The Argument Web is maturing as both a platform built upon a synthesis of many contemporary theories of argumentation in philosophy and also as an ecosystem in which various applications and application components are contributed by different research groups around the world. It already hosts the largest publicly accessible corpora of argumentation and has the largest number of interoperable and cross compatible tools for the analysis, navigation and evaluation of arguments across a broad range of domains, languages and activity types. (...) Such interoperability is key in allowing innovative combinations of tool and data reuse that can further catalyse the development of the field of computational argumentation. The aim of this paper is to summarise the key foundations, the recent advances and the goals of the Argument Web, with a particular focus on demonstrating the relevance to, and roots in, philosophical argumentation theory. (shrink)

As the average age of the population increases, so too do the number of people living with chronic illnesses. With limited resources available, the development of dialogue-based e-health systems that provide justified general health advice offers a cost-effective solution to the management of chronic conditions. It is however imperative that such systems are responsible in their approach. We present in this paper two main challenges for the deployment of e-health systems, that have a particular relevance to dialogue and argumentation: collecting (...) and handling health data, and trust. For both challenges, we look at specific issues therein, outlining their importance in general, and describing their relevance to dialogue and argumentation. Finally, we go on to propose six recommendations for handling these issues, towards addressing the main challenges themselves, that act both as general advice for dialogue and argumentation research in the e-health domain, and as a foundation for future work on this topic. (shrink)

Debates over the politicization of science have led some to claim that scientists have or should have a “right to research.” This article examines the political meaning and implications of the right to research with respect to different historical conceptions of rights. The more common “liberal” view sees rights as protections against social and political interference. The “republican” view, in contrast, conceives rights as claims to civic membership. Building on the republican view of rights, this article conceives the right to (...) research as embedding science more firmly and explicitly within society, rather than sheltering science from society. From this perspective, all citizens should enjoy a general right to free inquiry, but this right to inquiry does not necessarily encompass all scientific research. Because rights are most reliably protected when embedded within democratic culture and institutions, claims for a right to research should be considered in light of how the research in question contributes to democracy. By putting both research and rights in a social context, this article shows that the claim for a right to research is best understood, not as a guarantee for public support of science, but as a way to initiate public deliberation and debate about which sorts of inquiry deserve public support. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical study of the relations between hearing and thinking about music. The central problem it addresses is as follows: how is it possible to talk about what a listener perceives in terms that the listener does not recognize? By applying the concepts and techniques of analytic philosophy the author explores the ways in which musical hearing may be described as nonconceptual, and how such mental representation contrasts with conceptual thought. The author is both philosopher and musicologist (...) and uniquely combines the perspectives of both disciplines. Exploring the philosophical questions of mental representation in the relatively neglected, nonverbal domain of music, this study is a major contribution to the philosophical understanding of music perception and cognitive theory. (shrink)

Debates over health care have focused for so long on economics that the proper goals for medicine seem to be taken for granted; yet problems in health care stem as much from a lack of agreement about the goals and priorities of medicine as from the way systems function. This book asks basic questions about the purposes and ends of medicine and shows that the answers have practical implications for future health care delivery, medical research, and the education of medical (...) students. The Hastings Center coordinated teams of physicians, nurses, public health experts, philosophers, theologians, politicians, health care administrators, social workers, and lawyers in fourteen countries to explore these issues. In this volume, they articulate four basic goals of medicine — prevention of disease, relief of suffering, care of the ill, and avoidance of premature death — and examine them in light of the cultural, political, and economic pressures under which medicine functions. In reporting these findings, the contributors touch on a wide range of diverse issues such as genetic technology, Chinese medicine, care of the elderly, and prevention and public health. The Goals of Medicine clearly demonstrates the importance of clarifying the purposes of medicine before attempting to change the economic and organizational systems. It warns that without such examination, any reform efforts may be fruitless. (shrink)

Received opinion has it that humans are morally superior to non-human animals; human interests matter more than the like interests of animals and the value of human lives is alleged to be greater than the value of nonhuman animal lives. Since this belief causes mayhem and murder, its de-mythologizing requires urgent attention.

