CHAPTER I THE EMERGENCE AND DEVELOPMENT OF HUSSERL'S 'PHILOSOPHY OF ARITHMETIC'. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: WEIERSTRASS AND THE ARITHMETIZATION OF ANALYSIS In ...

This volume contains the text of a lecture course Heidegger presented in Marburg in the winter semester of 1924/25, just a year before completing his work on the manuscript for Being and Time. A lengthy introductory section examines the concept of truth in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Metaphysics. The "Main Section" presents a detailed commentary on the Greek text of Plato's Sophist. Part 1 deals with the various attempts made at the beginning of the dialogue to define "the factical existence (...) of the sophist." Part 2 is devoted to the ontological discussion which arises out of these attempts. (shrink)

The goal of this study is to use Husserl's phenomenological method to clarify the epistemic achievement of modern mathematics. It is not primarily an examination of Husserl's opinions on specific questions in the philosophy of mathematics, many of which were formulated in his early, pre-phenomenological works. Rather, Lohmar takes the methodological ideas presented in Husserl's mature works, particularly Formal and Transcendental Logic and Experience and Judgment, as a point of departure for his own examination of a number of important questions.

Introduction -- Part I: Starting points -- Some decisions are easier than others -- Easy decisions -- More difficult decisions -- Moral dilemmas -- The deep basis of the moral life -- Practical decision making -- Why ethics is ultimately religious -- Acceptable and unacceptable forms of revelation -- The useful incomplete ness of religious tradition -- Moral virtue and character -- Intuition and deliberation in moral decision-making -- The absolute and the relative in moral life -- Have we become (...) too relativistic? -- The natural law approach -- God as the absolute -- Facts and values -- Individual integrity and communal authority -- The transcendent absolute -- Rules and relationships -- The moral burden of proof -- The legal analogy -- Applying the idea of "presumption" to ethical decision-making -- Moral presumptions as a common starting point -- Basic moral presumptions -- Uses of scripture -- Positive Christian value presumptions -- The limits and flaws in human nature -- Presumptions that preserve balance -- A presumption for Scripture and tradition -- When presumptions are in conflict -- Part II: Applications and illustrations -- Difficult personal decisions -- Sexual intimacy and family life -- Contraception and abortion -- Choosing a spouse -- Divorce -- Vocational choices -- The uses of our money -- Political choices -- Hard choices in the public arena -- Abortion -- Homosexuality -- The dilemma of "affirmative action" -- Securing economic justice -- Environmental policies -- Criminal justice -- Uses of military power -- Hard choices at the global level -- International institution building -- International security and policing -- Nuclear disarmament -- Economic globalization -- Global warming -- Hard choices in communities of faith. (shrink)

Robert Sokolowski’s concise and accessible new book introduces phenomenology not as a historical movement, but as an approach to philosophy that still has much to offer. It discusses central topics in Husserlian phenomenology, but without quoting Husserl and for the most part without mentioning him by name. Instead of examining the contributions of individual phenomenologists, the book extracts and synthesizes the insights of various figures, formulating them in new ways and showing why they are important in the context of contemporary (...) intellectual life. (shrink)

The scope of this study is the early phase of Husserl's philosophy, from On the Concept of Number and Philosophy of Arithmetic through the Logical Investigations. Like others who have studied this period, Cooper-Wiele wants to trace the development of themes understood to play a central role in Husserl's mature, phenomenological philosophy. Of central concern to him is the emergence of Husserl's transcendental point of view, which Cooper-Wiele characterizes as "a conquest of spatio-temporal phenomena," "the dissolution of the threat" to (...) certainty and teleology posed by the assumption that causal reality is an ultimate philosophical category. The "key" to the early development of transcendental phenomenology is said to be Husserl's study of the mental act of collecting--or, as the author prefers, the "totalizing act.". (shrink)

