This paper is the second in a two-part series in which we discuss several notions of completeness for systems of mathematical axioms, with special focus on their interrelations and historical origins in the development of the axiomatic method. We argue that, both from historical and logical points of view, higher-order logic is an appropriate framework for considering such notions, and we consider some open questions in higher-order axiomatics. In addition, we indicate how one can fruitfully extend the usual set-theoretic semantics (...) so as to shed new light on the relevant strengths and limits of higher-order logic. (shrink)

The identification and positioning of sacred space within contemporary contexts has, to date, received scant attention. In reflecting upon a broad spectrum of conceptions of what constitutes sacred space, this collection of interdisciplinary essays presents a new perspective on an area that is developing into an important theological and philosophical concept.

Building on the work of worldview thinkers like James Sire, this book helps those committed to the gospel story recognize those rival cultural stories that ...

The dismissive attitude of intellectuals toward conspiracy theorists is considered and given some justification. It is argued that intellectuals are entitled to an attitude of prima facie skepticism toward the theories propounded by conspiracy theorists, because conspiracy theorists have an irrational tendency to continue to believe in conspiracy theories, even when these take on the appearance of forming the core of degenerating research program. It is further argued that the pervasive effect of the "fundamental attribution error" can explain the behavior (...) of such conspiracy theorists. A rival approach due to Brian Keeley, which involves the criticism of a subclass of conspiracy theories on epistemic grounds, is considered and found to be inadequate. Key Words: conspiracy • conspiracy theories • conspiracy theorizing. (shrink)

I argue for patternism, a new answer to the question of when some objects compose a whole. None of the standard principles of composition comfortably capture our natural judgments, such as that my cat exists and my table exists, but there is nothing wholly composed of them. Patternism holds, very roughly, that some things compose a whole whenever together they form a “real pattern”. Plausibly we are inclined to acknowledge the existence of my cat and my table but not of (...) their fusion, because the first two have a kind of internal organizational coherence that their putative fusion lacks. Kolmogorov complexity theory supplies the needed rigorous sense of “internal organizational coherence”. (shrink)

I argue that, contrary to intuition, it would be both possible and permissible to design people - whether artificial or organic - who by their nature desire to do tasks we find unpleasant.

There is a growing perception among economists that their field is becoming increasingly irrelevant due to its disregard for reality. Critical realism addresses the failure of mainstream economics to explain economic reality and proposes an alternative approach. This book debates the relative strengths and weaknesses of critical realism, in the hopes of developing a more fruitful and relevant socio-economic ontology and methodology. With contributions from some of the leading authorities in economic philosophy, it includes the work of theorists critical of (...) this approach. In the first part, contributors develop and deepen economics as a realist social theory by considering the work of individuals, various schools of thought, socio- economic phenomena and methodology. In the second part, contributors weigh the strengths and weaknesses of critical realism. (shrink)

This volume explores Science & Technology Studies (STS) and its role in redrawing disciplinary boundaries. For scholars/grad students in rhetoric of science, science studies, philosophy & comm, English, sociology & knowledge mgmt.

The social psychology of science is a compelling new area of study whose shape is still emerging. This erudite and innovative book outlines a theoretical and methodological agenda for this new field, and bridges the gap between the individually focused aspects of psychology and the sociological elements of science studies. Presenting a side of social psychology that, until now, has received almost no attention in the social sciences literature, this volume offers the first detailed and comprehensive study of the social (...) psychology of science, complete with a large number of empirical and theoretical examples. The volume's introductory section provides a detailed analysis of how modern social psychology might apply to the study of science. Chapters show how to analyze science in terms of social cognition, attribution theory, attitudes and attitude change, social motivation, social influence and social conformity, and intergroup relations, weaving extensive illustrations from the science studies literature into the theoretical analysis. The nature and role of experimentation are discussed, as are metaanalytic methods for summarizing the results of multiple studies. Ways to facilitate the generalization of causal inferences from experimental work are also examined. The book focuses on such topics as interactions among small groups of scientists, and the impact of social motivation, influence, and conformity on scientific work. Also covered are scientists' responses to ethical issues in research, differences in cognitive style distribution, creativity in research and development, and the sociologists's view of the social psychology of science and technology. In addition, the book provides two annotated bibliographies, one on the philosophy of science and the other on social psychology, to guide readers in both disciplines to salient recent works. Valuable to the entire science studies community, this text will be of special interest to philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, and historians of science interested in the nature of knowledge development in science. Because of its novel application of social psychological theories and methods, this book will be useful as a primary text or a secondary text in courses on science studies in psychology, sociology, or philosophy departments. (shrink)

