Precision medicine and molecular systems medicine (MSM) are highly utilized and successful approaches to improve understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of many diseases from bench-to-bedside. Especially in the COVID-19 pandemic, molecular techniques and biotechnological innovation have proven to be of utmost importance for rapid developments in disease diagnostics and treatment, including DNA and RNA sequencing technology, treatment with drugs and natural products and vaccine development. The COVID-19 crisis, however, has also demonstrated the need for systemic thinking and transdisciplinarity and the limits (...) of MSM: the neglect of the bio-psycho-social systemic nature of humans and their context as the object of individual therapeutic and population-oriented interventions. COVID-19 illustrates how a medical problem requires a transdisciplinary approach in epidemiology, pathology, internal medicine, public health, environmental medicine, and socio-economic modeling. Regarding the need for conceptual integration of these different kinds of knowledge we suggest the application of general system theory (GST). This approach endorses an organism-centered view on health and disease, which according to Ludwig von Bertalanffy who was the founder of GST, we call Organismal Systems Medicine (OSM). We argue that systems science offers wider applications in the field of pathology and can contribute to an integrative systems medicine by (i) integration of evidence across functional and structural differentially scaled subsystems, (ii) conceptualization of complex multilevel systems, and (iii) suggesting mechanisms and non-linear relationships underlying the observed phenomena. We underline these points with a proposal on multi-level systems pathology including neurophysiology, endocrinology, immune system, genetics, and general metabolism. An integration of these areas is necessary to understand excess mortality rates and polypharmacological treatments. In the pandemic era this multi-level systems pathology is most important to assess potential vaccines, their effectiveness, short-, and long-time adverse effects. We further argue that these conceptual frameworks are not only valid in the COVID-19 era but also important to be integrated in a medicinal curriculum. (shrink)

Here I both celebrate and critique the legacy of Charles W. Mills. I begin by offering some reflections on the trajectory of Mills’s career and intellectual development, focusing on his move from Marxist philosophy to the philosophy of race. I then attempt to undermine an argument in Mills’s final book, for why those interested in emancipation should choose liberalism over Marxism. By contrasting Mills with the late Italian Marxist philosopher of history Domenico Losurdo, with whom Mills shared a blistering (...) critique of ‘racial’ liberalism but whom I claim Mills misread, I seek to weaken key premises in Mills’s argument. (shrink)

There are a bewildering variety of claims connecting Darwin to nineteenth-century philosophy of science—including to Herschel, Whewell, Lyell, German Romanticism, Comte, and others. I argue here that Herschel’s influence on Darwin is undeniable. The form of this influence, however, is often misunderstood. Darwin was not merely taking the concept of “analogy” from Herschel, nor was he combining such an analogy with a consilience as argued for by Whewell. On the contrary, Darwin’s Origin is written in precisely the manner that one (...) would expect were Darwin attempting to model his work on the precepts found in Herschel’s Preliminary Discourse on Natural Science. While Hodge has worked out a careful interpretation of both Darwin and Herschel, drawing similar conclusions, his interpretation misreads Herschel’s use of the vera causa principle and the verification of hypotheses. The new reading that I present here resolves this trouble, combining Hodge’s careful treatment of the structure of the Origin with a more cautious understanding of Herschel’s philosophy of science. This interpretation lets us understand why Darwin laid out the Origin in the way that he did and also why Herschel so strongly disagreed, including in Herschel’s heretofore unanalyzed marginalia in his copy of Darwin’s book. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of Charles W. Mills and considering the case of reparations to Black Americans, this article defends the “structural turn” in the philosophical reparations scholarship. In the Black American context, the structural turn highlights the structural and institutional operations of a White supremacist political system and a long chronology of state-sponsored injustice, as opposed to enslavement as a standalone historical episode. Here, the question whether distributive justice is more appropriate than reparative justice is particularly pressing, since (...) structural racial inequalities form part of the basis for reparations. Derrick Darby’s pragmatic argument for non-race-specific redistributive policies and Tommie Shelby’s principled defense of distributive justice are both considered, as well as the challenge to the structural turn that comes from Carlton Waterhouse’s argument for reparations for enslavement rather than “legacy of slavery” reparations. (shrink)

