BackgroundCancer patients often suffer from psychological distress during or after cancer treatment, but the use of psycho-oncological care among cancer patients is limited. One of the reasons might be that the way psycho-oncological care is organized, does not fit patients’ preferences. This study aimed to obtain detailed insight into cancer patients’ preferences regarding the organization of psycho-oncological care.Methods18 semi-structured interviews were conducted among cancer patients. Patients completed psycho-oncological treatment between 2015 and 2020 at the psychology department in a general hospital (...) or a center specialized in psychological cancer care in the Netherlands. The interview comprised questions related to preferences regarding the institute where to receive treatment, the psychologist who provides treatment, and the type of treatment, as well as questions related to experienced barriers and facilitators to receive psycho-oncological care. Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analyzed individually by two coders into key issues and themes.ResultsRegarding the institute, easy accessibility and prompt availability of psychol-oncological care were considered important. Regarding the psychologist, most participants had a strong preference to be treated by a psychologist specialized in cancer or other somatic diseases. Individual face-to-face therapy was preferred above other types of treatment. Several barriers were mentioned to receive psycho-oncological treatment, among which poor accessibility to psycho-oncological care, lack of knowledge on the possibilities for psycho-oncological treatment, and stigma. Most frequently mentioned facilitators were being assertive to ask for help, having a good relationship with the healthcare professional, and the integration of psycho-oncological support within medical cancer care.ConclusionFrom the patient’s perspective, the organization of psycho-oncological care for cancer patients should focus on easy accessibility and availability, delivered by specialized psychologists, and integration in medical cancer care. Online and group therapy are acceptable, but individual face-to-face therapy is preferred. It is warranted to increase awareness on psycho-oncological care targeting both patients and healthcare providers. (shrink)

In recent years, to protect the rights and welfare of human subjects, institutions in the USA have begun to set up programmes to monitor ongoing medical research. These programmes provide routine, onsite oversight, and thus go beyond existing oversight such as investigating suspected misconduct or reviewing paperwork provided by investigators. However, because of a lack of guidelines and evidence, institutions have had little guidance in setting up their programmes. To help institutions make the right choices, we used interviews and document (...) analysis to study how and why 11 US institutions have set up their monitoring programmes. Although these programmes varied considerably, we were able to distinguish two general types. ‘Compliance’ programmes on the one hand were part of the institutional review board office and set up to ensure compliance with regulations. Investigators’ participation was mandatory. Monitors focused on documentation. Investigators could be disciplined, and could be obliged to take corrective actions. ‘Quality-improvement’ programmes on the other hand were part of a separate office. Investigators requested to be monitored. Monitors focused more on actual research conduct. Investigators and other parties received feedback on how to improve the research process. Although both types of programmes have their drawbacks and advantages, we argue that if institutions want to set up monitoring programmes, quality improvement is the better choice: it can help foster an atmosphere of trust between investigators and the institutional review board, and can help raise the standards for the protection of human subjects. (shrink)

Onderzoek naar idealisme en betrokkenheid onder de Nederlandse bevolking.

Rationalism offers an account of moral properties as a subset of the properties which serve to rationalize right actions, and these properties are fit to be the referents of our moral terms. That fitness can be exploited in constructing an externalist theory of reference determination for these terms. The resulting externalist theory draws support from standard responses to Moral Twin-Earth scenarios. The relevance of these responses to moral semantics has recently beenvigorously challenged by Dowell and by Schroeter and Schroeter. The (...) social character of meaning relations, which can explain the openness of questions about an analysis, may thereby also make Twin-Earth judgements beside the point. But the resources available to translators go beyond semantic competence and it is these resources that nonetheless make the Moral Twin-Earth responses relevant. (shrink)

According to the dominant computational approach in cognitive science, cognitive agents are digital computers; according to the alternative approach, they are dynamical systems. This target article attempts to articulate and support the dynamical hypothesis. The dynamical hypothesis has two major components: the nature hypothesis (cognitive agents are dynamical systems) and the knowledge hypothesis (cognitive agents can be understood dynamically). A wide range of objections to this hypothesis can be rebutted. The conclusion is that cognitive systems may well be dynamical systems, (...) and only sustained empirical research in cognitive science will determine the extent to which that is true. (shrink)

