Contrary to common misconceptions, today's logic is not devoid of existential import: the universalized conditional ∀ x [S→ P] implies its corresponding existentialized conjunction ∃ x [S & P], not in all cases, but in some. We characterize the proexamples by proving the Existential-Import Equivalence: The antecedent S of the universalized conditional alone determines whether the universalized conditional has existential import, i.e. whether it implies its corresponding existentialized conjunction.A predicate is an open formula having only x free. An existential-import predicate (...) Q is one whose existentialization, ∃ x Q, is logically true; otherwise, Q is existential-import-free or simply import-free.How abundant or widespread is existential import? How abundant or widespread are existential-import predicates in themselves or in comparison to import-free predicates? We show that existential-import predicates are quite abundant, and no less so than import-free predicates. Existential.. (shrink)

This brief, largely expository book—hereafter TT—blends history and philosophy of logic with contemporary mathematical logic. Page 3 says it “is about the relation between formal theories of truth...

Prior Analytics by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE) and Laws of Thought by the English mathematician George Boole (1815 – 1864) are the two most important surviving original logical works from before the advent of modern logic. This article has a single goal: to compare Aristotle’s system with the system that Boole constructed over twenty-two centuries later intending to extend and perfect what Aristotle had started. This comparison merits an article itself. Accordingly, this article does not discuss (...) many other historically and philosophically important aspects of Boole’s book, e.g. his confused attempt to apply differential calculus to logic, his misguided effort to make his system of ‘class logic’ serve as a kind of ‘truth-functional logic’, his now almost forgotten foray into probability theory, or his blindness to the fact that a truth-functional combination of equations that follows from a given truth-functional combination of equations need not follow truth-functionally. One of the main conclusions is that Boole’s contribution widened logic and changed its nature to such an extent that he fully deserves to share with Aristotle the status of being a founding figure in logic. By setting forth in clear and systematic fashion the basic methods for establishing validity and for establishing invalidity, Aristotle became the founder of logic as formal epistemology. By making the first unmistakable steps toward opening logic to the study of ‘laws of thought’—tautologies and laws such as excluded middle and non-contradiction—Boole became the founder of logic as formal ontology. (shrink)

Prior Analytics by the Greek philosopher Aristotle and Laws of Thought by the English mathematician George Boole are the two most important surviving original logical works from before the advent of modern logic. This article has a single goal: to compare Aristotle's system with the system that Boole constructed over twenty-two centuries later intending to extend and perfect what Aristotle had started. This comparison merits an article itself. Accordingly, this article does not discuss many other historically and philosophically important aspects (...) of Boole's book, e.g. his confused attempt to apply differential calculus to logic, his misguided effort to make his system of ‘class logic’ serve as a kind of ‘truth-functional logic’, his now almost forgotten foray into probability theory, or his blindness to the fact that a truth-functional combination of equations that follows from a given truth-functional combination of equations need not follow truth-functionally. One of the main conclusions is that Boole's contribution widened logic and changed its nature to such an extent that he fully deserves to share with Aristotle the status of being a founding figure in logic. By setting forth in clear and systematic fashion the basic methods for establishing validity and for establishing invalidity, Aristotle became the founder of logic as formal epistemology. By making the first unmistakable steps toward opening logic to the study of ‘laws of thought’—tautologies and laws such as excluded middle and non-contradiction—Boole became the founder of logic as formal ontology.… using mathematical methods … has led to more knowledge about logic in one century than had been obtained from the death of Aristotle up to … when Boole's masterpiece was published.Paul Rosenbloom 1950. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Descartes's Uses of the Word “Substance” Individual Substances in the Meditations and Objections and Replies Descartes and Aristotle Modes and Attributes: Tropes Two Further Points About Substances in the Meditations Substance in the Synopsis of the Meditations Substance in the Fourth Replies Substance in the Principles The Most General Things Uni‐Generic Attributes Attributes in General Substance in Descartes's Later Works Conclusion Acknowledgments References and Further Reading.

The article examines Aristotle’s seminal discussion of the fallacy of begging the question, reconstructing its complex articulation within a variety of different, but related, contexts. I suggest that close analysis of Aristotle’s understanding of the fallacy should prompt critical reconsideration of the scope and articulation of the fallacy in modern discussions and usages, suggesting how begging the question should be distinguished from a number of only partially related argumentative faults.

