Laws of nature take center stage in philosophy of science. Laws are usually believed to stand in a tight conceptual relation to many important key concepts such as causation, explanation, confirmation, determinism, counterfactuals etc. Traditionally, philosophers of science have focused on physical laws, which were taken to be at least true, universal statements that support counterfactual claims. But, although this claim about laws might be true with respect to physics, laws in the special sciences (such as biology, psychology, economics etc.) (...) appear to have—maybe not surprisingly—different features than the laws of physics. Special science laws—for instance, the economic law “Under the condition of perfect competition, an increase of demand of a commodity leads to an increase of price, given that the quantity of the supplied commodity remains constant” and, in biology, Mendel's Laws—are usually taken to “have exceptions”, to be “non-universal” or “to be ceteris paribus laws”. How and whether the laws of physics and the laws of the special sciences differ is one of the crucial questions motivating the debate on ceteris paribus laws. Another major, controversial question concerns the determination of the precise meaning of “ceteris paribus”. Philosophers have attempted to explicate the meaning of ceteris paribus clauses in different ways. The question of meaning is connected to the problem of empirical content, i.e., the question whether ceteris paribus laws have non-trivial and empirically testable content. Since many philosophers have argued that ceteris paribus laws lack empirically testable content, this problem constitutes a major challenge to a theory of ceteris paribus laws. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 30-32.

I articulate a functional characterisation of the concept of evidence, according to which evidence is that which allows us to make inferences that extend our knowledge. This entails Williamson's equation of knowledge with evidence.

What does Spinoza mean when he claims, as he does several times in the Ethics, that particular things are expressions of God’s nature or attributes? This article interprets these claims as a version of what is called theophany in the Neoplatonist tradition. Theophany is the process by which particular things come to exist as determinate manifestations of a divine nature that is in itself not determinate. Spinoza’s understanding of theophany diverges significantly from that of the Neoplatonist John Scottus Eriugena, largely (...) because he understands the non-determinateness of the divine nature in a very different way. His view is more similar, I argue, to what is presented in the work of Ibn ‘Arabī, under the name “tajallī”. (shrink)

Business firms play an increasingly influential role in contemporary societies, which has led many scholars to return to the question of the democratisation of corporate governance. However, the possibility of democratic deliberation within firms has received only marginal attention in the current debate. This article fills this gap in the literature by making a normative case for democratic deliberation at the workplace and empirically assessing the deliberative capacity of self-organised teams within business firms. It is based on sixteen in-depth interviews (...) in six German firms which practice various forms of self-organised teamwork. The article argues that self-organised teamwork can create a space for authentic, inclusive, and consequential deliberation by suspending authoritarian control structures within business firms. Finally, the article proposes the consideration of firms not only as necessary parts of a larger deliberative system but also as deliberative systems in themselves. (shrink)

We develop the theory of generically stable types, independence relation based on nonforking and stable weight in the context of dependent theories.

Drawing on a range of literature, I introduce two new concepts for understanding and exploring distributed cognition: resilience engineering and degeneracy. By re-examining Ed Hutchins’ (1995) ethnographic study of the navigation team I show how a focus on the developmental acquisition of cognitive practices can draw out several crucial insights that have been overlooked. Firstly, that the way in which agents learn and acquire cognitive practices enables a form of resilience engineering: the process by which the system is able to (...) overcome and adapt to errors and the vagaries of nature. Secondly, that the best way to engineer a resilient system is through promoting degeneracy – how differing structures produce the same function – at the level of cognitive practices. These two features show that focusing on cognitive practices and developmental trajectories is important for both greater explanatory leverage; and is also useful in regard to the practicalities of designing real-world cognitive systems. (shrink)

An account, based principally on Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society, of his concept of enlightened governance, and of the relation between that concept and his concept of human nature.

Changes in healthcare financing increasingly rely upon patient cost-sharing to control escalating healthcare expenditures. These changes raise new challenges for physicians that are different from those that arose either under managed care or traditional indemnity insurance. Historically, there have been two distinct bases for arguing that physicians should not consider costs in their clinical decisions—an “aspirational ethic” that exhorts physicians to treat all patients the same regardless of their ability to pay, and an “agency ethic” that calls on physicians to (...) be trustworthy advisors to their patients. In the setting of greater patient cost-sharing, physicians' aspiration and agency roles increasingly conflict. Satisfactorily navigating the new terrain of consumer-driven healthcare requires physicians to consider these two roles and how they can best be reconciled so as to maximize quality of care while respecting the heterogeneity of patients' financial resources and willingness to pay. (shrink)