The somatic integration definition of life is familiar from the debate on the determination of death, with some bioethicists arguing that it supports brain death while others argue that some brain‐dead bodies exhibit sufficient somatic integration for biological life. I argue that on either interpretation, the somatic integration definition of life implies that neither the preimplantation embryo nor the postimplantation embryo meet the somatic integration threshold condition for organismal human life. The earliest point at which a somatic integration determination of (...) life could be made would be the beginning of the fetal stage, 9 weeks postfertilization. Bioethical implications are considered, specifically with respect to the moral status of the postimplantation embryo in embryo research and abortion. (shrink)

Reviews the book "Science, Truth, and Democracy," by Philip Kitcher.

Background Research ethics boards exist for good reason. By setting rules of ethical behaviour, REBs can help mitigate the risk of researchers causing harm to their research participants. However, the current method by which REBs promote ethical behaviour does little more than send researchers into the field with a set of rules to follow. While appropriate for most situations, rule-based approaches are often insufficient, and leave significant gaps where researchers are not provided institutional ethical direction. Results Through a discussion of (...) a recent research project about drinking and driving in South Africa, this article demonstrates that if researchers are provided only with a set of rules for ethical behaviour, at least two kinds of problems can emerge: situations where action is required but there is no ethically good option and situations where the ethical value of an action can only be assessed after the fact. These dilemmas highlight and help to articulate what we already intuit: that a solely rule-based approach to promoting ethical research is not always desirable, possible, effective, or consistent. Conclusions In this article, I argue that to better encourage ethical behaviour in research, there is a need to go beyond the rules and regulations articulated by ethics boards, and focus more specifically on creating and nurturing virtuous researchers. (shrink)

Qualia are the elements of phenomenal consciousness -- the raw feels which constitute what it is like to be in a conscious mental state. Some claim that qualia are epiphenomenal properties -- mere by-products of brain function which are causally inert. Though this is an implausible theory, it is difficult to show that it is false. Here I present an ad hominem argument -- the argument from coincidence -- which shows that epiphenomenalism about qualia is explanatorily deficient because it leaves (...) unexplained a highly improbable state of affairs, and so we have good reason to suppose that qualitative properties must be causally efficacious, and must be so in virtue of their qualitative nature. (shrink)

Many commentators today lament the politicization of bioethics, but some suggest distinguishing among different kinds of politicization. This essay pursues that idea with reference to three traditions of political thought: liberalism, communitarianism, and republicanism. After briefly discussing the concept of politicization itself, the essay examines how each of these political traditions manifests itself in recent bioethics scholarship, focusing on the implications of each tradition for the design of government bioethics councils. The liberal emphasis on the irreducible plurality of values and (...) interests in modern societies, and the communitarian concern with the social dimensions of biotechnology, offer important insights for bioethics councils. The essay finds the most promise in the republican tradition, however, which emphasizes institutional mechanisms that allow bioethics councils to enrich but not dominate public deliberation, while ensuring that government decisions on bioethical issues are publicly accountable and contestable. (shrink)

The concept of an operator is used in a variety of practical and theoretical areas. Operators, as both conceptual and physical entities, are found throughout the world as subsystems in nature, the human mind, and the manmade world. Operators, and what they operate, i.e., their substrates, targets, or operands, have a wide variety of forms, functions, and properties. Operators have explicit philosophical significance. On the one hand, they represent important ontological issues of reality. On the other hand, epistemological operators form (...) the basic mechanism of cognition. At the same time, there is no unified theory of the nature and functions of operators. In this work, we elaborate a detailed analysis of operators, which range from the most abstract formal structures and symbols in mathematics and logic to real entities, human and machine, and are responsible for effecting changes at both the individual and collective human levels. Our goal is to find what is common in physical objects called operators and abstract mathematical structures, with the name operator providing foundations for building a unified but flexible theory of operators. The paper concludes with some reflections on functionalism and other philosophical aspects of the ‘operation’ of operators. (shrink)

