Serine proteinase cleavage of proteins is essential to a wide variety of biological processes and is primarily regulated by protein inhibitors. Many inhibitors are conformationally rigid simulations of optimal serine proteinase substrates, which makes them highly efficient competitive inhibitors of target proteinases. In contrast, members of the serpin family of serine proteinase inhibitors display extensive flexibility and polymorphism, particularly in their reactive site segments and in β‐sheet secondary structure, which can take up and expel strands. Reactive site and β‐sheet polymorphism (...) appear to be coupled in the serpins and may account for the extreme stability of serpinproteinase complexes through the insertion of the reactive site strand into a β‐sheet. These unusual properties may have opened an adaptive pathway of proteinase regulation that was unavailable to the conformationally rigid proteinase inhibitors. (shrink)

This reader has been assembled in response to increasing dissatisfaction among a growing number of international relations scholars with the currently dominant theory of realism as well as in recognition of the large number of newly independent states which are having to write new constitutions and develop foreign relations. The book includes excerpts and essays from political theory and international relations which provide a starting point for further study of these subjects. It draws together writings representing two distinct traditions and (...) demonstrates their interconnections. In political theory, excerpts are drawn from classical texts which have an important bearing on problems of international relations. In international relations, the collection includes essays which have had a seminal influence on the development of this discipline. (shrink)

COVID-19 has uncovered the vulnerabilities, inequalities and fragility present within our social community which has exposed and exacerbated the pre-existing racial and socioeconomic inequalities that disproportionately affect health outcomes for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people. Such disparities are fuelled by complex socioeconomic health determinants and longstanding structural inequalities. This paper aims to explore the inequalities and vulnerabilities of BAME communities laid bare by the Public Health England (PHE) reports published in June 2020, concluding with suggested strategies to address (...) inequalities in a post COVID-19 recovery. (shrink)

This essay is an inquiry into John McDowell’s thinking on ‘subjectivity.’ The project consists in two parts. On the one hand, I will discuss how McDowell understands and responds to the various issues he is tackling; on the other, I will approach relevant issues concerning subjectivity by considering different aspects of it: a subject as a perceiver, knower, thinker, speaker, agent, person and (self-) conscious being in the world. The inquiry begins by identifying and resolving a tension generated by the (...) very idea of ‘rational animal’: human beings are at the same time natural and rational. Later the inquiry proceeds by considering how McDowell’s notion of ‘second nature’ enables us to be human subjects with many faces. By going through the diagnoses and responses of McDowell, two central problems in modern and contemporary philosophy – the narrow conception of nature and the Cartesian inner space model – are identified and repelled. In Episode N I first urge that we should leave room for a certain notion of ‘world.’ I further argue that mentality has many aspects, and to understand those aspects is to understand the many faces of human subject. In Episode Ⅰ the Aristotelian notion of ‘second nature’ is discussed in order to resolve the tension in the very idea of ‘rational animal.’ Later I reply to some worries about this maneuver, including the objection from Crispin Wright. Hans-Georg Gadamer’s distinction between world and environment is introduced and related to McDowell’s thinking. Episode Ⅱ discusses perception and knowledge; McDowell’s main target – the Cartesian inner space – is introduced and criticized. Barry Stroud’s and Simon Blackburn’s positions are evaluated. Later I connect the main theme of Mind and World to the present context; in particular, I discuss McDowell’s invocation of Donald Davidson and Immanuel Kant. And then I discuss a common accusation of idealism, and Robert Brandom’s accusation of ‘residual individualism.’ Episode Ⅲ concentrates on Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein, arguing that the master thesis behind the rule-following paradox is a version of the inner space model, and that Kripke’s Wittgenstein is not Wittgenstein. Martin Kusch’s objections are answered; Michael Dummett’s demand of reductionism is rebutted. After this, I turn to Davidson’s ‘no language’ claim, and discuss to what extent McDowell agrees with him. In Episode Ⅳ I evaluate objections from Hubert Dreyfus concerning action and agency. I discuss how Dreyfus and Maurice Merleau-Ponty commit ‘the Myth of the Disembodied Intellect’ identified by McDowell. I answer Michael Ayer’s charge of intellectualism in passing. Later I bring in McDowell’s objections to Derek Parfit on personhood and to Davidson on the mind-body relation. In Episode Ⅴ I focus on consciousness and self-consciousness. McDowell applies his argument against Parfit to Kant, but Maximilian de Gaynesford dissents. I reply to his objections on McDowell’s behalf. I further connect this to McDowell’s attacks on the dualism of scheme and content. This leads to my McDowellian rejection to the existence of qualia, and further brings me to the debate between intentionalism and disjunctivism in the context of the argument from illusion. I argue against Tim Crane’s ways of conceiving issues about intentionalism and the argument from illusion. Varieties of disjunctivism are also discussed. In my Epilogue, I express my worry about McDowell’s notion of ‘self-determining subjectivity.’ According to McDowell, human freedom consists in causations in the space of reason, but as Richard Gaskin points out, a satisfying story of it is yet to be provided. I close this essay with some rough ideas about how to fill in the details of the McDowellian picture. (shrink)

