This article focuses on mirror self-recognition, the ability to recognize one's own image in a mirror. It presents the result of the first experiment on mirror self-recognition which showed that chimpanzees are able to learn that the chimps they see in the mirror are not other chimps, but themselves, as evidenced by self-directed behaviour. It reviews evidence for neural network for self-recognition and self-other differentiation and cites evidence that frontal cortex and cortical midline structures are implicated in self-recognition tasks. It (...) also suggests that the mirror self-recognition ability correlates to large brain size relative to the animal's body size. (shrink)

Do psychological traits predict philosophical views? We administered the PhilPapers Survey, created by David Bourget and David Chalmers, which consists of 30 views on central philosophical topics (e.g., epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language) to a sample of professional philosophers (N = 314). We extended the PhilPapers survey to measure a number of psychological traits, such as personality, numeracy, well-being, lifestyle, and life experiences. We also included non-technical ‘translations’ of these views for eventual use in other (...) populations. We found limited to no support for the notion that personality or demographics predict philosophical views. We did, however, find that some psychological traits were predictive of philosophical views, even after strict correction for multiple comparisons. Findings include: higher interest in numeracy predicted physicalism, naturalism, and consequentialism; lower levels of well-being and higher levels of mental illness predicted hard determinism; using substances such as psychedelics and marijuana predicted non-realist and subjectivist views of morality and aesthetics; having had a transformative or self-transcendent experience predicted theism and idealism. We discuss whether or not these empirical results have philosophical implications, while noting that 68% of our sample of professional philosophers indicated that such findings would indeed have philosophical value. (shrink)

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) has placed significant strain on United States’ health care and health care providers. While most Americans were sheltering in place, nurses headed to work. Many lacked adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), increasing the risk of becoming infected or infecting others. Some health care organizations were not transparent with their nurses; many nurses were gagged from speaking up about the conditions in their workplaces. This study used a descriptive phenomenological design to describe the lived experience of acute (...) care nurses working with limited access to PPE during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Unstructured interviews were conducted with 28 acute care nurses via telephone, WebEx, and Zoom. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The major theme, emotional roller coaster, describes the varied intense emotions the nurses experienced during the early weeks of the pandemic, encompassing eight subthemes: scared and afraid, sense of isolation, anger, betrayal, overwhelmed and exhausted, grief, helpless and at a loss, and denial. Other themes include: self‐care, ‘hoping for the best’, ‘nurses are not invincible’, and ‘I feel lucky’. The high levels of stress and mental assault resulting from the COVID‐19 crisis call for early stress assessment of nurses and provision of psychological intervention to mitigate lasting psychological trauma. (shrink)

In this article, we present results from a literature review of intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values of nature conducted for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as part of the Methodological Assessment of the Diverse Values and Valuations of Nature. We identify the most frequently recurring meanings in the heterogeneous use of different value types and their association with worldviews and other key concepts. From frequent uses, we determine a core meaning for each value type, which is (...) sufficiently inclusive to serve as an umbrella over different understandings in the literature and specific enough to help highlight its difference from the other types of values. Finally, we discuss convergences, overlapping areas, and fuzzy boundaries between different value types to facilitate dialogue, reduce misunderstandings, and improve the methods for valuation of nature's contributions to people, including ecosystem services, to inform policy and direct future research. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. (shrink)

Anime is exploding on the worldwide stage! Anime has been a staple in Japan for decades, strongly connected to manga. So why has anime become a worldwide sensation? A cursory explanation is the explosion of online streaming services specializing in anime, like Funimation and Crunchyroll. Even more general streaming services like Netflix and Amazon have gotten in on the game. Anime is exotic to Western eyes and culture. That is one of the reasons anime has gained worldwide popularity. This strange (...) aesthetic draws the audience in only to find it is deeper and more sophisticated than its surface appearance. Japan is an honor and shame culture. Anime provides a platform to discuss “universal” problems facing human beings. It does so in an amazing variety of ways and subgenres, and often with a sense of humor. The themes, characters, stories, plotlines, and development are often complex. This makes anime a deep well of philosophical, metaphysical, and religious ideas for analysis. International scholars are represented in this book. There is a diversity of perspectives on a diversity of anime, themes, content, and analysis. It hopes to delve deeper into the complex world of anime and demonstrate why it deserves the respect of scholars and the public alike. (shrink)

This Handbook represents a collective exploration of the emerging field of applied philosophy of language. The volume covers a broad range of areas where philosophy engages with linguistic aspects of our social world, including such hot topics as dehumanizing speech, dogwhistles, taboo language, pornography, appropriation, implicit bias, speech acts, and the ethics of communication. An international line-up of contributors adopt a variety of approaches and methods in their investigation of these linguistic phenomena, drawing on linguistics and the human and social (...) sciences as well as on different philosophical subdisciplines. The aim is to map out fruitful areas of research and to stimulate discussion with thought-provoking essays by leading and emerging philosophers. (shrink)