Scientific knowledge systems function as effective and specialized apparatus for formulating, analyzing and solving scientific problems. In science, problems become internal parts of the knowledge systems; thus they acquire new forms and properties in comparison with common-sense problems. Definite theoretical structures connected with problems and questions appear in the theory. Among them are erotetic expressions and languages, calculi and algebras of problems. On the basis of the structure-nominative reconstruction of a theory, the unified treatment of these structures is given. Methods (...) of the theory of named sets are used in the logical analysis of problems and their systems. As a consequence a new formalized model of the problem part of theory is constructed. (shrink)

Virtues are dispositions to see, think, desire, deliberate, or act well, with different philosophers emphasizing different permutations of these activities. Virtue has been an object of philosophical concern for thousands of years whereas situationism—the psychological theory according to which a great deal of human perception, thought, motivation, deliberation, and behavior are explained not by character or personality dispositions but by seemingly trivial and normatively irrelevant situational influences—was a development of the 20th century. Some philosophers, especially John Doris and Gilbert Harman (...) but also Mark Alfano and Peter Vranas, have argued that there is a tension between these two independently attractive positions. Normative ethics seems incomplete or even indefensible if it refers only to the rightness or wrongness of actions and the goodness or badness of states; we care not only about these punctate phenomena but also about laudable, longitudinal dispositions like honesty, courage, compassion, open-mindedness, and curiosity. However, according to these philosophers, decades-worth of psychological research provides robust support for situationism. Given the plausible assumption that a credible moral ideal is one that most people can aspire to and perhaps even attain, virtue theory and situationism appear to be on a collision course. The dispute between virtue ethicists and situationists unfolded over the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century. It continues today: Some disputants have attempted to find a middle way, and the empirical adequacy of virtue epistemology has also been called into question. (shrink)

What would Karl Popper have made of today’s management and organisation theories? He would surely have approved of the openness of debate in some quarters, but the ease with which many managers accept the generalisations of some academics, gurus and consultants might well have troubled him. Popper himself argued that processes of induction alone were unlikely to lead to developments in knowledge and considered processes of justification to be more important. He claimed that it was not through verifying theories from (...) experiment that knowledge actually developed but through the invention of bold and innovative theories that experimenters then tried to falsify. If new theories did not agree with the results of experiment, then they were considered false. If they passed testing then they were considered unfalsified and worthy of further testing rather than true. Objective knowledge was to be obtained through ensuring critical debate and learning, rather than adhering to some objective scientific method. In this paper, Popper’s notion of falsificationism is explored through stressing the importance of the predictive content and testability of theories. A number of theories from the fields of management and organisation theory are examined and it is argued that many of them suffer from one of three defects: from over-reliance upon untestable elements with psychological origins; from being phrased in language so vague that they gloss over phenomena; or from making predictions that are so cautious and allencompassing as to be practically useless. As a result, they are likely to be unfalsifiable in Popper’s terms and their epistemological status is called into question. While acknowledging that the unpredictability of social systems poses problems for an approach stressing predictability, I conclude by arguing that organisation theory and management knowledge might well benefit from the openness and critical nature of Popper’s approach. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to examine the individuals’ perceived usefulness and ease of use of the government’s electronic services. It also explores the effect of the social influences, as well as of the facilitating conditions, on the individuals’ intentions to use the government’s digital and mobile services. Design/methodology/approach The researcher has adapted various measuring items from the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology and from the theory of acceptance model to investigate the participants’ utilitarian motivations to engage with (...) the government’s online services. The analysis involved a two-step, structural equation modeling approach that included a confirmatory factor analysis that verified the constructs’ validity and reliability. Findings There was a satisfactory fit for this study’s research model. The findings revealed that there were direct and indirect effects that predicted the individuals’ readiness to use the e-government services. The results suggest that the respondents’ perceived usefulness and ease of use of this digital technology were significant antecedents for their behavioral intention to use it. The strength of these relationships was affected by the moderating variables, including, age, gender and experience. Yet, these demographic variables did not have a significant effect on the link between social influences and behavioral intention. Originality/value This study reported that the citizens felt that the e-government systems were useful and easy to use for them. The research participants indicated that they will continue accessing their government’s online services. Therefore, this research implies that the public services should continue improving the facilitating conditions, including the provision of service quality and capability; as well as secure the accessibility to their e-government systems via digital and mobile technologies. In conclusion, this contribution identifies possible research avenues to academia. (shrink)

