The founder of the eponymous engineering firm, which continues to realize seminal projects around the world, Ove Arup is widely acknowledged as one of the most significant engineers of his time. Generated over the course of his illustrious career, these lectures, essays, and interviews broadlyshare several themes: insight into Arup's thinking on the nature of good design, quality and value in the built environment, and the growing need for better collaboration between engineers, architects, and contractors in order to (...) exploit technological advances in materials and methods, while at the same time reducing the environmental impact of building. These chronologically arranged essays span five decades, and many of the themes they address are as relevant today as they were when first produced. Illustrating wisdom, practical problem solving, and Arup's philosophical approach, this book is a necessary and long-overdue addition to the library of anyone who has a passion for, and an interest in, the principles of great design. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Vice, Mental Disorder, and the Role of Underlying Pathological ProcessesNancy Nyquist Potter (bio) and Peter Zachar (bio)Keywordsresponsibility, virtue theory, cultural norms, psychopathologyThe issues discussed by John Sadler are among the most complicated in the philosophy of psychiatry, if for no other reason than that they highlight an area where disciplinary fault lines between clinical psychiatry/ psychology and philosophy seem most evident. We spent a year writing an article (...) on the relationship between the assessment of personality disorders and moral evaluations, and these fault lines became manifest not only between ourselves, but also when discussing our ideas with members of the various disciplines.Many practicing psychiatrists acknowledge that moral attributions (such as manipulativity) might be made about people with certain disorders (such as borderline personality disorder), but also find the argument that psychiatric diagnoses are moral rather than medical conditions to be a ludicrous bit of antipsychiatry in the Szaszian tradition. Philosophers, on the other hand, are less involved with these diagnostic categories in their day-to-day work and are more willing to be skeptical. Whether they are doing philosophy of psychiatry, moral theory, or sociopolitical philosophy, they are interested in digging a little bit deeper and are not impressed by arguments to the effect that—it’s obvious that these are really disorders. Being “obvious” is not a persuasive philosophical argument.The metaphysical task of determining what belongs in the category of criminality compared with other ways of sorting behavior has parallels in moral philosophy: Why is fraud, or theft, criminalized whereas (most) lying is not? Why is one set of moral norms enforceable, whereas a second set is aspirational? Does the difference involve property, where infractions of property are thought to be more serious wrongs than lying, which is “only” psychological rather than material? Are the “most serious” wrongs the ones we mark as crimes? Why is sodomy still criminalized in some areas but betraying one’s lifelong love is viewed as morally reprehensible but not criminal? Both actions are private, and only one seems to do harm—unfaithfulness—yet that is the one that is not criminalized. The point here is that, regardless of domain, our classification systems need to be justifiable, yet justification is most often mystifying. [End Page 27]The same is true for classifying mental disorders. The class of mental disorders appears to be a somewhat inconsistent collection of heterogeneous conditions and does not form a natural kind (Zachar 2000). At the most, the class of mental disorders names a family of loosely related conditions and the reasons for inclusion can shift from disorder to disorder.If the class of mental disorders does not specify an internally coherent kind akin to gold, deciding on the scope of psychiatric practice becomes an important problem. As Sadler asks, for what reasons do we classify pedophilia with schizophrenia—both as disorders—but omit sadism? This is an important question of disciplinary scope.This question of scope is itself ethically charged because, on the one hand, bringing a condition under the purview of psychiatry offers the possibility for treatment, and at least establishes the goal of improving the lives of people with specific kinds of problems. Making lives better is one of the humanistic justifications for science itself; clearly it is a raison d’être of psychiatry. On the other hand, medicalization sets up the conditions for a certain kind of social control. Hospitalization, educational services, day treatment, and disability payments are all contingent upon psychiatric diagnostic practices. These programs and the institutions that manage them are both socially available and socially prescribed. The diagnosed behaviors can now be considered to be entities, and explanations of them can be developed. New technologies for altering them will also be introduced. Such practices have been associated with dehumanization (Phillips 2009).Two important questions also need to be distinguished. The first is a question for moral philosophy—What degree of responsibility do people with putative mental disorders have for their behaviors? For example, should people with psychotic disorders or personality disorders be held responsible for crimes they commit? If so, under what conditions? Should responsibility for certain behavior be mitigated? If so, under what conditions? Moral philosophy... (shrink)

