The problem of gender equality among lawyers has been a subject of significant research, study and action across the globe. It is well known that despite women's entrance into law school in relatively equal numbers to men over the past few decades, they remain significantly under-represented in positions of leadership and power across sectors of the legal profession. Progress has come to a standstill, making this a particularly critical time to examine the ways we conceptualise the problem and rethink the (...) solutions. The legal profession, as a gatekeeper of equality and as an institution committed to the preservation of rights, should be emblematic of gender equality. Responsibility for addressing the problematic gender dynamics is something that lies with the entire profession and should be framed as a matter of ethics. To date, the conversation on this issue has been relatively insular and this essay argues for an expansion of this conversation to include the entire bar. Toward this end, this essay suggests that there are new ways to think about pathways to gender equality by expanding the boundaries that have defined the problem. First, it has been defined in a way that focuses almost exclusively on those already engaged in the practice of law, often at the highest echelons of practice to the exclusion of other sectors, especially legal education. Second, the existing movement has almost unilaterally focused on the structural impediments within the legal system or the characteristics of law practice itself that exist as roadblocks to women, ignoring significant barriers that are not necessarily unique to women lawyers but impede the progress of women generally. The movement also often fails to extend beyond geographic borders of a particular country, thereby eliminating the potential for a global conversation. In crafting solutions, there has been little acknowledgement of the role of legal education. (shrink)

Although Hannah Arendt is considered one of the major contributors to social and political thought in the twentieth century, this is the first general anthology ...

To what extent do people attribute meanings to “nonsense” words? How general is such attribution of meaning? We used a set of words lacking conventional meanings to elicit drawings of made‐up creatures. Separate groups of participants rated the nonsense words and the drawings on several semantic dimensions and selected what name best corresponded to each creature. Despite lacking conventional meanings, “nonsense” words elicited a high level of consistency in the produced drawings. Meaning attributions made to nonsense words corresponded with meaning (...) attributions made by separate people to drawings that were inspired by the name. Naïve participants were able to recover the name that inspired the drawing with greater‐than‐chance accuracy. These results suggest that people make liberal and consistent use of non‐arbitrary relationships between forms and meanings.Open Research Badges This article has been awarded Open Materials and Open Data badges. All materials and data are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/8juyc/. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki. (shrink)

Common practices such as donating blood or selling hair assume rights of disposal over oneself that are similar to, if not indistinguishable from, property rights. However, a simple view of self‐ownership fails to capture relevant moral differences between parts of a person and other objects. In light of this, we require some account of the continuity in the form of ownership rights a person has over herself and other objects, which also acknowledges the normative differences between constitutive parts of a (...) person, on the one hand, and external objects, on the other. This paper provides such an account by arguing that there are reasons internal to a general justification of property rights to limit the extent of powers included in ownership of different kinds of object, depending on how the person is situated in relation to them. Rejecting a typical Hohfeldian view of property as a univocal, gradable concept allows us to make space for a new approach to property and self‐ownership: one which can make sense of various uses of the body as property without entailing that our relation to those parts is exhaustively characterised by an ordinary property right. (shrink)

The work is the presentation of a logical theory - Logic in Reality (LIR) - and of applications of that theory in natural science and philosophy, including ...

Genome editing techniques are seen to be at the frontier of current research in the field of emerging biotechnologies. However, such biotechnological research is tensioned at the interface of science, technology and society. On the one hand, this means that it offers a tremendous potential to provide new concepts, methods and – in the long run – novel applications for urgent challenges and needs within society.

I defend the normativity of meaning against recent objections by arguing for a new interpretation of the ‘ought’ relevant to meaning. Both critics and defenders of the normativity thesis have understood statements about how an expression ought to be used as either prescriptive or semantic. I propose an alternative view of the ‘ought’ as conveying the primitively normative attitudes speakers must adopt towards their uses if they are to use the expression with understanding.

