Much has been written by many distinguished persons about the philosophical, religious and ethical considerations of doctors and their involvement with torture. What follows will not have the erudition or authority of the likes of St Augustine, Mahatma Gandi, Schopenhauer or Thomas Paine. It represents the views of a very ordinary person; a presumption defended by the submission that many very ordinary persons have been, and will be, instruments for effecting, assisting or condoning the physical or mental anguish of others. (...) As practitioners of medicine, we are particularly vulnerable, since our particular knowledge and our privileged position may be so easily abused--to the detriment of others. Those of us who practice clinical forensic medicine have even greater responsibility by virtue of our daily contact with the enforcement of law, criminal procedure, and the machinations of the judiciary. We are thus particularly well placed to monitor, encourage or discourage the occurrence of evil practices within the community. It is imperative, therefore, that the ordinary doctor should be cognisant of, and be party to, a code of conduct formulated by his peers and having reference to his obligations as a citizen, and doctor, and to his ability to manipulate human activity. Forensic physicians have further discretionary powers as arbiters in the marriage of the art and ethics of healing with the principles and practice of justice. (shrink)

What is the value of an early diagnosis of dementia in the absence of effective treatment? There has been a lively scholarly debate over this question, but until now patients have not played a large role in it. Our study supplements biomedical research into innovative diagnostics with an exlporation of its meanings and values according to patients. Based on seven focusgroups with patients and their care-givers, we conclude that stakeholders evaluate early diagnostics with respect to whether and how they expect (...) it to empower their capacity to care. They value it, for instance, with respect to whether it explains experienced complaints, allows to start a process of psychological acceptance and social adaptation to the expected degeneration, contributes to dealing with anxieties, informs adequately about when to start preparing for the end of life, informs the planning of a request for euthanasia, or allows society to deal with a growing amount of dementia patients. Our study suggests that information about disease is considered ‘harmful’ or ‘premature’ when recipients feel unable to act on that information in their care. The results of this research offers input to further ethical research. It invites to adopt a care perspective in evaluation and to seek ways to prevent the ‘harm’ that such diagnostic methods can bring about. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that there is a sense in which phenomenological content determines the object of a conscious experience. "Phenomenological content" consists of the senses and sense-structures which become apparent when a subject engages in phenomenological reflection. An introduction to phenomenology is provided for those who are unfamiliar with its practice and literature. ;Various philosophers have argued that the sense of a verbal expression does not determine its reference. Ronald McIntyre has maintained that the arguments against the determination (...) of reference by sense can also be used to show that phenomenological content does not determine the object of a conscious experience. I argue that there is a sense of "determination" for which McIntyre is correct, but that there is another sense of "determination" according to which it would be correct to say that phenomenological content determines the object. ;If "determination" is used in a functional sense, in which A determines B if there is some function which yields B as output given A as input, then McIntyre is correct. The twin earth examples of Putnam and Burge clearly show that two subjects can have experiences with the same phenomenological content but different objects, so phenomenological content does not determine the object in this "functional" sense. But if "determination" means just "selection of one", then there is a determination of the object by phenomenological content from the perspective of, or with respect to, the experience itself. ;The object of a conscious experience is determined through being presented in that experience via a unity of sense . Such determination would not occur if a unity of sense could present anything other than a single, distinct, object. But every unity of sense in the phenomenological content of an experience presents something single and distinct. So there is a sense in which the object of a conscious experience is determined by phenomenological content through presentation. (shrink)

In the history of formal semantics, the successful joining of linguistic and philosophical work brought with it some difficult foundational questions concerning the nature of meaning and the nature of knowledge of language in the domain of semantics: questions in part about “what’s in the head” of a competent language-user. This paper, part of a project on the history of formal semantics, revisits the central issues of (Partee, 1979) in a historical context, as a clash between two traditions, Fregean and (...) Chomskyan, a clash that accompanied early work combining Montague’s semantics with Chomskyan syntax. Recent advances in philosophy of mind (from, e.g., Stalnaker and Burge) go a long way towards changing the framework of arguments about “psychological reality” and “competence”, challenging the suppositions on which the original dichotomy rested, thus largely defusing the tension. (shrink)