There are two motivations commonly ascribed to historical actors for taking up statistics: to reduce complicated data to a mean value (e.g., Quetelet), and to take account of diversity (e.g., Galton). Different motivations will, it is assumed, lead to different methodological decisions in the practice of the statistical sciences. Karl Pearson and W. F. R. Weldon are generally seen as following directly in Galton’s footsteps. I argue for two related theses in light of this standard interpretation, based on a reading (...) of several sources in which Weldon, independently of Pearson, reflects on his own motivations. First, while Pearson does approach statistics from this "Galtonian" perspective, he is, consistent with his positivist philosophy of science, utilizing statistics to simplify the highly variable data of biology. Weldon, on the other hand, is brought to statistics by a rich empiricism and a desire to preserve the diversity of biological data. Secondly, we have here a counterexample to the claim that divergence in motivation will lead to a corresponding separation in methodology. Pearson and Weldon, despite embracing biometry for different reasons, settled on precisely the same set of statistical tools for the investigation of evolution. (shrink)

One claim found in the received historiography of the biometrical school (comprised primarily of Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, and W. F. R. Weldon) is that one of the biometricians' great flaws was their inability to look past their population-focused, statistical, gradualist understanding of evolutionary change – which led, in part, to their ignoring developments in cellular biology around 1900. I will argue, on the contrary, that the work of the biometricians was, from its earliest days, fundamentally concerned with connections between (...) statistical patterns of inheritance and the underlying cellular features that gave rise to them. Such work remained current with contemporary knowledge of chromosomes, cytology, and development; in this article, I explore the first case. The biometricians were thus well positioned to understand the relationship between the patterns of Mendelian inheritance and the statistical distributions with which they primarily occupied themselves. Ignorance of this connection, then, is not the reason why they rejected Mendelism. Further, both Galton and Weldon – though each in their own unique way – decided to turn to biological detail as a way to better justify the generality of their statistical approaches to heredity. Perhaps paradoxically, then, for these biometricians, detail offered an approach to theoretical generality. (shrink)

The Racial Contract pone la teoría clásica del contrato social occidental, sin ambages, al servicio de un uso radical extraordinario. Con una mirada arrolladora sobre el expansionismo y el racismo europeos de los últimos quinientos años, Charles W. Mills demuestra cómo este peculiar y no reconocido "contrato" ha dado forma a un sistema de dominación europea global: cómo da lugar a la existencia de "blancos" y "no blancos", personas de pleno derecho y subpersonas, cómo influye en la teoría moral (...) y la psicología moral de los blancos; y cómo este sistema se impone a los no blancos mediante el condicionamiento ideológico y la violencia. The Racial Contract sostiene que la sociedad en la que vivimos es un estado continuado de supremacía blanca. Levantando un espejo ante la filosofía dominante, este provocativo libro explica el esquema evolutivo del contrato racial desde la época de la conquista del Nuevo Mundo y el posterior colonialismo, pasando por el contrato escrito de la esclavitud, hasta el sistema de segregación "separados pero iguales" en los Estados Unidos del siglo XX. Según Mills, el contrato ha proporcionado la arquitectura teórica que justifica toda una historia de atrocidades europeas contra los no blancos, desde las afirmaciones de David Hume e Immanuel Kant de que los negros tenían un poder cognitivo inferior, pasando por el Holocausto, hasta el tipo de imperialismo en Asia que se demostró con la guerra de Vietnam. Mills sugiere que la guetización del trabajo filosófico sobre la raza no es accidental. Este trabajo desafía la suposición de que la teoría dominante carece en sí misma de raza. Al igual que la teoría feminista ha revelado el sesgo invisible de la filosofía política hacia los hombres blancos, la explicación de Mills del contrato racial expone sus fundamentos raciales. (shrink)

