Not all truths are on a par. The realm of truths is structured: some propositions are only true because others are. The relation that endows the realm of truths with this structure is often called grounding. Grounding has achieved much attention in 21st century metaphysics, but the topic is arguably as old as philosophy itself. -/- This becomes apparent when investigating the works of the 19th-century philosopher Bernard Bolzano, who developed what is perhaps the first comprehensive theory of grounding, drawing (...) on a rich tradition that goes back to Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. Roski’s book provides, for the first time, a comprehensive study of Bolzano’s theory of grounding in its entirety, paying more attention than previous studies to the interaction between grounding and the consequence-relation of deducibility. -/- . (shrink)

We present the first comprehensive theory of fairness that conceives of fairness as having two dimensions: a comparative and an absolute one. The comparative dimension of fairness has traditionally been the main interest of Broomean fairness theories. It has been analysed as satisfying competing individual claims in proportion to their respective strengths. And yet, many key contributors to Broomean fairness agree that ‘absolute’ fairness is important as well. We make this concern precise by introducing the Fairness formula and the absolute (...) priority rule and analyse their implications for comparative fairness. (shrink)

I argue that difference-making should be a crucial element for evaluating the quality of evidence for mechanisms, especially with respect to the robustness of mechanisms, and that it should take central stage when it comes to the general role played by mechanisms in establishing causal claims in medicine. The difference- making of mechanisms should provide additional compelling reasons to accept the gist of Russo-Williamson thesis and include mechanisms in the protocols for Evidence- Based Medicine (EBM), as the EBM+ research group (...) has been advocating. (shrink)

In this paper I offer an anti-Humean critique to Williamson and Russo’s approach to medical mechanisms. I focus on one of the specific claims made by Williamson and Russo, namely the claim that micro-structural ‘mechanisms’ provide evidence for the stability across populations of causal relationships ascertained at the (macro-) level of (test) populations. This claim is grounded in the epistemic account of causality developed by Williamson, an account which—while not relying exclusively on mechanistic evidence for justifying causal judgements—appeals nevertheless to (...) mechanisms, and rejects their anti-Humean interpretation in terms of capacities, powers, potencies, etc. By using (and expanding on) Cartwright’s basic critique against Humean mechanisms, I suggest that, in order to move beyond the level of plausibility, Williamson and Russo’s position is in need of a clarification as to the occurent reading of the components, functioning and interferences of mechanisms. Relatedly, as concerns Williamson’s epistemic account of causation, I argue that this account is in need of a more straightforward answer as to what truth-makers its causal claims should have. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 10, October 2019, Page 90-92.

In the article ‘How to be absolutely fair, Part I: the Fairness formula’, we presented the first theory of comparative and absolute fairness. Here, we relate the implications of our Fairness formula to economic theories of fair division. Our analysis makes contributions to both philosophy and economics: to the philosophical literature, we add an axiomatic discussion of proportionality and fairness. To the economic literature, we add an appealing normative theory of absolute and comparative fairness that can be used to evaluate (...) axioms and division rules. Also, we provide a novel definition and characterization of the absolute priority rule. (shrink)

The dissertation addresses the relationship between common sense, skepticism, and naturalistic science in Hume. It is argued that Hume's moral science uncovers numerous common illusions of visual and moral perception; it is not a defense of common-sense experience. ;Firstly, Hume views the ordinary experience of causation and external reality as illusory. The former experience is a projection of human expectation; the latter a conflation of perceptions. ;Secondly, it is argued that, according to Hume, the moral judge overlooks his biases by (...) fictively projecting himself to an impartial standpoint. Impartial sentiments are weak, however, and their weakness generates another fiction: they are mistaken for the inferences of reason. Finally, the judge falsely imagines that he can "see" the character of the persons whom he judges, when all that he actually sees are their actions. ;Thirdly, the dissertation contends that, although the practice of justice arises out of self-interest, the moral agent mistakes his personal interest for public benevolence. When his hidden selfishness fails to move him, he acts justly in the hope of re-acquiring the "lost" benevolence that he never actually had. He saves himself from disappointment by misinterpreting his actions as signs of genuine reform. In the case of promising, the agent falsely imagines that he wills its moral obligation into being with the words "I promise." ;Fourthly, it is shown how Hume denies that we can find the historical root of political obedience in enlightened self-interest and instead stresses the founding role of usurpation and conquest, erased from memory by the passage of time and the efficacy of present government. ;Finally, we see that the appearance of virtue and vice is the illusory correlate of our sentiments: we project sentiments of approval and disapproval onto others and then mistake them for objective traits. ;Contrary to what some interpreters have asserted, I conclude that, according to Hume, the philosopher is never cured of his profound skepticism. Skepticism recurs as long as the philosopher philosophizes. This is problematic, however, because at its most radical, skepticism is incompatible with moral science. (shrink)