This monograph explores how seven prominent German and Austrian novelists of the twentieth century—Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Anna Seghers, Uwe Johnson, Ingeborg Bachmann, Wolfgang Hilbig, and Marlene Steeruwitz—conveyed their literary figures' time spent waiting. By presenting states of waiting as emblematic of human existence in the turbulent twentieth century, these writers criticized hierarchical power structures in various historical contexts. Killing Time presents fresh readings of seven German-language novels, while providing insights into how and why German and Austrian writers repeatedly turned (...) to the waiting motif to expose the injustices inherent in interpersonal, political, and social hierarchies. In investigating the treatment of waiting in literary texts, William reexamines how prominent philosophers of metaphor and time influenced German and Austrian writers of the past century. This study is underpinned in part by the work of cultural and social theorists who have emphasized how the liminal status of the subjugated within social hierarchies ensures that they are kept perpetually waiting. (shrink)

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

This book brings together a team of leading theorists to address the question 'What is the right measure of justice?' Some contributors, following Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, argue that we should focus on capabilities, or what people are able to do and to be. Others, following John Rawls, argue for focussing on social primary goods, the goods which society produces and which people can use. Still others see both views as incomplete and complementary to one another. Their essays evaluate (...) the two approaches in the light of particular issues of social justice - education, health policy, disability, children, gender justice - and the volume concludes with an essay by Amartya Sen, who originated the capabilities approach. (shrink)

A distinctive feature of modern capitalist societies is the tendency of the market to take over the production, maintenance, and distribution of goods that were previously produced, maintained, and distributed by nonmarket means. Yet, there is a wide range of disagreement regarding the proper extent of the market in providing many goods. Labor has been treated as a commodity since the advent of capitalism, but not without significant and continuing challenges to this arrangement. Other goods whose production for and distribution (...) on the market are currently the subject of dispute include sexual intercourse, human blood, and human body parts such as kidneys. How can we determine which goods are properly subjects of market transactions and which are not? The purpose of this article is to propose a theory of what makes economic goods differ from other kinds of goods, which can help to answer this question. (shrink)

In the profession of nursing, whiteness continues to be deeply rooted because of the uncritical recognition of the white racial domination evident within the ranks of nursing leadership. White privilege is exerted in its ascendency and policy-making within the nursing discipline and in the Eurocentric agenda that commands nursing pedagogy. While attention to antiracism has recently increased, antiracism pedagogy in nursing education is nascent. Pedagogical approaches in the nursing profession are essential. Because it encompasses the strategies used to transmit the (...) science in how nurses practice and teach, which has predominantly been informed using a Eurocentric lens. This paper presents a literature review on antiracist pedagogy in nursing education, discussing how nurse educators can integrate antiracism pedagogy in nursing education, highlighting examples presented by the authors. Key terms related to antiracism are reviewed. The resultant themes from the literature review include resistance to antiracist pedagogy, managing emotional responses, and supporting transformative learning using an antiracist approach. The primary implementation of Eurocentric pedagogical approaches whiteness pervasive in nursing education must be uprooted. Antiracist and other antioppressive learning approaches must be embraced to understand the insidiousness of racial inequities and its power in sustaining structural oppression in nursing academia. (shrink)

Using Asimov’s “Bicentennial Man” as a springboard, a number of metaethical issues concerning the emerging field of machine ethics are discussed. Although the ultimate goal of machine ethics is to create autonomous ethical machines, this presents a number of challenges. A good way to begin the task of making ethics computable is to create a program that enables a machine to act an ethical advisor to human beings. This project, unlike creating an autonomous ethical machine, will not require that we (...) make a judgment about the ethical status of the machine itself, a judgment that will be particularly difficult to make. Finally, it is argued that Asimov’s “three laws of robotics” are an unsatisfactory basis for machine ethics, regardless of the status of the machine. (shrink)

Robert Pippin has recently raised what he calls ‘the Montaigne problem’ for Nietzsche's philosophy: although Nietzsche advocates a ‘cheerful’ mode of philosophizing for which Montaigne is an exemplar, he signally fails to write with the obvious cheerfulness attained by Montaigne. We explore the moral psychological structure of the cheerfulness Nietzsche values, revealing unexpected complexity in his conception of the attitude. For him, the right kind of cheerfulness is radically non-naïve; it expresses the overcoming of justified revulsion at calamitous aspects of (...) life through a reflective, higher-order affirmative attitude. This complex notion of cheerfulness turns out to have roots in Montaigne himself, and it must be thought of as a kind of second nature cultivated through practice, as a kind of second nature. Understanding the meaning of cheerfulness thereby sheds light on the conception of philosophy as a way of life in both Nietzsche and Montaigne. (shrink)