The legal, political, and social meaning of the work of Charles Darwin has been claimed as resident to conservative and liberal homes alike. Peter Singer’s unique admixture of personal liberal politics and what may look to be an extremely conservative philosophy of nature expose some over-simplicity in traditional ‘right’ and ‘left’ categories. In ‘‘Recovering the Left from Darwin in the 21st Century’’, Steve Fuller provides us with insightful historical and sociological contexts for Singer’s challenges. In this article, Kirk Junker (...) takes one aspect of the trajectory ‘the notion of natural rights’ and examines their social construction, linguistic maintenance, and legal ramifications. (shrink)

Charles Sanders Peirce famously claimed that ‘The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth’ (W3: 273). Christopher Hookway has argued for a highly distinctive interpretation of this claim in terms of speech-acts and the normative commitments we incur in performing them. So-construed, Peirce’s conception of truth is difficult to compare with standard theories of the concept, which tend to focus instead upon some property or feature that (...) is shared by all and only true propositions, and with whether or not that property is substantive or metaphysically significant. This paper examines Hookway’s interpretation of Peirce’s conception of truth in an effort to clarify its position in logical space. It then raises some difficulties for the way Hookway tries to accommodate Peirce’s remarks about the special status of assertion and belief in science. (shrink)

Bez wątpienia, Peirce nie oferuje w swoim pismach jasnego ujęcia koncepcji przekonania, a jego poglądy, ewoluujące w ciągu całego życia, nie wydają się prowadzić do wyraźnej konkluzji. Niemniej jednak pozostaje autorem inspirującym, który pozosta- wił trwałe osiągnięcia na gruncie logiki symbolicznej i semiotyki. Metoda hermeneutyczna, którą zastosowaliśmy w tej pracy, miała na celu, w zgodzie z jego własną wskazówką metodyczną, ukazanie koncepcji przekonania, którą można by uzgodnić z dostępnymi stwierdzeniami samego Peirce’a, jak również jego komentatorów.

Most models of generational succession in sexually reproducing populations necessarily move back and forth between genic and genotypic spaces. We show that transitions between and within these spaces are usually hidden by unstated assumptions about processes in these spaces. We also examine a widely endorsed claim regarding the mathematical equivalence of kin-, group-, individual-, and allelic-selection models made by Lee Dugatkin and Kern Reeve. We show that the claimed mathematical equivalence of the models does not hold. *Received January 2007; revised (...) April 2008. †To contact the authors, please write to: Elisabeth Lloyd, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, 130 Goodbody Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405; e-mail: [email protected]; Richard Lewontin, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138; Marcus Feldman, Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305; e-mail: marc@charles.stanford.edu. (shrink)

Recent philosophical secondary literature on white ignorance – a concept most famously developed by the late philosopher Charles W. Mills – suggests that white ignorance is, one way or another, a non-structural phenomenon. I analyse two such readings, the agential view and the cognitivist view. I argue that they misinterpret Mills’ work by (among other things) committing a kind of structural erasure, and one which implies that Mills’ account cannot capture, for example, cases where white ignorance (and white racial (...) domination) involves historical erasure, especially when perpetrated by sociopolitical institutions. This is particularly salient in cases such as the recent movement against anti-racist education, now widely conflated with critical race theory, in the United States and United Kingdom, which I offer as a brief case study. (shrink)

Connections between J.L.Vives and C.S. Peirce are shown. Not only is reflec-tion on language and meaning central in both thinkers, but Peirce also knew Vives' thought especially through W. Hamilton and the Scottish common sense school. Peirce credited Vives with being a forerunner of the use of dia-grams in logic, and both share a critical view of late medieval nominalistic logicians and a social and hierarchical conception of knowledge.