This systematic review identified and evaluated instruments measuring patients' perceptions of patient‐centred nursing care. Of 2629 studies reviewed, 12 were eligible for inclusion. Four instruments were reported: The Individualized Care Scale, the Client‐Centred Care Questionnaire, the Oncology patients' Perceptions of the Quality of Nursing Care Scale and the Smoliner scale. These instruments cover themes addressing patient participation and the clinician–patient relationship. Instruments were shown to have satisfactory psychometric properties, although not all were adequately assessed. More research is needed regarding test–retest (...) reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, validity with known groups and structural validity using confirmatory factor analysis. (shrink)

The article aims to put on the table the ongoing works of the United Nations Organization and others like World Trade Organization being focused in their current and future challenges to build an effective and useful Multilateral Trading System. Apart from achievements and reforms undertaken, further ones - based on another approach: considering the diversity principle - are proposed in order to reach equitable and fair trading negotiations outcomes in benefits of all members.

For 50 years, Star Trek has been an inspiration to its fans around the world, helping them to dream of a better future. This inspiration has entered our culture and helped to shape much of the technology of the early 21st Century. The contributors to this volume are researchers and teachers in a wide variety of disciplines; from Astrophysics to Ethnology, from English and History to Medicine and Video Games, and from American Studies to the study of Collective Computing Systems. (...) What the authors have in common is that some version of Star Trek has inspired them, not only in their dreams of what may be, but in the ways in which they work - and teach others to work - here in the real world. Introduced with references to Star Trek films and television shows, and illustrated with original cartoons, each of the 15 chapters included in this volume provides insights into research and teaching in this range of academic fields. (shrink)

Este manuscrito inédito corresponde al capítulo final del libro _Latin America replies to Transhumanism. __A Symposium on Sorgner’s We have always been cyborgs _a publicarse el año 2024 por la editorial Trivent. Budapest, Hungria. Agradecemos a Stefan L. Sorgner y Teodora C. Artimon por los permisos de publicación. Las referencias a los autores mencionados corresponden a otros capítulos de este mismo libro. Traducción de Nicolás Rojas Cortés y Camilo Vergara Ramírez.

The semantic valuations of classical logic, strong Kleene logic, the logic of paradox and the logic of first-degree entailment, all respect the Dunn conditions: we call them Dunn logics. In this paper, we study the interpolation properties of the Dunn logics and extensions of these logics to more expressive languages. We do so by relying on the \ calculus, a signed tableau calculus whose rules mirror the Dunn conditions syntactically and which characterizes the Dunn logics in a uniform way. In (...) terms of the \ calculus, we first introduce two different interpolation methods, each of which uniformly shows that the Dunn logics have the interpolation property. One of the methods is closely related to Maehara’s method but the other method, which we call the pruned tableau method, is novel to this paper. We provide various reasons to prefer the pruned tableau method to the Maehara-style method. We then turn our attention to extensions of Dunn logics with so-called appropriate implication connectives. Although these logics have been considered at various places in the literature, a study of the interpolation properties of these logics is lacking. We use the pruned tableau method to uniformly show that these extended Dunn logics have the interpolation property and explain that the same result cannot be obtained via the Maehara-style method. Finally, we show how the pruned tableau method constructs interpolants for functionally complete extensions of the Dunn logics. (shrink)

For anyone interested in the world on the cusp of the seventeenth-eighteenth century “le Père” Coronelli is simply unavoidable. He has his own learned society today (Coronelli Weltbund...

Silicon-based transhumanists talk a lot about the implications of digitalization, whereby topics like mind-uploading, a digital consciousness, as well as the simulation argument are discussed most often. From a pragmatic perspective none of these issues is of any relevance. It seems to me that the following question is the most central one: How can we collect and use digital data in a democratic manner, as digital data are the new oil? For quite some time, we have seen global fights for (...) digital data. China seems to have the most promising strategies for gathering digital data. Given the enormous interest of China in selected African countries, it needs to be analysed whether this development is in the long-term interest of these countries. In contrast to other analyses who primarily stress the neo-colonial aspects of this development, this article reveals some reasons why this cooperation also could be in the interest of the countries mentioned. (shrink)

This article aims to describe underlying principles of paradigm shifts in clinical medicine by means of analysis of typical examples. Retrospectively, profound shifts of ruling paradigms can be shown in diverse fields such as outcome research, in the redefining of patient's and doctor's autonomies, in the challenges presented by consumer medicine and the free market economy. This has provoked controversy between doctors, patients and the community. The judgement on whether recent shifts in paradigms in medicine have improved the health care (...) delivered today is by no means uncontroversial. Aiming to demonstrate how shifts of paradigms in medicine occur and what consequences can result from such shifts we reflect on the works of Thomas S. Kuhn, the eminent philosopher of science. An analysis of his theories lends important insight into the observed shifts in paradigms. (shrink)

