The philosophical papers comprising this volume range from process metaphysics and theology, through the phenomenological study of intentionality, to the foundations of geometry and of the system of real numbers. New light, it is thought, is shed on all these topics, some of them being of the highest interest and under intensive investigation in contemporary philosophical discussion. Metaphysi cians, process theologians, semanticists, theorists of knowledge, phenomenologists, and philosophers of mathematics will thus find in this book, it is hoped, helpful materials (...) and methods. The categoreal scheme of Whitehead's Process and Reality is discussed rather fully from a logical point of view in the first paper [I] in the light of the author's previous work on the logico-metaphysical theory of events. The clarification that results is thought to provide a new depth and precision to the problem of interpreting one of the most difficult books in the recent history of metaphysics and cosmol ogy. A detailed examination of some aspects of Hartshorne's recent Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method is given in II. This book is perhaps the most significant work on process philosophy since Process and Reality itself, and its logical underpinnings thus merit a full critical discussion. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “A Cybernetic Approach to Contextual Teaching and Learning” by Philip Baron. Upshot: I consider implications of Baron’s article on change in university education. In particular, I address the problem of why change happens with difficulty and how the principles and practices of second-order cybernetics that Baron discusses are applicable beyond South Africa to a wide range of situations.

Woodger first gives a rough account of the "Boole-Frege" movement in modern logic and persuasively argues as to the importance of formalized language-systems for the methodology of science. Some of these arguments are as follows: A natural language such as English, he notes, "is not only used for purposes of communication in the scientific sense. It is also used for the writing of poetry, for religious devotion, for political controversy, and for persuading people to buy some of the products of (...) industrial activity which they would not otherwise want. But these pursuits make demands upon language which are very different from those made by science. The requirements of science prove on investigation to be quite surprisingly meagre and the excessive riches of a natural language like English are a source of embarrassment. They tempt us to employ linguistic devices borrowed from extra-scientific usages which can have unfortunate consequences. Metaphors, for example, with which some branches of biology abound, are often suggestive and may be harmless enough if they are recognized for what they are. But at best they are makeshifts and substitutes for genuine biological statements, and the fact that recourse is had to them is surely a sign of immaturity. Science demands great linguistic austerity and discipline, and the canons of good style in scientific writing are different from those of good writing in other kinds of literature." Another argument is that "sooner or later the linguistic habits of everyday life will cease to do justice to... the... increasing complexity and novelty of observation and hypothesis." A third argument is that scientific language is used not only for the purpose of communication, for recording observations, or for formulating general laws or hypotheses. It is also used for calculation and the unearthing of the consequences of our assumptions. The logic underlying a formalized language is explicitly designed to enable us to calculate easily and efficiently. The important, and now thoroughly established, methodological distinction between object-language and meta-language is blurred for natural language and is best maintained in terms of formalized language-systems. And, finally, in natural language the important distinction between syntax and semantics also tends to be blurred. "From both the syntactical and the semantical points of view natural languages are incredibly complicated and unruly. The rules of ordinary gram mar are quite insufficient from the standpoint of the requirements of science, and the problems connected with meaning and truth in relation to natural languages are enormously complicated and perhaps insoluble.". (shrink)

It became obvious in classroom case discussions in a required MBA course, Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics, that subjective opinion often prohibited complete and thorough case analyses. Over a two-year period an attempt was made to identify the parameters of situations involving corporate social responsibility in order to develop a methodology which would facilitate classroom learning. The model described in the following manuscript is the result of these efforts.

The principal task of the book series Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities is to promote those developments in philosophy that respect the tradition of great philosophical ideas, on the one hand, and the manner of philosophical thinking introduced by analytical philosophy, on the other. The aim is to contribute to practicing philosophy as deep as Marxism and as caring about justification as positivism.

No detailed description available for "Studies in the Scientific and Mathematical Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce".

Two more or less standard methods exist for the systematic, logical construction of classical mathematics, the so-called theory of types, due in the main to Russell, and the Zermelo axiomatic set theory. In systems based upon either of these, the connective of membership, “ε”, plays a fundamental role. Usually although not always it figures as a primitive or undefined symbol.Following the familiar simplification of Russell's theory, let us mean by alogical typein the strict sense any one of the following: (i) (...) the totality consisting exclusively of individuals, (ii) the totality consisting exclusively of classes whose members are exclusively individuals, (iii) the totality consisting exclusively of classes whose members are exclusively classes whose members in turn are exclusively individuals, and so on. Any entity from (ii) is said to beone type higherthan any entity from (i), any entity from (iii), one type higher than any entity from (ii), and so on. In systems based upon this simplified theory of types, the only significant atomic formulae involving “ε” are those asserting the membership of an entity in an entity one type higher. Thus any expression of the form “(x∈y)” is meaningless except where “y” denotes an entity of just one type higher than the type of the entity denoted by “x” It is by means of general type restrictions of this kind that the Russell and other paradoxes are avoided. (shrink)

It is obvious that people experience ethical conflicts, and that many of these conflicts occur at work. We do not yet know empirically whether or how these experiences affect productivity. A person experiencing an ethical conflict will, at a minimum, be distracted. It seems likely that the incident will have a negative impact on his or her job performance.The kinds or degree of impact ethical conflicts have on productivity have not yet been determined scientifically. The purpose of this paper is (...) to encourage empirical investigation of the phenomena of the experience of ethical conflict at work and the impact these kinds of incidents have on job performance. (shrink)