Quelle conception de la science proposer aujourd'hui? Les grandes doctrines du XXe siècle se sont heurtées successivement à des difficultés, que ce soit le positivisme du Cercle de Vienne ou le rationalisme critique de Popper. Même la perspective historique inspirée par Bachelard et par Kuhn a donné lieu à des versions disparates. Pourtant, toutes ces tentatives partent d'un même constat : l'échec de la vision classique de la science et la nécessité d'un nouveau discours. On peut en retracer l'histoire. Face (...) à la pluralité des hypothèses possibles au sujet de l'espace, du temps et de la matière, Poincaré pose l'existence de conventions, ou mieux de libres décisions, au cœur de la science. Ainsi, dès la fin du XIXe siècle, il coupe court aux projets traditionnels de fondation : ni le synthétique a priori de Kant, ni les faits généraux de Comte ne sauraient expliquer la nature de l'activité scientifique. C'est la naissance d'un mouvement d'idées, le conventionnalisme, quia eu un impact décisif sur la philosophie viennoise et, à travers elle, sur la philosophie mondiale. Voilà un fil conducteur pour évaluer un siècle de débats. Que signifie donc libre décision en matière scientifique? On affirme la dimension historique irréductible de notre savoir ; on reconnaît la créativité et la responsabilité inhérentes à la science en tant qu'aventure humaine. (shrink)

All organizations have ethics programs which consist of both explicit and implicit parts. This paper defines corporate ethics programs and identifies a number of their components. Corporate ethics programs'' structural and behavioral dimensions are proposed which may allow further examination of such program components and their impacts. Finally, fifteen propositions are suggested which describe the influence of founder values, competitive pressures, leadership, and organizational problems on corporate ethics programs and the manageability of such programs.

Ecology and sustainability are current narratives about the behavior of humans toward themselves and the environment. Ecology is defined as a science, and a philosophy of ecology has become a recognized domain of the philosophy of science. For some, sustainability is an accepted, important moral goal. In 2013, a Special Issue of the journal Sustainability dealt with many of the relevant issues. Unfortunately, the economic, ideological, and psychological barriers to ethical behavior and corresponding social action remain great as well as (...) obvious. In this paper, I propose that a new, non-standard and non-propositional logic of real processes, Logic in Reality (LIR) grounded in physics applies to the science and philosophy of these narratives and helps to explicate them. Given the ecological role of organizations and institutions, reference is often made to organizational or institutional logics as guides to ecological practice. This paper suggests that these logics are either too abstract or too informal to have an impact in a conflictual world. Recognition of the suggested new, transdisciplinary logical dimension of ecological processes may provide credibility and support to new initiatives in ecology and its philosophy. (shrink)

Metaphysicians frequently appeal to the idea that theoretical simplicity is truth conducive in metaphysics, in the sense that, all other things being equal, simpler metaphysical theories are more likely to be true. In this paper I defend the notion that theoretical simplicity is truth conducive in metaphysics, against several recent objections. I do not give any direct arguments for the thesis that simplicity is truth conducive in metaphysics, since I am aware of no such arguments. I do argue, however, that (...) there is no special problem with the notion that simplicity is truth conducive in metaphysics. More specifically, I argue that if you accept the idea that simplicity is truth conducive in science, then it would be objectionably arbitrary to reject the idea that simplicity is truth conducive in metaphysics. (shrink)

Some facts ground other facts. Some fact is fundamental iff there are no other facts which partially or fully ground that fact. According to metaphysical foundationalism, every non-fundamental fact is fully grounded by some fundamental fact(s). In this paper I examine and defend some neglected considerations which might be made in favor of metaphysical foundationalism. Building off of work by Ross Cameron, I suggest that foundationalist theories are more unified than, and so in one important respect simpler than, non-foundationalist theories, (...) insofar as foundationalist theories allow us to derive all non-fundamental facts from some fundamental fact(s). Non-foundationalist theories can enjoy a similar sort of theoretical unification only by taking on objectionable metaphysical laws. (shrink)

Mereological nihilism is the thesis that composition never occurs. Some philosophers have thought that science gives us compelling evidence against nihilism. In this article I respond to this concern. An initial challenge for nihilism stems from the fact that composition is such a ubiquitous feature of scientific theories. In response I motivate a restricted form of scientific anti-realism with respect to those components of scientific theories which make reference to composition. A second scientifically based worry for nihilism is that certain (...) specific scientific phenomena might require ineliminable quantification over composite objects. I address these concerns, and argue that there seem to be nihilist-friendly construals of the scientific phenomena in question. (shrink)

Discusses the nature of thought and volition, examines past philosophical theories, and clarifies the relation between will and freedom.