Zygmunt Bauman tells us that liquid modernity is an age of both chances and dangers. It is a paradoxical age in which our attempts ‘to relate’ to each other are thwarted by the threat of ‘being related’, our hope for collective security and togetherness at odds with our desire for individual freedom and choice. As such, it is an age in which we prefer to roam freely in virtual networks, choosing when and how to connect with others. Facilitating this form (...) of liquid life is the growing consumption and usage of new communications technology. As the starting point for a new programme of research at the Bauman Institute, this article provides a critical evaluation of the role of new technology in liquid modernity with a particular focus upon its impact upon our perception of time. Presented here as two dialectical relationships, I argue that the professed capacity of new technology to ‘connect people’ and to ‘save time’ actually result in their opposites, namely: a curiously ‘hurried life’ in which we spend much of our waking lives interacting with digital screens rather than engaging in human face-to-face contact, and in which, for all of our frenetic productivity, we are perhaps becoming more and more ‘interpassive’, running the risk of losing basic social skills in the process. (shrink)

Explanations of organizational misconduct frequently point to declining firm performance and/or the actions of unethical or suspect leaders. Evidence that high-performing firms act illegally or unethically is an enigma. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues by exploring organizational performance using aspirational rather than absolute measures and examining the effect that suspect leader succession has on the increased probability of organizational misconduct. Our analysis of 128 collegiate football programs competing between 1953 and 2016 reveals an increased likelihood (...) of misconduct among organizations with strong as well as weak performance, most notably in comparison to competitive peer programs. Social- and self-referenced aspirations produced distinct relationships between relative performance and misconduct. The impact of leader succession was conditional. The data revealed an increased likelihood of infraction episodes with the appointment of suspect leaders. In some instances, however, a reduced likelihood of misconduct accompanied succession events involving untainted leaders. (shrink)

This experiment examined the effects of three elements comprising Jones' (1991) moral intensity construct, (social consensus, personal proximity, and magnitude of consequences) in a cross-cultural comparison of ethical decision making within a human resource management (HRM) context. Results indicated social consensus had the most potent effect on judgments of moral concern and judgments of immorality. An analysis of American, Eastern European, and Indonesian responses also indicted socio-cultural differences were moderated by the type of HRM ethical issue. In addition, individual differences (...) in personal ethical ideology (relativism and idealism) varied reliably with moral judgments after controlling for issue characteristics and socio-cultural background. (shrink)

Baatz’s excellent discussion moves the debate forward in two ways that I will focus on here: first, by articulating an attractive view based on the notion of what can reasonably be demanded of individuals, and second, by providing a helpful overview of much of the existing literature. In what follows I suggest three ways Baatz and others might further clarify and build on these contributions in future research.

Mark, G. La crisis de la física clásica por obra del experimento.--Thirring, J. La transformación del sistema conceptual de la física.--Hahn, J. La crisis de la intuición.--Nöbeling, J. La cuarta dimensión y el espacio curvo.--Menger, C. La nueva lógica.