The aim of this paper is to show that global scientific promises aka “scientific world-conceptions” have an interesting history that should be taken into account also for contemporary debates. I argue that the prototypes of many contemporary philosophical positions concerning the role of science in society can already be found in the philosophy of science of the 1920s and 1930s. First to be mentioned in this respect is the Scientific World-Conception of the Vienna Circle (The Manifesto) that promised to contribute (...) to the realization of an enlightened, rational and science-oriented society and culture. The Manifesto was not the only „scientific world-conception“ that philosophers and scientists put forward in the 1920s. Also the scientific world-conception of the philosopher and physicist Moritz Schlick, and the Weltanschauung of Sigmund Freud deserve to be mentioned. Still other examples of are Carnap’s Scientific Humanism and the project of The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science which was related to American pragmatism as well, as is shown by Charles W. Morris and others. Forgotten for a long time, since the beginning of the 21rst century, at least some of the Viennese projects are reconsidered in a new wave of „socially engaged philosophy of science”. (shrink)

In the article I deal with some paradoxes and errors caused by improper usage of logical and philosophical terms appearing in the arguments for existence of god and other philosophical issues. I point at rst some paradoxes coming om improper usage of propositional calculus as an instrument for analysis of a natural language. this language is actually not using simple sentences but rather propositional functions, their logical connections, and some replacements for variables in them. We still have to deal with (...) so called paradox of material implication. the second paragraph provides formal and metatheoretical critics of Charles Sanders Peirce’s theory of deduction, induction and abduction. I argue that what Peirce and his followers call abduction is actually deduction or some reasoning unable to describe in terms of the logic used by them. Both syllogistic and inferential theory of abduction generate some paradoxes and contradictions. In the last paragraph also some paradoxes and contradictions resulting om the theory of causation by Jan Łukasiewicz are presented. the central issue of the article is erroneous usage of the implication: in logical paraphrases of a natural language, in description of the scienti c reasoning, and in description of causality. However, my objective is not to solve all problems mentioned above but rather to open a discussion over them. (shrink)

This article applies Charles W. Mills’ notion of the domination contract to develop a Kantian theory of justice. The concept of domination underlying the domination contract is best understood as structural domination, which unjustifiably authorizes institutions and labour practices to weaken vulnerable groups’ public standing as free, equal and independent citizens. Though Kant’s theory of justice captures why structural domination of any kind contradicts the requirements of justice, it neglects to condemn exploitive gender- and race-based labour relations. Because the (...) ideal of civic equality must position all persons as co-legislators of the terms of political rule, the state must dismantle exploitive race- and gender-based labour relations for all persons to command political power as civic equals. (shrink)

This article discusses the adequacy of Rawls’ theory of justice as a tool for racial justice. It is argued that critics like Charles W Mills fail to appreciate both the insights and limits of the Rawlsian framework. The article has two main parts spread out over several different sections. The first is concerned with whether the Rawlsian framework suffices to prevent racial injustice. It is argued that there are reasons to doubt whether it does. The second part is concerned (...) with whether a Rawlsian framework has the resources to rectify past racial injustice. It is argued that it has more resources to do this than Mills allows. This second part of the article centers on two Rawlsian ideas: ideal theory and the fair equality of opportunity principle. It is argued that ideal theory is essential for the kind of rectificatory work that Mills wants nonideal theory to do, and that where there is a socioeconomic legacy of past injustice, it is hard to see how FEO could be implemented if it did no rectificatory work, a result which means that there is less need to turn to nonideal theory at all. (shrink)

