In this paper we explore the thesis that the role of argumentation in practical reasoning in general and legal reasoning in particular is to justify the use of defeasible rules to derive a conclusion in preference to the use of other defeasible rules to derive a conflicting conclusion. The defeasibility of rules is expressed by means of non-provability claims as additional conditions of the rules.We outline an abstract approach to defeasible reasoning and argumentation which includes many existing formalisms, including default (...) logic, extended logic programming, non-monotonic modal logic and auto-epistemic logic, as special cases. We show, in particular, that the admissibility semantics for all these formalisms has a natural argumentation-theoretic interpretation and proof procedure, which seem to correspond well with informal argumentation. (shrink)

: According to Kant, the arguments of rational psychology are formal fallacies that he calls transcendental paralogisms. It remains heavily debated whether there actually is any formal error in the inferences Kant presents: according to Grier and Allison, they are deductively invalid syllogisms, whereas Bennett, Ameriks, and Van Cleve deny that they are formal fallacies. I advance an interpretation that reconciles these extremes: transcendental paralogisms are sound in general logic but constitute formal fallacies in transcendental logic. By formalising the paralogistic (...) inference, I will pinpoint the error as an illegitimate existential presupposition. Since - unlike transcendental logic - general logic abstracts from all objects, this error can only be detected in transcendental logic. (shrink)

According to what Jonathan Bennett calls the Kant–Frege view of existence, Frege gave solid logical foundations to Kant’s claim that existence is not a real predicate. In this article I will challenge Bennett’s claim by arguing that although Kant and Frege agree on what existence is not, they agree neither on what it is nor on the importance and justification of existential propositions. I identify three main differences: first, whereas for Frege existence is a property of a concept, for Kant (...) it is a relational property pertaining between the concept and intuition of an object. Second, whereas for Frege truth about individuals presupposes their existence, for Kant truth is in many cases independent of the existence of objects. Third, whereas Frege binds logic to existence and removes modalities from logic, for Kant existence is a modal category that is emphatically removed from the domain of logic and set in the core of metaphysics. Due to these differences in Kant’s and Frege’s theories of existence, Frege cannot be seen as giving logical clarity to Kant’s view. (shrink)

There are two traditional ways to read Kant's claim that every event necessarily has a cause: the weaker every-event some-cause and the stronger same-cause same-effect causal principles. The focus of the debate about whether and where he subscribes to the SCP has been in the Analogies in the Critique of Pure Reason and in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. By analysing the arguments and conclusions of both the Analogies and the Postulates as well as the two Latin principles non (...) datur casus and non datur fatum that summarise their results, I will argue for the novel thesis that the SCP is actually demonstrated in the Postulates of the First Critique. (shrink)

This is a stimulating and vivid area of philosophical research, but it has tended to monopolize the notion of 'good-for', linking it necessarily to welfare or ...

The much endorsed idea that reasons are facts, gives raise to several issues, not least when it is applied to the distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons. The paper distinguish in broad terms between two important views on the nature of facts. Given in particular a view that conceives of facts as abstract entities, the dichotomy is not particularly problematic. We might run into problems when it comes to identifying which facts are reasons and which are not, but the very (...) dichotomy itself seems sound. On this, the so-called thin approach, it is at least a possibility that some reasons will be (in some sense of the dichotomy) agent-neutral and some will be agent-relative. The second approach, the thick account, is, much less popular. It is argued that the thin approach trivializes an interesting issue among practical philosophers. The thin account is also in one respect less appealing than its thick cousin. The thick account is not flawless, though. At the end, a couple of objections to it will be considered. (shrink)

The debate on how to interpret Kant's transcendental idealism has been prominent for several decades now. In his book Kant's Transcendental Proof of Realism (2004) Kenneth R. Westphal introduces and defends his version of the metaphysical dual-aspect reading. But his real aim lies deeper: to provide a sound transcendental proof for (unqualified) realism, based on Kant's work, without resorting to transcendental idealism. In this sense his aim is similar to that of Peter F. Strawson – although Westphal's approach is far (...) more sophisticated. First he attempts to show that noumenal causation – on the reality of which his argument partly rests – is coherent in and necessary for Kant's transcendental idealism. Westphal then aims to undermine transcendental idealism by two major claims: Kant can neither account for transcendental affinity nor satisfactorily counter Hume's causal scepticism. Finally Westphal defends his alternative for transcendental idealism by showing that it solves these problems and thus offers a genuine transcendental proof for realism. In this paper I will show that all the three steps outlined above suffer from decisive shortcomings, and that consequently, regardless of its merits, Westphal's transcendental argument for realism remains undemonstrated. (shrink)