What is the relationship between music and time? How does musical rhythm express our social experience of time? In Groove: An Aesthetic of Measured Time, Mark Abel explains the rise to prominence in Western music of a new way of organising rhythm - groove. He provides a historical account of its emergence around the turn of the twentieth century, and analyses the musical components which make it work. Drawing on materialist interpretations of art and culture, Mark Abel engages (...) with aesthetic arguments, challenging in particular Adorno's critique of popular music. He concludes that groove does not simply reflect the temporality of contemporary society, but, by incorporating abstract time into its very structure, is capable of effecting a critique of it"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes assigned indispensable, peace-directed roles to conscience in his moral and political philosophy. This paper first locates Hobbes's definition of conscience in its historical context by highlighting commonalities with scholastic and seventeenth-century doctrines. Second, it shows that Hobbes imposed numerous stringent obligations on conscience in the natural condition. Third, it analyses Hobbes's account of conscience as 'shared knowledge' in Chapter 7 of Leviathan and considers the possible targets for his polemics. Finally, it lays out the chief responsibilities of conscience (...) in society, clarifies the relationship between 'private' and 'public' conscience, and identifies major tensions in Hobbes's theory. (shrink)

A radical metaphysical theory typically comes packaged with a semantic theory that reconciles those radical claims with common sense. The metaphysical theory says what things exist and what their natures are, while the semantic theory specifies, in terms of these things, how we are to interpret everyday language. Thus may we “think with the learned, and speak with the vulgar.” This semantic accommodation of common sense, however, can end up undermining the very theory it is designed to protect. This paper (...) is a case study, showing in detail how one popular version of temporal parts theory is self-undermining. This raises the specter that the problem generalizes to other metaphysical theories. (shrink)

"Explores the concept of the social contract and how it shapes citizenship. Argues that the modern social contract is an account of the ethical and cultural conditions upon which modern citizenship depends"--Provided by publisher.

Normal systems of modal logic, interpreted as deontic logics, are unsuitable for a logic of conflicting obligations. By using modal operators based on a more complex semantics, however, we can provide for conflicting obligations, as in [9], which is formally similar to a fragment of the logic of ability later given in [2], Having gone that far, we may find it desirable to be able to express and consider claims about the comparative strengths, or degrees of urgency, of the conflicting (...) obligations under which we stand. This paper, building on the formalism of the logic of ability in [2], provides a complete and decidable system for such a language. (shrink)

This book has a noble aim: to free virtue ethics from the grip of the neo- Aristotelianism that limits its scope in contemporary Anglophone philosophy. Just as there are deontological views that are not Kant’s or even Kantian, just as there are consequentialist views that are not Bentham’s or even utilitarian, so, Swanton contends, there are viable virtue ethical views that are not Aristotle’s or even Aristotelian. Indeed, the history of both Eastern and Western philosophy suggests that the majority of (...) normative ethics has focused primarily on under- standing and explaining the nature and development of virtue and vice. There are other alternatives to Aristotle (Mengzi springs to mind), but it’s not unreasonable to start with Hume and Nietzsche, as has already been demonstrated by Erin Frykholm (“A Humean Particularist Virtue Ethic,” Philosophical Studies 172 [2015]: 2171–91) and myself (Mark Alfano, “The Most Agreeable of All Vices,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 [2013]: 767–90). (shrink)

Not long ago, I was perusing a commentary on Verdi’s Aida, and came across the following observation: the music toward the end of the Nile Scene, in which Aida and Radames resolve to flee Egypt, is the same as that of Radames’s entrance earlier.

In a previous paper, I briefly profiled unsafe beliefs as either: (1) beliefs formed using a method that is conditionally reliable and (2) beliefs formed using a method with unstable reliability. I dubbed these profiles as B-type and C-type, respectively. Extending this analysis, I will demonstrate how these belief types operate and why they fail in some notable counterexamples to safety offered by Neta and Rohrbaugh, Cosmesaña, Baumann, Kelp, Bogardus, and Freitag. Examining these cases also motivate my thesis that a (...) method’s conditional reliability or instability does not render a belief formed by an actually reliable method unjustified; its epistemic worth remains intact, unsafe as it may be. (shrink)