OBJECTIVES: To determine the relationship between ethical reasoning and gender and occupation among a group of male and female nurses and doctors. DESIGN: Partialist and impartialist forms of ethical reasoning were defined and singled out as being central to the difference between what is known as the "care" moral orientation (Gilligan) and the "justice" orientation (Kohlberg). A structured questionnaire based on four hypothetical moral dilemmas involving combinations of (health care) professional, non-professional, life-threatening and non-life-threatening situations, was piloted and then mailed (...) to a randomly selected sample of doctors and nurses. SETTING: 400 doctors from Victoria, and 200 doctors and 400 nurses from New South Wales. RESULTS: 178 doctors and 122 nurses returned completed questionnaires. 115 doctors were male, 61 female; 50 nurses were male and 72 were female. It was hypothesised that there would be an association between feminine subjects and partialist reasoning and masculine subjects and impartialist reasoning. It was also hypothesised that nurses would adopt a partialist approach to reasoning and doctors an impartialist approach. No relationship between any of these variables was observed. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Cet article examine la relation que Ronald Dworkin veut établir entre les idéaux libéraux d’égalité et de liberté dans le cadre de sa théorie dite de l’Égalité des ressources. Dworkin soutient que la spécification d’un système de libertés est essentielle à la définition même de l’égalité et que la théorie de l’Égalité des ressources unifie en profondeur ces deux idéaux par sa notion centrale de «vrais coûts de renonciation». Le présent article accepte avec Dworkin que la liberté et l’égalité (...) doivent être définies en interdépendance, mais nie que la théorie de l’Égalité des ressources y parvienne d’une manière cohérente. Cette théorie reste incomplète en tant que théorie de l’égalité et critiquable comme interprétation du libéralisme. Une autre voie serait de dériver le libéralisme d’un idéal libéral perfectionniste — celui de l’autonomie personnelle. On indique brièvement comment la chose pourrait être accomplie. (shrink)

Academic integrity has become a significant point of concern in the post-secondary landscape, and many institutions are now exploring ways on how to implement academic integrity training for students. This paper delineates the development of an Academic Integrity E-Learning (AIE-L) tutorial at MacEwan University, Canada. In its first incarnation, the AIE-L tutorial was intended as an education tool for students who had been found to violate the University’s Academic Integrity Policy. However, in a discourse of the academic integrity process, the (...) University reimagined it from only emphasising the increased understanding and strengthened commitment of students found to have committed academic misconduct to a proactive focus with education for all students. The purpose of the present paper is three-fold: first, describe the development of the AIE-L tutorial as an experiential case study; second, improve the content of the AIE-L tutorial through students’ quantitative and qualitative feedback; third, calibrate the pre and post-test questions for content validity for a forthcoming large-scale measurement of the AIE-L tutorial effectiveness. (shrink)

The term fuzzy logic is used in this paper to describe an imprecise logical system, FL, in which the truth-values are fuzzy subsets of the unit interval with linguistic labels such as true, false, not true, very true, quite true, not very true and not very false, etc. The truth-value set, , of FL is assumed to be generated by a context-free grammar, with a semantic rule providing a means of computing the meaning of each linguistic truth-value in as a (...) fuzzy subset of [0, 1].Since is not closed under the operations of negation, conjunction, disjunction and implication, the result of an operation on truth-values in requires, in general, a linguistic approximation by a truth-value in . As a consequence, the truth tables and the rules of inference in fuzzy logic are (i) inexact and (ii) dependent on the meaning associated with the primary truth-value true as well as the modifiers very, quite, more or less, etc. (shrink)

Philosophers of experiment have acknowledged that experiments are often more than mere hypothesis-tests, once thought to be an experiment's exclusive calling. Drawing on examples from contemporary biology, I make an additional amendment to our understanding of experiment by examining the way that `wide' instrumentation can, for reasons of efficiency, lead scientists away from traditional hypothesis-directed methods of experimentation and towards exploratory methods.

I discuss puzzles involving coinciding material objects (such as statues and their constitutive lumps of clay) and propose solutions.