This provocation critiques the notion of long-term thinking and the claims of its proponents that it will help address failures in dominant conceptions of time, particularly in regard to environmental crises. Drawing on analyses of the Clock of the Long Now and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, the article suggests that we be more wary of the concept’s use in what we might call chronowashing. Like the more familiar greenwashing, where environmental issues are hidden by claims to (...) be addressing the problem, the article explores how these examples of long-term thinking distract from extractivism, racism, and environmental injustice, making it harder to address the complexities involved. In particular, the article discusses examples where long-term thinking provides a veneer of environmental concern that actually disconnects from the work of building more equitable forms of relation. As a contrast, the article’s author asks: What is lost when we diagnose a problem as arising due to short-term thinking and propose long-term thinking as the solution? Against chronowashed environmental time, the author argues for more complex approaches that explicitly take into account the temporalities of inequality, political organization, ethical responsibilities and much else. The article engages with approaches to time that foreground the work needed to create time and move ethically within it, including Charles W. Mills’s white time and Kyle Powys Whyte’s kinship time. The author suggests that a stronger emphasis on the temporality of community, solidarity, and coalition—versus what James Hatley and Deborah Bird Rose have described as temporal narcissism—can better foreground the kinds of work that needs to be done, particularly by those with privilege. (shrink)

Genocide denialism is an understudied topic in the epistemic injustice scholarship; so are epistemic relations outside of the Euro-American context. This article proposes to bring the literature into contact with an underexplored topic in a ‘distant’ setting: Turkey. Here, I explore the ethical and epistemological implications of the Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide as a pervasive and systematic epistemic harm. Using an interdisciplinary methodology, I argue that a philosophical exploration of genocide denialism requires examining the role of institutions and (...) ideology in relation to the epistemic harm done by individual perpetrators. More specifically, I suggest that the individual, ideological, and institutional roots of genocide denialism constitute a regime of epistemic injustice in Turkey. (shrink)

There have been attempts to subsume Charles Darwin's theory of evolution under either one of two distinct intellectual traditions: early Victorian natural science and its descendants in political economy (as exemplified by Herschel, Lyell, or Malthus) and the romantic approach to art and science emanating from Germany (as exemplified by Humboldt and Goethe). In this paper, it will be shown how these traditions may have jointly contributed to the design of Darwin's theory. The hypothesis is that their encounter created (...) a particular tension in the conception of his theory which first opened up its characteristic field and mode of explanation. On the one hand, the domain of the explanandum was conceived of under a holistic and aesthetic view of nature that, in its combination with refined techniques of observation, was deeply indebted to Humboldt in particular. On the other hand, Darwin fashioned explanations for natural phenomena, so conceived, in order to identify their proper causes in a Herschelian spirit. The particular interaction between these two traditions in Darwin, it is concluded, paved the way for a transfer of the idea of causal laws to animate nature while salvaging the romantic idea of a complex, teleological and harmonious order of nature. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Christopher Hookway has been influential in promoting engagement with pragmatist and naturalist perspectives from classical and contemporary American philosophy. This book reflects on Hookway’s work on the American philosophical tradition and its significance for contemporary discussions of the understanding of mind, meaning, knowledge, and value. -/- Hookway’s original and extensive studies of Charles S. Peirce have made him among the most admired and frequently referenced of Peirce’s interpreters. His work on classical American pragmatism has explored the philosophies of William (...) James, John Dewey, and Josiah Royce, and examined the influence of pragmatist ideas outside of the United States. Additionally, Hookway has participated in a number of celebrated exchanges with some of the most high-profile figures of twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy, including Karl-Otto Apel, Philip Pettit, Hilary Putnam, and W.V.O. Quine, through which his treatments of a large range of topics in epistemology and the philosophies of mind and language have been developed and promoted. The chapters in this book—which include contributions from several of Hookway’s former students and colleagues—include studies of Hookway’s engagement with the works of Peirce, James, and Dewey, his contributions to virtue epistemology, and his discussions of hope and pragmatist metaphysics. -/- Pragmatic Reason will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on American philosophy, the history of analytic philosophy, and epistemology. (shrink)