One of the vividly discussed topics in the contemporary philosophy of science (especially physics) is the opposition between realism and Anti-Realism. The supporters of the first way of thinking trust in the objective existence of realities studied by science. They consider theories as approximate descriptions of these realities (Psillos 1999, xvii), whereas their opponents do not. However, both sides base their argumentation on simplified notions of scientific theories. In this paper, we present a more general approach, which can be coined (...) as “Theoretical Physics Realism” (TPR). It is based on the detailed reconstruction of the polysystemic nature of physical theories. The consequences of this reconstruction for understanding the genuine relationship between theories and experiments in studying the realities are indicated. The paper distinguishes between abstract (general) and domain-dependent theories and appeals to specific physical theories together with their application domains rather than to general speculations. (shrink)

ObjectiveIn this study we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate whether motor imagery of handwriting and circle drawing activates a similar handwriting network as writing and drawing itself.MethodsEighteen healthy right-handed participants wrote the German word “Wellen” and drew continuously circles in a sitting and lying position to capture kinematic handwriting parameters such as velocity, pressure and regularity of hand movements. Afterward, they performed the same tasks during fMRI in a MI and an executed condition.ResultsThe kinematic analysis revealed a general (...) correlation of handwriting parameters during sitting and lying except of pen pressure during drawing. Writing compared to imagined writing was accompanied by an increased activity of the ipsilateral cerebellum and the contralateral sensorimotor cortex. Executed compared to imagined drawing revealed elevated activity of a fronto–parieto-temporal network. By contrasting writing and drawing directly, executed writing induced an enhanced activation of the left somatosensory and premotor area. The comparison of the MI of these tasks revealed a higher involvement of occipital activation during imagined writing.ConclusionThe kinematic results pointed to a high comparability of writing in a vertical and horizontal position. Overall, we observed highly overlapping cortical activity except of a higher involvement of motor control areas during motor execution. The sparse difference between writing and drawing can be explained by highly automatized writing in healthy individuals. (shrink)

This paper argues that if creatures are to have significant free will, then God's essential omni-benevolence and essential omnipotence cannot logically preclude Him from creating a world containing a moral evil. The paper maintains that this traditional conclusion does not need to rest on reliance on subjunctive conditionals of free will. It can be grounded in several independent ways based on premises that many will accept.

Corrupt behavior presents major challenges for organizations in a wide range of settings. This article embraces a complexity theoretical perspective to elucidate the causal patterns of factors underlying consumers’ unethical judgments. This study examines how causal conditions of four distinct domains combine into configurational causes of unethical judgments of two frequent forms of corrupt consumer behavior: shoplifting and fare dodging. The findings of fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analyses indicate alternative, consistently sufficient “recipes” for the outcomes of interest. This study extends prior (...) work on the topic by offering new insights into the interplay and the interconnected structures of multiple causal factors and by describing configurational causes of consumers’ ethical evaluations of corrupt behaviors. This knowledge may support practitioners and policy makers to develop education and control approaches to thwart corrupt consumer behaviors. (shrink)

In this short article I examine whether and how one’s minor culpability in giving rise to an instance of otherwise justified defense affects the defense and affects the act giving rise to it.

China and Russia are the main driving forces of Eurasian integration. Russia is pursuing its “pivot to Asia,” while China is branching out to the West through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The interests of Russia and China meet in Eurasia and their friendly relations have led to several cooperation projects there. The most important are linkages between the Eurasian Economic Union and Silk Road Economic Belt Initiative and the plan to create a broader Eurasian Economic Partnership or Greater (...) Eurasia. This article studies the reasons which led the two countries to intensify their cooperation in Eurasia and the current state and prospects of that cooperation. (shrink)

Este escrito examina el particular enfoque dado por Arthur Schopenhauer a la cuestión de la libertad y su relación problemática con la voluntad humana, la causalidad y el conocimiento. Dicha interacción se enjuicia al no presentar la claridad y suficiencia teórica pretendida por el alemán para tal conjunto teórico. Para esto, se estudia el escrito Sobre la libertad de la voluntad premiado por la Real Sociedad Noruega de las Ciencias en 1839, recogido en el primer capítulo del texto Los dos (...) problemas fundamentales de la ética en la edición española. (shrink)

Este pequeno texto é uma singela homenagem que dedico para o meu exprofessor da graduação em Filosofia e meu orientador no mestrado em Ética e Epistemologia da UFPI. Trata-se de um texto rememorativo e de agradecimentos pela convivência e aprendizagem que tive com o professor Dr. José Sérgio D. da Fonseca. A grata oportunidade de conhecer o professor Dr. José Sérgio ocorreu-me por volta do ano 2009 em uma disciplina de seminário, na qual o professor José Sérgio ministrou um curso (...) sobre filosofia da mente, se minha memória não falha. (shrink)