This paper has two parts. In the first part, I concede an error in an argument I have given for the incompatibility of free will and determinism. I go on to show how to modify my argument so as to avoid this error, and conclude that the thesis that free will and determinism are compatible continues to be—to say the least—implausible. But if free will is incompatible with determinism, we are faced with a mystery, for free will undeniably exists, and (...) it also seems to be incompatible with indeterminism. In the second part of this paper, I will defend the conclusion that the concept of agent causation is of no use to the philosopher who wants to maintain that free will and indeterminism are compatible. I conclude that free will remains a mystery---that is, that free will undeniably exists and that there is a strong and unanswered prima facie case for its impossibility. (shrink)

This volume tackles Gödel's two-stage project of first using Husserl's transcendental phenomenology to reconstruct and develop Leibniz' monadology, and then founding classical mathematics on the metaphysics thus obtained. The author analyses the historical and systematic aspects of that project, and then evaluates it, with an emphasis on the second stage.

An international legal agreement governing the global antimicrobial commons would represent the strongest commitment mechanism for achieving collective action on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Since AMR has important similarities to climate change—both are common pool resource challenges that require massive, long-term political commitments—the first article in this special issue draws lessons from various climate agreements that could be applicable for developing a grand bargain on AMR. We consider the similarities and differences between the Paris Climate Agreement and current governance structures for (...) AMR, and identify the merits and challenges associated with different international forums for developing a long-term international agreement on AMR. To be effective, fair, and feasible, an enduring legal agreement on AMR will require a combination of universal, differentiated, and individualized requirements, nationally determined contributions that are regularly reviewed and ratcheted up in level of ambition, a regular independent scientific stocktake to support evidence informed policymaking, and a concrete global goal to rally support. (shrink)

This book offers a new description of the significance of Hesiod's 'myth of the races' for ancient Greek and Roman authors, showing how the most detailed responses to this story go far beyond nostalgia for a lost 'Golden' age or hope of its return. Through a series of close readings, it argues that key authors from Plato to Juvenal rewrite the story to reconstruct 'Hesiod' more broadly as predecessor in forming their own intellectual and rhetorical projects; disciplines such as philosophy, (...) didactic poetry and satire all engage in implicit questions about 'Hesiodic' teaching. The first chapter introduces key issues; the second re-evaluates the account in Hesiod's Works and Days. A major chapter outlines Plato's use of Hesiod through close study of the Protagoras, Republic and Statesman. Subsequent chapters focus on Aratus' Phaenomena and Ovid's Metamorphoses; the final chapter, on the Octavia attributed to Seneca and Juvenal's sixth Satire, broadens ideas of Hesiod's reception in Rome. (shrink)

ON BROUWER, like other titles in the Wadsworth Philosopher's Series, offers a concise, yet comprehensive, introduction to this philosopher's most important ideas. Presenting the most important insights of well over a hundred seminal philosophers in both the Eastern and Western traditions, the Wadsworth Philosophers Series contains volumes written by scholars noted for their excellence in teaching and for their well-versed comprehension of each featured philosopher's major works and contributions. These titles have proven valuable in a number of ways. Serving as (...) standalone texts when tackling a philosophers' original sources or as helpful resources for focusing philosophy students' engagements with these philosopher's often conceptually daunting works, these titles have also gained extraordinary popularity with a lay readership and quite often serve as "refreshers" for philosophy instructors. (shrink)

Probably colour is the best worked-out example of allegedly neurophysiologically innate response categories determining percepts and percepts determining concepts, and hence biology fixing the basic categories implicit in the use of language. In this paper I argue against this view and I take C. L. Hardin's Color for Philosophers [1988] as my main target. I start by undermining the view that four unique hues stand apart from all other colour shades (Section 2) and the confidence that the solar spectrum is (...) naturally divided into four categories (Section 3). For such categories to be truly universal, they have to be true for all peoples and in Section 4 I show that Berlin and Kay's [1969] widely quoted theory of basic colour categories is not sufficiently supported to lend it any credibility.Having disposed of the view that inspection of language or ‘pure’ perception unveils the universal colour categories. I turn to neurophysiological and psychophysical theories of colour vision to see whether they provide a more solid basis for deciding what the innate response categories are. In Section 5 I show that Hardin's account of the opponent-process theory neither supports his view that ‘colour-coding’takes place early in the visual neural pathway, nor his view that knowledge of colour vision science will help us solve many philosophical mysteries about colour.In Section 6 I give a more detailed review of what is known today about the neurophysiology of colour vision and I show that there's nothing in the brain which could be called a colour module, let alone a module with homunculi for particular basic colour categories. In Section 7 I show that psychophysical models do not support such rigid constraints on category formation either. Hence (Section 8), at least in the case of colour, current science supports a plasticity in the formation of categories that goes far beyond the requirements of those naturalistic philosophers who would like to ground primitive concepts in biology. (shrink)

