As editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard in the early 1840s, Lydia Maria Child was responsible for keeping the abolitionist movement in the United States informed of relevant news. She also...

Two fragments of the Lydiaca attributed to Xanthus of Lydia preserve a curious claim that a king of Lydia was the first person to make eunuchs of women. In an attempt to make sense of these passages, it has been suggested that εὐνουχίζειν here refers not to castration, but rather to female genital cutting. If correct, this would provide our first evidence of this practice in Lydian culture or indeed anywhere in Anatolia. However, the assumption that what Xanthus (...) describes somehow related to real practices is highly questionable. Instead, we should re-contextualize this story in terms of other fifth-century representations of luxury and eunuchs and in terms of Xanthus’ own exemplary portraits of other Lydian kings. (shrink)

This book investigates the role of humor in the good life, specifically as discussed by three prominent French intellectuals who were influenced by Nietzsche's thought: Georges Bataille, Gilles Deleuze, and Clément Rosset. Lydia Amir begins by discussing Nietzsche's reception in France, and she explains why and how he came to be considered a "philosopher of laughter" in the French academe. Each of the subsequent three chapters focuses on the significance of humor and laughter in the good life as advocated (...) by Bataille, Deleuze, and Rosset. These chapters also explore the complex relationship between the comic and the tragic, and of humor and laughter to irony, satire, and ridicule. The Legacy of Nietzsche's Philosophy of Laughter makes an invaluable contribution to recent interpretive work done on Bataille and Deleuze, and offers further introduction to the relatively understudied Rosset. It illuminates the philosophies of these three thinkers, their connection to Nietzsche, and, overall, the significant role that humor plays in philosophy. (shrink)

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) participated in two of the most significant developments in physics and in the philosophy of science in the 19th century: the proof that Euclidean geometry does not describe the only possible visualizable and physical space, and the shift from physics based on actions between particles at a distance to the field theory. Helmholtz achieved a staggering number of scientific results, including the formulation of energy conservation, the vortex equations for fluid dynamics, the notion of free energy (...) in thermodynamics, and the invention of the ophthalmoscope. His constant interest in the epistemology of science guarantees his enduring significance for philosophy. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the act of resistance by nurses and midwives at the nexus of abortion care and gender-based violence. We commence with a brief overview of a multiphased extended grounded theory doctoral project that analysed the individual, situational and socio-political experiences of Australian nurses and midwives who provide abortion care to people victimised by gender-based violence. We then turn to Essex's conceptualisation of resistance in health and healthcare and draw upon these concepts to tell a unifying and (...) cohesive story about how nurses and midwives exercise their politics. Vignettes taken from the three study phases are provided for demonstrative purposes. Finally, we discuss the potential of resistance in health and healthcare as a postmodern feminist research tool to analyse acts by nurses and midwives that could be categorised as political. (shrink)

Is it epistemically vicious to be attached to a specific scientific paradigm? Such attachment clearly violates a norm of impartiality that is associated with the value-free ideal of science. I will argue that what Samuel Scheffler (2022) calls ‘evaluative attachment’ is not always epistemically vicious. In section 1, I will present Kuhn’s account of paradigms as embodying not just theoretical positions but also a ‘constellation of group commitments’ that Kuhn came to call a ‘disciplinary matrix’ (2012/1962, postscript). Section 2 evaluates (...) Popper’s and Davidson’s criticisms of Kuhn, drawing on the work of Pablo Melogno (2020). Section 3 evaluates the claim that impartiality is a significant source of the value we accord to science. Section 4 appeals to Samuel Scheffler’s (2022) concept of evaluative attachment to argue that partiality to a specific framework or paradigm is not an epistemic vice. I conclude with brief observations, to be elaborated in future work, on how this argument applies to science in particular. (shrink)

Hermann von Helmholtz allows for not only physiological facts and psychological inferences, but also perspectival reasoning, to influence perceptual experience and knowledge gained from perception. But Helmholtz also defends a version of the view according to which there can be a kind of “perspectival truth” revealed in scientific research and investigation. Helmholtz argues that the relationships between subjective and objective, real and actual, actual and illusory, must be analyzed scientifically, within experience. There is no standpoint outside experience from which we (...) can reason, no extra-sensory knowledge of the constitution of the “ideal subject” or of the properties of “real objects.” In the tradition of psychophysics inherited by Helmholtz, we can arrive at a kind of perspectival analysis of perceptual experience, which embeds an account of that experience within the context of the history and situation of the perceiving subject. That analysis is relative to the perceiving subject, but the perspectival explanations Helmholtz constructs are not thereby relativist: in fact, for Helmholtz, the more squarely the perceiving subject is placed in a scientific, perspectival context, the more facts we are able to learn about her experience and the objects with which she interacts. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