Many Individuals currently identified within the academic world as ‘“professional” philosophers’ spend a great deal of time arguing about the meaning of their discipline. The situation has recently become so critical that the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, for example, self-consciously excludes the term ‘philosophy’ from its list of entries. An outsider might get the impression that members of the profession suffer from a recurrent kind of intellectual amnesia and need constantly to be reminded about who they are and what their (...) function is. (shrink)

In the Concept of Mind from 1949 Gilbert Ryle distinguished between knowing how and knowing that. What was Ryle’s basic idea and how is the discussion going on in philosophy today? How can sport philosophy use the idea of knowing how? My goal in this paper is first to bring Ryle and the post-Rylean discussion to light and then show how phenomenology can give some input to the discussion. The article focuses especially on the two main interpretations of knowing how, (...) intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. In the second part of the article I discuss how views from phenomenology and philosophy of mind can enrich and widen our understanding of what knowing how means in relation to sport practices. It is argued that knowing how is not limited to athletic abilities but includes knowledge of how the environing world operates in relation to athletic action. (shrink)

This paper divides the sophisms and paradoxes put forth by Chinese thinkers of the pre-Qin period of China into six groups: paradoxes of motion and infinity, paradoxes of class membership, semantic paradoxes, epistemic paradoxes, paradoxes of relativization, other logical contradictions. It focuses on the comparison between the Chinese items and the counterparts of ancient Greek and even of contemporary Western philosophy, and concludes that there turn out to be many similar elements of philosophy and logic at the beginnings of Chinese (...) and Greek civilizations. (shrink)

After a brief review of the notions of necessity and a priority, this paper scrutinizes Kripke's arguments for supposedly contingent a priori propositions and necessary a posteriori propositions involving proper names, and reaches a negative conclusion, i.e. there are no such propositions, or at least the propositions Kripke gives as examples are not such propositions. All of us, including Kripke himself, still have to face the old question raised by Hume, i.e. how can we justify the necessity and universality of (...) general statements on the basis of sensory or empirical evidence? (shrink)

: This paper critiques enlightenment notions of representation and rehearses an alternative model of mapping that is grounded in performance. Working from her own practice as a landscape painter, Bolt argues that the particular experience of the "glare" of Australian light fractures the nexus between light, form, knowledge, and subjectivity. This rupture prompts a move from shedding light ON the matter to shedding light FOR the matter and suggests an emergent rather than a representational practice.

This paper develops a meta-theory of business based on virtue theory which links the concept of virtues, the common good, and the dynamic economy into a unifying and comprehensive theory of business. Traditional theories and models of business have outlived their usefulness as they are unable to adequately explain social reality. Virtue theory shows firms that pursue ethically-driven strategies can realise a greater profit potential than those firms who currently use profit-driven strategies. The theory expounds that the business of business (...) is ethical business and that the crises that business and society face today are crises of leadership and ethics. The issues of leadership and corporate social responsibility are discussed in the context of the proposed theory. (shrink)

This paper discusses the philosophical argument and the application of the Triple Font Theory for moral evaluation of human acts and attempts to integrate the conceptual components of major moral theories into a systematic internally consistent decision-making model that is theoretically driven. The paper incorporates concepts such as formal and material cooperation and the Principle of Double Effect into the theoretical framework. It also advances the thesis that virtue theory ought to be included in any adequate justification of morality and (...) the need to integrate or coordinate notions of virtue into various act-oriented or principles-based ethics. The TFT offers a comprehensive and practical approach to ethical decision-making and is a useful alternative embedded in traditional wisdom. This paper provides a more general framework of the TFT than traditionally presented. Practical judgment is shown to play a constitute role in providing a guide for right action and is the “glue” that integrates the various components of the TFT. (shrink)

During the last decades the question of defining life has gained increased interest but, at the same time, the difficulty in reaching consensus on a possible answer has led many to skeptical positions. This, in turn, has raised a wider debate about why defining life is so hard and controversial. Such a debate introduces additional aspects to be considered, like the role and nature of a definition of life itself. In this paper, we will focus on those aspects, arguing that (...) progress can be made if we conceive definitions of life as open heuristic tools that contribute to develop specific research strategies in the biological sciences and, more generally, to increase our understanding of life’s complexity. In contrast with pragmatic or operationalist approaches, we will defend that definitions of life comprise a set of ontological assumptions, together with an inherent unifying vocation, so they should be subject to comparison and critical assessment, closely related to the success or failure of the corresponding research programs, but also to the success or failure in establishing well-grounded interconnections among the latter. We consider that the search for a more coherent, integrated and generalized theory of biology cannot be pursued without keeping an empirical standpoint, and the exercise of defining life should not be taken as an obstacle but as a valuable instrument to achieve that goal. (shrink)