Background Most jurisdictions that allow euthanasia and assisted suicide (AS) regulate it through the medical profession. However, the extent and nature of how medicine should be involved are debated. Swiss AS practice is unusual in that it is managed by lay AS organizations that rely on a law that permits AS when done for nonselfish reasons. Physicians are not mentioned in the law but are usually called upon to prescribe the lethal medications and perform capacity evaluations.Methods We analyzed in-depth interviews (...) of 23 Swiss AS experts including ethicists, lawyers, medical practitioners, and senior officials of AS organizations for their views on AS.Results Although there was agreement on some issues (e.g., need for better end-of-life care), the interviewees’ preferred model for AS, and the nature of preferred medical involvement, varied, which we categorized into five types: preference for AS practice as it occurred prior to lay AS organizations; preference for the current lay model; preference for a modified lay model to increase autonomy protections while limiting medical AS normalization; preference for various types of more medicalized models of AS; and, ambivalence about any specific model of medical involvement. The rationales given for each type of model reflected varying opinions on how medicine’s role would likely impact AS practice and demonstrated the experts’ attitudes toward those impacts.Conclusion The dynamics within the Swiss AS regime, as reflected in the varying views of Swiss AS experts, shed light on the dilemmas inherent to medical scope and involvement in AS, which may have implications for debates in other jurisdictions. (shrink)

We study finite ℓ‐colourable structures with an underlying pregeometry. The probability measure that is used corresponds to a process of generating such structures by which colours are first randomly assigned to all 1‐dimensional subspaces and then relationships are assigned in such a way that the colouring conditions are satisfied but apart from this in a random way. We can then ask what the probability is that the resulting structure, where we now forget the specific colouring of the generating process, has (...) a given property. With this measure we get the following results: (1) A zero‐one law. (2) The set of sentences with asymptotic probability 1 has an explicit axiomatisation which is presented. (3) There is a formula (not directly speaking about colours) such that, with asymptotic probability 1, the relation “there is an ℓ‐colouring which assigns the same colour to x and y” is defined by. (4) With asymptotic probability 1, an ℓ‐colourable structure has a unique ℓ‐colouring (up to permutation of the colours). (shrink)

Clear-cut cases of decision-making under risk (known probabilities) are unusual in real life. The gambler’s decisions at the roulette table are as close as we can get to this type of decision-making. In contrast, decision-making under uncertainty (unknown probabilities) can be exemplified by a decision whether to enter a jungle that may contain unknown dangers. Life is usually more like an expedition into an unknown jungle than a visit to the casino. Nevertheless, it is common in decision-supporting disciplines to proceed (...) as if reasonably reliable probability estimates were available for all possible outcomes, i.e. as if the prevailing epistemic conditions were analogous to those of gambling at the roulette table. This mistake can be called the tuxedo fallacy. It is argued that traditional engineering practices such as safety factors and multiple safety barriers avoid this fallacy and that they therefore manage uncertainty better than probabilistic risk analysis (PRA). PRA is a useful tool, but it must be supplemented with other methods in order not to limit the analysis to dangers that can be assigned meaningful probability estimates. (shrink)