In this paper I defend a pluralistic approach in understanding function, both in biological and other contexts. Talks about function are ubiquitous and crucial in biology, and it might be the key to bridge the “manifest image” and the “scientific image” identified by Sellars (1962). However, analysis of function has proven to be extremely difficult. The major puzzle is to make sense of “time-reversed causality”: how can property P be the cause of its realizer R? For example, “pumping blood” is (...) a property of hearts, but a property of hearts cannot be the cause of the presence of hearts, since properties cannot predate their realizers and be causes of them. In section 2 I discuss Wright’s etiological analysis, Cummins’ causal-role analysis, and their critics. In section 3 I defend a version of the “consensus without unity” strategy proposed by Godfrey-Smith from Christopher Boorse’s recent critique (2002). In Section 4 I conclude by reflecting on the relation between functional discourses and physicalism. (shrink)

An exploration of our fall from the pinnacle of human evolution 200,000 years ago and how we can begin our return. Explores recent neurological and psychological research on the brain and the role of plant biochemistry in human brain expansion. Explains how humanity's prehistoric diet change led to a neurodegenerative condition characterized by aggression and a fearful perception of the world. Outlines a strategy of raw foods, tantric sexuality, shamanic practices, and entheogens to reverse our mental degeneration and restore our (...) advanced abilities. Over a period of a million years the human brain expanded at an increasingly rapid rate, and then, 200,000 years ago, the expansion abruptly stopped. Modern science has overlooked this in order to maintain that we are at the pinnacle of our evolution. However, the halt in brain expansion explains not only recently uncovered anomalies within the human brain but also the global traditions of an earthly paradise lost and of humanity's degeneration from our original state of perpetual wonder and joy. Drawing on more than 20 years of research, authors Tony Wright and Graham Gynn explore how our modern brains are performing far below their potential and how we can unlock our higher abilities and return to the euphoria of Eden. They explain how for millions of years early forest-dwelling humans were primarily consuming the hormone-rich sex organs of plants--fruit--each containing a highly complex biochemical cocktail evolved to influence DNA transcription, rapid brain development, and elevated neural and pineal gland activity. Citing recent neurological and psychological studies, the authors explain how the loss of our symbiotic fruit-based diet led to a progressive neurodegenerative condition characterized by aggressive behaviors, a fearful perception of the world, and the suppression of higher artistic, mathematical, and spiritual abilities. The authors show how many shamanic and spiritual traditions were developed to counteract our decline. They outline a strategy of raw foods, tantric sexuality, shamanic practices, and entheogen use to reverse our degeneration, restore our connection with the plant world, and regain the bliss and peace of the brain of Eden"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Dung’s abstract argumentation frameworks have had a very significant role in the rise in interest in argumentation throughout this century. In this paper we will explore the impact of this seminal idea on a specific application domain, AI and Law. Argumentation is central to legal reasoning and there had been a considerable amount of work on it in AI and Law before Dung’s paper. It had, however, been rather fragmented. We argue that the abstract argumentation frameworks had a unifying effect (...) by offering a means of relating previously diverse work. We also discuss how the particular demands of legal systems have led to developments building on the basic notions of abstract argumentation. (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)