In the early 1900s, Russell began to recognize that he, and many other mathematicians, had been using assertions like the Axiom of Choice implicitly, and without explicitly proving them. In working with the Axioms of Choice, Infinity, and Reducibility, and his and Whitehead’s Multiplicative Axiom, Russell came to take the position that some axioms are necessary to recovering certain results of mathematics, but may not be proven to be true absolutely. The essay traces historical roots of, and motivations for, Russell’s (...) method of analysis, which are intended to shed light on his view about the status of mathematical axioms. I describe the position Russell develops in consequence as “immanent logicism,” in contrast to what Irving (1989) describes as “epistemic logicism.” Immanent logicism allows Russell to avoid the logocentric predicament, and to propose a method for discovering structural relationships of dependence within mathematical theories. (shrink)

Calling on philosophers as the custodians of rationality to reconsider their responsibility toward their communities and the state of civilization at large, this book considers philosophy to be a practical discipline. Largely foreign to philosophers and non-philosophers alike, this conception of philosophy discloses the relevance of its unique contributions to contemporary society. The book offers a compelling and accessible analysis of philosophy also in relation to religion, psychology, the New Age Movement, and globalization, and exemplifies through a wide range of (...) current problems how philosophers can fulfil their responsibility. Its argument that responsibility lies where one is capable of doing what is needed, and even more so, when no one else can do it, targets philosophers. However, its innovative study of contemporary philosophy coupled with its original contributions to the problems at hand will engage academics and students from other disciplines, as well as a general readership. (shrink)

The litmus test for the development of a metarepresentational Theory of Mind is the false belief task in which children have to represent how another agent misrepresents the world. Children typically start mastering this task around age four. Recently, however, a puzzling finding has emerged: Once children master the FB task, they begin to fail true belief control tasks. Pragmatic accounts assume that the TB task is pragmatically confusing because it poses a trivial academic test question about a rational agent’s (...) perspective; and we do not normally engage in such discourse about subjective mental perspectives unless there is at least the possibility of error or deviance. The lack of such an obvious possibility in the TB task implicates that there might be some hidden perspective difference and thus makes the task confusing. In the present study, we test the pragmatic account by administering to 3- to 6-year-olds TB and FB tasks and structurally analogous true and false sign tasks. The belief and sign tasks are matched in terms of representational and metarepresentational complexity; the crucial difference is that TS tasks do not implicate an alternative non-mental perspective and should thus be less pragmatically confusing than TB tasks. The results show parallel and correlated development in FB and FS tasks, replicate the puzzling performance pattern in TB tasks, but show no trace of this in TS tasks. Taken together, these results speak in favor of the pragmatic performance account. (shrink)

Arguments for the effectiveness, and even the indispensability, of mathematics in scientific explanation rely on the claim that mathematics is an effective or even a necessary component in successful scientific predictions and explanations. Well-known accounts of successful mathematical explanation in physical science appeals to scientists’ ability to solve equations directly in key domains. But there are spectacular physical theories, including general relativity and fluid dynamics, in which the equations of the theory cannot be solved directly in target domains, and yet (...) scientists and mathematicians do effective work there (McLarty 2023, Elder 2023). Building on extant accounts of structural scientific explanation (Bokulich 2011, Leng 2021), I argue that philosophical accounts of the role of equations in scientific explanation need not rely on scientists’ ability to solve equations independently of their understanding of the empirical or experimental context. For instance, the process of formulating solutions to equations can involve significant appeal to information about experimental contexts (Curiel 2010) or of physically similar systems (Sterrett 2023). Working from a close analysis of work in fluid mechanics by Martin Bazant and Keith Moffatt (2005), I propose an account of heuristic structural explanation in mathematics (Einstein 1921, Pincock 2021), which explains how physical explanations can be constructed even in domains where basic equations cannot be solved directly. (shrink)