The paper is an attempt to revisit Rawls’ idea of a self, which elicits the concept of justice in the liberal tradition. Justice, as understood in the social and political context, is the basic feature of a well-ordered and rationally developed society and it is considered to be a virtue of the social institution. The liberal theory believes in the basic principle that right is prior to the good, and what is most fundamental to our personhood are not the ends (...) we choose but our capacity to choose them. Hence, in Rawls’ account of the self, absoluteness of the metaphysical priority has an edge over the absoluteness of the moral priority. The idea of an unencumbered self, in the social and historical sense, is at the core of the Kantian-Rawlsian theory of justice, which is under attack by the communitarians. Communitarians like Sandel, however, questions Rawls’ claim for the priority of right over good and maintains that liberals fail to recognize the self is ‘embedded,’ in and partly constituted by communal commitments and values which are objects of choice. In this paper, I examine communitarian critiques of Rawls’ liberal self. Further, I also refer to Rawls’ turn to the ‘political,’ which works as a ‘module’ that fits into and can be supported by a variety of reasonable comprehensive doctrines. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this essay, I shall discuss Gadamer’s interpretation of Celan’s dialogical poetry in his essay “Wer bin Ich und wer bist Du?” (“Who am I and Who are You?”). One may argue that this is Gadamer’s articulation of the problem of the self-other relationship. To understand the question of self and other, it is first of all necessary to return to the poetic word from which the question arises. Speaking is, for Gadamer, the most profoundly self-forgetful action, because when (...) one speaks, one is so deeply “within the word” that one is not turned toward the word but, rather, to what one wants to say with the word. For hermeneutics, interpreting means putting oneself on the task of the poetic text. The proximity between poetizing and interpreting emerges, also in its specificity concerning the proximity between poetizing and thinking. Such a proximity, in turn, divides itself into two extremes: the word that sublates itself, and the word that stands for itself. It is hence the uncertain fullness of language, where, unsurprisingly, both poetizing and interpreting come into themselves, which constitutes the link between the one and the other. Therefore, the interpreted word, intertwined with the poetic word does not replace what it indicates, but merely points beyond itself, to what is other than itself. Both pursue a meaning that points toward an open realm. (shrink)

This book examines the role and limits of policies in shaping attitudes and actions toward war, violence, and peace. Authors examine militaristic language and metaphor, effects of media violence on children, humanitarian intervention, sanctions, peacemaking, sex offender treatment programs, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, community, and political forgiveness to identify problem policies and develop better ones.

This article is an attempt at a systematic account of decision making under greater uncertainty than what traditional, mathematically oriented decision theory can cope with. Four components of great uncertainty are distinguished: (1) the identity of the options is not well determined (uncertainty of demarcation) ; (2) the consequences of at least some option are unknown (uncertainty of consequences); (3) it is not clear whether information obtained from others, such as experts, can be relied on (uncertainty of reliance); and (4) (...) the values relevant for the decision are not determined with sufficient precision (uncertainty of values). Some possible strategy types are proposed for each of these components. Decisions related to environmental issues are used to illustrate the proposals. (shrink)

Borderline Personality Disorder is a diagnosis given to a significant number of people in the Western world. Yet many of the core concepts and symptoms that underlye this diagnosis are questionable. This book presents a compelling analysis of BPD, arguing that it needs to be approached in a new light- one that will benefit patients.

Most people find it obvious that concepts like APPLE, DOG, WATER, CACTUS, SWIM, CHIRP, FURRY, and SMOOTH are acquired from perceptual experiences along with some kind of inferential procedure. Models of how these concepts are inferentially acquired, however, force the acquired concepts to be representationally complex, built from, and composed by, the more primitive representations. Since at least the time of Plato, philosophers and psychologists have struggled to find complex sets of representations that have the same meanings, definitionally or probabilistically, (...) as these concepts. For example, to think about the property-kind being gold is not the same as to think about the complex property-kind being yellowish & shiny & malleable.... I call this Fodor's Challenge: Find an acquisition process that is genuinely inferential and yields a concept that genuinely is one of these lexical concepts. Rather than continue the pursuit of a complex representation that has the same meaning as our concept GOLD. I offer a model on which many lexical concepts are acquired from perception and inference, without being built up from, and composed by, the representations involved. The model, Baptizing Meanings for Concepts, is inspired in part by Saul Kripke's baptism process for assigning meanings to linguistic terms. Many lexical concepts, according to the BMC, are acquired by inferring the presence a new property-kind, picking out the property-kind in terms of those perceptible features, and then assigning a simple mental term, a concept, for that property-kind. (shrink)