Classifying human beings according to race and ethnicity may seem straightforward to some but it, in fact, belies a difficult process. No standard procedure exists for categorizing according to race and ethnicity, calling into question the variables’ use in research. This article explores the use of race and ethnicity variables in the nursing research literature. Content analysis was conducted of a sample of 337 original research studies published in Nursing Research from the years 1952, 1955, and then every 5 years (...) through to 2000. Of the 337 research articles reviewed, 167 mentioned race, ethnicity, or their 81 code words or phrases. Out of the 167 articles, 153 used race or ethnicity to describe the study sample, and 45 of the 167 articles included race or ethnicity as an element of data analysis. Throughout the sample, there was substantial inconsistency related to race and ethnicity categorization, meanings of the terms, and use of these variables. Specificity related to conceptual assumptions, definitions, and context was missing and, as a result, data interpretation and understanding are suspect. The integrity of nursing knowledge requires that nurse researchers recognize and address the difficulties inherent in using race and ethnicity in health research. (shrink)

The concept of truth is at the core of science, journalism, law, and many other pillars of modern society. Yet, given the imprecision of natural language, deciding what information should count as true is no easy task, even with access to the ground truth. How do people decide whether a given claim of fact qualifies as true or false? Across two studies (N = 1181; 16,248 observations), participants saw claims of fact alongside the ground truth about those claims. Participants classified (...) each claim as true or false. Although participants knew precisely how accurate the claims were, participants classified claims as false more often when they judged the information source to be intending to deceive (versus inform) their audience, and classified claims as true more often when they judged the information source to be intending to provide an approximate (versus precise) account. These results suggest that, even if people have access to the same set of facts, they might disagree about the truth of claims if they attribute discrepant intentions to information sources. Such findings may shed light on the robust and persistent disagreements over claims of fact that have arisen in the “post-truth era”. (shrink)

The proposition that digital innovations can put people in charge of their health has been accompanied by prolific talk of empowerment. In this paper we consider ethical challenges and opportunities of trying to achieve justice and empowerment using digital health initiatives. The language of empowerment can misleadingly suggest that by using technology, people can control their health and take responsibility for health outcomes to a greater degree than is realistic or fair. Also, digital health empowerment often primarily reaches people who (...) already have high technological and health literacy, leaving others behind. We critically investigate whether the concept of health empowerment could be re-engineered to mean something different, namely the process of improving the health literacy and access of those who least possess it, in line with recent proposals for conceptual engineering in the service of justice. We settle on the weaker conclusion that underlying ethical values including justice should be used to interpret the existing concept of empowerment. To conclude, we take a high-level view of various strategies for achieving the ethical value associated with digital health empowerment. (shrink)

The phenomenon of contract cheating presents, potentially, a serious threat to the quality and standards of Higher Education around the world. There have been suggestions, cited below, to tackle the problem using legal means, but we find that current laws are not fit for this purpose. In this article we present a proposal for a specific new law to target contract cheating, which could be enacted in most jurisdictions.We test our proposed new law against a number of issues that would (...) need to be considered before any legal approach could be successful; would changing the legal status of contract cheating make it less likely to happen? Could this be achieved in a specific way? If so, who should actually be prosecuted and what offence are they committing? Would it actually address the causes of contract cheating? We suggest some answers to these questions, but then also identify a number of unintended potential consequences. We therefore additionally consider whether a legal approach is possible or even desirable.We conclude that a legal approach to contract cheating is possible, and, on balance, appropriate. Using UK law as an example, we offer a specific suggestion to lawmakers, around the world, for how this might be achieved, and conclude that the most successful approach would be to focus largely on a law targeting the providers of contract cheating, in particular commercial services. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of moral uncertainty in explaining the morally disruptive character of new technologies. We argue that existing accounts of technomoral change do not fully explain its disruptiveness. This explanatory gap can be bridged by examining the epistemic dimensions of technomoral change, focusing on moral uncertainty and inquiry. To develop this account, we examine three historical cases: the introduction of the early pregnancy test, the contraception pill, and brain death. The resulting account highlights what we call “differential (...) disruption” and provides a resource for fields such as technology assessment, ethics of technology, and responsible innovation. (shrink)