This chapter presents a typology of the different kinds of inductive inferences we can draw from our evidence, based on the explanatory relationship between evidence and conclusion. Drawing on the literature on graphical models of explanation, I divide inductive inferences into (a) downwards inferences, which proceed from cause to effect, (b) upwards inferences, which proceed from effect to cause, and (c) sideways inferences, which proceed first from effect to cause and then from that cause to an additional effect. I further (...) distinguish between direct and indirect forms of downwards and upwards inferences. I then show how we can subsume canonical forms of inductive inference mentioned in the literature, such as inference to the best explanation, enumerative induction, and analogical inference, under this typology. Along the way, I explore connections with probability and confirmation, epistemic defeat, the relation between abduction and enumerative induction, the compatibility of IBE and Bayesianism, and theories of epistemic justification. (shrink)

In his 1958 seminal paper “Saints and Heroes”, J. O. Urmson argued that the then dominant tripartite deontic scheme of classifying actions as being exclusively either obligatory, or optional in the sense of being morally indifferent, or wrong, ought to be expanded to include the category of the supererogatory. Colloquially, this category includes actions that are “beyond the call of duty” (beyond what is obligatory) and hence actions that one has no duty or obligation to perform. But it is a (...) controversial category. Some have argued that the concept of supererogation is paradoxical because on one hand, supererogatory actions are (by definition) supposed to be morally good, indeed morally best, actions. But then if they are morally best, why aren't they morally required, contrary to the assumption that they are morally optional? In short: how can an action that is morally best to perform fail to be what one is morally required to do? The source of this alleged paradox has been dubbed the ‘good-ought tie-up’. In our article, we address this alleged paradox by first making a phenomenological case for the reality of instances of genuine supererogatory actions, and then, by reflecting on the relevant phenomenology, explaining why there is no genuine paradox. Our explanation appeals to the idea that moral reasons can play what we call amerit conferring role. The basic idea is that moral reasons that favor supererogatory actions function to confer merit on the actions they favor—they play a merit conferring role—and can do without also requiring the actions in question. Hence, supererogatory actions can be both good and morally meritorious to perform yet still be morally optional. Recognition of a merit conferring role unties the good-ought tie up, and (as we further argue) there are good reasons, independent of helping to resolve the alleged paradox, for recognizing this sort of role that moral reasons may play. (shrink)

Maxwellian electrodynamics genesis is considered in the light of the author’s theory change model previously tried on the Copernican and the Einstein revolutions. It is shown that in the case considered a genuine new theory is constructed as a result of the old pre-maxwellian programmes reconciliation: the electrodynamics of Ampere-Weber, the wave theory of Fresnel and Young and Faraday’s programme. The “neutral language” constructed for the comparison of the consequences of the theories from these programmes consisted in the language of (...) hydrodynamics with its rich content of analogous models ranging from the uncompressible fluid up to molecular vortices. The programmes’ meeting led to construction of the whole hierarchy of crossbred objects beginning from the displacement current and up to common hybrids. After that the interpenetration of the pre-maxwellian programmes began that marked the beginning of theoretical schemes of optics and electromagnetism unification. Maxwell’s programme did assimilate some ideas of the Ampere-Weber programme, as well as the presuppositions of the programmes of Fresnel and Faraday; and the significance of this fact for further methodology of scientific research programmes development is discussed. It is argued that the core of Maxwell’s unification strategy was formed by Kantian epistemology looked through the prism of William Whewell and such representatives of Scottish Enlightenment as Thomas Reid and William Hamilton. All these enabled Maxwell to start to unify not only optics and electromagnetism, but British and continental research traditions as well. Maxwell’s programme did supersede the Ampere-Weber one because Maxwell did put forward as a synthetic principle the idea, that differed from that of Ampere-Weber by its flexible and contra-ontological, strictly epistemological, Kantian character. For Maxwell, ether was not the last building block of physical reality, from which fields and charges should be constructed . “Action at a distance”, “incompressible fluid”, “molecular vortices” were only analogies for Maxwell, capable to direct the researcher on the “right” mathematical relations. From the “representational” point of view all this hydrodynamical models were doomed to failure efforts to describe what can not be described in principle – things in themselves, the “nature” of electrical and magnetic phenomena. On the contrary, Maxwell aimed his programme to find empirically meaningful mathematical relations between the electrodynamics basic objects, i.e. the creation of inter - coordinated electromagnetic field equations system. Namely the application of this epistemology enabled Hermann von Helmholtz and his pupil Heinrich Hertz to arrive at such a version of Maxwell’s theory that served a heuristical basis for the radiowaves discovery. (shrink)

