On the one hand, I show that the later Wittgenstein's practice-based approach to meaning, including the idea that the meaningfulness of mathematics ultimately is rooted in the everyday ‘applications’ it emerged from, as well as his insistence on the variability in and contingency of mathematical and mathematics-like practices, foreshadows more recent work in Philosophy of Mathematical Practice (PMP), although Wittgenstein's approach was more radically practice-based than what is prevalent in present-day PMP. On the other hand, I also show that Wittgenstein's (...) work on mathematics is driven by a pervasive critical attitude towards some key characteristics (monism, foundationalism and exceptionalism) of mainstream philosophical discourse about mathematics (then and now), which is mostly absent from present-day PMP, and I argue that this aspect of Wittgenstein's work on mathematics could inspire present-day practitioners of PMP to rethink the identity of their discipline. (shrink)

The role and ethics of professionals in business and economics have been questioned, especially after the financial crisis of 2008. Some suggest a reorientation using concepts such as craftsmanship. In this article, I will explore professional practices within the context of behavioural theory and business ethics. I suggest that scholars of behavioural theory need a strategy to deal with normative questions to meet their ambition of practical relevance. Evidence-based management (EBMgt), a recent behavioural approach, may assist business ethics scholars in (...) understanding how professionals infer ‘evidence’ to make decisions. For a professional, ethical issues are an integral part of decision-making at critical moments. As reflective practitioners, they develop insights related to ethical concerns when collecting and assessing evidence within decision-making processes. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic created a situation for the implementation of emergency remote learning. This meant that as a lecturer at a traditionalist University of contact sessions, the pandemic forced us to teach remotely through online methods of communication, using online lectures, narrated powerpoints, voice clips, podcasts, interviews and interactive videos. The assessments were conducted online from assignments to multiple choice questions, which forced the lecturers to think differently about the way the assessments were presented, in order to avoid easy access (...) to answers found in a textbook and online. This meant that more application questions of theory to practice were assessed in a more challenging way to prevent cheating and collaboration with peers. Formal assessments completed during emergency remote learning, have become the past practice, as innovative methods have been adopted for learning and for assessment purposes in order to preserve the integrity and attainment of the degree through online modes of learning. The aim of the paper investigates and explores the methods of teaching, together with the results obtained from the students of 2019 and 2020 in their final year relating to two final year modules against the literature relating to learning processes and methodologies. (shrink)

This critical note responds to Guiaşu and Tindale’s “Logical fallacies and invasion biology,” from our perspective as ecologists and philosophers of science engaged in debates about invasion biology and invasive species. We agree that “the level of charges and dismissals” surrounding these debates might be “unhealthy” and that “it will be very difficult for dialogues to move forward unless genuine attempts are made to understand the positions being held and to clarify the terms involved.” Although they raise several important scientific, (...) conceptual, and ethical issues at the foundations of invasion biology, we believe Guiaşu and Tindale’s attempts to clarify the debate were unsuccessful. Like some other critics of the field, they tend to misrepresent invasion biology by cherry-picking and constructing “straw people,” inaccurately portraying invasion biology, and thus failing to elevate the dialogue. In this critique, we clarify areas in the invasion biology literature misrepresented by Guiaşu and Tindale. We attempt to provide a more balanced view of areas of reasonable debate within invasion biology, including disputes about empirical evidence, diverse risk attitudes, and other diverse ethical commitments. (shrink)