Die Bezeichnung „alt“ hat sich zu einem Wertbegriff negativer Konnotation gewandelt, so dass er synonym für alle möglichen Defizienzen bzw. als Chiffre für Defizienz schlechthin steht. Alt zu sein ist nun nicht länger eine Sache der Jahre, sondern von (verloren gegangenen) Qualitäten. Positiv ist daran, dass (fast wieder alles) möglich ist, negativ ist, dass gerade deshalb auch (fast) wieder alles ermöglicht werden muss. Denn der Alte ist selber schuld und will er es nicht bleiben, muss er etwas daran ändern. Die (...) Krankschreibung des Alters ruft seine Behandlung hervor, was nichts anders bedeutet als dass das Alter, das als Krankheit begriffen wird, kuriert werden muss, wobei die Kur nicht in seiner Heilung, sondern in seiner Überwindung, d.h. seiner Abschaffung besteht. Das Anti-Aging verfolgt eine radikale Abkehr vom Menschen, wie wir ihn kennen. Gerade am Alter lässt sich aber zeigen, dass der Mensch mit Mängeln leben kann, häufig trotz seiner Mängel glücklich wird und mit ihnen sogar seinen Frieden macht. (shrink)

Si l’oeuvre d’historien de la philosophie que Brunschvicg a élaborée est largement reconnue, ses efforts dans le champ de ce qu’il nommait philosophie scientifique soulèvent une certaine perplexité. Ce versant de son oeuvre aurait été éclipsé par Bachelard et sa philosophie du nouvel esprit scientifique. L’avènement de la philosophie analytique et sa réception en France auraient achevé de rejeter dans l’ombre la critique brunschvicgienne de la philosophie de la logique de Russell. Pourtant, Brunschvicg a oeuvré sans relâche à un rapprochement (...) entre philosophie et science. Il a entrepris un examen précis et approfondi des théories les plus récentes des mathématiques et de la physique. Or on constate aujourd’hui une exigence accrue en matière d’histoire et une multiplication des méthodes d’investigation. Le but de cet article est d’interroger à nouveaux frais la pensée épistémologique de Brunschvicg. (shrink)

Segue abaixo a tradução do alemão da seção dedicada ao cinismo presente nas Lições Sobre a História da Filosofia de Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Na seção em questão, o filósofo alemão aborda não somente a história da escola cínica, mas também seus princípios, suas influências e a importância que esse movimento teve para o pensamento filosófico posterior – sobretudo para o estoicismo.

Mereological nihilism is the thesis that composition never occurs. Sider has defended nihilism on the basis of its relative ideological simplicity. In this paper I develop the argument from ideological simplicity, and defend it from some recent objections. Along the way I discuss the best way to formulate nihilism, what it means for a theory to exhibit lesser or greater degrees of ideological simplicity, the relationship between the parthood relation and the identity relation, and the notion that we should judge (...) the ideological simplicity of competing theories on the basis of the kinds of ideological commitments required by those theories. (shrink)

Kris McDaniel has recently proposed an interpretation of the distinction between conventional truth and ultimate truth, as that distinction is made within Abhidharma metaphysics. According to McDaniel's proposal, the distinction between conventional truth and ultimate truth is closely connected with a similar distinction between conventional existence and ultimate existence. What is more, the distinction between conventional existence and ultimate existence should be interpreted along ontological pluralist lines: the difference between things that ultimately exist and things that merely conventionally exist amounts (...) to a difference in the modes of being enjoyed by the things in question.One... (shrink)

