The construction of numbers has historically followed the process of recognizing the properties of geometry. The concept of countability is represented by natural numbers(N) on a straight line, while the completeness of real numbers(R) is derived from the continuous property of the number line. A complex number is established on a plane off the number line, and thereafter, the whole number system is completed. When the process of constructing a number with geometric features is investigated from different perspectives, it provides (...) a new insight into the fundamental principle of a number, which leads to a novel methodology in mathematics. (shrink)

A Number is a major object in mathematics. Mathematics is a discipline which studies the properties of numbers. The object can be described using mathematical language, which has been developed more rigorously than natural language. However, the language is not entirely free from natural language. The countability of a natural number also originates from natural language. It is necessary to understand how language guides a number into mathematics, its main playground.

Special relativity has changed the fundamental view on space and time since Einstein introduced it in 1905. It substitutes four dimensional spacetime for the absolute space and time of Newtonian mechanics. It is believed that the validity of this theory has been fully confirmed empirically for the last one hundred years, and therefore, its status is considered canonical, underpinning all physical principles. However, the spacetime metric is a geometric approach to nature when interpreting natural phenomena. A geometric flaw will be (...) exhibited on this, and an alternative is suggested. The reasonable geometric model of space and time is a three-dimensional space that translates along the time direction. This model accurately represents the true characteristics of nature. (shrink)

(From the Press's Website) -/- Winner of the 2004 Lakatos Prize, Thought in a Hostile World is an exploration of the evolution of cognition, especially human cognition, by one of today's foremost philosophers of biology and of mind. Features an exploration of the evolution of human cognition. Written by one of today’s foremost philosophers of mind and language. Presents a set of analytic tools for thinking about cognition and its evolution. Offers a critique of nativist, modular versions of evolutionary psychology, (...) rejecting the example of language as a model for thinking about human cognitive capacities. Applies to the areas of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and evolutionary psychology. -/- . (shrink)

This paper examines the iconic conception of aesthetic education in the work of Friedrich Schiller, with the aim of elucidating Schiller’s unique innovation of this notion in understanding i) the relationship between aesthetic and ethical value and ii) the transformative possibilities within a collective, social dimension of aesthetic experience. The paper provides an overview of the Kantian origins of Schiller’s aesthetic programme (Section 1). It then considers Schiller’s critique of the perceived failings of the Kantian and Enlightenment republican models of (...) ethical value and political emancipation (Section 2) before turning to his positive alternative aesthetic programme (Section 3). The paper concludes (Section 4) with some evaluation and reflection on Schiller’s original contributions. (shrink)

This study proposes two identification cuing factors to understand how corporate social responsibility relates to employees’ identification with their firm. The results reveal that a firm’s CSR initiatives increase employee–company identification. E–C identification, in turn, influences employees’ commitment to their company. However, CSR associations do not directly influence employees’ identification with a firm, but rather influence their identification through perceived external prestige. Compared to CSR associations, CSR participation has a direct influence on E–C identification. On the basis of these findings, (...) it is argued that CSR performance can be an effective way for companies to maintain a positive relationship with their employees. (shrink)

We are moral apes, a difference between humans and our relatives that has received significant recent attention in the evolutionary literature. Evolutionary accounts of morality have often been recruited in support of error theory: moral language is truth-apt, but substantive moral claims are never true. In this article, we: locate evolutionary error theory within the broader framework of the relationship between folk conceptions of a domain and our best scientific conception of that same domain; within that broader framework, argue that (...) error theory and vindication are two ends of a continuum, and that in the light of our best science, many folk conceptual structures are neither hopelessly wrong nor fully vindicated; and argue that while there is no full vindication of morality, no seamless reduction of normative facts to natural facts, nevertheless one important strand in the evolutionary history of moral thinking does support reductive naturalism—moral facts are facts about cooperation, and the conditions and practices that support or undermine it. In making our case for, we first respond to the important error theoretic argument that the appeal to moral facts is explanatorily redundant, and second, we make a positive case that true moral beliefs are a ‘fuel for success’, a map by which we steer, flexibly, in a variety of social interactions. The vindication, we stress, is at most partial: moral cognition is a complex mosaic, with a complex genealogy, and selection for truth-tracking is only one thread in that genealogy. (shrink)