Is it possible to construct a machine that can act of its own accord? There are a number of skeptical arguments which conclude that autonomous machine agency is impossible. Yet if autonomous machine agency is impossible, then serious doubt is cast on the possibility of autonomous human action, at least on the widely held assumption that some form of materialism is true. The purpose of this dissertation is to show that autonomous machine agency is possible, thereby showing that the autonomy (...) of human action is compatible with materialism. ;I proceed as follows. Chapter 1 casts the problem of autonomous machine agency. Chapter 2 sets out the skeptic's case against autonomous machine agency by canvassing arguments against the possibility of machine agency and arguments against the possibility of autonomous machine agency. Chapter 3 begins work on a theory of autonomous machine agency by developing and defending axioms of a theory of agency from thought experiments and examples. Chapter 4 expands the theory of agency to a theory of autonomous agency by adding axioms of autonomy. ;The axioms of autonomous agency contain the primitive terms 'belief', 'desire', and 'deliberation', which require further explication if the theory is to be of any use in arguing for the possibility of autonomous machine agency. Chapters 5 and 6 take up this challenge by developing mathematically tractable axioms of deliberation, belief, and desire. ;Chapter 7 completes the theory by developing axioms of mechanism derived from the substantial literature in the foundations of computer science. Chapter 8 employs the resulting theory of autonomous machine agency to show just how the functional prerequisites of autonomous agency can in principle be met by machines, thereby demonstrating the possibility of autonomous machine agency. ;Chapter 9 serves as a cautionary postscript. In spite of having shown that autonomous machine agency is possible, the implications are not always happy for current efforts in artificial intelligence or current philosophical theories of autonomous human agency. Nevertheless, the argument for autonomous machine agency suggests several research programs at the nexus of Philosophy of Mind and Artificial Intelligence. (shrink)

It is the continuity between epistemology and empirical science that the naturalism in contemporary philosophy of science emphasizes. After its individual and social dimensions, the philosophy of scientific practice takes a stand on naturalism in order to observe complex scientific activities through practice. However, regarding the naturalism’s problem of normativity, the philosophy of scientific practice today has deconstructed more than it has constructed.

The paper enriches the conceptual apparatus of the theory of meaning and denotation that was presented in Part I (Section 3). This part concentrates on the notion of interpretation, which is defined as an equivalence class of the relation possessing the same manner of interpreting types. In this part, some relations between meaning and interpretation, as well as one between denotation an interpretational denotation are established. In the theory of meaning and interpretation, the notion of language communication has been formally (...) introduced and some conditions of correctness of communication have been formulated. (shrink)

In recent decades, English has become the uncontestable lingua franca of philosophy of science and of most other areas of philosophy and of the humanities. To have a lingua franca produces enormous benefits for the entire scientific community. The price for those benefits, however, is paid almost exclusively by non-native speakers of English. Section 1 identifies three asymmetries that individual NoNES researchers encounter: ‘publication asymmetry’, ‘resources asymmetry’, and ‘team asymmetry’. Section 2 deals with ‘globalized parochialism asymmetry’: thanks to English being (...) a lingua franca, a special perspective, mostly US and British, is being globalized and is replacing European topics and approaches. This has serious consequences for history of philosophy as well as for philosophical theory: thinkers of the past tend to be dealt with on the global level at best only if and insofar they are translated into English. Similarly, the theoretical agenda of globalized philosophy of scien... (shrink)

It is the continuity between epistemology and empirical science that the naturalism in contemporary philosophy of science emphasizes. After its individual and social dimensions, the philosophy of scientific practice takes a stand on naturalism in order to observe complex scientific activities through practice. However, regarding the naturalism’s problem of normativity, the philosophy of scientific practice today has deconstructed more than it has constructed.

Pragmatism is often thought to be incompatible with realism, the view that there are knowable mind-independent facts, objects, or properties. In this article, I show that there are, in fact, realist versions of pragmatism and argue that a realist pragmatism of the right sort can make important contributions to such fields as religious ethics and philosophy of religion. Using William James's pragmatism as my primary example, I show (1) that James defended realist and pluralist views in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and (...) philosophy of religion, and (2) that these views not only cohere with his pragmatism but indeed are basic to it. After arguing that James's pragmatism provides a credible and useful approach to a number of basic philosophical and religious issues, I conclude by reflecting on some ways in which we can apply and potentially improve James's views in the study of religion. (shrink)