The use of informatic metaphors and models derived from mid-20th-century cyberscience in molecular biology has been the subject of much controversy. Many social critics have argued that informatic discourses implicitly privilege a disembodied or implicitly masculine conception of life that is most fully realized in contemporary genomics. In this paper, I offer a different perspective on these issues by returning to the 18th-century work of Gregor Mendel, who conducted a series of experiments that are generally regarded as having laid down (...) the basic rules of heredity underlying genetic science. I attempt to show that a nascent informatic understanding of the body is already present in Mendel’s work, and that the implications of his approach for the politics of gender and social life are much more ambiguous than is generally recognized. More specifically, I argue that the meaning of ‘sex’, and of its relation to the organic body, is implicitly at stake in Mendel’s thought. I suggest that his text contains certain unresolved questions of sexual propriety that are today still being worked out in the context of contemporary genomics. (shrink)

Nearly thirty years after the first stirrings of the Kuhnian revolution, history and philosophy of science continues to galvanize methodological discussions in all corners of the academy except its own. Evidence for this domestic stagnation appears in Warren Schmaus's thoughtful review of Social Epistemology in which Schmaus takes for granted that history of science is the ultimate court of appeal for disputes between philosophers and sociologists. As against this, this essay argues that such disputes may be better treated by experimental (...) psychology. Humanistic methods typically (though not always) blind the historian to cognitive biases and limitations that make it difficult for philosophers and sociologists to mobilize historical research for settling their differences. It is also observed that the failure of philosophers to incorporate the methods and findings of experiemental psychology is symptomatic of an artificially restrictive understanding of the normative dimension of their enterprise. (shrink)

In the twentieth century, philosophy came to be dominated by the English-speaking world, first Britain and then the United States. Accompanying this development was an unprecedented professionalization and specialization of the discipline, the consequences of which are surveyed and evaluated in this article. The most general result has been a decline in philosophy's normative mission, which roughly corresponds to the increasing pursuit of philosophy in isolation from public life and especially other forms of inquiry, including ultimately its own history. This (...) is how the author explains the increasing tendency, over the past quarter-century, for philosophy to embrace the role of "underlaborer" for the special sciences. Indicative of this attitude is the long-term popularity of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which argues that fields reach maturity when they forget their past and focus on highly specialized problems. In conclusion, the author recalls the history of philosophy that, following Kuhn's advice, has caused us to forget, namely, the fate of Neo-Kantianism in the early twentieth century. Key Words: analytic philosophy • normative • positivism • pragmatism • professionalism • underlaborer. (shrink)

The archipelago context of Maluku represents the living dynamics of Christian communities in that area, which becomes an ecclesiological foundation of the Gereja Protestan Maluku. Christianity, the embryo of the GPM, is the fruit of the evangelical works by European missionaries, particularly Dutch missions from the 18th century onwards. The Dutch-type Christianity had been adapted into models so that the form of institution and Protestant teachings in Maluku moved dynamically following socio-political and cultural changes along with the colonial and the (...) post-colonial history of Indonesian and Malukan society. It attempts to describe the manifestation of the Calvinism-model of Christianity that is continuously being contextualised through absorbing various elements of worldview, tradition, and the religiosity of the archipelago society. Cultural hermeneutics is used to interpret the socio-cultural phenomena in which the church lives in and to construct its theological understanding about Christian identity. The ecclesiological construction of GPM, in turn, is structured by plural social orders. The reality also influences the perspective about GPM from many different worldviews of the Malukan archipelago society. The contextual ecclesiological perspective, therefore, is constructed based on intermingled understandings that theology of the church can only be built by considering multifold dimensions of a particular society. The result of this research pertains to the constructive understanding of a specific ecclesial context of the GPM in their struggles for theologising their existence as God’s people and, at the same time, as an integral part of certain society in Maluku and Indonesia.Contribution: As the living contextual church that struggles for proclaiming God’s love, the GPM has a theological responsibility to conduct its church mission based on its ecclesiological understanding and practices contextually. The article contributes to the enrichment of the theological discourse on the crucial roles of a church in Maluku, in the eastern part of Indonesia. (shrink)