In this article I develop a big picture of the evolution of human cooperation, and contrast it to an alternative based on group selection. The crucial claim is that hominin history has seen two major transitions in cooperation, and hence poses two deep puzzles about the origins and stability of cooperation. The first is the transition from great ape social lives to the lives of Pleistocene cooperative foragers; the second is the stability of the social contract through the early Holocene (...) transition to complex hierarchical societies. The first of these transitions is driven, at least initially, by individual advantage: cooperation paid off for individual foragers, initially through mutualist interaction, then through reciprocation. This argument leads to a reanalysis of the role of violence and the nature of the freeriding threat to cooperation. But the conditions that select for cooperative individuals in the Pleistocene were eroded in the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. So we need an alternative account of the survival, and indeed the expansion, of cooperation in the Holocene. Group selection driven by intercommunal conflict really may well be central to this second transition. (shrink)

In this paper I argue, first, that human lifeways depend on cognitive capital that has typically been built over many generations. This process of gradual accumulation produces an adaptive fit between human agents and their environments; an adaptive fit that is the result of hidden‐hand, evolutionary mechanisms. To explain distinctive features of human life, we need to understand how cultures evolve. Second, I distinguish a range of different evolutionary models of culture. Third, I argue that none of meme‐based models, dual (...) inheritance models, nor Boyd and Richerson's models fully succeed in explaining this adaptive fit between agent and the world. I then briefly develop an alternative. Finally, I explore (in a preliminary way) constraints on cultural adaptation. The processes of cultural evolution sometimes built a fit between agents and their environment, but they do not always do so. Why is folk medicine, for example, so much less reliable than folk natural history? (shrink)

Philosophical orthodoxy holds that pains are mental states, taking this to reflect the ordinary conception of pain. Despite this, evidence is mounting that English speakers do not tend to conceptualize pains in this way; rather, they tend to treat pains as being bodily states. We hypothesize that this is driven by two primary factors—the phenomenology of feeling pains and the surface grammar of pain reports. There is reason to expect that neither of these factors is culturally specific, however, and thus (...) reason to expect that the empirical findings for English speakers will generalize to other cultures and other languages. In this article we begin to test this hypothesis, reporting the results of two cross-cultural studies comparing judgments about the location of referred pains between two groups—Americans and South Koreans—that we might otherwise expect to differ in how they understand pains. In line with our predictions, we find that both groups tend to conceive of pains as bodily states. (shrink)

Keith DeRose has argued that the two main problems facing subject-sensitive invariantism come from the appropriateness of certain third-person denials of knowledge and the inappropriateness of now you know it, now you don't claims. I argue that proponents of SSI can adequately address both problems. First, I argue that the debate between contextualism and SSI has failed to account for an important pragmatic feature of third-person denials of knowledge. Appealing to these pragmatic features, I show that straightforward third-person denials are (...) inappropriate in the relevant cases. And while there are certain denials that are appropriate, they pose no problems for SSI. Next, I offer an explanation, compatible with SSI, of the oddity of now you know it, now you don't claims. To conclude, I discuss the intuitiveness of purism, whose rejection is the source of many problems for SSI. I propose to explain away the intuitiveness of purism as a side-effect of the narrow focus of previous epistemological inquiries. (shrink)

This study reports the results of a study of Swedish psychiatrists’ responses to moral statements related to decision making in the psychiatric context. Use was made of the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire, a modified instrument previously constructed from a theory of moral sensitivity. This Likert-type scale contains 30 items constructed from the following categories: interpersonal orientation, structuring moral meaning, benevolence, modifying autonomy, experiencing moral conflict, and trust in medical knowledge and principles of care. The purpose was to identify possible differences in (...) responses rather than to evaluate right or wrong responses. The analysis is based on 754 completed questionnaires. The results of the study showed some significant differences in the item and category levels; for example, male psychiatrists experienced more conflicts than female psychiatrists and agreed to a greater extent that medical knowledge was most important in deciding what was best for the patient. The results also showed that more female than male psychiatrists thought that the relationship with the patient was most important in psychiatric practice. (shrink)

