According to a recent challenge to Kratzer's canonical contextualist semantics for deontic modal expressions, no contextualist view can make sense of cases in which such a modal must be information-sensitive in some way. Here I show how Kratzer's semantics is compatible with readings of the targeted sentences that fit with the data. I then outline a general account of how contexts select parameter values for modal expressions and show, in terms of that account, how the needed, contextualist-friendly readings might plausibly (...) get selected in the challenge cases. (shrink)

In Part 1 of this book, the first full-length treatment of its topic, J. L. Schellenberg argues that when we notice how.

Silence sometimes constitutes moral complicity. We see this when protestors take to the streets against racial injustice. Think of signs with the words: “Silence is complicity.” We see this in instances of sexual harassment, when we learn that many knew and said nothing. We see this in cases of wrongdoing within a company or organization, when it becomes clear that many were aware of the negligent or criminal activity and stayed silent. In cases like this we consider agents morally complicit (...) in virtue of their silence. Flagrant injustices cry out for action, and sometimes remaining silent amounts to complicity in those injustices. What philosophy owes us is an account of how it could be that silence constitutes complicity. In this paper I argue that one possibility is an account grounded in problematic deliberative contribution. The core idea of “deliberative complicity,” as I call it, is that agents have moral duties concerning the moral deliberation of other agents, and failures in these duties can amount to moral complicity. For example, an agent aware that a colleague is sexually harassing his students has a deliberative obligation to report the misconduct, and their silence in failing to report constitutes a failure to fulfill their deliberative obligation, a failure that grounds their moral complicity in the harassment. If my argument is successful, it provides a distinctive reason to prefer a deliberative account of moral complicity: it can capture cases of silent complicity that other views of moral complicity cannot. And further, by turning our attention toward our interpersonal deliberative obligations, a deliberative account of complicity can incorporate helpful resources from recent work in social epistemology and speech act theory as we set out to determine when and why silence amounts to complicity. And when it does, we cannot stay silent. We must speak. (shrink)

Historians of seventeenth-century science have frequently asserted that Kepler's laws of planetary motion were largely ignored between the time of their first publication and the publication of Newton's Principia . In fact, however, they were more widely known and accepted than has been generally recognized.Kepler's ideas were, indeed, rather slow in establishing themselves, and until about 1630 there are few references to them in the literature of the time. But from then onwards, interest in them increased fairly rapidly. In particular, (...) the principle of elliptical orbits had been accepted by most of the leading astronomers in France before 1645 and in England by about 1655. It also received quite strong support in Holland.The second law had a more chequered history. It was enunciated in its exact form by a few writers and was used in practice by some others without being explicitly formulated, but the majority, especially after 1645, preferred one or another of several variant forms which were easier to use but only approximately correct. The third law attracted less interest than the others, chiefly perhaps because it had no satisfactory theoretical basis, but it was correctly stated by at least six writers during the period under review.Between about 1630 and 1650 Kepler's Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae was probably the most widely read work on theoretical astronomy in northern and western Europe, while his Rudolphine Tables, which were based upon the first two laws, were regarded by the majority of astronomers as the most accurate planetary tables available.Kepler's work certainly did not receive all the recognition it deserved, but the extent to which it was neglected has been much exaggerated. (shrink)

Frank Jackson has argued that only if we have a priori knowledge of the extension-fixers for many of our terms can we vindicate the methodological practice of relying on intuitions to decide between philosophical theories. While there has been much discussion of Jackson’s claim that we have such knowledge, there has been comparatively little discussion of this most powerful argument for that claim. Here I defend an alternative explanation of our intuitions about possible cases, one that does not rely on (...) a priori extension-fixers. This alternative explanation provides a vindication of our reliance on intuitions, while blocking Jackson’s abductive argument for a priori semantic knowledge. In brief, I argue that we should regard our armchair intuitions as providing an important, a priori source of evidence for hypotheses about the contents of our implicit referential policies with regard to our terms. But all such hypotheses have a potential falsifier that is only discoverable empirically. In other words, gold-standard evidence for such hypotheses is always empirical. (shrink)

One strategy for blocking Chalmers's overall case against physicalism has been to deny his claim that showing that phenomenal properties are in some sense physical requires an a priori entailment of the phenomenal truths from the physical ones. Here I avoid this well-trodden ground and argue instead that an a priori entailment of the phenomenal truths from the physical ones does not require an analysis in the Jackson/Chalmers sense. This is to sever the dualist's link between conceptual analysis and a (...) priori entailment by showing that the lack of the former does not imply the absence of the latter. Moreover, given the role of the argument from conceptual analysis in Chalmers's overall case for dualism, undermining that argument effectively undermines that case as a whole in a way that, I'll argue, undermining the conceivability arguments as stand-alone arguments does not. (shrink)

What are the responsibilities of a business towards the city in which it operates? The Professor of Business Ethics at Nijenrode University, the Netherlands Business School suggests three practical ways of identifying them. This article is the substance of a paper which he delivered as Chairman of the European Business Ethics Network at its 1992 Conference in Paris.