HISTÓRIA DA SOCIOLOGIA: O DESENVOLVIMENTO DA SOCIOLOGIA I -/- A SOCIOLOGIA NOS ESTADOS UNIDOS -/- -/- HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY: THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGY I -/- SOCIOLOGY IN UNITED STATES -/- -/- Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva – IFPE-BJ, CAP-UFPE e UFRPE. E-mails: [email protected] e [email protected] WhatsApp: (82)9.8143-8399. -/- -/- PREMISSA -/- A Sociologia nos Estados Unidos desenvolveu-se no contexto de dois grandes eventos que marcaram profundamente a história do país. -/- O primeiro foi a Guerra de Secessão (também conhecida como (...) Guerra Civil Americana), que ocorreu entre 1861 e 1865 e gerou ressentimentos e atritos entre a população do sul e a do norte dos Estados Unidos. -/- Em contrapartida, houve a urbanização das terras do oeste e das áreas centrais do país, o que contribuiu para o crescimento da economia e a expansão industrial. No norte, graças ao esforço de guerra, houve um grande crescimento, principalmente na metalurgia, no transporte ferroviário, na indústria de armamentos e na indústria naval. O comércio também se expandiu de maneira exponencial em todo o território estadunidense. -/- O padrão de cultura dos Estados Unidos passou a ser o ideal nortista de “trabalho duro, educação e liberdade econômica a todos”. Houve ainda um grande desenvolvimento de escolas e instituições de ensino superior. -/- O segundo grande evento que marcou a história estadunidense foi a chegada em massa de estrangeiros. Entre 1860 e 1900, os Estados Unidos passaram de país agrícola, com população em torno de 4 milhões, para país industrial, com uma das maiores economias do mundo e com 75 milhões de habitantes. -/- O incremento populacional e a industrialização redundaram em um processo de urbanização sem precedentes que continuou até a década de 1930. Para se ter uma ideia, em 1860 viviam em Chicago 102 260 pessoas; em 1900, a população da cidade passou a 1 698 575 e, em 1930, a 3 375 329. Em virtude desses fatores, consolidaram-se nos Estados Unidos uma burguesia industrial, comercial e financeira significativa, uma classe trabalhadora majoritariamente formada por imigrantes e uma classe média em ascensão. -/- As principais cidades passaram a ser um espaço de conflito e alvo de preocupações. Temas como imigração, aculturação, conflitos étnicos, comportamentos desviantes e políticas públicas foram importantes na Sociologia desenvolvida inicialmente no país. -/- Entre os principais fundadores da Sociologia nos Estados Unidos estão William Graham Sumner (1840 -1910), Lester Frank Ward (1841-1913), Albion Woodbury Small (1854-1926), Franklin Henry Giddings (1855-1931), Thorstein Bunde Veblen (1857-1929), William Isaac Thomas (1863-1947), Robert Ezra Park (1864-1944), Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929) e George Herbert Mead (1863-1931). -/- A herança cultural desses fundadores é muito diversa: foram influenciados principalmente pela tradição religiosa protestante disseminada em quase todo o território, pelo liberalismo econômico clássico conservador, do tipo laissez-faire, pelo evolucionismo do inglês Charles Darwin (1809-1882) e pelo darwinismo social de Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). Acrescente-se a esse cadinho de concepções de mundo e ciência o pragmatismo do filósofo e psicólogo William James (1842-1910) e do filósofo Charles Pierce (1839-1914). -/- Essa herança permite compreender as duas grandes características da Sociologia nos Estados Unidos: -/- • multiplicidade de temas, problemas e propostas e diversidade teórica e metodológica; -/- • desenvolvimento desse campo do conhecimento em universidades, nas quais as atividades eram financiadas pelo Estado e pelo setor privado (Fundação Rockefeller, comitês e associações normalmente religiosas). -/- Por causa dessa segunda característica, optei por analisar o desenvolvimento da Sociologia nos Estados Unidos em três importantes universidades