Within contemporary philosophy of mind, it is taken for granted that externalist accounts of meaning and mental content are, in principle, orthogonal to the matter of whether cognition itself is bound within the biological brain or whether it can constitutively include parts of the world. Accordingly, Clark and Chalmers (Analysis 58(1):7–19, 1998) distinguish these varieties of externalism as ‘passive’ and ‘active’ respectively. The aim here is to suggest that we should resist the received way of thinking about these dividing lines. (...) With reference to Brandom’s (1994, 2000, Inquiry 47:236–253, 2008) broad semantic inferentialism, we show that a theory of meaning can be at the same time a variety of active externalism. While we grant that supporters of other varieties of content externalism (e.g., Putnam 1975 and Burge (Philosophical Review 95:3–45, 1986) can deny active externalism, this is not an option for semantic inferentialists: On this latter view, the role of the environment (both in its social and natural form) is not ‘passive’ in the sense assumed by the alternative approaches to content externalism. (shrink)

우리의 믿음, 욕구, 의도 등은 주관적인 성격을 갖는다. 예컨대, 우리는 존재하지 않는 대상에 대하여도 주관적으로 믿고, 생각하고, 욕구하고, 의도할 수 있다. 그리고 이와 같은 현상은 이러한 심적 태도의 내용이 외적 세계와 독립적으로, 즉 순수히 개인 내적으로 결정된다는 내재론적 직관을 이해할 수 있게 하여준다. 심성 내용이 내재적으로 결정된다는 전통적 견해는 그러나 버지(T. Burge)에 의해 촉발된 소위 심성 내용 외재론 논의에 의해 오늘날 심각하게 도전을 받고 있다. 버지는 퍼트남(H. Putnam)이 제시한 의미 외재론 논증을 응용하여, 의미뿐 아니라 심성 내용 역시 필연적으로 외적 세계의 (...) 인과적, 사회적 관계에 의존한다고 주장한다. 본 논문은 이 주장을 비판적으로 검토한다. 구체적으로, 이러한 주장을 위해 버지가 제시한 형태의 외재론 논증을 비판적으로 분석하고 그것이 충분한 설득력을 가지지 않음을 보이고자 한다. 이를 위해 본 논문은 우선, 심성 내용 외재론 논증이 전형적으로 어떤 형태를 취하는지 구체적으로 살펴보고, 이를 통해 심성 내용 외재론이 궁극적으로 의미론적 근거에 토대하고 있다는 것을 보일 것이다. 다음으로, 심성 내용에 대한 언어적 기술이 심성 내용을 결정하고 이해하는 데 있어 반드시 필요한지 또는 충분한 조건을 이루는지 구체적으로 검토한다. 이 검토를 통해 결국 언어적 기술은 심성 내용을 결정하고 이해하기 위해 필요하지도 충분하지도 않음이 드러날 것이다. 그리고 이러한 점은 결론적으로 심성 내용 외재론이 제시하고 있는 의미론적 근거는 이 이론이 주장하는 외재론적 견해를 뒷받침할 적절한 근거가 되지 않는다는 점을 드러내 보여줄 것이다. (shrink)

Tyler Burge, Christopher Peacocke; Our Entitlement to Self-Knowledge, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 96, Issue 1, 1 June 1996, Pages 117–158, h.