"The Routledge Guidebook to Berkeley's Three Dialogues is an engaging introduction to the last of a trio of works that cemented Berkeley's position as one of the truly great philosophers of the western canon. Berkeley's distinctive idealist philosophy has been a challenge and inspiration for thinkers ever since. Written for readers approaching this seminal work for the first time, this book: - Provides the philosophical context in which Three Dialogues was written - Critically discusses the arguments in each of the (...) Three Dialogues - Examines some of the principle disputes concerning the interpretation of his work The Routledge Guidebook to Berkeley's Three Dialogues offers a clear and comprehensive guide to this ground-breaking volume and includes further reading sections at the end of each chapter. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand this influential work"--. (shrink)

In the light of our recently performed experiments, revealing the anisotropy of light velocity in any frame moving with respect to absolute space, we show that the Lorentz transformation, where the relativity of light velocity is given implicitly through the relativity of the time coordinates, must be treated from an absolute point of view if one seeks to preserve its adequacy to physical reality. Then we propose a new transformation (which is to be considered as a legitimate companion of the (...) Lorentz transformation) wherein the relativity of light velocity is given explicitly and the time coordinates are absolute. (shrink)

Ștefan Bolea ABSTRACT: In the present paper I analyze the theme of death in Gothic Metal songs such as Forever Failure by Paradise Lost, Everything Dies by Type O Negative, The Hanged Man by Moonspell or Gone with The Sin by HIM. The subthemes I am mostly interested in are the...

I question here the differentiation of kinds as substantive universals in Lowe and Ellis’ metaphysics, by taking up, for the argument’s sake, two extreme approaches on kind differentiation and kind change, a Heraclitan and a Spinozan approach. I show that, as things currently stand, Heraclitanism or Spinozism about kinds is consistent with the broad tenets of Lowe and Ellis’ metaphysics of kinds.

Per the standard reading of his view, Hart held that the legally valid norms of any legal system are those identified as such by the criteria of validity effectively accepted in common by the system's officials. Here, I focus on the presupposition underlying this Hartian account of legal facts – namely, that the officials of any legal system share a perspective that fixes the identity of their system's legally valid norms. Below, I hope to establish the appeal of this presupposition (...) and the attendant Hartian project of providing an account of the identity of the legally valid norms of any legal system. Nonetheless, as I explain, the phenomenon of disagreement that Ronald Dworkin describes threatens Hart's crucial presupposition, thereby posing a mortal threat to his account of legal facts. Moreover, as I hope the following survey illustrates, the phenomenon of disagreement similarly threatens many other contemporary theories of law, for these theories join the project of providing a Hartian account of legal facts. A final objective of this survey is to highlight two mutually exclusive strategies for responding to the phenomenon of disagreement: rejecting the Hartian presupposition and commitment to legal facts or affirming this Hartian project by explaining how officials share a legal fact-fixing perspective despite disagreeing about their system's criteria of validity. (shrink)

This book argues that there is a complex logical and epistemological interplay between the concepts of metaphor, narrative, and emotions. They share a number of important similarities and connections. In the first place, all three are constituted by aspect-seeing, the seeing-as or perception of Gestalts. Secondly, all three are meaning-endowing devices, helping us to furnish our world with meaning. Thirdly, the threesome constitutes a trinity. Emotions have both a narrative and metaphoric structure, and we can analyse the concepts of metaphors (...) and narratives partly in each other's terms. Further, the concept of narratives can partly be analysed in the terms of emotions. And if emotions have both a narrative structure and a metaphoric one, then the concept of emotions must to some extent be analysable through the concepts of narratives and metaphors. But there is more. Metaphors (especially poetic ones) are important tools for the understanding of the tacit sides of emotions, perhaps because of the metaphoric structure of emotions. The notion that narrations can be tools for understanding emotions follows from two facts: narrations are devices for explanation and emotions have a narrative structure. Fourthly, the threesome has an impact on our rationality. It has become commonplace to say that emotions have a cognitive content, that narratives have an explanatory function, and that metaphors can perform cognitive functions. This book is the first attempt to articulate the implications that these new ways of seeing the three concepts entail for our concept of reason. The cognitive roles of the threesome suggest a richer notion of rationality than has traditionally been held, a rationality enlivened with metaphoric, narrative, and emotive qualities. Stefan Snaevarr (Reykjavik, 1953) studied philosophy and related subjects in Norway and Germany. Professor at Lillehammer University College in Norway, he is the author of several books of various kind in English, Norwegian and Icelandic. (shrink)