I argue (1) that what (ontic) New Mechanistic philosophers of science call mechanisms would be material Gestalten, and (2) that Merleau-Ponty’s engagement with Gestalt theory can help us frame a standing challenge against ontic conceptions of mechanisms. In short, until the (ontic) New Mechanist can provide us with a plausible account of the organization of mechanisms as an objective feature of mind-independent ontic structures in the world which we might discover – and no ontic Mechanist has done so – it (...) is more conservative to claim that mechanistic organization is instead a mind-dependent aspect of our epistemic strategies of mechanistic explanation. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to the understanding of Roy Bhaskar's philosophical evolution from critical realism to the philosophy of meta-Reality. Following Bhaskar's own terminology, I define his intellectual journey as the ‘identification of dualism and duality within non-duality’ by proposing that anti-anthropism plays a key role in the developmental consistency of his system from critical realism via dialectical critical realism to meta-Reality. For this purpose, I compare Bhaskar's philosophy with Andrew Collier's theory of human rationality and spiritual emancipation based (...) on Christianity and Tu Wei-Ming's anthropocosmic understanding of human beings and nature based on Confucianism. (shrink)

Claims that talk of life’s meaning is misguided, unmanageable or, worse, nonsensical, are overblown. Such claims especially track the cosmically focused the meaning of life. “The meaning of life” is perfectly intelligible, and is centered on a cluster of ideas encapsulated by what I call the “meaning triad.” One component of this triad—I-MEANING—provides the hermeneutical and conceptual resources for understanding the question “What is the meaning of life?” as asking for a single thing, in contrast to amalgam and pluralist views. (...) I will investigate the meaning triad en route to defending meaning of life holism. (shrink)

Since the automation revolution of our technological era, diverse machines or robots have gradually begun to reconfigure our lives. With this expansion, it seems that those machines are now faced with a new challenge: more autonomous decision-making involving life or death consequences. This paper explores the philosophical possibility of artificial moral agency through the following question: could a machine obtain the cognitive capacities needed to be a moral agent? In this regard, I propose to expose, under a normative-cognitive perspective, the (...) minimum criteria through which we could recognize an artificial entity as a genuine moral entity. Although my proposal should be considered from a reasonable level of abstraction, I will critically analyze and identify how an artificial agent could integrate those cognitive features. Finally, I intend to discuss their limitations or possibilities. (shrink)

The aim of this text is to reply to criticisms of the logics of evidence and truth and the epistemic approach to paraconsistency advanced by Barrio [2018], and Lo Guercio and Szmuc [2018]. We also clarify the notion of evidence that underlies the intended interpretation of these logics and is a central point of Barrio’s and Lo Guercio & Szmuc’s criticisms.

AI research is being challenged with ensuring that autonomous agents learn to behave ethically, namely in alignment with moral values. Here, we propose a novel way of tackling the value alignment problem as a two-step process. The first step consists on formalising moral values and value aligned behaviour based on philosophical foundations. Our formalisation is compatible with the framework of (Multi-Objective) Reinforcement Learning, to ease the handling of an agent’s individual and ethical objectives. The second step consists in designing an (...) environment wherein an agent learns to behave ethically while pursuing its individual objective. We leverage on our theoretical results to introduce an algorithm that automates our two-step approach. In the cases where value-aligned behaviour is possible, our algorithm produces a learning environment for the agent wherein it will learn a value-aligned behaviour. (shrink)

Through its social and political activism goals, postcolonial feminist theoretical approaches not only focus on individual issues that affect health but encompass the examination of the complex interplay between neocolonialism, neoliberalism, and globalization, in mediating the health of non-Western immigrants and refugees. Postcolonial feminism holds the promise to influence nursing research and practice in the 21st century where health remains a goal to achieve and a commitment for humanity. This is especially relevant for nurses, who act as global citizens and (...) as voices for the voiceless. The commitment of nursing to social justice must be further strengthened by relying on postcolonial theories to address issues of health inequities that arise from marginalization and racialization. In using postcolonial feminist theories, nurse researchers locate the inquiry process within a Gramscian philosophy of praxis that represents knowledge in action. (shrink)

Esse artigo se propõe a examinar o sentido da história da filosofia política na teoria de Leo Strauss. Pretendo sugerir que, apesar da sua crítica ao historicismo, Strauss apresenta uma teoria da interpretação dos textos filosóficos consistente.