estadunidenses: a de Chicago, Harvard e Columbia. -/- 1. A Universidade de Chicago -/- A Universidade de Chicago foi fundada em 1890 pelo magnata do petróleo John D. Rockefeller e recebeu os primeiros alunos em 1892. Nela foi criado o primeiro departamento de Sociologia dos Estados Unidos, sob a direção de Albion Woodbury Small. -/- No início de seus trabalhos sociológicos, a Universidade de Chicago deu primazia à pesquisa empírica, procurando conhecer, por meio da observação direta, a dinâmica das relações sociais. Desenvolveu uma forte tendência pragmática e microssociológica, que viria a ser conhecida como a Escola de Chicago. A maior preocupação dos integrantes dessa Escola foi com os problemas das grandes cidades dos Estados Unidos, como a marginalidade social, o alcoolismo, as drogas, a segregação racial e a delinquência, estabelecendo uma relação entre a pesquisa sociológica e a intervenção dos organismos públicos na sociedade. -/- Os sociólogos de Chicago também se dedicaram ao que chamaram de ecologia humana, em oposição à ecologia animal e vegetal. -/- Em 1895, Albion Woodbury Small fundou o American Journal of Sociology e, em 1907, participou ativamente da fundação da Sociedade Americana de Sociologia. Ele publicou, com Georges Vincent, em 1894, talvez o primeiro manual de Sociologia para estudantes, intitulado Introdução ao estudo da sociedade. Tendo estudado na Alemanha, Small foi o principal divulgador do pensamento de Georg Simmel nos Estados Unidos. -/- Entre os integrantes da Escola de Chicago mais conhecidos no Brasil, podemos citar William I. Thomas (1863-1947) e Florian Znaniecki (1882-1958), cuja principal obra foi O camponês polonês na Europa e na América, editada em 1918. -/- Destacam-se ainda Robert E. Park (1864-1944) e Ernest W. Burgess (1886-1966), que escreveram, entre outras obras, Introdução à ciência da Sociologia, em 1921. -/- Os dois, com Roderick Mackenzie, escreveram o clássico A cidade, em 1925. Outro membro de destaque foi Louis Wirth (1897-1952), autor de O gueto, escrito em 1928, e de um artigo que se tornou famoso, “Urbanismo como modo de vida”, publicado em 1938, no American Journal of Sociology. -/- A Escola de Chicago congregou, ainda, sociólogos e antropólogos com ligação com a Psicologia Social, que desenvolveram uma abordagem sociológica das relações sociais conhecida como interacionismo simbólico. A principal figura dessa vertente foi George Herbert Mead (1863-1932), que trabalhou em diversas áreas, sobretudo como psicólogo social e como professor de várias gerações de antropólogos e sociólogos. Seus escritos foram sistematizados por seus alunos e publicados com o nome Mind, self and society (A mente, o eu e a sociedade), em 1934. -/- Além da tradição intelectual dos Estados Unidos, os integrantes da Escola de Chicago receberam a influência de Jean-Gabriel de Tarde, Émile Durkheim e Georg Simmel. Seus continuadores foram Herbert Blumer (1900-1987) e Everett C. Hughes (1897-1983). -/- 1.1 Erving Goffman (1922-1982) -/- O representante da Sociologia desenvolvida na Universidade de Chicago mais influente no Brasil é Erving Goffman, que nasceu em Manville, Alberta, no Canadá, em 1922, e faleceu nos Estados Unidos em 1982. Obteve o grau de bacharel pela Universidade de Toronto, em 1945, e concluiu mestrado (1949) e doutorado (1953) na Universidade de Chicago, onde estudou Sociologia e Antropologia Social. Em 1958, tornou-se professor da Universidade da Califórnia e, em 1968, ingressou na Universidade da Pensilvânia, onde foi professor de Antropologia e Sociologia. -/- Entre 1981 e 1982, Goffman foi presidente da Sociedade Americana de Sociologia e realizou pesquisas na linha da Sociologia interpretativa e cultural, iniciada por Max Weber, desenvolvendo a ideia de que o mundo é um teatro e cada um, individualmente ou em grupo, interpreta papéis de acordo com as circunstâncias em que se encontra. Essas circunstâncias são marcadas por rituais e posições distintivas em relação a