This article examines parallels between the increasing mental burnout and environmental overshoot in the organisational context. The article argues that there is a particular philosophy of management that connects these two phenomena of overshoot and burnout, namely productivism. As there are boundaries in all ecological processes and systems, the productivist aim of having ever more output and growth is deemed absurd. It is proposed that productivity as a management philosophy not only leads to mental ill-health in organisations but also to (...) overshoot in the environment. The article concludes that productivism, which denies the limits in utilisation of humans and other natural resources, fits poorly with circular economy and sustainability. Hence, ecological management should be complemented with a more holistic and processual view of organizations, as well as have an aim of peaceful coexistence between all earthbound objects. This signifies acknowledging and caring for human and non-human needs both now and in future by applying the idea of moderation to production of goods and services. (shrink)

In The Value Gap, Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen addresses the distinction between what is finally good and what is finally good-for, two value notions that are central to ethics and practical deliberation. The first part of the book argues against views that claim that one of these notions is either faulty, or at best conceptually dependent on the other notion. Whereas these two views disagree on whether it is good or good-for that is the flawed or dependent concept, it is argued, (...) as against both approaches, that goodness and goodness-for are independent value notions that cannot be fully understood in terms of one another. The second part provides an analysis of good and good-for in terms of a fitting-attitude analysis. By elaborating a more nuanced understanding of the key elements of this analysis—reasons and pro-attitudes—Rønnow-Rasmussen challenges the widespread idea that there are no genuine practical and moral dilemmas. The result is that the gap between favouring for a reason what is good and favouring for a reason what is good for someone appears insurmountable. (shrink)

In the presentation I will analyse Kant’s conception of modalities and consider its relevance to his critical metaphysics. With his Tables of Judgements and of Categories Kant makes an important division between two kinds of modality, of which the former is only logical and the latter transcendental, i.e., objective. Only judgements that are necessary in both ways are properly metaphysical. This distinction is important for Kant’s distinction between Transcendental Analytic and Transcendental Dialectic, i.e., between acceptable and unacceptable metaphysics. I submit (...) that not only is Kant’s theory of modality useful for properly understanding his arguments in the Dialectic, but that only by distinguishing between the two types of modality can one can make sense of his theory that the ideas of reason are simultaneously inevitable and erroneous. This modal analysis thus offers a new and important point of view to Kant’s metaphysics and its critique. (shrink)

The development of the Values History instrument for use in advance directive decision making has raised the question of the importance of values in eliciting advance directives. This pilot study examines the relationship between the domains of values and advance directives drawn from the Values History in three generation intrafamily triads. Significant correlations between values and advance directives were found primarily within the youngest generation. Results reveal a relatively high familiarity by the participants of the various established forms of advance (...) directives. Also, a significant percentage of parents and grand- parents was found to have signed some form of advance directive. (shrink)

Building on work by Popper, Schweber, Nozick, Sober, and others in a still-growing literature, I explore here the conceptual kinship between Adam Smith''s ''invisible hand'' and Darwinian natural selection. I review the historical ties, and examine Ullman -Margalit''s ''constraints'' on invisible-hand accounts, which I later re-apply to natural selection, bringing home the close relationship. These theories share a ''parent'' principle, itself neither biological no politico-economic, that collective order and well-being can emerge parsimoniously from the dispersed action of individuals. The invisible (...) hand operates on ''memes'' the way natural selection operates on genes. Like Darwin''s concept, it brings together traditional opposites, ''nature'' and ''selection,'' forming a saltation-mitigating transition between biological instinct and full-blown conscious design. Herschel''s criterion of confirmation, which Darwin long strove to satisfy, is itself an invisible hand-like meme – a ''Midas effect'' revealing and rewarding the fittest theories, Darwin''s and Smith''s emphatically among them. (shrink)

Recent Work on Intrinsic Value brings together for the first time many of the most important and influential writings on the topic of intrinsic value to have appeared in the last half-century. During this period, inquiry into the nature of intrinsic value has intensified to such an extent that at the moment it is one of the hottest topics in the field of theoretical ethics. The contributions to this volume have been selected in such a way that all of the (...) fundamental questions concerning the nature of intrinsic value are treated in depth and from a variety of viewpoints. These questions include how to understand the concept of intrinsic value, what sorts of things can have intrinsic value, and how to compute intrinsic value. The editors have added an introduction that ties these questions together and places the contributions in context, and they have also provided an extensive bibliography. The result is a comprehensive, balanced, and detailed picture of current thinking about intrinsic value, one that provides an indispensable backdrop against which future writings on the topic may be assessed. (shrink)

