We study a modal system ¯T, that extends the classical (prepositional) modal system T and whose language is provided with modal operators M inn (nN) to be interpreted, in the usual kripkean semantics, as there are more than n accessible worlds such that.... We find reasonable axioms for ¯T and we prove for it completeness, compactness and decidability theorems.

Retraction note: Ríos-Caro, T. E., León Rodríguez, J. A., Coronel-Zubiate, F. T., Ríos-Angulo, C. M. & Ríos-Caro, M. C. (2023). Teleodontology in the Central Peruvian Jungle: Quality and Service Satisfaction. HUMAN REVIEW. International Humanities Revista Internacional De Humanidades, 21(2), 223-235. https://doi.org/10.37467/revhuman.v21.5049 The Editorial Office of Eurasia Academic Publishing Group has retracted this article. An investigation carried out by our Research Integrity Department has found a group of articles, among which this one is found, that are not within the (...) thematic scope of the journal. We believe that the editorial process was manipulated and, furthermore, acceptance decisions were made under possibly inappropriate peer review. (shrink)

We show that the divergence between the predictions of quantum optics and the local realist theory known as stochastic optics, for the extended type of photon-coincidence experiment described recently by de Caro, is of the same order of magnitude as for Aspect-type experiments. This means that, in such new experiments, as in those so far performed, counting statistics will have to be greatly improved before a discrimination between the two theories becomes possible.We also show that the outstanding difference between (...) the two theories is that, while stochastic optics uses a genuine, that is, positive, detection probability, the corresponding quantum formalism leads to a pseudoprobability. Nevertheless, there is a striking parallel, in that both theories recognize the phenomenon known as enhancement, and both describe it as having its origin in a mixing of the signal field with the zero-point field by a polarizing device. (shrink)

[T. M. Scanlon] It is clearly impermissible to kill one person because his organs can be used to save five others who are in need of transplants. It has seemed to many that the explanation for this lies in the fact that in such cases we would be intending the death of the person whom we killed, or failed to save. What makes these actions impermissible, however, is not the agent's intention but rather the fact that the benefit envisaged does (...) not justify an exception to the prohibition against killing or the requirement to give aid. The difference between this explanation and one appealing to intention is easily overlooked if one fails to distinguish between the prospective use of a moral principle to guide action and its retrospective use to appraise the way an agent governed him or herself. Even if this explanation is accepted, however, it remains an open question whether and how an agent's intention may be relevant to the permissibility of actions in other cases. \\\ [Jonathan Dancy] My first four sections concentrate on the second section of Professor Scanlon's contribution, where he lays out his conception of moral principles and of the role they play in theory and practice. I will raise questions on the following issues: 1. Scanlon's initial introduction of the notion of a principle. 2. His rejection of the standard view that principles are concerned with the forbidding, permitting and requiring of actions. 3. His rejection of pro tanto conceptions of principles in favour of a conception of them as conclusive. 4. The resulting account of what it is for a principle to face and survive exceptions. Scanlon's discussion of these matters here both appeals to and is in some respects more detailed than the relevant section of his recent What We Owe to Each Other. The topic is interesting both for the role played by principles in Scanlon's present discussion of intention and permissibility, and more generally because of his account of wrongness: an act is wrong iff it is ruled out by principles that nobody could reasonably reject. The remainder of my contribution is concerned with the ostensible focus of IP, namely the relevance of agent-intentions to the permissibility of what is done. (shrink)

Bhattacharyya, K. The Advaita concept of subjectivity.--Deutsch, E. Reflections on some aspects of the theory of rasa.--Nakamura, H. The dawn of modern thought in the East.--Organ, T. Causality, Indian and Greek.--Chatterjee, M. On types of classification.--Lacombe, O. Transcendental imagination.--Bahm, A. J. Standards for comparative philosophy.--Herring, H. Appearance, its significance and meaning in the history of philosophy.--Chang Chung-yuan. Pre-rational harmony in Heidegger's essential thinking and Chʼan thought.--Staal, J. F. Making sense of the Buddhist tetralemma.--Enomiya-Lassalle, H. M. The mysticism of Carl Albrecht (...) and Zen.--Parrinder, G. The nature of mysticism.--Cairns, G. E. Axiological contributions of East and West to the spiritual development of mankind.--Mayeda, S. Śaṇkara's view of ethics.--Mercier, A. On peace.--Barlingay, S. S. A discussion of some aspects of Gaudapāda's philosophy. (shrink)

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1996, given by T.M. Scanlon, an American philosopher.