Tyler Burge defends the idea that memory preserves beliefswith their justifications, so that memory's role in inferenceadds no new justificatory demands. Against Burge's view,Christensen and Kornblith argue that memory is reconstructiveand so introduces an element of a posteriori justificationinto every inference. I argue that Burge is right,memory does preserve content, but to defend this viewwe need to specify a preservative mechanism. Toward thatend, I develop the idea that there is something worthcalling anaphoric thinking, which preserves content inBurge's sense of ``content (...) preservation.'' I providea model on which anaphoric thought is a fundamentalfeature of cognitive architecture, consequentlyrejecting the idea that there are mental pronounsin a Language of Thought. Since preservativememory is a matter of anaphoric thinking, thereare limits on the analogy of memory and testimony. (shrink)

Putnam and Burge have been viewed as launching a joint attack on individualism, the view that the content of one's psychological state is determined by what is in the head . Putnam argues that meanings are not in the head while Burge argues that beliefs are not in the head either, and both have come up with convincing arguments against individualism. It is generally conceived that Putnam's view is a version of physical externalism, which argues that factors in the physical (...) environment play a role in determining the meanings of natural kind terms. Burge, on the other hand, is regarded as following up Putnam's argument to bring in factors in the social environment for the determination of belief. Burge's view has been commonly referred to as 'social externalism.' The general consensus in the field is that physical externalism and social externalism are compatible views. Furthermore, both Putnam and Burge seem to endorse each other’s position for the most part. In this paper, however, I shall argue against this general view to show that the two theories are deep down incompatible. (shrink)

The celebrated "Twin Earth" arguments of Hilary Putnam (1975) and Tyler Burge (1979) aim to establish that some intentional states logically depend on facts external to the subjects of those states. Ascriptions of states of these kinds to a thinker entail that the thinker's environment is a certain way. It is not possible that the thinker could be in those very intentional states unless the environment is that way...

ABSTRACTA number of philosophers within critical race theory use phenomenology to describe the way in which their identities are always already constituted as delinquent within the consciousness of white people, and how their own identity fractures in relation to this white gaze – a fracturing that creates unspeakable ontological, and ultimately physical, violence. Though these philosophers are already doing phenomenology in their work, there is a deeper level of analysis that has yet to be given. Specifically, an account has not (...) yet been provided as regards the production of the white gaze within the consciousness of white people. That is, how is an already racialized world of experience produced prior to any active reflection? In this essay, I engage George Yancy’s famous elevator example, using Edmund Husserl’s concepts of apperception, internal time consciousness and passive synthesis to give a phenomenological description of the production of a pre-reflective racialized world. (shrink)

Common sense and philosophical tradition agree that mind makes a difference. What we do depends not only on how our bodies are put together, but also on what we think. Explaining how mind can make a difference has proved challenging, however. Some have urged that the project faces an insurmountable dilemma: either we concede that mentalistic explanations of behavior have only a pragmatic standing or we abandon our conception of the physical domain as causally autonomous. Although each option has its (...) advocates, most theorists have sought a middle way that accommodates both the common-sense view of mind and the metaphysical conviction about the physical world. This volume presents a collection of new, specially written essays by a diverse group of philosophers, each of whom is widely known for defending a particular conception of minds and their place in nature. Contributors include Robert Audi, Lynne Rudder Baker, Tyler Burge, Donald Davidson, Fred Dretske, Ted Honderich, Jennifer Hornsby, Frank Jackson, Jaegwon Kim, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ruth Garrett Millikan, H. W. Noonan, Philip Pettit, Ernest Sosa, and Robert Van Gulick. (shrink)

This paper starts from the presupposition that moral codes often do not suffice to make agents understand their moral responsibility. We will illustrate this statement with a concrete example of engineers who design a truck’s trailer and who do not think traffic safety is part of their responsibility. This opinion clashes with a common supposition that designers in fact should do all that is in their power to ensure safety in traffic. In our opinion this shows the need for a (...) moral philosophy that helps engineers to interpret their responsibility and think more critically about it. For this purpose we will explore the moral philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre, which is particularly interesting because he locates the beginning of moral thinking in the daily practice of a profession. This is consistent with the history of moral codes, for codes are also the product of moral reflection by professionals. We will use MacIntyre’s philosophy to (1) explain what is wrong with the designers’ understanding of their responsibility and (2) show a possible way to bring their reflection to a more self-critical level. We will also inspect MacIntyre’s proposal critically. (shrink)