Most management researchers pause at the threshold of objective right and wrong. Their hesitation is understandable. Values imply a “subjective,” personal dimension, one that can invite religious and moral interference in research. The dominant epistemological camps of positivism and subjectivism in management stumble over the notion of moral objectivity. Empirical research can study values in human behavior, but hard-headed scientists should not assume that one value can be objectively better than another. In this article, we invite management researchers to rethink (...) this presumption. We show how accepting at least a limited form of moral objectivity, namely, an epistemic orientation that seeks objective moral reasons, can benefit management research by 1. guiding research practice; 2. using patterns of moral objectivity as clues for formulating empirical hypotheses for psychological explanations; and 3. adding prescriptive power to empirical theories. (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume address a range of issues that arise when the focus of philosophical reflection on identity is shifted from metaphysical to practical and evaluative concerns. They also explore the usefulness of the notion of narrative for articulating and responding to these issues. The chapters, written by an outstanding roster of international scholars, address a range of complex philosophical issues concerning the relationship between practical and metaphysical identity, the embodied dimensions of the first-personal perspective, the kind (...) of reflexive agency involved in the self-constitution of one’s practical identity, the relationship between practical identity and normativity, and the temporal dimensions of identity and selfhood. In addressing these issues, contributors engage with debates in the literatures on personal identity, phenomenology, moral psychology, action theory, normative ethical theory, and feminist philosophy. (shrink)

This anthology, intended to accompany _A Companion to Metaphysics_, brings together over 60 selections which represent the best and most important works in metaphysics during this century. The selections are grouped under ten major metaphysical problems and each section is preceded by an introduction by the editors.

Despite growing interest in examining the role of religion in business ethics, there is little consensus concerning the basis or standards of “good” or ethical behavior and the reasons behind them. This limits our ability to enhance ethical behavior in the workplace. We address this issue by examining worldviews as it relates to ethics research and practice. Our worldview forms the context within which we organize and build our understanding of reality. Given that much of our academic work as well (...) as business practice operate from a modern worldview, we examine how modernism shapes our beliefs and approaches to ethics in business and academia. We identify important limitations of modernism in addressing moral issues and religion. We then introduce the Christian worldview as an alternative approach to examining ethical issues in business. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:We argue that Confucianism makes a fundamental contribution to understanding why civility is necessary for a morally decent workplace. We begin by reviewing some limits that traditional moral theories face in analyzing issues of civility. We then seek to establish a Confucian alternative. We develop the Confucian idea that even in business, humans may be sacred when they observe rituals culturally determined to express particular ceremonial significance. We conclude that managers and workers should understand that there is a broad range (...) of morally important rituals in organizational life and that managers should preserve and develop the intelligibility and integrity of many of these rituals. (shrink)

Background: Childhood cancer care involves many ethical concerns. Deciding on treatment levels and providing care that infringes on the child’s growing autonomy are known ethical concerns that involve the whole professional team around the child’s care. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to explore healthcare professionals’ experiences of participating in ethics case reflection sessions in childhood cancer care. Research design: Data collection by observations, individual interviews, and individual encounters. Data analysis were conducted following grounded theory methodology. Participants and research (...) context: Healthcare professionals working at a publicly funded children’s hospital in Sweden participated in ethics case reflection sessions in which ethical issues concerning clinical cases were reflected on. Ethical considerations: The children’s and their parents’ integrity was preserved through measures taken to protect patient identity during ethics case reflection sessions. The study was approved by a regional ethical review board. Findings: Consolidating care by clarifying perspectives emerged. Consolidating care entails striving for common care goals and creating a shared view of care and the ethical concern in the specific case. The inter-professional perspectives on the ethical aspects of care are clarified by the participants’ articulated views on the case. Different approaches for deliberating ethics are used during the sessions including raising values and making sense, leading to unifying interactions. Discussion: The findings indicate that ethical concerns could be eased by implementing ethics case reflection sessions. Conflicting perspectives can be turned into unifying interactions in the healthcare professional team with the common aim to achieve good pediatric care. Conclusion: Ethics case reflection sessions is valuable as it permits the discussion of values in healthcare-related issues in childhood cancer care. Clarifying perspectives, on the ethical concerns, enables healthcare professionals to reflect on the most reasonable and ethically defensible care for the child. A consolidated care approach would be valuable for both the child and the healthcare professionals because of the common care goals. (shrink)