It is well known that Ernest Gellner made substantial use of his knowledge of the social sciences in philosophy. Here I discuss how he used it on the basis of a few examples taken from Gellner’s philosophical output. It is argued that he made a number of highly original “translations”, or re-interpretations, of philosophical theories and problems using his knowledge of the social sciences. While this method is endorsed, it is also argued that some of Gellner’s translations crossed the line (...) between the original and the idiosyncratic. (shrink)

Among legal scholars, P. J. A. Feuerbach is considered one of the most important German jurists of the 19th century: not only has he established Germany’s modern doctrine of penal law and the Bavarian penal code of 1813, but he is also the founder of the theory of psychological force, i.e. the idea of the threat of punishment (not punishment itself!) as deterrence. Whereas one cannot comprehend Feuerbach’s legal doctrines without their original philosophical justification, namely his concept of the legal (...) subject as a citizen of two worlds, most contemporary interpreters ignore this aspect of Feuerbach’s theory of punishment. Against this reductionist interpretation of Feuerbach, by reconstructing his philosophy of punishment, this article exposes both the theoretical potential and shortcomings of Feuerbach’s main philosophical concepts. (shrink)

What is it for predicates to mean what they do and what is their contribution to the meaning of an utterance? It is exactly this question to which Davidson dedicates his book Truth and Predication. Most commentators focus on Davidson’s discussion of failed accounts, in particular of Frege’s account. In contrast to this tendency, I focus here on Davidson’s own account. The structure is as follows. First, I sketch the problem of predication and I glance at Davidson’s discussion of failed (...) accounts. Then I present his solution and integrate it in his theory of interpretation, thereby bringing out the particularity of the account. In doing so I shall scru- tinize some criticisms as well, for as I intend to show, they originate from a wrong understanding of his com- prehensive theory of interpretation. (shrink)

This paper introduces a distinction between three different kinds of religious arguments. On the basis of a deliberative model of democracy, it is argued that autonomy and identity arguments should be acceptable in public debate, whereas authority arguments should be rejected. This deliberative approach is clarified by comparing it with the exclusionist position of John Rawls on the one hand and the inclusionist position of Nicholas Wolterstorff on the other. The paper concludes with some general remarks about the relation between (...) reason and religion that explain the sense in which a postsecular public sphere also remains a secular one. (shrink)

In this paper I try to elucidate the differences between theoretical and practical endeavors in philosophy, and then to show that in a sense philosophy has to be theoretical, but— if it claims to be viable—it must be practical as well. First I consider the meaning of the terms theoretical, practical, abstract, and concrete. Then, with the help of Whitehead’s ideas on this topic, I briefly reflect on the method, aims and role of philosophy. I hold that a properly established (...) philosophical approach should have its roots in concrete experience and should include concrete applications. Thus, abstract ideas can be (and indeed often are) transformed into our daily life practices, being applied to solve real problems—personal, social, environmental, etc. The ideas are conveyed from the sphere of philosophy to that of ordinary life. In the next stage I demonstrate this principle using a concrete example, Whitehead’s philosophical system and how it can be fruitfully applied to the sphere of deep ecology. There are many other examples that could be mentioned, but giving a proper demonstration of this application principle requires more space and so I concentrate only on one of these examples. (shrink)

Die Fähigkeiten, nachzudenken und sich denkend auf Wirkliches zu beziehen, werden in der heutigen Philosophie des Geistes unter dem Begriff "Intentionalität" zusammengefasst. Wie können diese Fähigkeiten im Rahmen unseres naturwissenschaftlich geprägten Weltbildes erklärt werden? Stefan Kappner beantwortet diese Frage, indem er auf die Zeichentheorie von Charles Sanders Peirce zurückgreift.

Though many well-known German philosophers have devoted considerable attention to music and its aesthetics, surprisingly few of their writings on the subject have been translated into English. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, a philosopher, and Oliver Fürbeth, a musicologist, here fill this important gap for musical scholars and students alike with this compelling guide to the musical discourse of ten of the most important German philosophers, from Kant to Adorno. _Music in German Philosophy_ includes contributions from a renowned group of ten (...) scholars, including some of today’s most prominent German thinkers, all of whom are specialists in the writers they treat. Each chapter consists of a short biographical sketch of the philosopher concerned, a summary of his writings on aesthetics, and finally a detailed exploration of his thoughts on music. The book is prefaced by the editors’ original introduction, presenting music philosophy in Germany before and after Kant, as well as a new introduction and foreword to this English-language addition, which places contemplations on music by these German philosophers within a broader intellectual climate. (shrink)