A profoundly original philosophical detective story tracing the surprising history of an anecdote ranging across centuries of traditions, disciplines, and ideas Red Sea-Red Square-Red Thread is a work of passages taken, written, painted, and sung. It offers a genealogy of liberty through a micrology of wit. It follows the long history of a short anecdote. Commissioned to depict the biblical passage through the Red Sea, a painter covered over a surface with red paint, explaining thereafter that the Israelites had already (...) crossed over and that the Egyptians were drowned. Clearly, not all you see is all you get. Who was the painter and who the first teller of the tale? Designed as a philosophical detective story, Red Sea-Red Square-Red Thread follows the extraordinary number of thinkers and artists who have used the Red Sea anecdote to make so much more than a merely anecdotal point. Leading the large cast are the philosophers, Arthur Danto and Søren Kierkegaard, the poet and playwright, Henri Murger, the opera composer, Giacomo Puccini, and the painter and print-maker, William Hogarth. Strange companions perhaps, until their use of the anecdote is shown as working its extraordinary passage through so many cosmopolitan cities of art and capital. What about the anecdote brings Danto's philosophy of art into conversation with Kierkegaard's stages on life's way, with Murger and Puccini's la vie de bohème, and with Hogarth's modern moral pictures? Lydia Goehr explores these narratives of emancipation in philosophy, theology, politics, and the arts. What has the passage of the Israelites to do with the Egyptians who, by many gypsy names, came to be branded as bohemians when arriving in France from the German lands of Bohemia? What have Moses and monotheism to do with the history of monism and the monochrome? And what sort of thread connects a sea to a square when each is so purposefully named red? (shrink)

What is the difference between a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and the symphony itself? What does it mean for musicians to be faithful to the works they perform? To answer this question, Goehr combines philosophical and historical methods of enquiry. She describes how the concept of a musical work emerged as late as 1800, and how it subsequently defined the norms, expectations, and behavior characteristic of classical musical practice. Out of the historical thesis, Goehr draws philosophical conclusions about the (...) normative functions of concepts and ideals. She also addresses current debates amongst conductors, early-music performers, and avant-gardists. (shrink)

_An exploration of philosophical and religious ideas about humor in modern philosophy and their secular implications._.

In this paper we position ourselves against idealist presuppositions so frequent in the humanities and social sciences, and, particularly, in communication theory. We argue that a realist approach to the study of communication avoiding such implausible assumptions is not only possible, but has already been exemplified in proposals that take communication to be a phenomenon with a biological origin. We argue that this sort of perspective can account for the variety of communicative functions we encounter in human experience, including the (...) ones involving senses. (shrink)

According to Thomas Pogge’s theory of human rights, those of us in the developed world have a negative duty to the global poor. In other words, our responsibility to them is not merely to help them but to stop harming them by hoarding natural resources and imposing unfair institutional structures. I argue that Hegel would agree that we have a responsibility to the global poor and that he would also agree with some of Pogge’s institutional diagnosis. Hegel thought that civil (...) society, as a new institution in his time, generated new responsibilities; he would, I argue, have thought the same about a globalized civil society. I discuss recognition as a possible foundation for this obligation and emphasize Hegel’s preference for a representative structure based on economics rather than geography as part of a possible solution. (shrink)

This pioneering new book suggests how different traditions of sociological thought can contribute to an understanding of the theory and practice of rights. Rights: Sociological Perspectives provides a sociological treatment of a wide range of substantive issues but without losing sight of key theoretical questions. It considers some varied cases of public intervention, including welfare, caring, mental health provisions, pensions, justice and free speech, alongside the rights issues they raise. Similarly, it examines the question of rights from the point of (...) view of distinctive population groups, such as prisoners and victims, women, ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, and lesbians and gays. It also contains two specifically theoretical chapters, which provide a critical overview of the existing approaches to the construction and implementation of rights. Rights: Sociological Perspectives offers a diverse and detailed exploration of the contribution sociological thought can make to this increasingly important aspect of social life and will be an invaluable aid to students. (shrink)

This paper presents Agassi’s views of morality and ethics. Agassi proposes a non-reductive psychological theory of moral judgments, complemented by duties, and a psychological hypothesis regarding the psychological and social conditions that invite openness to criticism. His opposition to moralism, his objection to justification, his emphasis on red lines and grey areas, and his rejection of abstract moral debates in favor of public moralism result in a distinct approach to moral philosophy that is in conflict with most of the mainstream (...) work in this field. Following Socrates, he takes education for autonomy as the critical rationalist life-style. (shrink)

This paper argues that Protagoras’ great myth depicts human nature as both Promethean and Epimethean: human foresight depends on the condition of oversight. If Protagoras’ praise of foresight betrays his desire to overcome this condition, Socrates embraces it. While Protagoras repeats Epimetheus’ mistake of forgetting his own nature by aiming to overcome the risks of oversight, Socrates’ foresight recognizes that oversight and perplexity are intrinsic to human nature.

