What are the most fundamental features of the world? Do minds stand outside the natural order? Is a unified picture of mental and physical reality possible? The Mind in Nature provides a staunchly realist account of the world as a unified system incorporating both the mental and the physical.

Various scholars defend the idea that leadership is something accomplished between the leader and the led, rather than something that coincides with the role of an individual manager. Even so, we argue that shared leadership implies a relational ontology grasping leadership as an ever-changing series of events that is thoroughly processual in nature. Supplementing existing analyses and expanding the possibilities for relational leadership research, we propose a view from the perspective ofprocess philosophy, in which relations determine individual leaders and followers, (...) and not the reverse. The process perspective invites us to see and to feel leadership subjectively within ourselves, instead of simply looking at it objectively from the outside. Understanding leadership in this way, as an internally related complex occasion of experience, has implications for expanding the possibilities for what is known in management as relational leadership research. (shrink)

"Is higher education a right, or a privilege? This author argues that all citizens in a free and open society should have an unconditional right to higher education. Such an education should be costless for the individual and open to everyone regardless of talent. A readiness and willingness to learn should be the only qualification. It should offer opportunities that benefit citizens with different interests and goals in life. And it should aim, as its foundational moral purpose, to help citizens (...) from all walks of life live better, freer lives. Using concepts and ideas from liberal political philosophy the author argues that access to educational goods and services is something to which all citizens have a right over a full life. Such goods, it is argued, play a key role in helping citizens realize self-determined goals. Higher education should therefore be understood a basic social institution responsible for ensuring that all citizens can access such 'autonomy-supporting' goods. The book examines the implication of this justification of the right to higher education for questions of educational justice, political authority, distributive justice, civic education, and personal autonomy"--. (shrink)

The term ‘locality’ is used in different contexts with different meanings. There have been claims that relational quantum mechanics is local, but it is not clear then how it accounts for the effects that go under the usual name of quantum non-locality. The present article shows that the failure of ‘locality’ in the sense of Bell, once interpreted in the relational framework, reduces to the existence of a common cause in an indeterministic context. In particular, there is no need to (...) appeal to a mysterious space-like influence to understand it. (shrink)

This textbook by Martin Hollis offers an exceptionally clear and concise introduction to the philosophy of social science. It examines questions which give rise to fundamental philosophical issues. Are social structures better conceived of as systems of laws and forces, or as webs of meanings and practices? Is social action better viewed as rational behaviour, or as self-expression? By exploring such questions, the reader is led to reflect upon the nature of scientific method in social science. Is the aim (...) to explain the social world after a manner worked out for the natural world, or to understand the social world from within? (shrink)

Recent research illustrates substantial gaps between entrepreneurial intentions and behavior. This is a challenge for entrepreneurship promotion interventions that have primarily focused on stimulating entrepreneurial intentions. However, extant literature suggests that implementation intentions enhance the likelihood of acting congruently to the behavioral intention. Furthermore, theory also suggests the condition effects of situations and the perceived control over them. We therefore hypothesized that implementation intentions mediate the relationship between entrepreneurial intention and action, while perceived family support moderates the movement from implementation (...) intention to entrepreneurial action. Using two-wave survey data from a sample of students at an African university, we measured two psychological attributes as important precursors of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial intentions present before undertaking an innovations and entrepreneurship course. Implementation intentions regarding entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial actions, and perceived parental support for entrepreneurial activities were also measured 2 weeks after completion of the course. Our results demonstrate support for the proposed moderated double mediation model in which the effects of the two psychological attributes on entrepreneurial actions are explained via entrepreneurial intentions and implementation intentions. We further find moderation effects of perceived family support indicating that implementation intentions more likely predicted entrepreneurial actions in cases of higher family support. (shrink)

In the current paper, we re-examine the concept of strong admissibility, as was originally introduced by Baroni and Giacomin. We examine the formal properties of strong admissibility, both in its e...