The AGM theory of belief contraction is extended tomultiple contraction, i.e. to contraction by a set of sentences rather than by a single sentence. There are two major variants: Inpackage contraction all the sentences must be removed from the belief set, whereas inchoice contraction it is sufficient that at least one of them is removed. Constructions of both types of multiple contraction are offered and axiomatically characterized. Neither package nor choice contraction can in general be reduced to contractions by single (...) sentences; in the finite case choice contraction allows for reduction. (shrink)

It is almost universally acknowledged that risks have to be weighed against benefits, but there are different ways to perform the weighing. In conventional risk analysis, collectivist risk-weighing is the standard. This means that an option is accepted if the sum of all individual benefits outweighs the sum of all individual risks. In practices originating in clinical medicine, such as ethical appraisals of clinical trials, individualist risk-weighing is the standard. This implies a much stricter criterion for risk acceptance, namely that (...) the risk to which each individual is exposed should be outweighed by benefits for that same individual. The different choices of risk-weighing methods in different policy areas seem to have emerged from traditional thought patterns and social relations, rather than from explicit deliberations on possible justifications for the alternative ways to weigh risks against benefits. It is not obvious how the prevalent differences in risk-weighing practices can be reconstructed in terms of consistent underlying principles of preventive health or social priority-setting. (shrink)

Arbitrary Rule is the first book to tackle political slavery’s discursive complexity, engaging Eurocolonialism, political philosophy, and literary studies, areas of study too often kept apart.

Following the influential thought experiments by Hilary Putnam and others, philosophers of language have for the most part adopted semantic externalism concerning natural kind terms. In this article, we present results from three experiments on the reference of natural kind terms. Our results confirm some standard externalist assumptions, but are in conflict with others: Ordinary speakers take both appearance and underlying nature to be central in their categorization judgments. Moreover, our results indicate that speakers’ categorization judgments are gradual, and proportional (...) to the degree of similarity between new samples and familiar, “standard” samples. These findings pose problems for traditional theories, both externalist and internalist. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss and compare various positions in leadership theory through the perspective of Kierkegaard’s modes of existence. After a brief presentation of the three modes of existence—aesthetic, ethical and religious—and a description of the ironic–reflective interpretation of the change process, we synthesize leadership theories into the three main positions of instrumental, responsible and spiritual. Later, we compare and integrate the different positions in leadership theory with the three modes of existence. We argue that the various positions in (...) leadership theory represent different modes of existence. This means that leaders anchored within the aesthetical mode of existence tend to prefer the instrumental position, leaders anchored in the ethical mode of existence tend to prefer the responsible position, and leaders anchored in the religious mode of existence tend to prefer the spiritual position. In accordance with this line of reasoning the ironic–reflective interpretation of Kierkegaard’s three modes of existence gives a relevant explanation for development of leadership theory, and we delve deeper into some key dimensions in the expanding contexts of ontology, epistemology, ethics, the image of man and organizational ends. We conclude that it is necessary to start a process of transition in the mode of existence and in leadership theory in order to cope with the underlying patterns of the natural, cultural and economic crises we are facing today. (shrink)

Cognitive science has evolved since early disputes between radical empiricism and radical nativism. The authors are reacting to the revival of radical empiricism spurred by recent successes in deep neural network (NN) models. We agree that language-like mental representations (language-of-thoughts [LoTs]) are part of the best game in town, but they cannot be understood independent of the other players.