Though most contemporary philosophers and scientists accept a physicalist view of mind, the recent surge of interest in the problem of consciousness has put the mind /body problem back into play. The physicalists' lack of success in dispelling the air of residual mystery that surrounds the question of how consciousness might be physically explained has led to a proliferation of options. Some offer alternative formulations of physicalism, but others forgo physicalism in favour of views that are more dualistic or that (...) bring in mentalistic features at the ground- floor level of reality as in pan-proto-psychism. My aim here is to give an overview of the recent philosophic discussion to serve as a map in locating issues and options. I will not offer a comprehensive survey of the debate or mark every important variant to be found in the recent literature. I will mark the principal features of the philosophic landscape that one might use as general orientation points in navigating the terrain. I will focus in particular on three central and interrelated ideas: those of emergence, reduction, and nonreductive physicalism. The third of these, which has emerged as more or less the majority view among current philosophers of mind, combines a pluralist view about the diversity of what needs to be explained by science with an underlying metaphysical commitment to the physical as the ultimate basis of all that is real. The view has been challenged from both left and right, on one side from dualists and on the other from hard core reductive materialists. Despite their differences, those critics agree in finding nonreductive physicalism an unacceptable and perhaps even incoherent position. They agree as well in treating reducibility as the essential criterion for physicality; they differ only about whether the criterion can be met. Reductive physicalists argue that it can, and dualists deny it. (shrink)

It has been observed many times before that, as yet, there are no encompassing, integrated theories of mathematical practice available.To witness, as we currently do, a variety of schools in this field elaborating their philosophical frameworks, and trying to sort out their differences in the course of doing so, is also to be constantly reminded of the fact that a lot of epistemic aspects, extremely relevant to this task, remain dramatically underexamined. This volume wants to contribute to the stock of (...) studies filling this perceived lacuna. It contains papers by established, upcoming, as well as beginning scholars, covering general, metaphilosophical themes such as naturalism, semiotics, pragmaticism, or empiricism, next to more specific topics including the unity of mathematical theories, thruth-flow in mathematics, diagrammatic reasoning, erroneous argumentation, or numerical analysis. (shrink)

Discourse Representation Theory is a specific name for the work of Hans Kamp in the area of dynamic interpretation of natural language. Also, it has gradually become a generic term for proposals for dynamic interpretation of natural language in the same spirit. These proposals have in common that each new sentence is interpreted in terms of the contribution it makes to an existing piece of interpreted discourse. The interpretation conditions for sentences are given as instructions for updating the representation of (...) the discourse. (shrink)

... rushing around like the red queen in a world where change is virtuous merely because it is change, we can start by putting up some resistance. ...

The Lockean theory of property licenses unilateral appropriation on the condition that there be ‘enough, and as good left in common for others’. However, the meaning of this proviso is all but clear. This article argues that the proviso is centered around the Lockean theory of freedom. To be free, I argue, we must be ‘non-subjected’ in the exercise of our rights, including our rights to appropriate. We enjoy such freedom only when the ability to exercise our rights does not (...) depend on others. That can obtain if literally enough and as good is left in common. But it can also obtain in other ways, for example through competitive labour markets. The latter offer something as good as ‘enough and as good’. (shrink)

Guarded actions are changes with preconditions acting as a guard. Guarded action models are multimodal Kripke models with the valuations replaced by guarded actions. Call guarded action logic the result of adding product updates with guarded action models to PDL (propositional dynamic logic). We show that guarded action logic reduces to PDL.

Can the straight line be analysed mathematically such that it does not fall apart into a set of discrete points, as is usually done but through which its fundamental continuity is lost? And are there objects of pure mathematics that can change through time? The mathematician and philosopher L.E.J. Brouwer argued that the two questions are closely related and that the answer to both is "yes''. To this end he introduced a new kind of object into mathematics, the choice sequence. (...) But other mathematicians and philosophers have been voicing objections to choice sequences from the start. This book aims to provide a sound philosophical basis for Brouwer's choice sequences by subjecting them to a phenomenological critique in the style of the later Husserl. "It is almost as if one could hear the two rebels arguing their case in a European café or on a terrace, and coming to a common understanding, with both men taking their hat off to the other, in admiration and gratitude. Dr. van Atten has convincingly applied Husserl's method to Brouwer's program, and has equally convincingly applied Brouwer's intuition to Husserl's program. Both programs have come out the better." Piet Hut, professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, U.S.A. (shrink)