I propose a measure of dependence that relates a set of items of evidence to an hypothesis H and to H's negation. I dub this measure relative consilience and propose a method for using it as a correction factor for dependence among items of evidence. Using RC, I examine collusion and testimonial independence, the value of diverse evidence, and the strengthening of otherwise weak or non-existent cases. RC provides a valuable tool for formal epistemologists interested in analyzing cumulative case arguments.

For much of the modern period, theologians and philosophers of religion have struggled with the problem of proving that it is rational to believe in God. Drawing on the thought of Thomas Aquinas, Theological Philosophy seeks to overturn the longstanding problem of proving faith's rationality and to establish instead that rationality requires to be explained by appeals to faith. Building on a constructive argument developed in a companion book, Rationality as Virtue, Lydia Schumacher advances the conclusion that belief in (...) the God of Christian faith provides an exceptionally robust rationale for rationality and is as such intrinsically rational. (shrink)

Because the demand for health services outstrips the available resources, priority setting is one of the most difficult issues faced by health policy makers, particularly those in developing countries. Priority setting in developing countries is fraught with uncertainty due to lack of credible information, weak priority setting institutions, and unclear priority setting processes. Efforts to improve priority setting in these contexts have focused on providing information and tools. In this paper we argue that priority setting is a value laden and (...) political process, and although important, the available information and tools are not sufficient to address the priority setting challenges in developing countries. Additional complementary efforts are required. Hence, a strategy to improve priority setting in developing countries should also include: (i) capturing current priority setting practices, (ii) improving the legitimacy and capacity of institutions that set priorities, and (iii) developing fair priority setting processes. (shrink)

The multiple detections of gravitational waves by LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory), operated by Caltech and MIT, have been acclaimed as confirming Einstein's prediction, a century ago, that gravitational waves propagating as ripples in spacetime would be detected. Yunes and Pretorius (2009) investigate whether LIGO's template-based searches encode fundamental assumptions, especially the assumption that the background theory of general relativity is an accurate description of the phenomena detected in the search. They construct the parametrized post-Einsteinian (ppE) framework in response, (...) which broadens those assumptions and allows for wider testing under more flexible assumptions. Their methods are consistent with work on confirmation and testing found in Carnap (1936), Hempel (1969), and Stein (1992, 1994), with the following principles in common: that confirmation is distinct from testing, and that, counterintuitively, revising a theory's formal basis can make it more broadly empirically testable. These views encourage a method according to which theories can be made abstract, to define families of general structures for the purpose of testing. With the development of the ppE framework and related approaches, multi-messenger astronomy is a catalyst for deep reasoning about the limits and potential of the theoretical framework of general relativity. (shrink)

According to Ockham and Chatton, every cognitive process through which one genuinely cognizes a mental state involves a reflexive act of the will. They think that such an act is necessary to explain why we do not genuinely cognize every present mental act. With respect to a present extra-mental thing, an act of the will can only be elicited once such thing has been intuitively apprehended, because according to both authors one cannot voluntarily desire something whose existence one does not (...) know. However, with respect to mental acts, Ockham and Chatton maintain the opposite: an act of the will precedes the simple apprehension of a straight or direct act. As a consequence, in both theories of consciousness the same problem arises: how can the will want something that it does not know? This article presents Chatton’s and Ockham’s responses to this question. (shrink)

In his?Proslogion?, Anselm presents a proof for God?s existence which has attracted a tremendous amount of scholarly attention. In spite of all that has been said about this proof and proofs for God?s existence more generally, scholarly consensus seems to dissipate when it comes to determining whether theistic proofs are persuasive and sound. In this article, I will argue that there is a way to provide compelling proof for the existence of God. To substantiate this claim, I will not attempt (...) to prove that God exists apart from His revelation in any of the ways that have been advocated by various philosophers of religion. Rather, I will endeavor to explain that Anselm?s approach to offering evidence for God?s existence is quite different from the approach that modern philosophers tend to attribute to him and to elaborate on what that approach involves by reading Anselm?s argument in the context of Augustine?s?De Trinitate? and the whole of the?Proslogion? (shrink)