Being robustly committed to state neutrality which does not permit the promotion of liberal-perfectionist ideals and denying that there is anything normatively relevant or ‘special’ about religion leaves liberal-egalitarians embroiled in a paradox. If religion is not special, how and why do liberal states afford it differential treatment (in comparison with non-religious analogues like secular doctrines or deeply-held beliefs of individual conscience)? This paper explores liberal-egalitarian strategies for resolving this paradox with predominant reference to the disaggregation strategy advanced by Cécile (...) Laborde. After discussing the novelty and advantages of disaggregation relative to other liberal-egalitarian strategies, the paper distinguishes between the coverage and the basis in justification of differential treatment to argue that disaggregation does not ultimately succeed in solving the latter. Despite this, reflecting on the clarifications achieved through disaggregation and the deeper issues of justification and justice emerging therefrom, the paper concludes by proposing the need to consider a lateral solution to the paradox and speculating on what this might look like. (shrink)

This article addresses the exclusivism–inclusivism debate about religious reasons in law within a justificatory liberal framework. The question of whether religious reasons have justificatory capacity for attaining public justification has increasingly been seen as a matter of how public justification is understood between two rival models: the consensus model being aligned with exclusivism, the convergence model with inclusivism. More recently, however, that alignment has been challenged with attempts to show that consensus can reach an equivalent degree of inclusivism as convergence. (...) Against this, I contend that the purported equivalence is misplaced. First, I identify a crucial ambiguity about public justification and two corresponding domains. Upon demonstrating these to be mutually independent and severable, I conclude that the moves to equalize the models are confined within the more narrow domain while, in the more fundamental domain, the choice of model continues to prove determinative as to the exclusivist or inclusivist valence of justificatory liberalism. (shrink)

We present an analysis of counterfactuals in terms of stories and combine it with an account similar to Walton’s account of truth in fiction to yield truth conditions for counterfactuals. We discuss unusual features of this account, and compare it to other main approaches. In particular, we argue that our analysis succeeds in accounting for counterpossibles and counterfactuals with true antecedents while the other two main approaches fail, and we give reasons for thinking that it is important to have an (...) adequate account of these two areas. (shrink)

Background Ethical sensitivity is a prerequisite for ethical nursing practices. Efforts to improve nurses’ ethical sensitivity are required to correctly recognise ethical conflicts and for sound decision-making. Because an emerging infectious disease response involves complex ethical issues, it is important to understand the factors that influence public health nurses’ ethical sensitivity while caring for patients with COVID-19, an emerging infectious disease. Objectives This study aims to identify the relationship between nursing professionalism, the organisation’s ethical climate, and the ethical sensitivity of (...) nurses who care for emerging infectious disease patients in Korean public health centres. Further, it sought to identify factors influencing ethical sensitivity and the mediating effect of the organisational ethical climate to inform guidelines and improve ethical sensitivity. Research design This was a cross-sectional descriptive study. Participants and research context Data were collected from February 3 to 8 March 2021. Participants included 167 nurses caring for patients with COVID-19 in public health centres in South Korea. Ethical consideration This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Chung-Ang University and followed the principles of research ethics. Results The factors influencing ethical sensitivity were working at a COVID-19 disease direct response department, nursing professionalism, and organisation’s ethical climate. The organisation’s ethical climate showed a partial mediating effect on the influence of nursing professionalism on ethical sensitivity. Conclusion Our findings show that nurses’ ethical sensitivity can be improved by refining the organisation’s ethical climate and nursing professionalism. (shrink)

Common notions of comparative philosophy tend to be strongly configured by the East-West axis. This essay suggests ways of seeing Latin American liberation philosophy as a form of comparative philosophy and an important Latin American thinker as being relevant for East-West political philosophy. The essay focuses on the Peruvian activist and intellectual, José Mariátegui, who is widely regarded to have been a leading Marxist, liberatory, and decolonial figure in 20th century Latin America. Like many “Third World” intellectuals of the interwar (...) years, Mariátegui had an interest in decolonization struggles in Asia and wrote with some consistency on this subject and in ways that bear significantly upon key themes in his political theory. Since very little of this has received commentary, this essay begins a discussion of Mariátegui's decolonial experimentation with ideas about Asia, decolonization, and indigenous cultural forms, like those of the Incas and Confucians. After some preliminary discussion of Euro.. (shrink)