Pendant un demi-siècle, la méthode appropriée en philosophie des sciences dans la tradition continentale était l'étude historique ; dans la tradition anglosaxonne, l'analyse logique. Ce clivage au sein du discours philosophique s'est grandement estompé de nos jours. D'une part, Kuhn a défendu la pertinence philosophique de l'histoire des sciences. D'autre part, Vuillemin et Gilles-Gaston Granger ont promu l'étude de la philosophie analytique et l'emploi de ses techniques logiques. Le rapprochement des deux traditions a pris encore une nouvelle tournure dans les (...) derniers textes de Feyerabend et dans les travaux de Ian Hacking. Celui-ci associe délibérément les instruments historiques de l'école française avec les procédés logiques de l'école nordaméricaine. Quelle est la signification de ce rapprochement ? Quels problèmes fait-il surgir ? Quelles directions de recherche ouvre-t-il ? Telles sont les questions que nous aborderons par le biais d'une étude comparée de certains développements récents de la philosophie des sciences en France et en Amérique du Nord. For over half a century the continental tradition favored a historical method in philosophy of science, while the Anglo-American tradition promoted a logical method. In recent years this contrast has tended to lessen. On the one hand, there has been a growing interest since the 1970s in France for the analytic tradition, due to the pioneering studies of Vuillemin and Gilles-Gaston Granger. On the other hand, Kuhn has brought out the philosophical relevance of history of science. This tendency takes a new turn in Feyerabend's final texts as well as in the works of Ian Hacking. The latter deliberately combines the historical instruments of the French school with the logical techniques of the North-American school. How to understand this evolution ? What directions of research does it open up ? I address these questions by way of a comparative study of some recent developments in philosophy of science both in France and North America. (shrink)

Dr Sydney Brenner has played a major, and unique, role in biology during the past 40 years. His contributions have ranged from key work on the structure of the genetic code and the existence of mRNA through the development of Caenorhabditis elegans as a key model system in developmental biology to genomic analysis and function in vertebrates. BioEssays went to interview Dr Brenner at his home in the cathedral city of Ely, England, on the significance of the genome (...) projects for human biology, in particular, and for biology, in general. (shrink)

Gambling and Speculation takes the long, historic perspective of its controversial subject. The book offers not only a better understanding of the recent "gambling craze," but also a fundamental inquiry into human nature and the structure of societies. The Brenners argue that the negative image of gamblers and of speculators stems from prejudice, whose roots are in the distant, forgotten past. Legal scholars have frequently confused gambling with speculation and the anti-gambling laws were, at times, erroneously interpreted as implying the (...) prohibitions of contracts in futures and insurance markets. One consequence of all this confusion was that during this century both in the United States and England, the legislation and law on betting and gambling became ambiguous. The authors touch on this issue and make policy recommendations: to abolish restrictions on the industry, diminish the states' role in selling lotteries, and, at the same time, make legal distinctions capable of helping the tiny percentage of players who might be "addicted.". (shrink)

In a number of recent publications Thomasson has defended a deflationary approach to ontological disputes, according to which ontological disputes are relatively easy to settle, by either conceptual analysis, or conceptual analysis in conjunction with empirical investigation. Thomasson’s “easy” approach to ontology is intended to derail many prominent ontological disputes. In this paper I present an objection to Thomasson’s approach to ontology. Thomasson’s approach to existence assertions means that she is committed to the view that application conditions associated with any (...) term “K” with non-trivial application conditions must refer to the existence of things other than Ks. Given other components of her meta-ontological scheme, this leads to either an infinite regress or circularity of application conditions, both of which seem objectionable. Accordingly, some part of Thomasson’s meta-ontological scheme should be modified or abandoned. (shrink)

It is sometimes supposed that, in principle, we cannot offer an explanation for why there is something rather than nothing. I argue that this supposition is a mistake, and stems from a needlessly myopic conception of the form explanations can legitimately take. After making this more general point, I proceed to offer a speculative suggestion regarding one sort of explanation which can in principle serve as an answer to the question “why is there something rather than nothing?” The suggestion is (...) that there may be something rather than nothing in virtue of the truth of certain sorts of subjunctive conditionals. (shrink)

Mereological nihilists hold that composition never occurs, so that nothing is ever a proper part of anything else. Substance dualists generally hold that we are each identical with an immaterial soul. In this paper, I argue that every popular objection to substance dualism has a parallel objection to composition. This thesis has some interesting implications. First, many of those who reject composition, but accept substance dualism, or who reject substance dualism and accept composition, have some explaining to do. Secondly, one (...) popular objection to mereological nihilism, one which contends that mereological nihilism is objectionable insofar as it is incompatible with the existence of people, is untenable. (shrink)

Mereological nihilism (henceforth just "nihilism") is the thesis that composition never occurs. Nihilism has often been defended on the basis of its theoretical simplicity, including its ontological simplicity and its ideological simplicity (roughly, nihilism's ability to do without primitive mereological predicates). In this paper I defend nihilism on the basis of the theoretical unification conferred by nihilism, which is, roughly, nihilism's capacity to allow us to take fewer phenomena as brute and inexplicable. This represents a respect in which nihilism enjoys (...) greater theoretical simplicity than its rivals which has not yet been explored, and which is immune to many of the objections which have been leveled against previous arguments for nihilism from nihilism's theoretical simplicity. Composition as identity might be thought to confer a similar degree of theoretical unification as nihilism. I end the paper by arguing that this is not the case. (shrink)

