Much contemporary metaphysics, moved by an apparent necessity to take reality to consist of given beings and properties, presents us with what appear to be deep problems requiring radical changes in the common sense conception of persons and the world. Contemporary meta-ethics ignores questions about logical form and formulates questions in ways that make the possibility of correct value judgments mysterious. In this book, Wheeler argues that given a Davidsonian understanding of truth, predication, and interpretation, and given a relativised version (...) of Aristotelian essentialism compatible with Davidson’s basic thinking, many metaphysical problems are not very deep. Likewise, many philosophers' claims that common sense needs to be modified are unfounded. He argues further that a proper consideration of questions of logical form clarifies and illuminates meta-ethical questions. Although the analyses and arguments he gives are often at odds with those at which Davidson arrived, they apply the central Davidsonian insights about semantics, understanding, and interpretation. (shrink)

The title of this book echoes a phrase used by the Washington Post to describethe American attempt to kill Saddam Hussein at the start of the war againstIraq. Its theme is the notion of targeting (skopos) as the name of an intentionalstructure in which the subject tries to confirm its invulnerability by aiming todestroy a target. At the center of the first chapter is Odysseus’s killing of the suitors;the second concerns Carl Schmitt’s Roman Catholicism and Political Form; thethird and fourth (...) treat Freud’s “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death” and“The Man Moses and Monotheistic Religion.” Weber then traces the emergenceof an alternative to targeting, first within military and strategic thinking itself(“Network Centered Warfare”), and then in Walter Benjamin’s readings of“Capitalism as Religion” and “Two Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin.”. (shrink)

New and experienced psychotherapists alike can find themselves overwhelmed by an ethical quandary where there doesn't seem to be an easy solution. This book presents positive ethics as a means to overcome such ethical challenges. The positive approach focuses on not just avoiding negative consequences, but reaching the best possible outcomes for both the psychotherapist and the client. The authors outline a clear decision-making process that is based on three practical strategies: the ethics acculturation model to help therapists incorporate personal (...) ethics into their professional roles, the quality enhancement model for dealing with high-risk patients who are potentially harmful, and ethical choice-making strategies to make the most ethical decision in a situation where two ethical principles conflict. Throughout the decision-making process, psychotherapists are encouraged to follow four basic guidelines: Focus on overarching ethical principles Consider intuitive, emotional, and other nonrational factors Accept that some problems have elusive solutions Solicit input from colleagues and consultation groups Numerous vignettes illustrate how to apply positive ethics to many different ethical challenges that psychotherapists will likely encounter in practice. (shrink)

Bearing Society in Mind disrupts the disciplinary boundaries of economic, political and cultural theory by exploring the theory and politics of the social formation.

This paper discusses lower bounds for proof length, especially as measured by number of steps (inferences). We give the first publicly known proof of Gödel's claim that there is superrecursive (in fact. unbounded) proof speedup of (i + 1)st-order arithmetic over ith-order arithmetic, where arithmetic is formalized in Hilbert-style calculi with + and · as function symbols or with the language of PRA. The same results are established for any weakly schematic formalization of higher-order logic: this allows all tautologies as (...) axioms and allows all generalizations of axioms as axioms. Our first proof of Gödel's claim is based on self-referential sentences: we give a second proof that avoids the use of self-reference based loosely on a method of Statman. (shrink)

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 4, Page 570-571, July 2012.

A theoretical structure for multiattribute decision making is presented, based on a dynamical system for interactions in a neural network incorporating affective and rational variables. This enables modeling of problems that elude two prevailing economic decision theories: subjective expected utility theory and prospect theory. The network is unlike some that fit economic data by choosing optimal weights or coefficients within a predetermined mathematical framework. Rather, the framework itself is based on principles used elsewhere to model many other cognitive and behavioral (...) data, in a manner approximating how humans perform behavioral functions. Different, interconnected modules within the network encode (a) attributes of objects among which choices are made, (b) object categories, (c) and goals of the decision maker. An example is utilized to simulate the actual consumer choice between old and new versions of Coca-Cola. Potential applications are also discussed to market decisions involving negotiations between participants, such as international petroleum traders. (shrink)

A debate has emerged in the bioethics literature about the use of biotechnology to modify human nature. A failure to define humanness has produced conceptual confusion in this debate. We draw upon recent social psychological work on folk concepts of humanness and dehumanization to analyse the understandings of humanness that underpin the rival positions. We argue that advocates and opponents of human nature modification employ distinct conceptions of humanness, and that their differing evaluations of modification make sense in light of (...) these conceptions. Advocates view modification as the enhancement of a non-essentialist sense of humanness that takes us further from animal nature. Opponents view it as the loss of an essentialist sense of humanness that takes us closer to a robotic state. Recognition that humanness has multiple senses implies that there is no mutually exclusive choice between seeing the outcome of modification as a quantitative gain in humanness or a fundamental, qualitative loss of it. (shrink)

When Kuhn first published his _Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ he was accused of promoting an “irrationalist” account of science. Although it has since been argued that this charge is unfair in one aspect or another, the early criticism still exerts an influence on our understanding of Kuhn. In particular, normal science is often characterized as dogmatic and uncritical, even by commentators sympathetic to Kuhn. I argue not only that there is no textual evidence for this view but also that normal (...) science is much better understood as being based on _epistemically justified_ commitment to a paradigm and as _pragmatic_ in its handling of anomalies. I also argue that normal science is an example of what I call Kuhn’s program of _revisionary rational reconstruction_. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie Jahrgang: 2 Heft: 1 Seiten: 200-215.

Written by two well-known theologians, the book encompasses Christian ethics in its entirety, but also offers a new way of viewing this subject.

Nominalists should give up on one of Frege’s semantic tenets, and adopt an account on which the truth-value of a sentence depends on the senses, rather than the referents, of its syntactic constituents. That way, sentences like ‘2+2=4’ and ‘Hamlet did not exist’ might be true, without components like ‘2’ and ‘Hamlet’ having a referent.