This study aims to determine possible associations between strength parameters, injury rates, and performance outcomes over six seasons in professional basketball settings. Thirty-six male professional basketball players [mean ± standard deviation : age, 30.5 ± 4.7 years; height, 199.5 ± 9.5 cm; body mass, 97.9 ± 12.9 kg; BMI 24.6 ± 2.5 kg/m2] participated in this retrospective observational study, conducted from the 2008–09 to the 2013–14 season. According to their epidemiological records, each player followed an individual plan designed within different (...) strength training programs: Functional, Eccentric, or Resistance. Seven hundred and fourteen valid records were obtained from 170 individual strength tests during 31 sessions. Tests performed were leg press, squat, and jerk. Parameters recorded were force, power, velocity, peak velocity, and time to peak velocity for strength; time loss injury and muscle injury for injury rate; and games won, games lost, and championships for performance outcomes. All the strength variables and injuries are independent of the strength programs. The correlation analysis showed very significant relationships between muscular injuries and time to peak velocity, significant relationships between force and games lost, and muscular injuries with games lost per season. Mean values per season described a possible association of force, time to peak velocity, and muscular injuries with performance outcomes. In this specific context, strength variables and injury rate data show no association with a single type of strength training program in this cohort of high-performance basketball players. (shrink)

What does it mean that an object has instrumental value? While some writers seem to think it means that the object bears a value, and that instrumental value accordingly is a kind of value, other writers seem to think that the object is not a value bearer but is only what is conducive to something of value. Contrary to what is the general view among philosophers of value, I argue that if instrumental value is a kind of value, then it (...) is a kind of extrinsic final value. (shrink)

In the course of his philosophy, in various contexts, Kant comes to reject three theses about existence: (i) that the thoroughgoing determination of a thing implies its existence, (ii) that existence is a real predicate or determination of a thing, and (iii) that existence is the complement of inner possibility or essence. Kant’s target here is Baumgarten, who advocates these theses as the criterion, classification, and definition of existence. In this article I seek to clarify Kant’s elusive theory of existence (...) through its opposition to Baumgarten. I will show that Kant’s refutation of (i)–(iii) does not stand alone but is grounded on his own definition of existence as (absolute) positing. Thus contrary to common practice, Kant’s negative claims about what existence is not cannot be understood in isolation but must be taken as jointly dependent on Kant’s positive claim of what existence is. I will show that the theses (i)–(iii) fail because they presuppose that existence contributes to the intension or content of a concept, whereas according to Kant existence in fact posits a (non-empty) extension to the concept. (shrink)

Conscientious Objection (CO) has become a highly contested topic in the bioethics literature and public policy. However, when CO is discussed, it is almost universally referred to as a single entity. Reality reveals a more nuanced picture. Healthcare professionals may object to a given action on numerous grounds. They may oppose an action because of its ends, its means, or because of factors that lay outside of both ends and means. Our paper develops a taxonomy of CO, which makes it (...) possible to describe the refusals of healthcare professional with greater finesse. The application of this development will potentially allow for greater subtlety in public policy and academic discussions – some species of CO could be permitted while others could be prohibited. (shrink)

Although recent research suggests that women are underrepresented in philosophy after initial philosophy courses, there have been relatively few empirical investigations into the factors that lead to this early drop-off in women’s representation. In this paper, we present the results of empirical investigations at a large American public university that explore various factors contributing to women’s underrepresentation in philosophy at the undergraduate level. We administered climate surveys to hundreds of students completing their Introduction to Philosophy course and examined differences in (...) women’s and men’s feelings of belonging, comfort, and confidence in the philosophy classroom. We present findings suggesting various factors that contribute to women’s lower willingness to continue in philosophy compared to men’s, including perceptions about intuition-based methods in philosophy, the usefulness of the philosophy major, philosophy as a male discipline, and philosophical abilities as innate talents. We conclude by providing some suggestions for improving undergraduate philosophy courses in ways that would increase women’s willingness to continue in philosophy and may improve the courses for all students. (shrink)

It is argued that the so-called fitting attitude- or buck-passing pattern of analysis may be applied to personal values too if the analysans is fine-tuned in the following way: An object has personal value for a person a, if and only if there is reason to favour it for a’s sake. One benefit with it is its wide range: different kinds of values are analysable by the same general formula. Moreover, by situating the distinguishing quality in the attitude rather than (...) the reason part, the analysis admits that personal value is recognizable as a value not only by the person for whom it has personal value, but for everyone else too. We thereby avoid facing two completely different notions of value, viz., one pertaining to impersonal value, and another to personal value. The analysis also elucidates why we are justified in our concern for objects that are valuable for us; if value just is, as it is suggested, the existence of reasons for such a concern, the justification is immediately forthcoming. (shrink)

Here we respond to Shaw et al., and show why the application of Conscientious Objection cannot be dismissed from cases of organ donation, where the donor is presumed to be dead.