. Science at the interface with society is regarded with mistrust among parts of the public. Scientific judgments on matters of practical concern are not infrequently suspected of being incompetent and biased. I discuss two proposals for remedying this deficiency. The first aims at strengthening the independence of science and suggests increasing the distance to political and economic powers. The drawback is that this runs the risk of locking science in an academic ivory tower. The second proposal favors “counter-politicization” in (...) that research is strongly focused on projects “in the public interest,” that is, on projects whose expected results will benefit all those concerned by these results. The disadvantage is that the future use of research findings cannot be delineated reliably in advance. I argue that the underlying problem is the perceived lack of relevance and reliability and that pluralism is an important step toward its solution. Pluralism serves to stimulate a more inclusive research agenda and strengthens the well-testedness of scientific approaches. However, pluralism also prevents the emergence of clear-cut practical suggestions. Accordingly, pluralism is part of the solution to the credibility crisis of science, but also part of the problem. In order for science to be suitable as a guide for practice, the leeway of scientific options needs to be narrowed – in spite of uncertainty in epistemic respect. This reduction can be achieved by appeal to criteria that do not focus on the epistemic credentials of the suggestions but on their appropriateness in practical respect. (shrink)

Earlier in this century, many philosophers of science (for example, Rudolf Carnap) drew a fairly sharp distinction between theory and observation, between theoretical terms like 'mass' and 'electron', and observation terms like 'measures three meters in length' and 'is _2° Celsius'. By simply looking at our instruments we can ascertain what numbers our measurements yield. Creatures like mass are different: we determine mass by calculation; we never directly observe a mass. Nor an electron: this term is introduced in order to (...) explain what we observe. This (once standard) distinction between theory and observation was eventually found to be wanting. First, if the distinction holds, it is difficult to see what can characterize the relationship between theory :md observation. How can theoretical terms explain that which is itself in no way theorized? The second point leads out of the first: are not the instruments that provide us with observational material themselves creatures of theory? Is it really possible to have an observation language that is entirely barren of theory? The theory-Iadenness of observation languages is now an accept ed feature of the logic of science. Many regard such dependence of observation on theory as a virtue. If our instruments of observation do not derive their meaning from theories, whence comes that meaning? Surely - in science - we have nothing else but theories to tell us what to try to observe. (shrink)

Agnotology concerns the creation and preservation of confusion and ignorance. Certain positions are advocated in science in order to promote sociopolitical interests with the result of launching mock controversies or epistemically unjustified dissent. I propose to identify agnotological ploys by the discrepancy between the conclusions suggested by the design of a study and the conclusions actually drawn or intimated. This mechanism of “false advertising” serves to implement agnotological endeavors and helps identify them without having to invoke the intentions of the (...) relevant agents. I discuss three agnotological cases, i.e., studies on bisphenol A, Bt-maize/Roundup, and Oslo’s airport Gardermoen. Pinpointing agnotological endeavors is a means for weeding out approaches that look fitting at first glance, but are blatantly inappropriate, in fact. (shrink)

Martin Davies; V*—Idiom and Metaphor, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 83, Issue 1, 1 June 1983, Pages 67–86, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelia.

The paper discusses modelling uncertainties in climate models and how they can be addressed based on physical principles as well as based on how the models perform in light of empirical data. We ar...

I defend a conception of the relationship between the personal and sub-personal levels as interaction withoutreduction.There are downward inferences from the personal to the sub-personal level but we find upward explanatory gaps when we try to construct illuminating accounts of personal level conditions using just sub-personal level notions. This conception faces several serious challenges but the objection that I consider in this paper says that, when theories support downward inferences from the personal to the sub-personal level, this is the product (...) of an unacceptably • mechanistic view of persons. According to this objection, if we were to focus on persons as conscious rational thinkers and agents then the support for putative downward inferences would be undermined. I consider and reject developments of this objection in response to two arguments for downward inferences. (shrink)

Cognitive approaches contribute to our understanding of delusions by providing an explanatory framework that extends beyond the personal level to the sub personal level of information-processing systems. According to one influential cognitive approach, two factors are required to account for the content of a delusion, its initial adoption as a belief, and its persistence. This chapter reviews Bayesian developments of the two-factor framework.