De werkelijkheid is dat wat niet verdwijnt ook als we er niet meer in geloven. Het is niet erg om dingen niet te weten, maar het is ook niet nodig om deze werkelijkheid in twijfel te trekken wanneer dit geloof aan het wankelen wordt gebracht. Om de weg niet kwijt te raken is het van belang om zo goed en zo kwaad als we kunnen te blijven onderscheiden tussen zinnig en onzinnig, tussen verstandig en ondoordacht, tussen goed geïnformeerd en de (...) kluts kwijt. Dit boek helpt de lezer onderscheid te maken tussen propaganda en betrouwbare experts, om de werkelijkheid zo nooit uit het oog te verliezen."--Publisher information. (shrink)

Consciousness and self-awareness seem intuitively linked, but how they intertwine is less than clear. Must one be self-aware in order to be consciousness? Indeed, is consciousness just a special type of self-awareness? Or perhaps it is the other way round: Is being self-aware a special way of being conscious? Discerning their connections is complicated by the fact that both the main relata themselves admit of many diverse forms and levels. One might be conscious or self- aware in many different ways (...) or respects, and to varying degrees. Thus the real questions of linkage must be posed more specifically. We need to ask not whether the two are bound in general, but whether and how being conscious in some specific sense and degree relates to some particular sort of self-awareness. Only those more specific questions are likely to have fully determinate answers. (shrink)

Most philosophers still tend to believe that mathematics is basically about producing formal proofs. A consequence of this view is that some aspects of mathematical practice are entirely lost from view. My contention is that it is precisely in those aspects that similarities can be found between practices in the exact sciences and in mathematics. Hence, if we are looking for a (more) unified treatment of science and mathematics it is necessary to incorporate these elements into our view of what (...) mathematics is about. As a helpful tool I introduce the notion of a mathematical argument as a more liberalized version of the notion of mathematical proof. (shrink)

Le culte grandiose de Kali, la Mère, son incomparable symbolisme, ses litanies et ses chants, embrasse l'âme de l'univers qu'il glorifie comme aucune conception religieuse ne le fit jamais. La terrifiante déesse sème la peste et les pires ravages sur ses pas, tout en accordant sa grâce et sa clémence à ses enfants assez hardis pour soulever l'horrible masque derrière lequel elle se cache la figure. Ceux-là retrouveront les traits radieux qui ont enchanté leur enfance. La sublime conception de Kali, (...) la Mère, découle d'une philosophie moniste qui s'écarte pourtant sensiblement de la philosophie Védanta de Shankara. Tous deux partent, il est vrai, de la même idée. Ils admettent l'un et l'autre une substance une, indivisible et éternelle, que les Védantins appellent Brahma et les adorateurs de Kali, la Mère, Siva. Mais il y a divergence quant aux manifestations. Pour Shankara il n'y a qu'illusion. Il tranche le lien qui rattache le phénomène à l'absolu. Il se demande qui a pu susciter l'apparence. Mais, l'absolu étant la vérité même, il n'a pu engendrer l'apparence pas plus que la lumière n'aurait pu engendrer l'obscurité. Qu'y avait-il donc de commun entre les Brahmas et Maya? A première vue il semble qu'il n'y a aucun rapport. Pour Shankara il n'était besoin d'aucune relation, puisque Maya n'existe pas en réalité et que le monde n'est que mirage. Le monde n'existe que pour l'esprit qui est lui-même sujet aux hallucinations. Adorer la Mère, c'est accepter l'univers dans ses aspects les plus terrifiants. Cette philosophie est diamétralement opposée au christianisme dans son culte du Dieu d'amour, du Père plein de miséricorde. Le christianisme enseigne que tout se fait pour notre bien, tandis que pour les adorateurs de Kali, l'univers est féroce et hostile à l'homme, qui avant tout doit se montrer supérieur aux événements. Mais Kali n'est pas seulement la destructrice. Si elle démolit inexorablement toutes les formes vitales qui ont fait leur temps et qui se détériorent, elle en crée au fur et à mesure des nouvelles. C'est dans cette conception de la Mère qu'il faut chercher tout d'abord le mystère de l'esprit indien. Dans son essence la plus intime la mère du monde est l'absolu, est Siva même. Comme telle elle représente la connaissance, l'entité et la joie absolues. Pour les adorateurs de Kali les mots Mantram Saham (je suis elle) renferment la clef de la vie et dissipent crainte et tristesse. (shrink)