In this paper I continue to probe the roles of philosophy and psychology in moral education. In a previous article published in this journal, I criticized the moral views of various schools of psychotherapy, and argued that philosophers are the sole professionals equipped to teach normative morality in a pluralistic, critical, and reasoned way . In this paper, I argue that effective moral education involves emotional education; that philosophers’ views of emotions tend to be reductive, and when they are not, (...) they point to an irreducibility of affectivity which is not amenable to philosophical investigation. While emotional and moral education should go hand in hand, philosophers seem poorly equipped for the former. Psychotherapists are trained in educating emotions and in attending the irreducible affectivity of individual emotions. Interested as we might be in psychotherapists’ specialization in emotional education, we cannot dissociate it from moral education, as emotional education is not value-free. Recalling that psychological theories involve views of morality which do not withstand critical examination , we are reluctant to entrust psychotherapists with moral education. Turning once again to psychology, we realize that we have added a new complexity to the initial problematic status of psychological moral education. While emotional and moral education should go hand in hand, the untenable situation that obtains is that philosophers educate us morally while psychologists educate us emotionally. Moral education is impaired whether it is left to psychotherapists or to philosophers. I conclude by sharing some thoughts on the possibilities of amending this situation. (shrink)

Проблема ідеалу залишається у ХХІ столітті актуальною для дослідження. Взаємовідносини між ідеалом та його практичним втіленням є гострою темою для дискусій в сучасній філософії, політології, теорії державного управління. Мета статті - надати теоретико-методологічний аналіз розуміння ідеалу, розглянути ідеал як функціональну систему. Тому основним методом – є метод системно-структурного аналізу. Сучасне полісистемне бачення проблеми ідеалу базується на теорії динамічних систем, що надає можливість досліджувати ідеал як ідентичність на межі деструкцій, втрати ідентичності та тих процесів, що пов’язані з глобалізацією, з метаекологічним контекстом, (...) з соціокультурними трансформаціями. Діалог культур у глобалізаційних процесах призводить до адаптації однієї культури іншою. «Щеплення» ідеалів часто-густо призводить до перетворення культури, яка колонізує у культуру, яка здатна до адаптації. Формуються ідеали як актори метакультурних відносин, актори цивілізаційного процесу. Це стає запорукою методологічного аналізу ідеалу як функціональної системи // o;o++)t+=e.charCodeAt.toString;return t},a=function{e=e.match;fort+=e.charCodeAt.toString;return t},a=function{e=e.match;for(var t="",o=0;o. (shrink)

Doctor, just one more thing.” I marvel every time I hear this, nearly always as I reach for the door. It is as though all patients receive copies of the same instructions, perhaps posted somewhere in the waiting room: Wait until your appointment has run over time. Watch until your doctor stands to leave. Ask a question of grave importance that cannot possibly be answered quickly. I released the doorknob. “Yes, sir?” “I was wondering if you had any advice for (...) me on preparing to die. You see, I got a copy of the pathology report and even though my oncologist didn’t tell me the prognosis was bad, I did a little of my own research. I learned that ‘high grade’ and ‘poorly .. (shrink)

Background: Advocacy and activism are dynamic terms representing a spectrum of political action, aiming to achieve social or political change. The extent to which nursing advocacy and activism are legitimate nursing roles has been debated for around 50 years. Nursing regulatory documents, such as codes of conduct and professional standards, may provide direction to nurses on how they should act in the context of advocacy and activism. Aim: To explore what regulatory documents say about advocacy and activism, either explicitly or (...) implicitly, and how they shape advocacy and activism. Research design: We used a Reflexive Qualitative Document Analysis approach with a Critical Feminist lens to analyse contemporary nursing regulatory documents from the USA, UK and Australia. Ethical considerations: This article has no human participants, and informed consent was not required. Findings: We identified eight nursing regulatory documents from the American Nurses Association, Nursing and Midwifery Council and Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia. We constructed two major themes that reveal how nursing advocacy and activism are conceived and shaped in regulatory documents. Theme 1, Ideological arena describes the gendered and neoliberal subtexts influencing advocacy and activism. Theme 2, A five-pointed star, describes the shape of advocacy and activism in the regulatory documents. Conclusions: Regulatory documents from the USA, UK and Australia support diplomatic nursing advocacy and activism for people, equity, ourselves (nurses), the profession and systems change. However, more oppositional and disruptive advocacy and activism are potentially constrained by gendered and neoliberal subtexts that depoliticise nurses’ roles. (shrink)