dialectical frameworks (ADFs) are generalizations of Dung argumentation frameworks where arbitrary relationships among arguments can be formalized. This additional expressibility comes with the price of higher computational complexity, thus an understanding of potentially easier subclasses is essential. Compared to Dung argumentation frameworks, where several subclasses such as acyclic and symmetric frameworks are well understood, there has been no in-depth analysis for ADFs in such direction yet (with the notable exception of bipolar ADFs). In this work, we introduce certain subclasses of (...) ADFs and investigate their properties. In particular, we show that for acyclic ADFs, the different semantics coincide. On the other hand, we show that the concept of symmetry is less powerful for ADFs and further restrictions are required to achieve results that are similar to the known ones for Dung’s frameworks. A particular such subclass (support-free symmetric ADFs) turns out to be closely related to argumentation frameworks with collective attacks (SETAFs); we investigate this relation in detail and obtain as a by-product that even for SETAFs symmetry is less powerful than for AFs. We also discuss the role of odd-length cycles in the subclasses we have introduced. Finally, we analyse the expressiveness of the ADF subclasses we introduce in terms of signatures. (shrink)

In 1995, in his seminal paper introducing the abstract argumentation framework, Dung has also established the first relationship between this framework and a logical framework (in this case: logic programming). Since that time, a lot of work have pursued this path, proposing different definitions, uses and exhibiting distinct relationships between argumentation and logic. In this paper, we present a survey of existing works about this topic and more especially those that address the following question: “How logic has been used for (...) capturing various aspects or parts of Dung’s argumentation”. This survey covers many different approaches but is not intended to be totally exhaustive due to the huge quantity of papers in this scope. Moreover, due to the fact that each approach has its own specificities, sometimes antagonistic with the other approaches, and is also justified by its own context of definition or use, the aim of this survey is not to identify one approach as being better than another. (shrink)

Afrocentrism. Eurocentrism. Caribbean Studies. British Studies. To the forces of cultural nationalism hunkered down in their camps, this bold hook sounds a liberating call. There is, Paul Gilroy tells us, a culture that is not specifically African, American, Caribbean, or British, but all of these at once, a black Atlantic culture whose themes and techniques transcend ethnicity and nationality to produce something new and, until now, unremarked. Challenging the practices and assumptions of cultural studies, The Black Atlantic also complicates and (...) enriches our understanding of modernism. Debates about postmodernism have cast an unfashionable pall over questions of historical periodization. Gilroy bucks this trend by arguing that the development of black culture in the Americas arid Europe is a historical experience which can be called modern for a number of clear and specific reasons. For Hegel, the dialectic of master and slave was integral to modernity, and Gilroy considers the implications of this idea for a transatlantic culture. In search of a poetics reflecting the politics and history of this culture, he takes us on a transatlantic tour of the music that, for centuries, has transmitted racial messages and feeling around the world, from the Jubilee Singers in the nineteenth century to Jimi Hendrix to rap. He also explores this internationalism as it is manifested in black writing from the "double consciousness" of W. E. B. Du Bois to the "double vision" of Richard Wright to the compelling voice of Toni Morrison. In a final tour de force, Gilroy exposes the shared contours of black and Jewish concepts of diaspora in order both to establish a theoretical basis for healing rifts between blacks and Jews in contemporary culture and to further define the central theme of his book: that blacks have shaped a nationalism, if not a nation, within the shared culture of the black Atlantic. (shrink)

Here, Bob Hale and Crispin Wright assemble the key writings that lead to their distinctive neo-Fregean approach to the philosophy of mathematics. In addition to fourteen previously published papers, the volume features a new paper on the Julius Caesar problem; a substantial new introduction mapping out the program and the contributions made to it by the various papers; a section explaining which issues most require further attention; and bibliographies of references and further useful sources. It will be recognized as (...) the most powerful presentation yet of a neo-Fregean program. (shrink)

Recasting important questions about truth and objectivity in new and helpful terms, his book will become a focus in the contemporary debates over realism, and ...