The purpose of the Cambridge Edition is to offer translations of the best modern German edition of Kant's work in a uniform format suitable for Kant scholars. When complete the edition will include all of Kant's published writings and a generous selection from the unpublished writings such as the Opus postumum, handschriftliche Nachlass, lectures, and correspondence. This volume contains the first translation into English of notes from Kant's lectures on metaphysics. These lectures, dating from the 1760s to the 1790s, touch (...) on all the major topics and phases of Kant's philosophy. Most of these notes have appeared only recently in the German Academy Edition; this translation offers many corrections of that edition. As is standard with the volumes in the Cambridge Edition there is an extensive editorial apparatus, including extensive linguistic and explanatory notes, a detailed subject index, and glossaries of key terms. (shrink)

This paper continues a conversation about Wittgenstein’s picture of language and meaning and its potential applications for educational theorising. It takes the form of a response to Wolff-Michael Roth’s earlier paper “Heeding Wittgenstein on “understanding” and “meaning”: A pragmatist and concrete human psychological approach in/for education,” in which Roth problematizes the use of the terms “understanding” and “meaning” in education discourse and proposes their abandonment. Whilst we agree with Roth about a series of central points, at the same time we (...) maintain that he has taken his argument in directions antithetical to our reading of Wittgenstein’s work. We offer four points of departure, exploring themes of: appropriate questioning; eliminativism; language-games and grammar; and productivity, explanation, and a science of learning. We conclude by discussing ways consistent with Wittgenstein’s thought to go on in thinking about education. (shrink)

In this paper I develop an objection to the version of expressivism found in Allan Gibbard’s book Thinking How to Live, and I suggest that the difficulty faced by Gibbard’s analysis is symptomatic of a problem for expressivism more generally. The central claim is that Gibbard’s expressivism is unable to account for certain normative judgments that arise in the process of evaluating cases of innocent mistakes. I begin by considering a type of innocent mistake that Gibbard’s view is able to (...) capture, one that can occur in situations in which our judgments of what it makes sense to do come apart from our judgments of what it makes sense to plan to do. Whether or not such mistakes are possible is a normative question, and I argue against Gibbard that we should adopt a normative stance that rules out such mistakes. This leads me to consider a second type of innocent mistake, one that can arise when an agent is constituted in such a way as to be incapable of recognizing the appropriate course of action. I argue here that our full normative assessment of the situation incorporates judgments that cannot be captured by Gibbard’s expressivism. I conclude by suggesting that any form of expressivism that shares Gibbard’s commitment to account for an intimate tie between normative judgments and action will face a similar problem. (shrink)

Biodiversity scientists often describe their field as aiming to save life and humanity, but the field has yet to reckon with the history and contemporary practices of colonialism and systematic racism inherited from natural history. The online data portals scientists use to store and share biodiversity data are a growing class of organizations whose governance can address or perpetuate and further institutionalize the implicit assumptions and inequitable social impacts from this extensive history. In this context, researchers and Indigenous Peoples are (...) developing and implementing new strategies to examine and change assumptions about which agents should count as salient participants to scientific projects, especially projects that build and manage large digital data portals. Two notable efforts are the FAIR and CARE Principles for scientific data management and governance. To characterize how these influence the governance of biodiversity data portals, we develop an account of fitness-for-use that makes explicit its social as well as technical conditions in relation to agents and purposes. The FAIR Principles, already widely adopted by biodiversity data projects, prioritize machine agents and efficient computation, while the CARE Principles prioritize Indigenous Peoples and their data sovereignty. Both illustrate the potency of an emerging general strategy by which groups of actors craft and implement governance principles for data fitness-of-use to change assumptions about salient participants to data science. (shrink)

In Naming and Necessity, Saul Kripke employs a handy philosophical trick: he invents the term ‘schmidentity’ to argue indirectly for his favored account of identity. Kripke says in a footnote that he wishes someday “to elaborate on the utility of this device”. In this paper, I first take up a general elaboration on his behalf. I then apply the trick to support an attractive but somewhat unorthodox picture of conceptual analysis—one according to which it is a process of forming intentions (...) for word use. This picture can recover a naturalistically respectable notion of the philosopher’s task, and can help resolve current debates that turn on the place of conceptual analysis. (shrink)

We formulate and prove a combinatorial property assuming AD + V = L(R). As a consequence, we show that every regular κ which is either a Suslin cardinal or the successor of a Suslin cardinal is δ 2 1 -supercompact. In particular, all the projective ordinals δ 1 n are δ 2 1 -supercompact.