This paper describes a computational model of how ideas, or memes, evolve through the processes of variation, selection, and replication. Every iteration, each neural-network based agent in an artificial society has the opportunity to acquire a new meme, either through 1) INNOVATION, by mutating a previously-learned meme, or 2) IMITATION, by copying a meme performed by a neighbor. Imitation, mental simulation, and using past experience to bias mutation all increase the rate at which fitter memes evolve. Memes at epistatic loci (...) converged more slowly than memes at over- or underdominant loci. The higher the ratio of innovation to imitation, the greater the meme diversity, and the higher the fitness of the fittest meme. Optimization is fastest for the society as a whole with an innovation to imitation ratio of 2:1, but diversity is comprimized. (shrink)

Recent interest in the problem of verisimilitude stemmed originally from Popper's desire to provide a non-inductive criterion of merit that will select between two false theories) But the problem has also been taken up by others who are not committed to Popper's anti-inductivism. Indeed Ilkka Niiniluoto has argued that the estimated degree of truthlikeness of a generalisation g which is compatible with evidence e can be equated with the inductive probability of g on e, wherever g is a constituent in (...) Hintikka's sense. It might therefore be worth while to approach the problem afresh, in order to determine quite generally whether a measure of verisimilitude is what is principally needed for the evaluation of scientific progress. I shall argue that it is not. (shrink)

Suppose libertarians could prove that durable, unqualified private property rights could be created through 'original acquisition' of unowned resources in a state of nature. Such a proof would cast serious doubt on the legitimacy of the modern state. It could also render the approach to property rights that I favour irrelevant. I argue here that none of the familiar Lockean-libertarian arguments for a strong natural right to acquisition succeed, and that any successful argument for grounding a right to acquire would (...) have to use my favoured approach to property rights - the 'vector-sum' approach. I conclude with some doubts about original acquisition theory and natural property rights. (shrink)

Quentin Smith has argued that the new tenseless theory of time is faced with insurmountable problems and should be abandoned in favour of the tensed theory of time. Smith;s main argument attacks the fundamental premise of the tenseless theory: that tenseless truth conditions for tokens of tensed sentences adequately capture the meaning of tensed sentences. His position is that tenseless truth conditions cannot explain the logical relations between tensed sentences, thus the tensed theory must be accepted. Against Smith, this paper (...) adopts an alternative approach to the explanation of the entailment relations between sentences which contain indexicals. The approach drops the reliance upon tokens and instead relies on the evaluation of sentence types with respect to a context rather than upon actual or possible utterances of tokens of the types. This (new) version of the tenseless theory of time can adequately explain the relevant entailment relations between tensed sentences. (shrink)

Our best philosophical and scientific pictures of the world organize material objects into a hierarchy or levels or layers- microparticles at the bottom, molecules, cells, and persons at higher layers. Are objects at higher layers identical to the sums of objects at lower layers that constitute them? (Note that this question is different from the question of whether composition- as opposed to constitution- is identity.).

Quentin Smith has argued (Philosophical Studies, 1987, pp. 371-392) that the token-reflexive and the date versions of the new tenseless theory of time are open to insurmountable difficulties. I argue that Smith's central arguments are irrelevant since they rest upon methodological assumptions accepted by the old tenseless theory, but rejected by the new tenseless theory.

No one nowadays would deny the importance of conceptual innovation in the growth of scientific knowledge. But how is it possible? And by this I do not mean: what kinds of social, economic, or mental develop- ments are causally responsible for promoting it? That is a question for historians, sociologists and psychologists of science to answer. Instead I shall concern myself with a more philosophical issue, namely: how can the possibility of conceptual innovation be compatible with the way in which (...) we reason about language, meaning and understanding - i.e., what adjustments in, or constraints on, the framework of such reasoning are forced on us by acceptance of this possibility? In particular does it fit in with the project of reconstructing scientific reasoning in artificial languages like Leibniz proposed in the 17th century or Carnap in the 20th? (shrink)