The chapters in this book reflect these different forms of interaction in an effort to clarify issues and debates concerning some traditional cognitive ...

It is clearly impermissible to kill one person because his organs can be used to save five others who are in need of transplants. It has seemed to many that the explanation for this lies in the fact that in such cases we would be intending the death of the person whom we killed, or failed to save. What makes these actions impermissible, however, is not the agent's intention but rather the fact that the benefit envisaged does not justify an (...) exception to the prohibition against killing or the requirement to give aid. The difference between this explanation and one appealing to intention is easily overlooked if one fails to distinguish between the prospective use of a moral principle to guide action and its retrospective use to appraise the way an agent governed him or herself. Even if this explanation is accepted, however, it remains an open question whether and how an agent's intention may be relevant to the permissibility of actions in other cases. \\\ [Jonathan Dancy] My first four sections concentrate on the second section of Professor Scanlon's contribution, where he lays out his conception of moral principles and of the role they play in theory and practice. I will raise questions on the following issues: 1. Scanlon's initial introduction of the notion of a principle. 2. His rejection of the standard view that principles are concerned with the forbidding, permitting and requiring of actions. 3. His rejection of pro tanto conceptions of principles in favour of a conception of them as conclusive. 4. The resulting account of what it is for a principle to face and survive exceptions. Scanlon's discussion of these matters here both appeals to and is in some respects more detailed than the relevant section of his recent What We Owe to Each Other. The topic is interesting both for the role played by principles in Scanlon's present discussion of intention and permissibility, and more generally because of his account of wrongness: an act is wrong iff it is ruled out by principles that nobody could reasonably reject. The remainder of my contribution is concerned with the ostensible focus of IP, namely the relevance of agent-intentions to the permissibility of what is done. (shrink)

abstract This paper examines, from a philosophical point of view, the ethics of the role of the family and the deceased in decisions about organ retrieval. The paper asks: Who, out of the individual and the family, should have the ultimate power to donate or withhold organs? On the side of respecting the wishes of the deceased individual, the paper considers and rejects arguments by analogy with bequest and from posthumous bodily integrity. It develops an argument for posthumous autonomy based (...) on the liberal idea of self‐development and argues that this establishes a right of veto over donation. It claims, however, that whether the family's power to veto would conflict with posthumous autonomy rights depends on how it comes about. On the side of respecting the family's wishes, the paper first considers an argument from family distress. This supports a contingent, non‐rights‐based reason for the family's power that is trumped by the deceased's rights. It then outlines and criticises an argument based on family autonomy. The conclusion is that the individual has the right to veto the family's wish to donate and that, while the family has no right to veto the individual's wishes to donate, it can legitimately acquire this power and has done so in practice. (shrink)

Plato's Psychology originally published in 1970 and reprinted in 1972, is still the definitive modern discussion of the nature and development of Plato's ...

T. M. Rudavsky tells the story of the development of Jewish philosophy from the 10th century to Spinoza in the 17th, as part of a dialogue with medieval Christian and Islamic thought. She gives a broad historical survey of major figures and schools within the medieval Jewish tradition, focusing on the tensions between Judaism and rational thought.

We introduce a simple model for so-called spin-echo experiments. We show that the model is a mincing system. On the basis of this model we study fine-grained entropy and coarse-grained entropy descriptions of these experiments. The coarse-grained description is shown to be unable to provide an explanation of the echo signals, as a result of the way in which it ignores dynamically generated correlations. This conclusion is extended to the general debate on the foundations of statistical mechanics. We emphasize the (...) need for an appropriate mechanism to explain the gradual suppression over time of the correlations in a thermodynamic system. We argue that such a mechanism can only be provided by the interventionist approach, in which the interaction of the system with its environment is taken into account. Irreversible behavior is then seen to arise not as a result of limited measurement accuracy , but as a result of the fact that thermodynamic systems are limited systems which interact with their environment. A detailed discussion is given of recent objections to the interventionist approach in the literature. (shrink)