This paper sets out an account of trust in AI as a relationship between clinicians, AI applications, and AI practitioners in which AI is given discretionary authority over medical questions by clinicians. Compared to other accounts in recent literature, this account more adequately explains the normative commitments created by practitioners when inviting clinicians’ trust in AI. To avoid committing to an account of trust in AI applications themselves, I sketch a reductive view on which discretionary authority is exercised by AI (...) practitioners through the vehicle of an AI application. I conclude with four critical questions based on the discretionary account to determine if trust in particular AI applications is sound, and a brief discussion of the possibility that the main roles of the physician could be replaced by AI. (shrink)

The development of effective means to enhance research integrity by universities requires baseline measures of individual, programmatic, and institutional factors known to contribute to ethical decision making and behavior. In the present study, master’s thesis and Ph.D. students in the fields of biological, health and social sciences at a research extensive university completed a field appropriate measure of research ethical decision making and rated the seriousness of the research issue and importance for implementing the selection response. In addition they were (...) asked to rate their perceptions of the institutional and departmental research climate and to complete a measure of utilitarian and formalistic predisposition. Female students were found to be more ethical in their decision making compared to male students. The research ethical decision measure was found to be related to participants’ ethical predisposition and overall perception of organizational and departmental research climate; however, formalism was the only individual predictor to reach statistical significance and none of the individual subscales of the research climate measure were significantly correlated to ethicality. Participants’ ratings of the seriousness of the issue were correlated with their ratings of the importance of carrying out their selected response but neither was significantly predictive of the ethicality of their responses. The implications of these findings for the development of more effective training programs and environments for graduate students in research ethics and integrity are discussed. (shrink)

The s, p, d and f blocks of the elements, as delimited by Charles Janet in 1928, can be represented as parallel slices of a regular tetrahedron. They also fit neatly on to the surface of a sphere. The reasons for this are discussed and the possible objections examined. An attempt is made to see whether there are philosophical implications of this unexpected geometrical regularity. A new tetrahedral design in transparent plastic is presented.

Deep convolutional networks exceed humans in sensitivity to local image properties, but unlike biological vision systems, do not discover and encode abstract relations that capture important properties of objects and events in the world. Coupling network architectures with additional machinery for encoding abstract relations will make deep networks better models of human abilities and more versatile and capable artificial devices.

Fossil organisms offer our only direct insight into how the distinctive body plans of extant organisms were assembled. However, realizing the potential evolutionary significance of fossils can be hampered by controversy over their interpretation. Here, as a guide to evaluating palaeontological debates, we outline the process and pitfalls of fossil interpretation. The physical remains of controversial fossils should be reconstructed before interpreting homologies, and choice of interpretative model should be explicit and justified. Extinct taxa lack characters diagnostic of extant clades (...) because the characters had not yet evolved, because of secondary loss, or because they have rotted away. The latter, if not taken into account, will lead to the spurious assignment of fossils to basally branching clades. Conflicting interpretations of fossils can often be resolved by considering all the steps in the process of anatomical analysis and phylogenetic placement, although we must accept that some fossil organisms are simply too incompletely preserved for their evolutionary significance to be realized. (shrink)

This article introduces the concept of technological citizenship as a status for individuals consisting of rights and obligations within bounded technological polities enforced by statist structures. The model reconciles freedom to innovate with the affirmation of the autonomy and dignity of laypersons and the assimilation of laypersons with their world. It seeks lay control over the introduction and ongoing management of environmental hazards and self-verification of safety. The rights and obligations of TC compose a "new social contract of complexity." Even (...) with different values stressed, the name, concept, and terms of TC would streamline studies of peril. (shrink)

We draw a distinction between defensive and predatory forms of aggression, and how these forms relate to basic neuropsychological systems, especially the Fight-Flight-Freeze-System (FFFS; putatively related to defensive aggression), and the Behavioural Approach System (BAS; putatively related to predatory aggression). These systems may help further to account for proximal brain processes and personality influences in the context of sex differences.