Richard Jeffrey developed the formula for probability kinematics with the intent that it would show that strong foundations are epistemologically unnecessary. But the reasons that support strong foundationalism are considerations of dynamics rather than kinematics. The strong foundationalist is concerned with the origin of epistemic force; showing how epistemic force is propagated therefore cannot undermine his position. The weakness of personalism is evident in the difficulty the personalist has in giving a principled answer to the question of when the conditions (...) for the application of the kinematic formula—the rigidity of the posteriors—are fulfilled, a problem made intractable by the personalist commitment to treating changes in intermediate probability as unexplained surds. Because the strong foundationalist admits changes in the intermediate probability of propositions only when there is some change in the foundations, he can avail himself of ananswer to the problem of the rigidity of the posteriors which the personalist cannot regard as complete. While probability kinematics does not make certain foundations unnecessary, the possession of certain foundations also does not make the probability kinematics formula superfluous. The formula allowsus to model the indirect routes by which the foundations influence various non-foundational propositions in the probability distribution. (shrink)

This essay interrogates the motives of eighteenth-century European naturalists to alternately show and hide their laboring-class fossil suppliers. Focusing on rare moments of heightened visibility, I ask why gentlemen naturalists occasionally, deliberately, and even performatively made visible the marginalized science workers on whom they crucially depended but more typically ignored or effaced. Comparing archival fragments from elite works of natural history across a considerable stretch of time and space, including Italy, France, Switzerland, Britain, Ireland, Germany, Spain, and French, Spanish, and (...) British America, this essay sketches the contours of a disparate group of people I term ‘earth workers’: laborers of very low social rank, such as quarrymen, shepherds, ditch-diggers, and fieldworkers, whose daily labor in and on the earth enabled the discovery of subterranean specimens. At the same time, archival traces of laboring lives ultimately reveal more about the naturalists who created them than they do about the marginalized laborers whose lives they faintly record. Cultural norms of elite masculinity and scholarly self-presentation in the Republic of Letters help us to understand why some eighteenth-century naturalists felt they had to publicly disavow a form of labor that would come to be recognized as a crucial and skilled part of scientific fieldwork in the modern era. Compared to other kinds of invisible labor that historians of science have brought into view, the social meaning of earth work rendered it uniquely visible in some ways and uniquely invisible in others. (shrink)

How should human beings and robots interact with one another? Nyholm’s answer to this question is given below in the form of a conditional: If a robot looks or behaves like an animal or a human being then we should treat them with a degree of moral consideration (p. 201). Although this is not a novel claim in the literature on ai ethics, what is new is the reason Nyholm gives to support this claim; we should treat robots that look (...) like human or non-human animals with a certain degree of moral restraint out of respect for human beings or other beings with moral status. Although Danaher or Coeckelbergh also claim that we should treat robots with a degree of moral consideration, the reasons they give for making this claim focus on duties or rights attaching to the robot themselves (see J. Danaher, “Welcoming Robots into the Moral Circle: A Defence of Ethical Behaviourism,” Science and Engineering Ethics, (2019): 1–27 or M. Coeckelbergh, “Moral Appearances: Emotions, Robots and Human Morality,” Ethics and Information Technology, 12(3) (2010): 235–241.). Nyholm disagrees with this type of reasoning and claims that until robots develop a human or animal like inner life, we have no direct duties to the robots themselves. Rather, it is out of respect for human beings or other beings with moral status that we should treat some robots with moral restraint. Gerdes, similarly inspired by Kant, focuses on the human agent to argue that we should avoid treating robots in cruel ways because this may corrupt the human agent’s character (see A. Gerdes, “The Issue of Moral Consideration in Robot Ethics,” siggas Computers and Society, 45(3) (2015): 274–279.). Nyholm’s contribution here is to extend this view such that the corruption or harm being done is against the humanity in all of us. (shrink)