The biological membranes of eukaryotic cells harbor sensitive surveillance systems to establish, sense, and maintain characteristic physicochemical properties that ultimately define organelle identity. They are fundamentally important for membrane homeostasis and play active roles in cellular signaling, protein sorting, and the formation of vesicular carriers. Here, we compare the molecular mechanisms of Mga2 and Ire1, two sensors involved in the regulation of fatty acid desaturation and the response to unfolded proteins and lipid bilayer stress in order to identify their commonalities (...) and specializations. We will speculate on the cellular significance of membrane property sensors in other organelles and discuss their putative mechanisms. Based on these findings, we propose membrane property sensors as an emerging class of proteins with wide implications for organelle communication and function. (shrink)

This paper argues that healthcare aims at the good of health, that this pursuit of the good necessitates conscience, and that conscience is required in every practical judgement, including clinical...

Florence Ashley has argued that requiring patients with gender dysphoria to undergo an assessment and referral from a mental health professional before undergoing hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is unethical and may represent an unconscious hostility towards transgender people. We respond, first, by showing that Ashley has conflated the self-reporting of symptoms with self-diagnosis, and that this is not consistent with the standard model of informed consent to medical treatment. Second, we note that the model of informed consent involved in cosmetic (...) surgery resembles the model Ashley defends, and that psychological assessment and referral is recognised as an important aspect of such a model. Third, we suggest that the increased prevalence of psychiatric morbidity in the transgender population arguably supports the requirement of assessment and referral from a mental health professional prior to undergoing HRT. (shrink)

In her paper ‘Cosmetic surgery and conscientious objection’, Minerva rightly identifies cosmetic surgery as an interesting test case for the question of conscientious objection in medicine. Her treatment of this important subject, however, seems problematic. It is argued that Minerva's suggestion that a doctor has a prima facie duty to satisfy patient preferences even against his better clinical judgment, which we call Patient Preference Absolutism, must be regarded with scepticism. This is because it overlooks an important distinction regarding autonomy's meaning (...) and place in clinical practice, and it makes obsolete the important concepts of expert clinical judgment and beneficence. Finally, we discuss two ideas which emerge from consideration of cosmetic surgery in relation to conscientious objection. These are the possible analogy between clinical judgment and conscientious objection, and the possible role the goals of medicine can play in defining the scope of conscientious objection. (shrink)

Book IV of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations concerns two rival economic theories, Mercantilism and Physiocracy. The latter, François Quesnay's system, occupies only the ninth and final chapter, and it begins with a stunning dismissal. Yet, fifteen pages later, Smith praises this theory to the skies. That cries out for explanation. Like Mercantilism, Smith's system emphasizes commerce, whereas Quesnay's is confined to agriculture. But like Physiocracy, Smith's system is built on individual liberty, whereas Mercantilism is one of government control. Despite (...) his initial put-down, Smith is naturally inclined more toward Quesnay's philosophy. And the main thesis of my paper is to suggest one reason for this that has not previously been brought to light, and that can explain Smith's extravagant praise for it. Quesnay employs a Newtonian scientific method different from the one emphasized in Smith's early ‘Astronomy’ treatise, a method Smith first prominently introduced a decade after his meetings with Quesnay, in Wealth of Nations and Smith's eulogy for Hume, and in the sixth edition of his Theory of Moral Sentiments. (shrink)