This paper analyzes Kant’s notorious claim that psychology cannot become a science “properly so-called”. Contrary to widespread opinion, he does not hold any of the following three implausible views: psychological phenomena cannot be mathematized, they cannot be explained in by reference to mathematical causal laws, and they cannot be dealt with in causal terms at all. Instead of claiming something about psychological phenomena, Kant argues against a specific conception of psychology: the then popular introspective psychologies. Only this reading explains why (...) he is also concerned with the possibility of psychological experiments, and it does justice to how he himself treats phenomena of thinking, willing, and so on. (shrink)

This paper shows how late 1960’s student protests influenced the thought of Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend. I argue that student movements shaped their work from this period, specifically Lakatos’s “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes” and Feyerabend’s Against Method. Archival evidence shows that their political environments at London and Berkeley inflected their writing on scientific method, entrenching Lakatos’s search for a rationalist account of scientific development, and encouraging Feyerabend’s ‘anarchistic’ theory of knowledge. I document this influence and (...) draw two broader lessons: one lesson about the role of biography in philosophy and the other about the historiography of student protests. (shrink)

Academic philosophy can be puzzling to newcomers. The conventions, terms, and expectations entrenched among philosophers aren’t always clear from the outside. Why are philosophers so preoccupied with finding “the truth”—doesn’t everyone have their own philosophy? Is philosophy so deep and difficult that its literature has to be incomprehensible? What kinds of arguments can there be for a philosophical position? Where does the evidence come from? Why is there so much jargon—wouldn’t it be better to do away with it altogether? Best-selling (...) author and retired philosophy professor Robert Martin answers these questions and many more, offering a practical guide to arguing and writing philosophically. Anecdotes, jokes, asides, digressions, oddments, and entertainments are included throughout, resulting in an informal introduction that doesn’t shy away from the nuts and bolts of philosophical argument. (shrink)

This book sets out for the first time in English and in the terms of modern logic the semantics of the Port Royal Logic of Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, perhaps the most influential logic book in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its goal is to explain how the Logic reworks the foundation of pre-Cartesian logic so as to make it compatible with Descartes' metaphysics. The Logic's authors forged a new theory of reference based on the medieval notion of objective (...) being, which is essentially the modern notion of intentional content. Indeed, the book's central aim is to detail how the Logic reoriented semantics so that it centered on the notion of intentional content. This content, which the Logic calls comprehension, consists of an idea's defining modes. Mechanisms are defined in terms of comprehension that rework earlier explanations of central notions like conceptual inclusion, signification, abstraction, idea restriction, sensation, and most importantly within the Logic's metatheory, the concept of idea-extension, which is a new technical concept coined by the Logic. Although Descartes is famous for rejecting "Aristotelianism," he says virtually nothing about technical concepts in logic. His followers fill the gap. By putting to use the doctrine of objective being, which had been a relatively minor part of medieval logic, they preserve more central semantic doctrines, especially a correspondence theory of truth. A recurring theme of the book is the degree to which the Logic hews to medieval theory. This interpretation is at odds with what has become a standard reading among French scholars according to which this 16th-century work should be understood as rejecting earlier logic along with Aristotelian metaphysics, and as putting in its place structures more like those of 19th-century class theory. (shrink)

The task of this paper is to exhibit Wittgenstein’s method of perspicuous presentation as aiming at a distinctive kind of self-knowledge. Three influential readings of Wittgenstein’s concept of perspicuous presentation – Hacker’s, Baker’s and Sluga’s – are examined. All of them present what Wittgenstein calls the “unsurveyablity of our grammar” as a result of the “complexity” of our language. Contrary to this, a fundamental difference between matter-of-factual complexity and the unsurveyability of grammar is pointed out. What perspicuous presentations are designed (...) to deal with, isn’t, accordingly, occasioned by the complexity of our language but by an unnoticed assimilation of our own activities as speaking beings to matter-of-factual affairs. In response to this, perspicuous presentations help us to fully appropriate our activities as speakers in virtue of achieving a transparent understanding of the use of “our words”. It thus provides us with a distinctive kind of grammatical self-knowledge. (shrink)

The Mind in Nature has two central aims. First, that of defending a ‘basic ontology’. Second, having advanced a plausible ontological framework, to appeal to it to cast light on the status of intentionality and the nature of consciousness, paying particular attention to the question of what distinguishes conscious systems from those that are vegetative.Central to Martin's basic ontology is his acceptance of a realist conception of dispositionality. Contrary to the view of David Lewis and others, talk about a (...) thing's dispositions cannot be analysed as talk about a thing's behaviour in a set of counterfactual circumstances. The account of dispositions that emerges from Martin's discussion is one according to which a specific disposition is either actual or it is not. To be actual a disposition need not be manifesting any manifestation. Unmanifesting dispositions are not, therefore, unactualized possibilia – a description which, he observes, is more fitting of unmanifested manifestations. In advancing a realist conception of dispositionality, Martin also opposes those who maintain that dispositional properties reduce to …. (shrink)