Since McTaggart first proposed his paradox asserting the unreality of time, numerous philosophers have attempted to defend the tensed theory of time against it. Certainly, one of the most highly developed and original is that put forth by Quentin Smith. Through discussing McTaggart's positive conception of time as well as his negative attack on its reality, I hope to clarify the dispute between those who believe in the existence of the transitory temporal properties of pastness, presentness and futurity, and those (...) who deny their existence. We shall see that the debate centers around the ontological status of succession and the B-relations of earlier and later. I shall argue that Smith's tensed theory fails because he cannot account for the sense in which events have their tensed properties successively, and he cannot account for the direction of time. (shrink)

Entrer dans la pensée de François Jullien -- L'ailleurs chinois -- Tribulations d'un jeune philosophe en Chine -- La langue-pensée chinoise -- Une stratégie philosophique -- Dissidence -- De la cohérence au concept -- D'un dérangement l'autre -- Vivre en existant -- Une philosophie du vivre -- La ressource de l'intime -- De la dé-coïncidence -- L'inouï -- Une pensée du politique -- Un chantier politique -- Du dialogue des cultures -- L'Europe en panne d'idéal -- L'identité culturelle en question.

This collection of articles pays homage to the creativity and scientific rigor Jerome Singer has brought to the study of consciousness and play. It will interest personality, social, clinical and developmental psychologists alike.

Comment témoigner d’une espérance religieuse dans le droit contemporain ? Par l’obéissance et l’humilité de l’inculturation, ou par l’objection et la résistance propre au signe de contradiction ? Si les périodes barbares du XXe siècle ont relancé l’analyse théologique de la tension entre ces deux voies, qu’en est-il aujourd’hui des contextes apparemment pacifiés de nos droits démocratiques ? Si le moment juridique y colonise progressivement la société, c’est au nom de sa nature de « droit commun » qu’il estime acquérir (...) de sa prétention croissante à la « neutralité ». À cet égard, la prise de parole religieuse dans l’espace public est aujourd’hui vivement débattue. Il serait cependant erroné de n’y viser que le seul moment de l’élaboration formelle de la loi. Cette prise de parole peut aussi viser les modalités d’application et de mise en contexte du droit. Cet article entend montrer l’importance de ce nouveau moment pour une prise de parole religieuse, entendue comme une troisième voie : celle de l’attestation évangélique au cœur de la pratique du droit. (shrink)

Hauser considers John Searle's attempt to distinguish acts from movements. On Searle's account, the difference between me raising my arm and my arm's just going up (e.g., if you forcibly raise it), is the causal involvement of my intention to raise my arm in the former, but not the latter, case. Yet, we distinguish a similar difference between a robot's raising its arm and its robot arm just going up (e.g., if you manually raise it). Either robots are rightly credited (...) with intentions or it's not intention that distinguishes action from mere movement. In either case acts are attributable to robots. Since the truth of such attributions depends not on the speaker's "intentional stance" but on "intrinsic" features of the things they are not merely figurative "as if" attributions. Gunderson allows that internally propelled programmed devices (Hauser Robots) do act but denies that they have the mental properties such acts seem to indicate. Rather, given our intuitive conviction that these machines lack consciousness, such performances evidence the dementalizability of acts.Hauser replies that the performances in question provide prima facie warrant for attributions of mental properties that considerations of consciousness are insufficient to override. (shrink)

Responding to potential hazards is likely to require precaution-related recalibration, the extensive integration of complex variables related to inferred risk and fitness. By swamping working memory with goal-demoted actions and focusing recalibration on the inferred threat, ritualized behaviors may serve to increase the efficacy of precaution-related recalibration. This benefit may be an important mechanism maintaining non-pathological ritualized behavior. (Published Online February 8 2007).

La metodologia empirica di Christian Wolff -- Vernunft und Erfahrung. Zur Entwicklung der empirischen Methodologie in der Rationalistischen Tradition des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts -- Wahrscheinlichkeit und wahrscheinliches Wissen in der Philosophie von Christian Wolff -- Wolff, Bolzano e la probabilita -- Fondamento razionale e fondamento empirico della dimonstrazione: un'alternativa sei-settecentesca -- Christian Wolff e l'ermeneutica filosofica dell'Illuminismo tedesco -- Le origini dell'ermeneutica filosofica -- Teoria e critica della ragione nella filosofia di Christian Wolff -- Proposizioni indubitate e giudizi sintetici (...) a priori -- Rezenzionen. (shrink)