This paper examines Alfred Schutz’s insights on types and typification. Beginning with a brief overview of the history and meaning of typification in interpretive sociology, the paper further addresses both the ubiquity and the necessity of typification in social life and scientific method. Schutz’s contribution itself is lacking in empirical application and grounding, but examples are provided of ongoing empirical research which advances the understanding of types and typification. As is suggested by illustrations from scholarship in the social studies of (...) social science, studies of social identity associated with membership categorization analysis, and constructionist social problems theory, typification can be found to be central to social research whether it is taken up as a largely unacknowledged resource or whether it is addressed by different names. The overview and illustrations suggest the continuing, widespread, and indeed foundational relevance of Schutz’s insights into types and typification. (shrink)

In this paper, we provide a Bayesian analysis of the well-known surprise exam paradox. Central to our analysis is a probabilistic account of what it means for the student to accept the teacher's announcement that he will receive a surprise exam. According to this account, the student can be said to have accepted the teacher's announcement provided he adopts a subjective probability distribution relative to which he expects to receive the exam on a day on which he expects not to (...) receive it. We show that as long as expectation is not equated with subjective certainty there will be contexts in which it is possible for the student to accept the teacher's announcement, in this sense. In addition, we show how a Bayesian modeling of the scenario can yield plausible explanations of the following three intuitive claims: (1) the teacher's announcement becomes easier to accept the more days there are in class; (2) a strict interpretation of the teacher's announcement does not provide the student with any categorical information as to the date of the exam; and (3) the teacher's announcement contains less information about the date of the exam the more days there are in class. To conclude, we show how the surprise exam paradox can be seen as one among the larger class of paradoxes of doxastic fallibilism, foremost among which is the paradox of the preface. (shrink)

In his 21st-century explorer’s uniform, Nordiclooking Spencer Wells kneels alongside nearly naked, smaller, African hunters who sport bows and arrows. Featured on the National Geographic Web site, “Explorer-in-Residence” Wells hold a bachelor’s and doctorate degree in biology. He is also a filmmaker who both masterminded and hosted National Geographic’s 2002 documentary, The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, which explains to non-scientists a molecular anthropology narrative of how humans left Africa 60,000 years ago to populate the rest of the globe.In (...) his latest exploratory adventure, Wells is the project leader and spokesperson for the recently announced “Genographic Project,” a “landmark study of the human journey.” In April 2005, National Geographic and IBM, with funding from the Waitt Family Foundation, launched the Genographic Project as a five-year “research partnership” that aims to “trace the migratory history of the human species” and “map how the Earth was populated.”. (shrink)

This article responds to a common criticism of Aristotelian naturalism known as the Pollyanna Problem, the objection that Aristotelian naturalism, when combined with recent empirical research, generates morally unacceptable conclusions. In developing a reply to this objection, I draw upon the conception of human nature developed by the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius, and build up an account of ethical naturalism that provides a satisfying response to the Pollyanna Problem while also preserving what is most attractive about Aristotelian naturalism.

There is nothing like an overwhelming consensus of opinion to encourage a less than rigourous approach to analyzing complex ethical issues. Unfortunately, this is nowhere more apparent than in the discussion of human reproductive cloning contained in the federal House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs’ report on human cloning, released last August The report may well fulfil the first half of its project, namely the empirical task of adequately summarizing and categorizing the various submissions made to (...) the Committee. However, it is clearly inadequate as a discussion of the ethical and legal permissibility of human reproductive cloning. (shrink)