Although the literature on, and the interest in, the relation of Husserlian phenomenology and Hegelian phenomenology are almost next to nil, the interpretations surrounding this relation are plagued by a number of aporiai. There is too much attention to extraneous matters. There is no adequate attempt to work out and explicate their respective theories of phenomenology and the coherency of the theories. There is a failure to spell out the presuppositions involved in the formation of transcendental philosophy which is to (...) be established within their respective phenomenological frameworks. Our approach avoids these pitfalls by focusing on Husserl's phenomenology as a transcendental philosophy within a subjectively dependent framework, and on Hegel's phenomenology as a propadeutic to a concept dependent framework. As a propadeutic, however, Hegelian phenomenology is an immanent critique of philosophical discourse, which is articulated within a subjectively dependent framework, in order for the concept dependent framework to be instituted. The question is raised as to whether Husserlian phenomenology can be encompassed by the immanent critique of the PhS. This would mean that Husserl's phenomenology must be prefigured by a cognitive formation in the PhS. We answer this question in the affirmative. We give individual treatment to Husserl and Hegel concerning the relation of phenomenology to logic. We go into a detailed analysis of what is involved in Husserl's notion of the subjective-logical and its aesthetic orientation, where we develop Husserl's full phenomenological theory of subjective life and its relation to world. We show that Husserl's full phenomenological theory of subjective life and world is prefigured by and maintains a family resemblance to the cognitive formation "Religion." We demonstrate finally that the argument of "Absolute Knowing" provides for the elimination of the subjective dependent framework as a viable principle for philosophical discourse. With this result, it becomes possible to claim that Hegel's PhS has encompassed and, hence, negated the subjectively dependent phenomenology of Husserl. (shrink)

El presente artículo recorre críticamente la situación venezolana a partir de la actual vinculación de lo indígena con un Estado denominado socialista. Sin embargo, el par conceptual indígena/socialista puede ser examinado a la luz de antecedentes socio-históricos que dan cuenta de realidades muy diferentes a las retóricas chavistas. Por otra parte, las acciones del gobierno respecto al petróleo demuestran la lejanía que tiene la cuestión indígena en las preocupaciones del Estado. Los derechos indígenas siguen quedando tras las bambalinas de la (...) política, a lo cual se suma la indiferencia gubernamental por los problemas ecológicos. (shrink)

Sport gehört zum Leben vieler Menschen weltweit. Sport wirft ethische Fragen und Probleme auf, die in den Massenmedien, an Stammtischen und auch in der Wissenschaft diskutiert werden. Wenn es um Doping, Sexismus, Umweltzerstörung, politische Ideologisierung und ähnliches geht, stehen im Hintergrund solcher Diskussionen auch Fragen nach einem dem gesellschaftlichen Zusammenleben und dem Sport angemessenen Menschenbild. In Auseinandersetzung mit leibphänomenologischen Konzepten der zeitgenössischen philosophischen Anthropologie und die Leiblichkeit des Menschen betreffenden Aussagen der theologischen Anthropologie wird in dieser Sportethik das christliche Menschenbild (...) beschrieben. Das Phänomen Sport wird vom Spielgedanken her in den Blick genommen. Als ethisches Leitbild dient die allen Menschen gleiche Würde. Sie wird in Auseinandersetzung mit zeitgenössischen philosophischen und theologischen Entwürfen von der Lehre der Gottebenbildlichkeit des Menschen her beschrieben und für ethische Fragen im Sport fruchtbar gemacht. Exemplarisch werden die Themen Doping, Geschlechterverhältnis, Tier- und Umweltschutz, Politisierung, Kommerzialisierung und die Möglichkeit ethischer Bildung im Sport erörtert. (shrink)

The major themes and human concerns expressed in Leopardi's writings are related to his life experiences and to the historical period in which he lived. Of central interest are the book's discussions of nobility and love as these two themes evolve and change as Leopardi acquired a more general and universal conception of life. The fascinating admixture in his work of classical and modern perspectives on life and literature is highlighted throughout the book.

A proposal by Ferguson [2003, Argumentation 17, 335–346] for a fully monotonic argument form allowing for the expression of defeasible generalizations is critically examined and rejected as a general solution. It is argued that (i) his proposal reaches less than the default-logician’s solution allows, e.g., the monotonously derived conclusion is one-sided and itself not defeasible. (ii) when applied to a suitable example, his proposal derives the wrong conclusion. Unsuccessful remedies are discussed.