If we are responsible for taking care of our health, are we blameworthy when we become sick because we failed to meet that responsibility? Or is it immoral to blame the victim of sickness? A moral perspective that is sensitive to therapeutic concerns will downplay blame, but banishing all blame is neither feasible nor desirable. We need to understand the ambiguities surrounding moral responsibility in four contexts: (1) preventing sickness, (2) assigning financial liabilities for health care costs, (3) giving meaning (...) to human suffering, and (4) interacting with health care professionals. We also need to distinguish different kinds of blame, explore the interplay of justice and compassion in avoiding unjustified blaming of victims, and work toward a unified moral-therapeutic perspective that encourages individuals to accept responsibility while avoiding destructive forms of blaming. (shrink)

While human vulnerability has been discussed for some time in the contemporary philosophy and bioethics literature, animal vulnerability has received less attention. In this article, I investigate whether the concept of vulnerability, as it is currently used in bioethics, can be meaningfully extended to animals. Furthermore, I discuss the ethical implications of ascribing vulnerability to animals and I show what vulnerability discourse can add to debates on animal ethics. In a first step, I analyse the conditions of vulnerability ascription. By (...) taking as my basis the definition of vulnerability presented by Martin, Tavaglione and Hurst, I demonstrate that some animals fulfil the conditions of vulnerability ascription. I explore the ethical implications of vulnerability ascriptions in three domains: livestock farming, animal experimentation, and animals living in the wild. I argue that many groups of animals currently qualify as particularly vulnerable and should be afforded special protection so that they receive what they are due. I conclude by outlining the differences between vulnerability and sentience ascriptions: while sentience is a sufficient reason to ascribe moral status to a being, vulnerability draws our attention to those who are more likely to be denied what they are due. (shrink)

This Introduction to the Special Issue on “Responsible Research and Innovation” outlines features of the philosophical debate about the concepts involved and summarizes the papers assembled in this issue. The topic of RRI is widely discussed in science studies and has made its way into science policy. This SI is intended to make the contributions of philosophers of science more visible. The philosophically relevant parts of the field concern, among others, the processes of public participation in science and their impact (...) on the knowledge produced, the notion of justified public trust in science, and the idea of research pursued for the common good. Such topics bring social procedures together with epistemic and ethical considerations and thus raise philosophical challenges. RRI is subject to the tension between committing research to creating knowledge in harmony with public expectations, on the one hand, while not complying with public wishful thinking, on the other. RRI embodies a friction between serving people’s aspirations and correcting people’s expectations. This special issue is intended to explore the narrow pathway left between these conflicting demands. (shrink)

Max Weber is presented as a fervent supporter of the US-American life-style, its love of freedom and capitalist competition. After his return from the United States he makes all efforts at Americanizing Germany and bridging the transatlantic divide that Germany has brought about by its cultivation of "Gemütlichkeit" and "Bildung".

I attempt a reconstruction of Kant’s version of the causal theory of time that makes it appear coherent. Two problems are at issue. The first concerns Kant’s reference to reciprocal causal influence for characterizing simultaneity. This approach is criticized by pointing out that Kant’s procedure involves simultaneous counterdirected processes—which seems to run into circularity. The problem can be defused by drawing on instantaneous processes such as the propagation of gravitation in Newtonian mechanics. Another charge of circularity against Kant’s causal theory (...) was leveled by Schopenhauer. His objection was that Kant’s approach is invalidated by the failure to deliver non-temporal criteria for distinguishing between causes and effects. I try to show that the modern causal account has made important progress toward a successful resolution of this difficulty. The fork asymmetry, as based on Reichenbach’s principle of the common cause, provides a means for the distinction between cause and effect that is not based on temporal order.Author Keywords: Kant; Causal theory of time; Anisotropy of time; Fork asymmetry; Principle of the common cause; Screening off. (shrink)