In his pioneering work on Abstract Argumentation, P.M. Dung set a wide scenario by connecting stable models in Logic and Game Theory to simple Abstract Argumentation Frameworks ( AAF), which are essentially directed graphs in which arguments are represented as nodes, and the attack relation is represented by arrows. From such abstraction and simplicity, it is possible to capture important properties in many different fields. The Stable Marriage ( SM) problem is exactly one of such representable problems. Given two sets (...) of individuals partitioned into men and women, a matching is stable when there does not exist any man-woman match by which both man and woman would be individually better off than they are with the person to which they are currently matched. Stable matchings correspond to stable extensions if an AAF is correctly generated from the given SM problem. In this paper we elaborate on the original formulation by Dung, by also encoding SM problems with ties and incomplete preference lists into AAFs. Moreover, we use Weighted Abstract Argumentation to represent optimality criteria in the optimal extension of SM problems, where some matchings are better than others: criteria may consider only the preference of either men, or women, or a more global view obtained by combining the preferences of both. (shrink)

Hoping to bring some objectivity to the debate, Ben-Moshe has argued that conscientious objection in medicine should be accommodated based on its concordance with the ‘impartial spectator’, a metaphor for conscience drawn from the writings of Adam Smith. This response finds fault with this account on two fronts: first, that its claim to objectivity is unsubstantiated; second, that it implicitly relies on moral absolutes, despite claiming that conscience is a social construct, thereby calling its coherence and claims into question. Briefly, (...) a traditional account of conscience is then described, before ending with a related thesis for future discussion. (shrink)

The notion of similarity has been studied in many areas of Computer Science; in a general sense, this concept is defined to provide a measure of the semantic equivalence between two pieces of knowledge, expressing how “close” their meaning can be regarded. In this work, we study similarity as a tool useful to improve the representation of arguments, the interpretation of the relations between arguments, and the semantic evaluation associated with the arguments in the argumentative process. In this direction, we (...) present a novel mechanism to determine the similarity between two arguments based on descriptors representing particular aspects associated with these arguments. This mechanism involves a comparison process influenced by the context in which the process develops, where this context provides the relevant aspects that need to be analyzed in the application domain. Then, we use this similarity measure as a quantity to compute the result of attacks and supports in the argumentation process. These valuations, applied to a Bipolar Argumentation Frameworks, allowed us to refine the argument relations, providing the tools to establish a family of new argumentation semantics that considers the similarity between arguments as a crucial part for the argumentation process. (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)

This brief and remarkably inexpensive book by the distinguished Professor Maehle of Durham University is composed of five detailed studies of aspects of nineteenth and twentieth century British med...

Self-managing teams have been predicted to break down organizational hierarchies and sex-segregated functional divisions. Based on participant observation and interviews with 39 men and women in service-oriented self-managing teams, the authors found that the metaphor of family emerged in interviews as a popular way to describe teams' interaction and social relations. The ways that team members used the family metaphor revealed that women were often perceived in familial roles that the authors argue encourage emotional labor. Although relational tasks may not (...) directly reproduce traditional gender power relations in teams, women can face difficulties taking on more instrumental team tasks. The authors propose that the persistence of family metaphors sustains the organizational gender categorization that self-managing teams as work-based, cross-functional groups were supposed to help eliminate. To the extent that this is the case, it suggests the importance of exploring the gendered organizational cultures that exist alongside structural arrangements. (shrink)

The conventional historical account of the concept of brain death credits developments and discoveries of the twentieth century with its inception, emphasizing the role of technological developments and professional conferences, notably the 1968 Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death. This essay argues that the French physician Eugène Bouchut anticipated the concept of brain death as early as 1846. Correspondence with Bouchut’s understanding of brain death and one important contemporary concept of brain (...) death is established then contrasted with current trends of defining death as the death of the brain. The philosophical factors that influenced Bouchut and the later developments of concepts of brain death are considered, with special reference to mechanistic philosophy and vitalism. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION The appeal to teleological principles of explanation within the body of natural science has had an unfortunate history. ...

Drawing from a keynote panel held at the hybrid 25th International Philosophy of Nursing Conference, this discussion paper examines the question of epistemic silence in nursing from five different perspectives. Contributors include US‐based scholar Claire Valderama‐Wallace, who meditated on ecosystems of settler colonial logics of nursing; American scholar Lucinda Canty discussed the epistemic silencing of nurses of colour; Canadian scholar Amelie Perron interrogated the use of disobedience and parrhesia in and for nursing; Canada‐based scholar Ismalia De Sousa considered what nursing (...) protects in its silences; and Australian scholar Janice Gullick spoke to trans invisibility in nursing. (shrink)

1. The benefits resulting from a combination of quantitative (e.g. probabilistic) and qualitative (e.g. logic-based) reasoning are widely acknowledged (e.g. see Domingos et al., 2006; Poole, 2011)....