Ever since Kant, mainstream moral philosophy has been more or less animated by the mission of discovering inescapable law-like rules that would provide a binding justification for morality. Recently, however, more and more authors have started to question a) whether this is possible, and b) what could this project, after all, achieve? An alternative vision of the task of moral philosophy starts from the pragmatic idea that philosophizing begins and ends in the actual human experience. It leads into a view (...) where morality is seen as a ‘social technology’ that aims to make living together possible, and strengthen people’s capability to live a good life within a society. Moral rules, then, are tools that we use to influence our behavior for the better. The role of moral philosophy is, accordingly, to develop further our moral tools, to propose solutions that enhance people’s capabilities to live good lives. In other words, moral philosophers become ethical engineers that use their expertise in ethical topics to criticize existing ‘moral technology’ and construct new concepts and theories that better answer the current challenges for living a good life. (shrink)

In a series of related essays, Dr Parkinson argues that both science and religion are at a crossroads, because in both cases their current paradigms are breaking down. In science, Einstein’s General Relativity has left an unbridgeable gap between quantum physics and the new cosmology and, in the West, the gap between the story told by modern scholarship and “gospel truth” has become equally wide. What for two millennia has been considered to be historical fact is now seen often to (...) be not only pious myth but deliberate falsification. The author adds something new and positive – but controversial- to the debate, in arguing that a future science and religion must be symbiotic. That is to say, in being true to their most basic principles of truth-seeking, both will find themselves to be not merely harmonious but mutually supporting and illuminating. When the evidence for this is fully, and honestly, assessed, the “phoney war” between science and religion can be seen for what it is. The question under all the questions is this: if simple honesty is an essential part of both science and religion, can either continue to survive with what J. K. Galbraith called “institutional truth?”. (shrink)

This work contrasts conservative or minimally mutilating revisions of empirical theories as they are identified in the presently dominant AGM model of formal belief revision and the structuralist program for the reconstruction of empirical theories. The aim is to make understandable why both approaches only partly succeed in substantially informing and formally restraining the issue. With respect to the rationality of minimal change, the overall result is negative. Readers with an interest in formal epistemology are provided with application cases, the (...) historically inclined reader is offered a systematic perspective. The discussion can largely be followed without a background in formal logic. (shrink)

This essay argues that the deontological view of morality is connected to extreme and massive forms of violence through a kind of phenomenological necessity. In the first main section, I examine one family of such violence, which usually comes under the label of “religious violence”. I argue that it is not the religious element but the disqualification of context from the realm of justification which characterizes such violence. In the second main section, I examine the phenomenology of duty to conclude (...) that duty, by definition, denies any normative relevance to context. In the third main section, I use this sketch of a phenomenology of duty to propose a hypothesis about the underpinnings of the connection between mass violence and duty, namely, that the notion of duty carries with it the exclusion of moderation, and places the agent before an impossible situation that can only be resolved by violence. (shrink)

The restructuration of municipalities which has been decided by the Belgian government, is not only a purely technical operatzon but rather, and in the first place, a social problem. The shape and duty-profile of a local authority should not, indeed, be attuned only to fast changing expectations as far as services are concerned, but to consultation and participation as well.Public administration research cannot keep aloof from this debate, but is considerably hampered by the institutional confusion and the insufficient explicitation of (...) the aims of the present reform. A starting-pointcan, however, be found in the mergers of municipalities that were realized in 1964 and in 1970/1971. In 67 of these municipalities an inquiry was held concerning the consequences of the merger, and moreover, in twotest-cases this inquiry grew to a full-scale systematic policy analysis.This research shows that, as a rule, the former municipalities are reasonably represented in the new entity's council, but it also reveals that few efforts are made to give this representation a broader impact along formal or informal participation-channels. Integration of employees has not caused insurmountable problems. However, in large sized municipalities, resulting from mergers, one could notice a drastic increase in municipal personnel, not only with regard to new duties and objectives but to traditional administrative and police duties as well. Such a phenomenon points to the far-reaching changes which a substantial scale-increase provokes in a municipality's structure and policy profile. A large municipality resulting from mergers is no langer a simple sum of component parts, but a completely new entity, wishing to catch up as fast as possible with comparable municipalities that passed through a progressive growth process. Therefore, scale-increase is not only a means of economizing or an intra-administrative matter, but rather a way of creating chances for further development or wealth and well-being. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 93 Heft: 2 Seiten: 585-588.