One method for investigating the neurobiology of consciousness is to experimentally manipulate consciousness as a variable and then visualize the resultant functional brain changes with advanced imaging techniques. To begin investigation into this area, healthy volunteers underwent positron emission tomography scanning while listening to randomized word lists in both conscious and unconscious conditions. Following anaesthesia, subjects had no explicit memories. Nonetheless, subjects demonstrated implicit memory on a forced-choice test . These subsequent memory scores were correlated with regional brain metabolism measured (...) during encoding. Conscious recall and unconscious recognition memory demonstrated considerable anatomic overlap in correlating significantly with relative glucose metabolism in auditory verbal memory areas. However, only conscious recall correlated with mediodorsal thalamic nucleus activity; unconscious recognition memory did not. These findings suggest that conscious versus unconscious memory distinctions may depend on the presence or absence of correlated thalamic activity, and directly implicate the thalamus in the neurobiology of consciousness. (shrink)

In response to comments on my book, Being Realistic about Reasons, by Justin Clarke-Doane, David Enoch and Tristram McPherson, and Gideon Rosen, I try to clarify my domain-based view of ontology, my understanding of the epistemology of normative judgments, and my interpretation of the phenomenon of supervenience.

ABSTRACT This paper considers what should be done about offers of organs for transplant that come with racist strings attached. Saving lives or improving their quality seem powerful reasons to accept the offer. Fairness, justice, and rejecting racism seem like powerful reasons against. This paper argues that conditional allocation should occur when it would provide access to organs for at least one person without costing others their access to organs. The bulk of the paper concentrates on defending this claim against (...) these objections: (i) that the good that might come about through conditional allocation does so through wrongful complicity in the racist's wrongdoing; (ii) that conditional allocation symbolizes support for racism; and (iii) that conditional allocation is unjust or unfair and is, for that reason, impermissible. The final section, on conditional allocation as a policy, considers the speculative possibility that conditional allocation would reduce access to organs for some, but it argues that, even then, conditional allocation could be justified. (shrink)

It is generally wrong to manipulate. One leading reason is because manipulation interferes with autonomy, in particular the component of autonomy called ‘independence’, that is, freedom from intentional control by others. Manipulative health promotion would therefore seem wrong. However, manipulative techniques could be used to counter-manipulation, for example, playing on male fears of impotence to counter ‘smoking is sexy’ advertisements. What difference does it make to the ethics of manipulation when it is counter-manipulation? This article distinguishes two powerful defences of (...) counter-manipulative health promotion: that the counter-manipulation would prevent manipulation occurring, leaving people unmanipulated; and that the counter-manipulation would make people healthier without being any more manipulated than they would otherwise be. The article explains how counter-manipulation might work and the limits to its scope. The upshot is that counter-manipulative health promotion could respect the independence people are owed in virtue of their autonomy. However, autonomy is not the only consideration, and the article discusses further potential problems. Counter-manipulative health promotion might be misapplied, it might undermine trust, it might infringe on some norms for role behaviour and it might encourage a regrettable social practice. These objections are likely to be decisive against the counter-manipulation in some but not all cases. (shrink)

Within the moral/social order maintained and reproduced by biomedical ethics (i.e., the “peaceable community”), suffering is a senseless accident with no value. Insofar as suffering compromises the fundamental pillar of this order, namely, autonomy, it threatens the existence of the “peaceable community”. Consequently, biomedical ethics is only able to offer those who suffer one moral or practical response: that of elimination, embodied most vividly in the increasingly approved practice of assisted-suicide. Another moral/ social order, however, the “peaceable Kingdom” or the (...) “Body of Christ”, provides an alternative understanding of the meaning, purpose, and significance of suffering, through the Roman Catholic sacrament of anointing of the sick. Recognizing the power of sickness and suffering to “dis-inscribe” bodies of their normative self-understandings, the Church responds with a set of liturgical practices which intend to respond to the dynamics of suffering, re-inscribe these bodies, and assist persons in fulfilling the vocation of “participating in Christ's suffering for the salvation of the world”. (shrink)