When scientist investigate why things happen, they aim at giving an explanation. But what does a scientific explanation look like? In the first chapter (Theories of Scientific Explanation) of this book, the milestones in the debate on how to characterize scientific explanations are exposed. The second chapter (How to Study Scientific Explanation?) scrutinizes the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation, Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon and shows what went wrong. Next, it is the responsibility of current philosophers (...) of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a clever way. We call this clever way the pragmatic approach to scientific explanation and clarify briefly what this approach consists in. The third chapter (A Toolbox for Describing and Evaluating Explanatory Practices) elaborates the pragmatic approach by presenting a toolbox for analysing scientific explanation. In the last chapter (Examples of Descriptions and Evaluations of Explanatory Practices) the approach is illustrated with real-life examples of scientists aiming at explaining. (shrink)

The Danish theologian-philosopher K. E. Løgstrup is second in reputation in his homeland only to Søren Kierkegaard. He is best known outside Europe for his _The Ethical Demand_, first published in Danish in 1956 and published in an expanded English translation in 1997. _Beyond the Ethical Demand_ contains excerpts, translated into English for the first time, from the numerous books and essays Løgstrup continued to write throughout his life. In the first essay, he engages the critical response to _The Ethical (...) Demand,_ clarifying, elaborating, or defending his original positions. In the next three essays, he extends his contention that human ethics “demands” that we are concerned for the other by introducing the crucial concept of “sovereign expressions of life.” Like Levinas, Løgstrup saw in the phenomenon of “the other” the ground for his ethics. In his later works he developed this concept of “the sovereign expressions of life,” spontaneous phenomena such as trust, mercy, and sincerity that are inherently other-regarding. The last two essays connect his ethics with political life. Interest in Løgstrup in the English-speaking academic community continues to grow, and these important original sources will be essential tools for scholars exploring the further implications of his ethics and phenomenology. “K. E. Løgstrup’s work undoubtedly made in his time an original contribution to the field of moral philosophy and philosophy of religion. This translation makes extracts from his later publications on moral philosophy accessible to an English-speaking audience. I am again impressed by the depth of his ideas, which are certainly not outdated and still relevant for contemporary debates in moral philosophy.” —_Bert Musschenga, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam _ “Making a large part of Knud Løgstrup’s legacy accessible to the English-speaking public is an event of enormous cultural, philosophical and political importance—and we are all in debt to his disciple, Kies van Kooten Niekerk, and the University Press of Notre Dame, for making it happen. Løgstrup, alongside few other giants of 20th Century ethical thought, like Emmanuel Levinas or Hans Jonas, anticipated and articulated all the major challenges and urgent tasks with which the coming century is likely to confront the moral self. Our ethical discourse was all the poorer so far for being barred access to his findings and proposition. This will no longer be the case.” —_Zygmunt Bauman, emeritus, University of Leeds_ “The publication of an English translation of Knut Eljert Løgstrup's later works in ethics provides a wider readership with the opportunity to better understand his important contribution to ethics in the second half of the last century. With his notion of the _Sovereign Expressions of Life_ Løgstrup articulates his rejection of moral atomism that has become influential in recent times. The introduction and annotation by Kees van Kooten Niekerk are very helpful to see how Løgstrup's thought developed beyond _The Ethical Demand.” —__Hans S. Reinders, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam_. (shrink)

Dov Gabbay is a prolific logician just by himself. But beyond that, he is quite good at making other people investigate the many further things he cares about. As a result, King's College London has become a powerful attractor in our field worldwide. Thus, it is a great pleasure to be an organizer for one of its flagship events: the Augustus de Morgan Workshop of 2005. Benedikt Loewe and I proposed the topic of 'interactive logic' for this occasion, with an (...) emphasis on social software – the logical analysis and design of social procedures – and on games, arguably the formal interactive setting par excellence. This choice reflects current research interests in our logic community at ILLC Amsterdam and beyond. In this broad area of interfaces between logic, computer science, and game theory, this paper is my own attempt at playing Dov. I am, perhaps not telling, but at least asking other people to find out for me what I myself cannot. (shrink)