Key words: rationality, communication, maxwellian revolution, Ampere-Weber research programme, synthesis, Kantian epistemology.. Why did Maxwell’s programme supersede the Ampere-Weber one? – To answer the question one has to consider the intertheoretic context of maxwellian electrodynamics genesis and development. It is demonstrated that maxwellian electrodynamics was created as a result of the old pre-maxwellian programmes reconciliation: the electrodynamics of Ampere-Weber, the wave theory of Young-Fresnel and Faraday’s programme. The programmes’ meeting led to construction of the hybrid theory at first with an (...) irregular set of theoretical schemes. However, step by step, on revealing and gradual eliminating the contradictions between the programmes involved, the hybrid set is “put into order”.A hierarchy of theoretical schemes starting from the crossbreeds and up to usual hybrids is set up. And after the displacement current construction the interpenetration of the pre-maxwellian programmes begins that markes the commencement of theoretical schemes of optics and electromagnetism real unification. Maxwell’s programme did supersede the Ampere-Weber one because it did assimilate the ideas of the Ampere-Weber programme, as well as the presuppositions of the programmes of Young-Fresnel and Faraday properly co-ordinating them with each other. But the opposite proposition is not true. Ampere-Weber programme did not assimilate the propositions of the Maxwellian programme. Maxwell’s victory became possible because the core of Maxwell’s unification strategy was formed by Kantian epistemology looked through the prism of William Whewell and such representatives of Scottish Enlightenment as Thomas Reid and William Hamilton. Maxwell did put forward as a basic synthetic principle the idea that radically differed from that of Ampere-Weber approach by its open, flexible and contra-ontological, strictly epistemological, Kantian character. For Maxwell, ether was not the last building block of physical reality, from which all the charges and fields should be constructed. “Action at a distance”, “incompressible fluid”, “molecular vortices” were contrived analogies for Maxwell, capable only to direct the researcher at the “right” mathematical relations. Namely the application of Kantian epistemology enabled Hermann von Helmholtz and his pupil Heinrich Hertz to arrive at such a version of Maxwell’s theory that served a heuristical basis for the radio waves discovery. (shrink)

Science is an activity of the human intellect and as such has ethical implications that should be reviewed and taken into account. Although science and ethics have conventionally been considered different, it is herewith proposed that they are essentially similar. The proposal set henceforth is to create a new ethics rooted in science: scientific ethics. Science has firm axiological foundations and searches for truth and knowledge. Hence, science cannot be value neutral. Looking at standard scientific principles, it is possible to (...) construct a scientific ethic, which can be applied to all sciences. These intellectual standards include the search for truth, human dignity and respect for life. Through these it is thence achievable to draft a foundation of a ethics based purely on science and applicable beyond the confines of science. A few applications of these will be presented. Scientific ethics can have vast applications in other fields even in non scientific ones. (shrink)

Professional ethics, in general, deals with justified moral values that govern the work of professionals. Profession is an expertise who is committed to promote a distinctive public good, such as learning or education. Professionals are committed to special duties to make services available, maintain confidentiality, secure informed consent for services, and be loyal to clients, employers, and others with whom one has fiduciary relationship. Professional ethics deals with theoretical issues which seek to understand how the justified moral values governing professionals (...) are linked to wider values. It also deals with practical issues as to how to apply duties in particular contexts. Professional values include principles of obligation and rights, virtues, personal moral ideals as manifested in the great lives. Given such a Western idea of professional ethics, it is indeed fascinating to trace professional ethics in the Upaniṣads. The Upaniṣadic sages since time immemorial have shown the path to peace and progress for all humanity, not only by laying down theoretical ideals or speculation, but by actually applying truths in their practical life. They have demonstrated the practical application of the ethical ideals or moral values in the personal and professional life and proved that self-realization alone can not only save man from misery but promote to the state of highest bliss. The standards laid down by them have been followed practically by people even today. Gītoponiṣad states that whatever action is performed by the great is imitated by the common people; whatever standard is set by him is followed by them. The Kaṭha Upaniṣad prescribes professional values to the extent that not he who has not ceased from evil conduct can obtain Him by knowledge. Good conduct as a value is thus emphasized here. In Taittirīya Upaniṣad, for instance, the teacher prescribes certain values in the form of commandments: speak the truth and practice virtue. Thus, it is evident that the Upaniṣadic teacher is not only concerned about the intellectual progress of the student but also its personal and professional life as well. The paper is a humble attempt to explore the roots of professional ethics in the Upaniṣadic ethics. (shrink)