This primarily diagnostic paper offers, from the perspective of relational egalitarianism, a normative analysis of three major injustices in the context of adaptation finance. Adaptation finance includes payments provided by the affluent countries of the Global North to low-income countries in the Global South, countries particularly exposed to the harms of climate change. Relational egalitarianism is the normative view that interactions between people and between institutions have to respect the equal moral status of every human being. The first injustice, from (...) this perspective, consists in the sheer fact that adaptation measures are required at all to deflect harm from people who did not significantly contribute to the causes of climate change. The second injustice consists in the persisting, even increasing adaptation finance gap, as countries of the Global North do neither provide adequate financial means to reduce climate risks, nor even fulfil their commitments to adaptation finance pledged in the Copenhagen Accord in 2009. The third injustice emerges from current procedures to determine criteria for distributing scarce financial resources that consolidate structural injustice. The paper concludes by providing the contours of a practical response to these injustices that respects the demands of relational egalitarianism. (shrink)

At every moment, somewhere in the world, a group of men and women are sitting around a table deliberating about an ethical issue posed by medicine and research, whether as a research ethics committee; a hospital or clinical ethics committee; a stem‐cell review committee; a gene transfer research committee; a biobank ethics committee; an ethics advisory committee for a medical or nursing association or nongovernmental organization; a state, provincial, national, or intergovernmental bioethics committee; or an ad hoc panel examining a (...) particular development or case. However, the last national committee in the United States, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, held its final meeting at the end of August 2016 and closed its doors. Should we regret its departure? I believe that the United States would benefit from having another national bioethics advisory body, but I do not think that the commission should simply have continued under a new president in the same form. Instead, looking at the experience of that commission and its six predecessors—who they were, how they worked, the functions they served, and the problems they experienced—we can derive some useful ideas for anyone planning to build the next commission. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging conversation, Michael Hardt reflects on recent transformations within Empire. Several unique themes emerge concerning power and pedagogy as they intersect with subjectivity and global crisis. Drawing on the common in conjunction with the tradition of love in education uncovers a different path that attends to today’s real political, ecological, and social needs. Finally, a focus on collectivity points to a possible strategy—collective intellectuality—for educators to revise traditional notions of leadership to encourage more ethical, democratic, and sustainable futures. (...) Yet, what this looks like in practice remains for us to imagine. (shrink)

Brain states, which correlate with specific motor, cognitive, and emotional states, may be monitored with noninvasive techniques such as electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography that measure macroscopic cortical activity manifested as oscillatory network dynamics. These rhythmic cortical signatures provide insight into the neuronal activity used to identify pathological cortical function in numerous neurological and psychiatric conditions. Sensory and transcranial stimulation, entraining the brain with specific brain rhythms, can effectively induce desired brain states correlated with such cortical rhythms. Because brain states have distinct (...) neural correlates, it may be possible to induce a desired brain state by replicating these neural correlates through stimulation. To do so, we propose recording brain waves from a “donor” in a particular brain state using EEG/MEG to extract cortical signatures of the brain state. These cortical signatures would then be inverted and used to entrain the brain of a “recipient” via sensory or transcranial stimulation. We propose that brain states may thus be transferred between people by acquiring an associated cortical signature from a donor, which, following processing, may be applied to a recipient through sensory or transcranial stimulation. This technique may provide a novel and effective neuromodulation approach to the noninvasive, non-pharmacological treatment of a variety of psychiatric and neurological disorders for which current treatments are mostly limited to pharmacotherapeutic interventions. (shrink)

Nehamas geeft in zijn essay een kritische reactie op de religieuze wereldvisie, en houdt een pleidooi voor het heidendom. Het heidendom zou in tegenstelling tot het monotheïsme erkennen dat er veel manieren zijn waarop mensen hun leven kunnen bevestigen, en is volgens Nehamas een combinatie tussen tolerantie en kosmopolitisme.

Determinism is a doctrine or assumption best defined in the realm of the natural sciences. In this paper I explain in detail the four senses of determinism, from the most fundamental metaphysical sense, to the most complex epistemic (predictive) sense. I take as a starting point the analysis of determinism offered by Stephen Kellert. Each of these senses is then expounded and commented with a view to explore some of the implications of each of them in theoretical physics. The most (...) important of my tasks in this paper is to differentiate between the metaphysical and epistemic consequences of the deterministic assumption. My objective is to show that determinism as an ontological tenet is capable of withstanding criticism, even though predictive determinism is likely to be false. (shrink)