Common sense and philosophical tradition agree that mind makes a difference. What we do depends not only on how our bodies are put together, but also on what we think. Explaining how mind can make a difference has proved challenging, however. Some have urged that the project faces an insurmountable dilemma: either we concede that mentalistic explanations of behavior have only a pragmatic standing or we abandon our conception of the physical domain as causally autonomous. Although each option has its (...) advocates, most theorists have sought a middle way that accommodates both the common-sense view of mind and the metaphysical conviction about the physical world. This volume presents a collection of new, specially written essays by a diverse group of philosophers, each of whom is widely known for defending a particular conception of minds and their place in nature. Contributors include Robert Audi, Lynne Rudder Baker, Tyler Burge, Donald Davidson, Fred Dretske, Ted Honderich, Jennifer Hornsby, Frank Jackson, Jaegwon Kim, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ruth Garrett Millikan, H. W. Noonan, Philip Pettit, Ernest Sosa, and Robert Van Gulick. (shrink)

In most Western countries, health law bioethics are strongly intertwined. This strong connection is the result of some specific factors that, in the early years of these disciplines, facilitated a rapid development of both. In this paper, I analyse these factors and construe a development theory existing of three phases, or ideal‐typical models. In the moralistic‐paternalistic model, there is almost no health law of explicit medical ethics and the little law there is is usually based on traditional morality, combined with (...) paternalist motives, the objections to this modal are that its paternalism and moralism are unacceptable, that it is too static and knows no external control mechanisms. In the liberal model, which is now dominant on most Western countries, law and ethics closely cooperate and converge, both disciplines use the same framework for analysis: they are product‐oriented rather than practice‐oriented; they use the same conceptual categories, they focus on the minimally decent rather than the ideal, and they are committed to the same substantive normative theory in which patient autonomy and patient rights are central. However, each of these four characteristics also result in a certain one‐sidedness. In some countries, a third model is emerging. In this postliberal model, health law is more modest and acknowledges its inherent and normative limits, whereas ethics takes a richer and most ambitious self image. As a result health law and ethics will partly diverge again. (shrink)

Health care resource distribution is a subject of debate among health policy analysts, economists, and philosophers. In the United States, there is a widening gap between the more-and less-advantaged socioeconomic sub-populations in terms of both health care resource distribution and outcomes. Conventional wisdom suggests that there is a tradeoff, a zero-sum game, between efficiency and fairness in the distribution of health care resources. Promoting fairness in the distribution of health care resources and outcomes is not efficient in terms of maximization (...) of a health outcome production function. On the other side of the coin, improving efficiency comes at the expense of fairness. Such conventional wisdom is supported in part by standard static Paretian welfare analysis. However, in this paper it is shown that in a dynamic setting in which there are efficiency gains in the health production function, fairness in distribution of health care resources can improve simultaneously. (shrink)

Reasons and reasoning were central to the work of Paul Grice, one of the most influential and admired philosophers of the late twentieth century. In the John Locke Lectures that Grice delivered in Oxford at the end of the 1970s, he set out his fundamental thoughts about these topics; Aspects of Reason is the long-awaited publication of those lectures. They focus on an investigation of practical necessity, as Grice contends that practical necessities are established by derivation; they are necessary because (...) they are derivable. This work sets this claim in the context of an account of reasons and reasoning, allowing Grice to defend his treatment of necessity against obvious objections and revealing how the construction of explicit derivations can play a central role in explaining and justifying thought and action. Grice was still working on Aspects of Reason during the last years of his life, and although unpolished, the book provides an intimate glimpse into the workings of his mind and will refresh and illuminate many areas of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