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

Notwithstanding requirements for scientific/social value and risk/benefit proportionality in major research ethics policies, there are no widely accepted standards for these judgments in Phase 1 trials. This paper examines whether the principle of clinical equipoise can be used as a standard for assessing the ratio of risk to direct-benefit presented by drugs administered in one category of Phase 1 study—first-in-human trials involving patients. On the basis of the supporting evidence for, and architecture of, Phase 1 studies, the articles offers two (...) provisional conclusions: (1) the risks of drug administration in such trials cannot generally be justified on therapeutic grounds but by appeal to the social value of the research; and (2) a framework for adjudicating the ratio of risk/social-value must be developed. (shrink)

Autonomy is one of the most contested concepts in philosophy and psychology. Much of the disagreement centers on the form of reflexivity that one must have to count as genuinely self-governing. In this essay, we argue that an adequate account of autonomy must include a distinct requirement of accurate self-assessment, which has been largely ignored in the philosophical focus on agents' ability to evaluate the desirability of acting on certain impulses or values. In our view, being autonomous (i.e., self-guiding) involves (...) understanding the extent to which one has the capacities required for one's intended actions. On both clinical grounds (drawn from cases of frontal brain injury) and conceptual grounds, we argue that one's autonomy is diminished to the extent to which one's ability to assess one's capacities is impaired. (shrink)

Following a suggestion of Feys, we use “rigorous implication” as a translation of Ackermann's strenge Implikation ([1]). Interest in Ackermann's system stems in part from the fact that it formalizes the properties of a strong, natural sort of implication which provably avoids standard implicational paradoxes, and which is consequently a good candidate for a formalization of entailment (considered as a narrower relation than that of strict implication). Our present purpose will not be to defend this suggestion, but rather to present (...) some information about rigorous implication. In particular, we show first that the structure of modalities (in the sense of Parry [4]) in Ackermann's system is identical with the structure of modalities in Lewis's S4, and secondly that (Ackermann's apparent conjecture to the contrary notwithstanding) it is possible to define modalities with the help of rigorous implication. (shrink)

This volume began as a remembrance of Alonzo Church while he was still with us and is now finally complete. It contains papers by many well-known scholars, most of whom have been directly influenced by Church's own work. Often the emphasis is on foundational issues in logic, mathematics, computation, and philosophy - as was the case with Church's contributions, now universally recognized as having been of profound fundamental significance in those areas. The volume will be of interest to logicians, computer (...) scientists, philosophers, and linguists. The contributions concern classical first-order logic, higher-order logic, non-classical theories of implication, set theories with universal sets, the logical and semantical paradoxes, the lambda-calculus, especially as it is used in computation, philosophical issues about meaning and ontology in the abstract sciences and in natural language, and much else. The material will be accessible to specialists in these areas and to advanced graduate students in the respective fields. (shrink)

Deleuze (1990) reads Part I of the Ethics as articulating an expressionist philosophy, in which to express (exprimere) is the ontological criterion for existence throughout Spinoza’s metaphysical system. However, he argues that inadequate ideas and passions are non‑expressing, such that finite modes express substance only in their adequate ideas. I argue, contra Deleuze, that Spinoza’s account of the workings of the human mind presses us to understand inadequate ideas as genuine expressions of substance which nonetheless are specific to the individuals (...) which form them. On the same textual grounds I propose that the mind’s expression of substance in inadequate ideas, and thus in virtue of its encounters with other modes, is a source of both creativity and potential instability. I put this insight to work in a reading of Spinoza’s political philosophy, arguing that expression generates a dynamic in which social formations enact and reinforce their own forms of expression, while also being subject to the reimaginations and expression of those who live within them. (shrink)

Deleuze (1990) reads Part I of the Ethics as articulating an expressionist philosophy, in which to express (exprimere) is the ontological criterion for existence throughout Spinoza’s metaphysical system. However, he argues that inadequate ideas and passions are non‑expressing, such that finite modes express substance only in their adequate ideas. I argue, contra Deleuze, that Spinoza’s account of the workings of the human mind presses us to understand inadequate ideas as genuine expressions of substance which nonetheless are specific to the individuals (...) which form them. On the same textual grounds I propose that the mind’s expression of substance in inadequate ideas, and thus in virtue of its encounters with other modes, is a source of both creativity and potential instability. I put this insight to work in a reading of Spinoza’s political philosophy, arguing that expression generates a dynamic in which social formations enact and reinforce their own forms of expression, while also being subject to the reimaginations and expression of those who live within them. (shrink)