The authors argue that while meaning holism makes massive error possible, it does not, as Donald Davidson fears, threaten interpretability. Thus they hold, in opposition to Davidson, that meaning holism need not be constrained by an account of meaning according to which in the methodologically most basic cases the content of a belief is given by the cause of that belief. What ensures interpretability, they maintain, is not that speakers' beliefs are in the main true, but rather that beliefs have (...) the contents they do because of events others can in principle identify and describe. (shrink)

Unlike nonhuman primates, thousands of bird species have articulatory capabilities that equal or surpass those of humans, and they develop their vocalizations through vocal imitation in a way that is very similar to how human infants learn to speak. An understanding of how speech mechanisms have evolved is therefore unlikely to yield key insights into how the human brain is special.

Entre los filósofos contemporáneos que más han hecho por el desarrollo y la consolidación académica de la historia del pensamiento español, destaca la figura de José Luis Abellán. Este libro, escrito por algunos de los más importantes especialistas en esta disciplina, pretende clarificar críticamente la obra de Abellán y recorrer algunos de los temas a los que mayor relevancia ha concedido el autor de la vasta e imprescindible "Historia crítica del pensamiento español". El erasmismo, el mito de Cristo, la generación (...) del 98, Ortega y Gasset y sus discípulos o el exilio del siglo veinte, son algunos de los temas abordados por los autores del libro, y sobre los que José Luis Abellán nos ha ofrecido artículos y monografías imprescindibles para conocer la historia de la filosofía española. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to understand the relationship between knowledge and society and to reflect on the links between science and political decision making. The text evolved from a number of reflections the author made while president of the European Astronomical Society, president of the Swiss Academy of Sciences and vice-president of the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC). The book starts by using astronomy as a showcase for what science brings to society in terms of intellectual enrichment, (...) of practical tools and of societal inputs. It then turns to looking generally at science as a human endeavour for which pleasure is a prime motivation and it describes the efforts made by researchers to rationalise their findings, thus making them universally acceptable. The author also describes the role of science in shaping our environment and discusses resulting responsibility of the scientists with respect to the evolution of the world. As part of an analysis of the relationship between science and policy the author describes the way in which scientists can (and must) bring knowledge in the political decision making process. The argument is closed with considerations on global governance, while the conclusion puts evidence based decision making processes in relation with the more emotional aspects of our behaviour. The readership of the book is intended to be all scientists involved in "science for policy" activities, as well as those who should become more active in this domain. This includes, but is not limited to, all members of science academies. Astronomers will find specific elements to help them think about their science. The intended readers of the book also include civil servants and policy makers who develop legislation and societal action in domains in which a solid knowledge base is important. The book should furthermore be of interest to citizens following public life and all those worried by the "post evidence" trends in policy. (shrink)

Lewis proposes a solution for bridging the gap between cognitive-psychological and neurobiological theories of emotion in terms of dynamic systems modeling. However, an important brain network is absent in his account: the neuroendocrine system. In this commentary, the dynamic features of the cross-talk between the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) and gonadal (HPG) axes are discussed within a triple-balance model of emotion.

Durante los últimos años ha habido un creciente interés por parte de físicos y matemáticos en el estudio de problemas que surgen al tratar de comprender cuestiones de biología. Por otra parte los avances en las técnicas experimentales están permitiendo obtener una gran cantidad de información sobre los mecanismos que emplean las células en su funcionamiento. En este artículo se describen algunas líneas de investigación en matemáticas cuyo estudio ha sido motivado por el estudio de problemas biológicos.

Se presenta una aplicación desarrollada en Visual Basic para Microsoft Excel 2010 con el propósito de ofrecer una herramienta que ayude al profesorado en las labores de calificación de pruebas de evaluación continua a lo largo de un curso en conjunción con la plataforma Moodle. Se describe también su aplicación a una asignatura concreta.