We offer philosophical motivations for a method we call Virtual World Cognitive Science (VW CogSci), in which researchers use virtual embodied agents that are embedded in virtual worlds to explore questions in the field of Cognitive Science. We focus on questions about mental and linguistic representation and the ways that such computational modeling can add rigor to philosophical thought experiments, as well as the terminology used in the scientific study of such representations. We find that this method forces researchers to (...) take a god’s-eye view when describing dynamical relationships between entities in minds and entities in an environment in a way that eliminates the need for problematic talk of belief and concept types, such as the belief that cats are silly, and the concept CAT, while preserving belief and concept tokens in individual cognizers’ minds. We conclude with some further key advantages of VW CogSci for the scientific study of mental and linguistic representation and for Cognitive Science more broadly. (shrink)

This book explains how the logic of theory change employs formal models in the investigation of changes in belief states and databases. The topics covered include equivalent characterizations of AGM operations, extended representations of the belief states, change operators not included in the original framework, iterated change, applications of the model, its connections with other formal frameworks, and criticism of the model.

This article critically examines Louis Charland’s claim that personality disorders are moral rather than medical kinds by exploring the relationship between personality disorders and virtue ethics. We propose that the conceptual resources of virtue theory can inform psychiatry’s thinking about personality disorders, but also that virtue theory as understood by Aristotle cannot be reduced to the narrow domain of ‘the moral’ in the modern sense of the term. Some overlap between the moral domain’s notion of character-based ethics and the medical (...) domain’s notion of character-based disorders is unavoidable. We also apply a modified version of John Sadler’s “moral wrongfulness test” to borderline and narcissistic personality disorders. With respect to both diagnoses, we argue that they involve negative moral evaluations, but may also have indispensable nonmoral features and, therefore, classify legitimate psychiatric disorders. (shrink)

Modern belief revision theory is based to a large extent on partial meet contraction that was introduced in the seminal article by Carlos Alchourrón, Peter Gärdenfors, and David Makinson that appeared in 1985. In the same year, Alchourrón and Makinson published a significantly different approach to the same problem, called safe contraction. Since then, safe contraction has received much less attention than partial meet contraction. The present paper summarizes the current state of knowledge on safe contraction, provides some new results (...) and offers a list of unsolved problems that are in need of investigation. (shrink)

Artiklens fokus er begrebet folk, der udgør et af sprogets mest komplekse og kon- fliktfyldte begreber. Artiklen belyser den semantiske og idehistoriske transforma- tionsproces, som begrebet folk undergår: fra primært at være forbundet med hus- stand og slægt til at blive knyttet sammen med nation og demokrati. I det ældre danske sprog blev ordet folk anvendt om samfundets laveste stand, bondestand og brugt synonymt med begreber som almue, tyende, tjenere, hob og mængde. Men fra slutningen af 1700-tallet og frem blev (...) begrebet gradvist omdefineret og ordet folk knyttet sammen med begreber som nation, kultur, sprog og folkesuverænitet. Der er tale om en langstrakt proces, hvor et gammelt sprogligt paradigme efter- hånden bliver overtrumfet af et nyere. Dog uden at den ældre betydning af ordet folk forsvinder. Transformationsprocessen belyst ved hjælp af ordbøger og politiske tænkere som Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Gottfried Herder, Karl Marx og Frie- drich Engels såvel som N.F.S. Grundtvig. (shrink)

Rousseau's philosophy of education is contained not only in Emile , but also in The Government of Poland . In each of them he emphasises different aspects of education: How to be a human being? And: How to be a citizen? The main theme investigated by Rousseau in The Government of Poland, is how a minor nation surrounded by such major powers as Russia, Prussia and Austria can ensure its survival? Not having the option of defending itself against its powerful (...) neighbours by military means, Rousseau's advice is to found the Polish nation in the hearts of the Polish people, primarily through citizenship education. However, Poland was finally divided between its neighbours in 1795. Rousseau's writing The Government of Poland can shed some light on the Danish situation after losing the war to Prussia and Austria in 1864. With its defeat Denmark did not disappear, as did Poland, but the territory of the United Monarchy was almost halved by the loss of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. After the war some of the same defence strategies and educational ideas as Rousseau had recommended to Poland became important in Denmark. In light of Rousseau's ideas about citizenship education this article will explore the Danish way of trying to establish the nation in the hearts of the people throughout the 20th century. Today the question is: How to understand the conception of self‐determination in the context of establishing European political unity? In his analysis Habermas directs our attention to some of the same dilemmas that Rousseau had dealt with 200 years earlier. Habermas’ advice is to give the European spirit a republican form. (shrink)