I present new counterexamples to the asymmetry of grounding: we have prima facie reason to think that some conditional probabilities partially ground their inverse conditional probabilities, and vice versa. These new counterexamples may require that we reject the asymmetry of grounding, or alternatively may require that we reject one or more of the assumptions which enable the counterexamples. Either way, by reflecting on these purported counterexamples to grounding asymmetry we learn something important, either about the formal properties of grounding, or (...) about the nature of probability. (shrink)

Stoffregen & Bardy's target article is based on the assumption that our senses' ultimate purpose is to provide us with perfect information about the outside world. We argue that it is often more important that information be available quickly than that it be perfect. Consequently our nervous system processes different aspects of information about our surrounding as separately as possible. The separation is not between the senses, but between separate aspects of our surrounding. This results in inconsistencies between judgments: sometimes (...) because different frames of reference are used. Such inconsistencies are fundamental to the way the information is picked up, however, and hence cannot be avoided with clearer instructions to the subjects. (shrink)

Mereological nihilism is the thesis that composite objects—objects with proper parts—do not exist. Nihilists generally paraphrase talk of composite objects F into talk of there being “xs arranged F-wise” . Recently several philosophers have argued that nihilism is defective insofar as nihilists are either unable to say what they mean by such phrases as “there are xs arranged F-wise,” or that nihilists are unable to employ such phrases without incurring significant costs, perhaps even undermining one of the chief motivations for (...) nihilism. In this paper I defend nihilism against these objections. A key theme of the paper is this: if nihilists need to employ such phrases as “there are xs arranged F-wise,” non-nihilists will need to do so as well. Accordingly, any costs incurred by the nihilist when she employs such phrases will be shared by everyone else. What’s more, such phrases are intelligible when employed by the nihilist, as well as when they are employed by the non-nihilist, insofar as analyses of such phrases will not essentially involve mereological concepts incompatible with nihilism. (shrink)

One of the difficulties facing the philosopher of science today is the divide between historical epistemology and analytic philosophy of science. For over half a century these two traditions have followed independent and divergent paths. Historical epistemology, which originated in France in the early twentieth century, has recently been reformulated by a number of scholars such as Lorraine Daston, Ian Hacking, and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger. Elaborating novel historical methods, they seek to provide answers to major questions in the field. In the (...) light of this situation, my article examines the cultural barrier that explains the uneasy relationship between the two traditions. This barrier hinges on a number of factors—institutional, political and social—that are bound up with the philosophical issues in question. By resorting both to historical study and logical analysis, the new historical epistemology incites us to move beyond a rather sterile antagonism. (shrink)

1. The field of genetics has seen a huge increase in advancements over the past decade. Diseases that were once considered to have no treatment options yielding dismal outcomes now have quick and e...

Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.

Joachim Schulte’s introduction provides a distinctive and masterful account of the full range of Wittgenstein’s thought. It is concise but not compressed, substantive but not overloaded with developmental or technical detail, informed by the latest scholarship but not pedantic. Beginners will find it accessible and seasoned students of Wittgenstein will appreciate it for the illuminating overview it provides.

In the Western philosophical tradition logical investigation and philosophical advance have been inextricably linked, each having stimulated and shaped the other. In Logic and Philosophy William H. Brenner examines a broad range of logical concepts and methods as they relate to the larger context of philosophical investigation and thus bring to light the philosophical depth of logic and its relevance to philosophy in general.

I would like to thank Kris McDaniel for his reply. In my original response to McDaniel I say that, given his interpretation of the distinction between conventional and ultimate truth, we would no longer be able to employ certain powerful arguments in favor of the thesis that persons are merely conventionally existent, and it would turn out that the thesis that persons are merely conventionally existent doesn't have some of the important implications that proponents of that thesis generally take it (...) to have. McDaniel offers a reply to both of these concerns. In the remainder of this rejoinder I will say a bit about his reply.In my original response to McDaniel I claim that a proponent of... (shrink)