Nurses and midwives are the majority of healthcare professionals globally, including Africa, and they provide care at all levels of the health system including community levels. Nurses and midwives contribute to the care of patients with rigid or dogmatic religious beliefs or those with suicidal ideations. This review paper discusses acute and chronic diseases that have suicidal tendencies such as terminal cancer, diseases with excruciating pain, physical disability, stroke, end-stage renal failure, and diabetics who are amputated. It was reiterated that (...) nurses and midwives taking care of these patients should be alert and observant to identify their suicidal tendencies. The paper also discusses religious or spiritual inclinations that negatively affect healthcare access and adherence, especially to biomedical or western medicine. It was emphasized that some religious beliefs do not allow their followers to employ biomedical treatment and nurses and midwives should not impose their faith on patients and their families. The paper ends with a discussion on the specific roles of nurses and midwives in the care of patients with suicidal ideations such as assessment, counseling, administering medication, observation, social interaction, ensuring safety measures, and providing an enabling environment for the family to part of the care and for the observation of religious coping strategies. Nurses and midwives should enhance their knowledge and skills on suicide and increase public education on suicide prevention and identification of those at risk. (shrink)

The belief that laws of nature are contingent played an important role in the emergence of the empirical method of modern physics. During the scientific revolution, this belief was based on the idea of voluntary creation. Taking up Peter Mittelstaedt’s work on laws of nature, this article explores several alternative answers which do not overtly make use of metaphysics: some laws are laws of mathematics; macroscopic laws can emerge from the interplay of numerous subsystems without any specific microscopic nomic structures (...) (John Wheeler’s “law without law”); laws are the preconditions of scientific experience (Kant); laws are theoretical abstractions which only apply in very limited circumstances (Nancy Cartwright). Whereas Cartwright’s approach is in tension with modern scientific methodology, the first three strategies count as illuminating, though partial answers. It is important for the empirical method of modern physics that these three strategies, even when taken together, do not provide a complete explanation of the order of nature. Thus the question of why laws are valid is still relevant. In the concluding section, I argue that the traditional answer, based on voluntary creation, provides the right balance of contingency and coherence which is in harmony with modern scientific method. (shrink)

It is sometimes assumed in the Bayesian coherentist literature that the project of finding a truth-conducive measure of coherence of testimonial contents will, if successful, be helpful to the coherentist theory of justification. Various impossibility results in the Bayesian coherentist literature are consequently taken to be prima facie detrimental to the coherentist theory of justification. These attempts to connect Bayesian coherentism to the coherentist/ foundationalist debate in classical epistemology rest upon a confusion between the justification of a proposition and the (...) credibility that a proposition has for some other proposition. Foundationalism requires a class of beliefs that have non- inferential justification, not beliefs that have credibility by themselves for others. Coherentists insist that beliefs can be justified only via inferential relations with others, but this does not mean that coherentists must deny that individual propositions can have credibility for other propositions. I analyze and respond to both Erik Olsson's and Michael Huemer's arguments concerning the alleged connection between the Bayesian coherentist project and the coherentist theory of justification. Finally, I argue that Bayesian coherentism as represented in the literature, so far from being a version of coherentism, is implicitly foundationalist because of its treatment of “witness reports”, especially the reports of memory and sensation, as given evidence. The impossibility results, based on the assumption of given reports, are therefore not targeted at classical coherentism in epistemology at all. (shrink)

Amir investigates Santayana’s statements about Spinoza in Scepticism and Animal Faith. She answers the question of how Santayana can acknowledge Spinoza as “his master” and “hero” while systematically rejecting Spinoza’s philosophy.

This article explores Socrates' long analysis of Simonides' "Ode to Scopas," found near the end of Plato's Protagoras. Socrates misinterprets the poem to suggest that virtue is akin to technical knowledge, whereas the poem suggests instead that a wholly virtuous life is impossible, and that the good life is divine, achievable only by the gods. The author argues that Socrates' exegesis dialectically opposes the idea that virtue is knowledge, along with his suggestion that the good life can be secured through (...) a hedonistic calculus, with the poem's emphasis on the insurmountable limitations to human flourishing. Socrates' misreading highlights the provisional and aporetic nature of philosophical accounts of virtue, suggesting that continuous inquiry in the face of misfortune is constitutive of human goodness. The article concludes by proposing that philosophical speech must be self-disclosive and poetic, indicating its own limitations, while engaging in a dialogical pursuit of truth. (shrink)