As a moral philosopher, the perspective I will take in this chapter is one of argumentation and informed judgment about two main questions: whether individuals should ever choose to conduct human embryonic stem cell research, and whether the law should permit this type of research. I will also touch upon a secondary question, that of whether the government ought to pay for this type of research. I will discuss some of the main arguments at stake, and explain how the ethical (...) conflict over these questions differs from the political conflict over them. I will be guided throughout by the assumption that the unique scientific and clinical promise of human embryonic stem cell research is significant. Those who have doubts about this assumption should consult other chapters in this volume in which the issue is addressed directly. I begin with one of the basic facts relevant to the ethical issue of stem cell research: you and I, along with everybody else we know, developed out of clumps of primordial cells, which happen to be the very same clumps that serve as the source for human embryonic stem cells in the laboratory. Let us call these “source cells” for short, since they can be used in this way. Each individual has developed into whatever she is now out of a one-celled animal, which then became a blastocyst, a multi-celled human embryo. These blastocysts are partly made up of an inner mass of cells, and the body of every adult person has developed out of this inner mass. It is this very same clump from the inner part of the blastocyst that consists of source cells for human embryonic stem 1 cell research. These cells can be extracted and grown into a laboratory specimen of extraordinary interest to scientists. Before discussing the significance of the fact that all humans originate from these source cells, it is useful to begin by asking some perhaps rather simple-minded questions about how any one of us knows this fact to be true in the first place. How do I know that I developed from a single cell, and then a blastocyst? In my own case, the main way I know this is that other people have told me so.. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider a form of skepticism that has a permissive conclusion, according to which we are rationally permitted to suspend judgment in an area, or to have beliefs in that area. I argue that such a form of skepticism is resistant to some traditional strategies of refutation. It also carries a benefit, namely that it increases voluntary control over doxastic states by introducing options, and therefore greater freedom, into the realm of belief. I argue that intellectual preferences (...) and dispositions provide decisive reasons that can settle our doxastic states in such cases. (shrink)

This paper explores principles governing the rational balance among an agent's beliefs, goals, actions, and intentions. Such principles provide specifications for artificial agents, and approximate a theory of human action (as philosophers use the term). By making explicit the conditions under which an agent can drop his goals, i.e., by specifying how the agent is committed to his goals, the formalism captures a number of important properties of intention. Specifically, the formalism provides analyses for Bratman's three characteristic functional roles played (...) by intentions [7, 9], and shows how agents can avoid intending all the foreseen side-effects of what they actually intend. Finally, the analysis shows how intentions can be adopted relative to a background of relevant beliefs and other intentions or goals. By relativizing one agent's intentions in terms of beliefs about another agent's intentions (or beliefs'), we derive a preliminary account of interpersonal commitments. (shrink)

This article considers the use of ethnographic language in Procopius' Vandal Wars. In particular, it examines how self-control was employed as a flexible criterion for membership of a civilised, Roman world. We see this both in the sense of non-Romans imitating the self-controlled example of Belisarius and of Romans losing their self-control through imitating the luxury and tyranny of their Vandal opponents. In addition, the article argues for the Christianised character of this ethnographic language, which embraced the equation between right (...) belief, divine favour and self-control seen in the ecclesiastical historians, even if Procopius' understanding of right belief emphasises religious tolerance and humility over issues of dogma. (shrink)

This paper is underpinned by an epistemological question: What are the types and ways of knowing that can be entailed in reflective leadership in its fullest sense? The question is explored through a mapping exercise which outlines a geography of reflective leadership in terms of three variables: type of knowledge, problem focus, and mode of learning (incorporating the notion of embodied learning). Particular attention is given to recognising within the terrain of reflective leadership the epistemic credentials of spiritual learning and (...) experiential awareness of spirituality. This paper was given the award of best paper at the Philosophy of Management Conference, University of Oxford, 11th–14th July 2008. (shrink)