Observations from philosophy and psychology heavily favor the Empiricist tenet that many lexical concepts are learned. However, many observations also heavily favor the Nativist tenet that such concepts are representationally atomic. Fodor Representations: Philosophical essays on the foundations of cognitive science, 1981, LOT2: The language of thought revisited, 2008) has famously argued that representationally atomic concepts cannot be learned, at least not learned by hypothesis formation and testing. Concept theorists who want to preserve observations about concept learning have developed acquisition (...) models on which the acquired concepts are either non-atomic or are acquired by a process that doesn’t involve hypothesis formation and testing. I offer a model, Baptizing Meanings for Concepts, in which representationally atomic concepts are learned by hypothesis formation and testing. The concepts are learned by the agent’s hypothesizing the existence of a latent/hidden/imperceptible property in objects to explain the objects’ perceptible similarities. Once a hidden property is hypothesized, a new atomic mental name is assigned to it, and this atomic name becomes the concept. Any connections between the name and the representations involved in linking the name to its referent are stored as contingent. Further experience may give the agent reason to revise its hypotheses about latent properties as explanations for its observations. I discuss a software robot implementation of the BMC process that uses a Bayesian learning network. The implementation provides an existence proof of the possibility of learning representationally atomic concepts by hypothesis formation and testing. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper, I clear the ground from frequent misconceptions of the relationship between fact and value by examining some uses of the adjective “natural” in ethical controversies. Such uses bear evidence to our “natural” tendency to regard nature as the source of ethical norms. I then try to account for the origins of this tendency by offering three related explanations, the most important of which is evolutionistic: if any behaviour that favours our equilibrium with the (...) environment is potentially adaptive, nothing can be more effective for this goal than developing an attitude toward the natural world that considers it as a dispenser of sacred norms that must be invariably respected. By referring to the Aristotelian notion of human flourishing illustrated in the first part of the paper, in the second I discuss as a case study some ethical problems raised by mini-chips implantable in our bodies. I conclude by defending their potential beneficial effects of such new technological instruments. (shrink)

The scope of the review is all doctoral theses that exist on Laestadius and the Laestadian movement. A total of 31 doctoral theses on Laestadius and the Laestadian movment are included in this review.The Laestadian movement is an international one, albeit primarily established in the Nordic countries, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The review aims at presenting an overview of doctoral theses, countries which they are produced, which academic disciplines that have contributed in this research, and finally discuss some main tendencies.

In this essay, I examine Hobbes’s interpretation of Scriptural passages that figure prominently in contemporaneous political debates. Hobbes’s interpretative practices affirm his major systematic aims but also contribute to his inventive reenvisioning of Hebraic and Christian political history. The privileged position Hobbes gives Hebraic forms of rule together with his treatment of I Samuel 8 are motivated, in part, by a need to counter Aristotle’s influence on an exegetical tradition that opposes monarchy-as-tyranny in connection with this central, much-debated text. Hobbes (...) conjoins his counter-revolutionary interpretation of 1 Samuel 8 with specific passages in the Christian New Testament that permit him to insert Jesus as “king of the Jews” into a startlingly unique conception of Hebraic and Christian history. This revisionary history and eschatology support Hobbes’s theorization of absolute sovereignty and undercut fantastical beliefs in an immaterial world. (shrink)

In a trio of recent articles, Johnson and Nado defend a form of metasemantic dispositionalism, arguing for a novel approach to the “error”-problem, based on speakers’ dispositional states under what they call a state of “full information”. In this article, I argue that their brand of dispositionalism fails to solve the “error”-problem, because of what I think of as counterexamples to it. In the final sections, I propose a way to amend the theory to shield it from some of the (...) counterexamples, based on the idea that what determines meaning is not only dispositions to apply words under full information, but also dispositions to evaluate one’s prior usage, under full information. (shrink)