The notion of Self plays a significant role in the philosophical speculations of Buddha and Wittgenstein. For the Buddha, ‘Self’ has empirical validity without ultimate reality. However, the Real Self is transcendent. It is the Absolute which is immanent as well as transcendent. It cannot therefore be bound to thought-constructions. The Absolute is Nirvāṇa; it is peaceful, immortal and unproduced which is unspeakable and can only be realised through immediate spiritual experience. To deal with Nirvāṇa rigourously, Buddha upholds a negative (...) method of describing it as final. He prefers to subscribe to the philosophy of silence, for the bliss of Nirvāṇa is beyond empirical reality. Some striking affinities with such Buddhist notion of Self can be found in Wittgensteinian philosophy of Self. For Wittgenstein, the ‘Self’ comes into being through one’s own world. The Self or the metaphysical subject does not belong to the world; rather it is the limit of the world. The metaphysical Self is different from the empirical Self or ego with which psychology deals. The psychological self pertains to and explains the worldly state-of-affair. Besides, the philosophical Self or I is not the human being, the human body or the human soul with psychological properties, but the boundary (not a part) of the world. Self or I is not the name of a person. It therefore is inexplicable. Since it is unspeakable, we must be silent about it, for whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Wittgenstein finally submits that this is all that really matters in human life. A comparative study of the two great philosophers suggests that the Buddhist philosophy of Self apparently echoes in the Wittgensteinian philosophy of Self. (shrink)

Being diagnosed with cancer can be one of those critical incidents that negatively affect the self. Identity is threatened when physical, psychological, and social consequences of chronic illness begin to erode one’s sense of self and challenge an individual’s ability to continue to present the self he or she prefers to present to others. Based on the notion of illness trajectory and adopting a Ricoeurian narrative perspective, this theoretical paper shall explore the impact of cancer disease on identity and establish (...) the crucial importance of metaphor in the narratives of life with cancer. Findings indicate that in cancer narratives the illness experience supplies the narrative structure with temporal and spatial meeting points that make the narrative comprehensible and meaningful. Cancer forces identity changes not only from having to endure the long-term physical and psychosocial effects of the disease, but also from inevitable existential questions about life’s meaning. Improved medical knowledge today means improved ethnomedical practices. Metaphor can bridge the gap between the cancer experience and the world of technology and treatment, helping patients to symbolically control their illness. (shrink)

University of Turku, Finland In this article, relationalist approaches to social sciences are analyzed in terms of a conceptual distinction between "philosophizing sociology" and "sociologizing philosophy." These mark two different attitudes toward philosophical metaphysics and ontological commitments. The authors’ own pragmatist methodological relationalism of Deweyan origin is compared with ontologically committed realist approaches, as well as with Bourdieuan methodological relationalism. It is argued that pragmatist philosophy of social sciences is an appropriate tool for assisting social scientists in their methodological work, (...) especially as regards problem-driven case studies. Key Words: metaphysics • pragmatism • realism • relationalism. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore the complex forms of knowledge involved in diagnostic and interventional decision making by comparing the processes in medicine and nursing, including nurse practitioners. Many authors assert that the practice of clinical decision making involves the application of theoretical knowledge (acquired in the classroom and textbooks) as well as research evidence, upon concrete particular cases. This approach draws on various universal principles and algorithms to facilitate the task. On the other hand, others argue (...) that this involves an intuitive form of judgement that is difficult to teach, one that is acquired principally through experience. In an exploration of these issues, this article consists of three sections. A clarification of terms commonly used when discussing decision making is provided in the first section. In the second section, an epistemological analysis of decision making is presented by examining several perspectives and comparing them for their use in the nursing and medical literature. Bunge's epistemological framework for decision making (based on scientific realism) is explored for its fit with the aims of medicine and nursing. The final section presents a discussion of knowledge utilization and decision making as it relates to the implications for the education and ongoing development of nurse practitioners. It is concluded that Donald Schön's conception of reflective practice best characterizes the skilful conduct of clinical decision making. (shrink)

In this article, the relevance of justice in care is discussed, with special regard to long-term care. After a short introduction laying out the conceptual framework of justice and care, followed by an exploration of some special challenges within long-term care, this article consists of two main parts. The first part deals with justice as a general (secular) philosophical phenomenon and draws especially upon principles of justice as developed by John Rawls. Both the principle of fair equality of opportunity and (...) the difference principle, according to which an unequal treatment may be justified, provided that those “worst off” benefit mostly and are relevant within the field of care. The feminist debate about an ethics of care is also considered since its more recent contributions offer interesting attempts to mediate between justice and care. The second part of the article introduces a Christian perspective on justice, with relevance for (long-term) care. From a Christian point of view, one will even more strongly than Rawls argue for a conception of justice, which gives priority to those worst off. It is also argued that justice and care converge in the practice of diakonia. Diakonia, in many traditions synonymous with the caring dimension of the church, always had a special focus on long-term care. In this kind of church-based practice, justice and care are reconciled. (shrink)