In this practitioner’s perspective on the role of ethics in fraud prevention, I outline the situation that compelled Nedcor Bank in South Africa to establish their own fraud investigation and prevention unit. A brief discussion of the role, functions and achievement of the fraud unit follow this. Then the various components of the bank’s fraud detection and prevention strategies are described. These include the nurturing of a commitment to zero tolerance towards fraud amongst the entire staff, the communication strategy, control (...) mechanisms, and culture change within the bank. These respective dimensions are then examined to reveal the role that ethical values and considerations play with regard to each of them. It is concluded that ethics does not only provide the foundation for the entire strategy, but also forms an integral part of each strategic dimension. (shrink)

Proceedings of a conference held in Sept. 2009 in London, England.

Jeffrey conditioning allows updating in Bayesian style when the evidence is uncertain. A weighted average, essentially, over classically updating on the alternatives. Unlike classical Bayesian conditioning, this allows learning to be unlearned.

Arthur Falk has proposed a new construal of faith according to which it is not a mere species of belief, but has essential components in action. This twist on faith promises to resurrect Pascal’s Wager, making faith compatible with reason by believing as the scientist but acting as the theist. I argue that Falk’s proposal leaves religious faith in no better shape; in particular, it merely reframes the question in terms of rational desires rather than rational beliefs.

Tradition compels me to write dissertation acknowledgements that are long, effusive, and unprofessional. Fortunately for me, I heartily endorse that tradition.

John Paley has rightly observed that, while spirituality is widely discussed in the nursing literature, the discussions are uncritical and unproblematic. In an effort ‘to reconfigure the spirituality‐in‐nursing debate, and to position it where it belongs: in the literature on health psychology and social psychology, and not in a disciplinary cul‐de‐sac labelled “unfathomable mystery” ’, Paley has proposed an alternative, reductionist approach to spirituality. In this paper, I identify two critiques developed by Paley: one political, the other ‘logical’. Paley's political (...) critique claims the concept of ‘spirituality’ has been appropriated by nursing theorists as part of an attempt to accrue professional power and jurisdiction over occupational territory. I suggest that Paley's analysis masks his own exclusivist, secularizing jurisdictional claim made at the expense of spirituality. Paley's so‐called ‘logical’ critique is motivated by an intention to ‘determine what the “spirituality” terrain looks like from the naturalistic point of view’. However, noting a number of inconsistencies, I challenge his ‘logical move’ as a naïve attack on a straw man. In place of Paley's reductionism, I propose my own alternative alternative and argue (after Foucault) that ‘spirituality’ is a discourse, a non‐reductionist attempt, in a post‐religious society, to speak about the human condition open to the unknown. I conclude with a definition and a description of empirically congruent spirituality. (shrink)

Medical training is intense by design. Starting with medical school, for 4 years most of the time in the formal curriculum is filled with numerous essential topics, and, as scientific and medical knowledge increases, it is increasingly difficult to “triage” what must be learned. Efforts to insert new topics are often fraught with obstacles and resistance. Thus, it is problematic to suggest that even more be taught in those finite years of formal medical education. However, that is exactly what we (...) propose to do here. (shrink)

Busy physicians and scientists tend to be willfully naive about politics. Physics, chemistry, and biology are clean—that is, subject to relatively consistent and identifiable laws or at least trends and, certainly in the case of medicine, beneficial when properly applied. Politics, on the other hand, tend to be unpredictable, murky, and dirty—that is, too often all about self-serving power and, ultimately, money.

Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Ph.D., is a leader in the area of telomere and telomerase research—in fact, in 1984 she codiscovered the ribonucleoprotein enzyme telomerase, opening up new potentials in cancer research and therapy. This and subsequent work has earned her numerous honors, not the least of which are the National Academy of Science Award in Molecular Biology, an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Yale University, the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor, and many more awards. Dr. Blackburn is a Fellow (...) of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of London, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and is a Member of the Institute of Medicine. (shrink)

Garrett Hardin, Ph.D.—biologist, environmental ethicist, and lightning rod for controversy for over four decades—died in a double suicide with his wife in September 2003 at his longtime home in Santa Barbara, where he was a Professor Emeritus of Human Biology at the University of California. Both Hardins had been ill for some time and in fact were leaders in the local chapter of the Hemlock Society, the “right-to-die” advocacy organization.