Kant’s view that freedom is a “kind of causality” seems to conflict with his claim that the categories of the understanding – including causality – can only be applied objectively to sensible phaenomena, never to supersensible noumena, as freedom is only possible for the latter. I argue that only Kant’s theory of symbolic presentation, according to which the category of cause is applied merely analogically to freedom, can dispel this threatening inconsistency. Unlike it is commonly thought, one cannot here use (...) the category of cause in its unschematised form to think freedom as causality, for its mere logical significance does not suffice for the practical reality of freedom. Symbolic cognition in turn is not unschematised but indirect schematized presentation. Ultimately I will show that symbolic cognition is a necessary condition of moral agency – but not of morality itself – for without it we could not cognize and hence self-consciously use our freedom to act from the moral law. (shrink)

The distinction between the agent-relative and the agent-neutral plays a prominent role in recent attempts to taxonomize normative theories. Its importance extends to most areas in practical philosophy, though. Despite its popularity, the distinction remains difficult to get a good grip on. In part this has to do with the fact that there is no consensus concerning the sort of objects to which we should apply the distinction. Thomas Nagel distinguishes between agent-neutral and agent-relative values, reasons, and principles; Derek Parfit (...) focuses on normative theories (and the aims they provide to agents), David McNaughton and Piers Rawling focus on rules and reasons, Skorupski on predicates, and there are other suggestions too. Some writers suspect that we fundamentally talk about one and the same distinction. This work is about practical reasons for action rather than theoretical reasons for belief. Moreover, focus is on whether reasons do or do not essentially refer to particular agents. A challenge that undermines the dichotomy in this sense is posed. After having rejected different attempts to defend the distinction, it is argued that there is a possible defence that sets out from Jonathan Dancy’s recent distinction between enablers and favourers. (shrink)

Alongside the photographs are short pieces of critical commentary by Vicki Karaminas and Toni Johnson-Woods, shedding light on the city's changing culture and how this is expressed through the clothing choices of ordinary city-dwellers ...

Up until the end of the twentieth century, the dystopia was a practically nonexistent genre in Finnish literature. However, since the turn of the century, there has been a marked dystopian turn. In addition to the anxieties associated with the passing of the millennium, emerging global issues such as digital development, environmental problems, and terrorism have contributed to the ongoing popularity of dystopian fiction.1 At the same time, Finnish literature has been strongly influenced by the trends of international book markets. (...) For example, the unprecedented popularity of dystopian young adult literature has inspired Finnish authors. In the past ten years, a number of writers have published... (shrink)

Newborn neurons are generated in the adult hippocampus from a pool of self‐renewing stem cells located in the subgranular zone (SGZ) of the dentate gyrus. Their activation, proliferation, and maturation depend on a host of environmental and cellular factors but, until recently, the contribution of local neuronal circuitry to this process was relatively unknown. In their recent publication, Song and colleagues have uncovered a novel circuit‐based mechanism by which release of the neurotransmitter, γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA), from parvalbumin‐expressing (PV) interneurons, can (...) hold radial glia‐like (RGL) stem cells of the adult SGZ in a quiescent state. This tonic GABAergic signal, dependent upon the activation of γ2 subunit‐containing GABAA receptors of RGL stem cells, can thus prevent their proliferation and subsequent maturation or return them to quiescence if previously activated. PV interneurons are thus capable of suppressing neurogenesis during periods of high network activity and facilitating neurogenesis when network activity is low. (shrink)

This paper applies Paul Grobstein's theory of science as story telling and story revising to history. The purpose of drawing such links is to show that in our current age when disciplinary borders are becoming increasingly blurred, what may be effective research practice for one discipline, may have some useful insights for another. It argues that what Grobstein advocates for science makes just as much sense for history and that historians have long recognised in their own discipline many of the (...) points Grobstein raises. It examines the changing role of stories dependant upon their cultural context and the emergence of global stories due to advances in technology. Such advances also challenge traditional methods of telling the story. It suggests that we may be entering a period which demands a new discourse on the relationship between human knowledge, understanding, and culture. (shrink)

People are prone to ascribe value to persons they love. However, the relation between love and value is far from straightforward. This is particularly evident given certain views on the nature of love. Setting out from the idea that what causes us to have an attitude towards an object need not be found in the intentional content of the attitude, this paper depicts love as an attitude that takes non‐fungible persons as intentional objects. Taking this view as a starting point, (...) the paper shows why it is difficult to combine with certain views on value. The main challenge comes from the idea that value judgments are universalizable. This view squares badly with the thought that the people whom we love are irreplaceable. Introducing the idea that properties may have different functions in the intentional content of the attitude, this paper determines what precisely it is about love that makes it hard to combine with universalizability. Moreover, it suggests two ways of meeting this challenge. (shrink)