The article examines the role played by policy advice institutions in the governance of ethically controversial new and emerging science and technology in Europe. The empirical analysis, which aims to help close a gap in the literature, focuses on the evolution, role and functioning of national ethics advisory bodies (EABs) in Europe. EABs are expert bodies whose remit is to issue recommendations regarding ethical aspects of new and emerging science and technology. Negative experiences with the impacts of science and technology (...) in the past have resulted in calls for increased transparency and broader participation and pluralism in expert advice and policy decision-making. Do national EABs function as inclusive, anticipatory “hybrid forums”? Or do they resemble more “classical” expert-oriented bodies, inspired by technocratic or decisionist approaches? As part of the empirical analysis of the role and functioning of institutional ethical advisory structures in 32 European countries, an extensive analysis of EAB websites and the content of publicly available documents on such institutions has been carried out, supplemented by an online survey of representatives of the EABs. One major finding of the empirical analysis is the very uneven distribution of “hybrid forum” features of EABs across Europe. (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)

Overtaxed by the realities laid bare in the pandemic, nursing has imminent decisions to make. The exigencies of pandemic times overextend a health care infrastructure already groaning under the weight of inequitable distribution of resources and care commodified for profit. We can choose to prioritise different values. Invoking philosopher of science Isbelle Stengers's manifesto for slow science, this is not the only nursing that is possible. With this paper, I pick up threads of nursing's historical ontology, drawing previous scholarship on (...) the historical narratives nurses use to understand themselves. Peeling back nursing's myth to alternate points of origin allows me to consider alternate lines of flight, a speculative adventure in paths not taken but paths that exist nonetheless. I go on to examine what a collective ethic of nursing could be, when we make space for these alternate histories, considering the confluences and conflicts that enable nurses to care and those that inhibit them from doing so. The imperative for this lies in the central importance of the reproductive labour of nursing health care, which leads me to a critique of nursing's capitulation to the pressures of late stage capitalism. This is a problem with ethical and ontological implications both for nursing, and also for those who require nursing care, an imperative to think about the kinds of present/futures for health, care, and health care we might cocreate in collaboration and solidarity with the communities in which nurses are imbricated, shedding the trappings of neoliberalism. There is significant power in the vision and praxis of 28 million nurses and midwives worldwide. Our ethics can guide our imagination which can in turn create possibility. This kind of endeavour—that of dreams and imagination—leads us to what could be, if only we leap. (shrink)

"Dogmatism" is a term renovated by James Pryor [2000] to stand for a certain kind of neo-Moorean response to Scepticism and an associated conception of the architecture of basic perceptual warrant. Pryor runs the response only for (some kinds of) perceptual knowledge but here I will be concerned with its general structure and potential as a possible global anti-sceptical strategy. Something like it is arguably also present in recent writings of Burge 1 and Peacocke.2 If the global strategy could succeed, (...) (...) it would pre-empt any role in the diagnosis and treatment of sceptical paradoxes for the kind of notion of entitlement (rational, non-evidential warrant) I have proposed elsewhere [Wright 2004]. But my overarching contention will be that Dogmatism is, generally and locally, too problematic a stance to be helpful in that project. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel argumentation framework to support Issue-Based Information System style debates on design alternatives, by providing an automatic quantitative evaluation of the positions put forward. It also identifies several formal properties of the proposed quantitative argumentation framework and compares it with existing non-numerical abstract argumentation formalisms. Finally, the paper describes the integration of the proposed approach within the design Visual Understanding Environment software tool along with three case studies in engineering design. The case studies show the potential (...) for a competitive advantage of the proposed approach with respect to state-of-the-art engineering design methods. (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)