Over the past decade AIDS research has turned toward the use of pharmacology in HIV prevention, including pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP): the use of HIV medication as a means of preventing HIV acquisition in those who do not have it. This paper explores the contradictory reasons offered in support of PrEP—to empower women, to provide another risk-reduction option for gay men—as the context for understanding the social meaning of the experimental trials that appear to show that PrEP works in gay men (...) and heterosexual couples but not single women. The PrEP debates reveal the different ideas about “demedicalization” in the earlier gay health and women’s health movements and highlight the relationship between health activism and critique of research ethics in the context of a global pharmaceutical market. (shrink)

In recent years, the far right “culture war” has to an increasing extent been allowed to set the terms for cultural policy debates, in Sweden and internationally. In the Swedish context, empty accusations against public cultural institutions of “wokeist” bias and “cancel culture” have found support in a public report from the governmental Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis, which claims that national public funding bodies are imposing politically correct demands on their applicants, with a “detrimental influence” on the freedom of (...) art. This article shows that the ACPA lacks grounds for these claims. Taking its cue from the ACPA’s report, it instead focuses on the fundamental and contested concept of the freedom or the autonomy of art. It seeks to outline what would need to characterise a critical concept of the autonomy of art today, and asks what the political implications would be of a rigorous understanding of such a concept. It argues that cultural policy should be understood as a project of cultural democratization, which should in turn be understood as a project of autonomy. (shrink)

Abstract of a paper presented in an APA symposium on Supervenience, December 29, 1985.

How does mind fit into nature? Philosophy has long been concerned with this question. No contemporary philosopher has done more to clarify it than Jaegwon Kim, a distinguished analytic philosopher specializing in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. With new contributions from an outstanding line-up of eminent scholars, this volume focuses on issues raised in Kim's work. The chapters cluster around two themes: first, exclusion, supervenience, and reduction, with attention to the causal exclusion argument for which Kim is widely celebrated; and (...) second, phenomenal consciousness and qualia, with attention to the prospects for a functionalist account of the mental. This volume is sure to become a major focus of attention and research in the disciplines of metaphysics and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In the past two decades, normative Confucian political theory has emerged as one of the most vibrant subfields of political theory, spawning a variety of philosophical thoughts, normative ideas, and institutional suggestions that are relevant to the modern societal context of Confucian East Asia. Ideas such as “Confucian democracy” and “Confucian constitutionalism” are no longer considered oxymoronic or conceptually impossible, and scholars in this field continue to develop their theories from a wide range of philosophical perspectives. What is still missing, (...) though, is a philosophical construction that intertwines Confucianism not only with democracy but also with other important... (shrink)

_Self and Subjectivity_ is a collection of seminal essays with commentary that traces the development of conceptions of 'self' and 'subjectivity' in European and Anglo-American philosophical traditions, including feminist scholarship, from Descartes to the present.

I came to utopia by accident, having painted myself into a corner with an idea for a trilogy: three science fiction novels consisting of an after-the-fall novel, a dystopia, and a utopia, all set in the same place and about the same distance into the future. The idea came to me in 1972, and I didn’t know how to write a novel then, so the plan needed brooding on. Some sixteen years later, the time came for the utopia. I had (...) written the after-the-fall novel, The Wild Shore, and the dystopia, The Gold Coast. The utopia was the only one left.By that time many aspects of it had been determined by the previous two books. I needed it to be in Orange County, California; I needed it to be fifty years in the future; and I.. (shrink)

Traditionally, the term ‘diaspora’ (from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) referred to the dispersion of the Jewish people from ancient Israel. It had a pejorative connotation, associated...

This paper examines the methodological problem of casuistry by reference to Immanuel Kant's position on it. He addressed “Casuistical Questions” in his last work on ethics, Metaphysik der Sitten, in order to defend his position against attacks from scholars defending an Aristotelian eudemonistic viewpoint. It is argued that Kantian casuistry has much in common with the Aristotelian idea of emphasizing the moral objectives and sensibility of an agent in concrete circumstances. Nevertheless, Kant did not entirely adopt the case-oriented ethical perspective (...) because he saw the moral duty as the „wide“ one. Moral duties are wide in the sense that they demand continuous self-examination: asking whether there might be a better way to limit one's maxim by another. According to Kant, although casuistry as a case study could give moral law or duties more practicability through the training of moral judgment, the moral agent cannot use with individual cases in order to modify or devise new moral rules or duties. (shrink)