This paper argues that an educated being logically does not have to be a human. Philosophers analyzing the concept of education have reached a consensual notion of the matter; but in applying that idea, they have barely discussed whether or not human beings are the only entities that may be educated. Using their notion as the core of a heuristic conception of education, this paper attempts to show that in some contexts it might make sense to predicate education of certain (...) non-human entities. In addition, the paper examines the place of beliefs, reflective intelligence, practical thinking, and feelings in education. It concludes by discussing its implications for educational theory and practice and for the connections between the educated being and personhood and the right to education. (shrink)

The Philosophical Underpinnings of Social Constructionist Discourse Analysis Although discourse analysis emerges as a multi-faceted research method reflecting various schools of thought, disciplines and approaches, it is possible to pinpoint some meta-theoretical issues or fundamental assumptions common for most of them. This article aims to investigate different philosophical aspects and theoretical foundations that inform discourse analysis, such as the interplay between epistemological and ontological dimensions or the definition of language itself. Because space does not allow an in-depth discussion of all (...) the theoretical orientations collectively contributing to the development of social constructionist discourse analysis, this paper focuses on poststructuralist, constructivist, and social realist positions, and also attempts to trace the roots of social constructionism in linguistic philosophy, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. Hopefully, this article will provide the opportunity to develop meta-theoretical reflections on discourse analysis, thus striking the balance between the philosophy, methodology and practice. (shrink)

The aim of the present volume is to draw the balance of naturalism's success so far.

Public conversation about biological contributors to mental disorder often centers on whether the problem is “biological or not.” In this paper, we propose moving beyond this bifurcation to a very different question:how exactlyare these problems understood to be biological? Specifically, we consider four issues around which different interpretations of the body’s relationship to mental disorder exist:1. The body’s relationship to day-to-day action; 2. The extent to which the body is changeable; 3. The body’s relationship to context; 4. The degree to (...) which states of the body directly cause mental disorder.Drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty and other phenomenologists, we examine different responses to these questions and associated implications for how mental health treatment and recovery come to be experienced. Finally, we consider broader questions these patterns raise, including why certain portrayals of the brain dominate public attention and how to foster more deliberation in this regard. (shrink)

Relevant logics have traditionally been viewed as paraconsistent. This paper shows that this view of relevant logics is wrong. It does so by showing forth a logic which extends classical logic, yet satisfies the Entailment Theorem as well as the variable sharing property. In addition it has the same S4-type modal feature as the original relevant logic E as well as the same enthymematical deduction theorem. The variable sharing property was only ever regarded as a necessary property for a logic (...) to have in order for it to not validate the so-called paradoxes of implication. The Entailment Theorem on the other hand was regarded as both necessary and sufficient. This paper shows that the latter theorem also holds for classical logic, and so cannot be regarded as a sufficient property for blocking the paradoxes. The concept of suppression is taken up, but shown to be properly weaker than that of variable sharing. (shrink)

This article traces certain rhetorics of knowledge-change as well as a few models of such change. In particular, it focuses on models that emphasize novelty and sudden transformation. To this end, the works of Thomas Kuhn, and the debates surrounding his celebrated modeling of the paradigm, are explored. Having established – at least in an illustrative fashion – the role of novelty in Kuhn’s philosophy of science, we then look more briefly at the mid-career work of Michel Foucault (his Order (...) of Things and the Archaeology of Knowledge ), and the debate between Jürgen Habermas and Jean-François Lyotard to find (in Foucault’s case) analogies with the earlier models and debates surrounding Popper and Kuhn, and then (in the Habermas/Lyotard discussion), to see how revolutionary and reactionary status count in assigning value to models of knowledge. In all these inquiries, we seek less to criticize particular theorists (that has already been done) than to understand a dominant strand of understanding of knowledge and knowledge-change in the contemporary academy. (shrink)

Logic is about reasoning, or so the story goes. This thesis looks at the concept of logic, what it is, and what claims of correctness of logics amount to. The concept of logic is not a settled matter, and has not been throughout the history of it as a notion. Tools from conceptual analysis aid in this historical venture. Once the unsettledness of logic is established we see the repercussions in current debates in the philosophy of logic. Much of the (...) battle over the ‘one true logic’ is conceptually talking past each other. The theory of logics-as-formalizations is presented as a conceptually open theory of logic which is Carnapian in flavour and grounding. Rudolf Carnap’s notions surrounding ‘external’ and ‘pseudo-questions’ about linguistic frameworks apply to formalizations, thus logics, as well. An account of what formalizations are, a more structured sub-set of modelling, is given to ground the claim that logics are formalizations. Finally, a novel account of correctness, the COFE framework, is developed which allows the notions of logical monism, pluralism and nihilism to be more precisely formulated than they currently are in the discourse. (shrink)