The central thesis of this paper is that, for most issues of multiculturalism, regarding them as a problem of tolerance puts us on the wrong track because there are certain biases inherent in the principle of tolerance. These biases – individualism, combined with a focus on religion and a focus on beliefs rather than on persons or practices – can be regarded as distinctly Protestant. Extending the scope of tolerance may seem a solution but if we really want to counter (...) these biases, the principle of tolerance becomes so general that it loses any distinctive meaning. Therefore, we should accept the limited scope of tolerance and its biases. The principle of tolerance can still be useful for some problems where there is a clear and direct link to political or religious beliefs. Moreover, it should be cherished as a more general attitude or practice in Dutch society. For most problems of multiculturalism, however, we should appeal to broader theoretical frameworks that do justice to persons and practices. (shrink)

Moral ideals should not be seen as simple and purely personal, but as complex values with a social dimension that transcend attempts to formulate or realize them. Orientation towards ideals needs a realistic component: people should identify with the quest for an ideal, not with the ideal itself, and consider the possibility of negative consequences of their pursuit. Such realism about ideals includes acknowledging that ideals are not the only, nor the most important, motivating force of morality.

Since its advent, predictive DNA testing has been perceived as a technology that may have considerable impact on the quality of people’s life. The decision whether or not to use this technology is up to the individual client. However, to enable well considered decision making both the negative as well as the positive freedom of the individual should be supported. In this paper, we argue that current professional and public discourse on predictive DNA-testing is lacking when it comes to supporting (...) positive freedom, because it is usually framed in terms of risk and risk management. We show how this ‘risk discourse’ steers thinking on the good life in a particular way. We go on to argue that empirical research into the actual deliberation and decision making processes of individuals and families may be used to enrich the environment of personal deliberation in three ways: (1) it points at a richer set of values that deliberators can take into account, (2) it acknowledges the shared nature of genes, and (3) it shows how one might frame decisions in a non-binary way. We argue that the public sharing and discussing of stories about personal deliberations offers valuable input for others who face similar choices: it fosters their positive freedom to shape their view of the good life in relation to DNA-diagnostics. We conclude by offering some suggestions as to how to realize such public sharing of personal stories. (shrink)

Description: Ancient Indian logic by itself is a very vast subject. The ancient Sanskrit term nyaya which was first used in a different or in a much more general sense, was later specifically applied to the Nyaya school. The physics and physiology and psychology of the Nyaya doctrine are not specifically its own, being from the first indistinguishable from those of its sister Sastra, the Vaisesika. What characterizes it specifically is the development of the nyaya or five-membered method of demonstration (...) and its insistence on the four sources of knowledge, corresponding to the first four members of its demonstrative formula, or 'Syllogism.' The importance of Nyaya is in its doctrine of the pramanas, or sources of proof, and in its formulation of the nyaya, or method of demonstration. Indian Logic in its Early Schools by H.N. Randle is an interpretation of Indian logical theory in its historical development based on the study of original texts wherever reference to Nyaya as a method of logic has been made, and thus, covers a very wide field of Indian philosophy. An indispensable work for students of Indian philosophy, it is especially important for those who are interested in Nyayadarsana in its relation to the early logic of other schools. (shrink)

And I am perfectly confident that no professor is able to impart any knowledge or truth to anybody. Professor You are completely mistaken and absurd. ...

This volume is not restricted to papers presented at the 1988 Colloquium, but instead aims to provide the reader with a (relatively) coherent reading on Algebraic Logic, with an emphasis on current research. To help the non-specialist reader, the book contains an introduction to cylindric and relation algebras by Roger D. Maddux and an introduction to Boolean Algebras by Bjarni Joacute;nsson.

Open peer commentary on the article “Religion: A Radical-Constructivist Perspective” by Andreas Quale. Upshot: Quale offers a way of categorizing religious discourse based on radical constructivism. This commentary raises questions about the inter-relation of cognitive and non-cognitive knowledge, the role of testimony in learning about religion, and whether knowledge and belief have different roles in cognitive and non-cognitive knowledge, and suggests that Quale’s analysis opens a tolerant perspective on religious discourse.