I raise the question of what cognitive attitude self-deception brings about. That is: what is the product of self-deception? Robert Audi and Georges Rey have argued that self-deception does not bring about belief in the usual sense, but rather “avowal” or “avowed belief.” That means a tendency to affirm verbally (both privately and publicly) that lacks normal belief-like connections to non-verbal actions. I contest their view by discussing cases in which the product of self-deception is implicated in action in a (...) way that exemplifies the motivational role of belief. Furthermore, by applying independent criteria of what it is for a mental state to be a belief, I defend the more intuitive view that being self-deceived that p entails believing that p. Beliefs (i) are the default for action relative to other cognitive attitudes (such as imagining and hypothesis) and (ii) have cognitive governance over the other cognitive attitudes. I explicate these two relations and argue that they obtain for the product of self-deception. (shrink)

_This is an account of his present thinking by an excellent philosopher who has been_ _among the two or three foremost defenders of the doctrine that determinism and_ _freedom are incompatible -- that logically we cannot have both. In his 1983 book,_ _An Essay on Free Will_ _, he laid out with unique clarity and force a fundamental_ _argument for this conclusion. What the argument comes to is that if determinism is_ _true, we are not free, since our actions are (...) effects of causal circumstances in the_ _remote past, and those circumstances are certainly not up to us. To that line of_ _thought, in the article below, by way of the supposition of a world of angels, he adds_ _something new. This is a fundamental difficulty with the freedom that we cannot_ _have if determinism is true. The difficulty, indeed a mystery, is one having to do with_ _the opposite of determinism -- indeterminism._. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen is a philosopher who became a Christian at the age of forty. His conversion was not a return to the religion of his childhood, but, on the contrary, consisted of the adoption of beliefs that had been held in explicit contempt by the Unitarian Sunday school teachers of his youth, the philosophers responsible for his professional training, and his colleagues in the philosophy department where he had been teaching for ten years at the time of his conversion.This (...) collection of classic writings represents van Inwagen’s attempts to answer the philosophical objections to Christianity that he encountered in these intellectually hostile environments. They include reflections on the charge that religious belief is belief that is unsupported by evidence, on arguments that purport to show that the doctrine of resurrection is metaphysically impossible, on the problem of evil, and on Hume’s famous argument against belief in miracles. (shrink)

Across numerous languages, the attitude verb "think" is learned later than other attitude verbs like "want." But why? This essays advances a new hypothesis: children initially treat think as a veridical yet non-factive verb akin to a class of verbs I call "confirmatives." This hypothesis is argued to better explain existing data that troubles other hypotheses, and to find support from the ease with which children represent knowledge but not belief.

How can we best reconstruct the origin of a notion, its development, and possible spread to multiple fields? We present a pilot study on the spread of the notion of conceptual scheme. Though the notion is philosophically important, its origin, development, and spread are unclear. Several purely qualitative and competing historical hypotheses have been offered, which rely on disconnected disciplinary traditions, and have never been tested all at once in a single comprehensive investigation fitting the scope of its subject matter. (...) As a step toward such an investigation, we trace the use of the bigram “conceptual scheme” in about 42,000 US journal articles in social sciences from 1888-1959 by using a novel method combining a quantitative procedure aided by basic computational techniques with qualitative elements informed by Betti and van den Berg (2014)’s ‘model approach to the history of ideas’. (shrink)

How should we interact with people in echo chambers? Recently, some have argued that echo-chambered individuals are not entitled to civility. Civility is the virtue whereby we communicate respect for persons to manage our profound disagreements with them. But for civil exchanges to work, people must trust one another and their testimony. Therefore, some argue, we can be moderately uncivil towards those in echo chambers who are unlikely to trust our attempts to be civil. I argue against this position. I (...) suggest the focus should be on trying to rebuild these social relationships in alignment with the Confucian value of harmony. In this tradition, we aim to manage social relationships with disagreeable others by turning inward and cultivating certain dispositions in ourselves: open-mindedness, amenability, tactfulness, and courage. I argue this helps us craft a concept of ‘reparative civility’: an ideal for managing our fraught social relations in a world of echo chambers. (shrink)

Sentences like ⌜δ is indescribable⌝ appear to state that the speaker is unable to do what the speaker just did. This is known as the "paradox of ineffability." An explanation for how such sentences can be true is widely thought to be a pre-requisite for showing the coherence of ineffability. This paper offers a dissolution of the paradox. I argue that the relevant sentences are always false. However, I show that the falsity of such sentences does not entail that ineffability (...) is incoherent. That ⌜δ is indescribable⌝ can never be truthfully said does not entail that ineffability cannot be coherently explicated. (shrink)