outros indivíduos ou grupos. Para ele, é possível distinguir indivíduos, grupos e classes com base, por exemplo, em aspectos como as formas de vestir ou de se apresentar publicamente. -/- O sociólogo considera a interação social como um processo fundamental de identificação e de diferenciação dos indivíduos e grupos, analisando-a no cotidiano, especialmente em lugares públicos. Goffman estudou com especial atenção o que chamou de “instituições totais”, lugares onde o indivíduo é isolado da sociedade, como prisões e manicômios. -/- De acordo com o sociólogo brasileiro Édison Gastaldo: -/- O trabalho de Goffman trouxe à luz aspectos da vida cotidiana que não se julgavam “sociologicamente relevantes”. Seus insights sobre as interações ordinárias, sobre o deslocamento dos pedestres, sobre a ocupação social dos espaços públicos, sobre a atuação dos vigaristas, mendigos, loucos, espiões, jogadores e de todos aqueles que passam cotidianamente debaixo de nossos narizes sem que prestemos atenção modificaram o pensar sociológico no mundo. Sua descrição etnográfica de um hospital para doentes mentais colaborou decisivamente para deflagrar a luta antimanicomial no mundo inteiro. Vinte e dois anos depois de sua morte, os temas e os conceitos desenvolvidos por Goffman ainda estão em pleno uso e vitalidade (GASTALDO, 2004, p. 9/10). -/- Suas três obras mais conhecidas são: A representação do eu na vida cotidiana (1959), Manicômios, prisões e conventos (1961) e Estigma: notas sobre a manipulação da identidade (1963). -/- 2. A Universidade Harvard -/- A história de Harvard começa em 1636, quando foi fundada, na cidade de Cambridge, no estado de Massachusetts, uma instituição de ensino denominada New College. Em 1639, essa instituição recebeu o nome de Harvard College, em homenagem a John Harvard, seu principal mecenas. -/- A Sociologia desenvolvida na Universidade Harvard é marcada por uma preocupação teórica e tem dois sociólogos como expoentes: Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin (1889-1968) e Talcott Edgar Frederick Parsons (1902-1979). Este último influenciou muito o desenvolvimento da Sociologia no mundo e no Brasil. -/- 2.1 Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) -/- Talcott Parsons nasceu no Colorado, nos Estados Unidos. Em 1924, graduou-se em Biologia e Filosofia na Faculdade Amherst. Em 1925, pós-graduou-se em Ciências Sociais na Escola de Economia de Londres, na Inglaterra, e, em seguida, doutorou-se na Universidade de Heidelberg, na Alemanha. -/- Nos Estados Unidos, lecionou Economia e Sociologia na Universidade Harvard durante 45 anos (1927-1973). Em 1944, tornou-se presidente do Departamento de Sociologia, transformando-o, dois anos depois, no Departamento de Relações Sociais, a fim de unir a Sociologia a outras ciências sociais. -/- Assim como Sorokin, Parsons voltou-se para a Sociologia europeia, tendo por base as ideias de Max Weber, Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) e Émile Durkheim, além das do economista inglês Alfred Marshall (1842-1924). Fundamentado nesses autores, desenvolveu uma grande obra teórica, que dominaria a Sociologia estadunidense desde então. -/- Parsons é o sociólogo estadunidense mais conhecido no mundo. Em geral, seus críticos entenderam-no como um pensador conservador, preocupado basicamente com o bom ordenamento da sociedade. Seu interesse era determinar a função que os indivíduos desempenhavam na estrutura social. Entendia o indivíduo como expressão dessa estrutura, a qual devia ser mantida e preservada. Caso isso não ocorresse, deviam entrar em ação os mecanismos de controle social (moral, ética, sistema jurídico e penal etc.), como instrumentos preventivos ou corretivos. -/- Seu trabalho exerceu influência em diversos países e ambientes acadêmicos (particularmente nas décadas de 1950 a 1970), até mesmo na então União Soviética, onde, em 1964, ministrou aulas sobre a Sociologia estadunidense a convite da Academia de Ciências da União Soviética (URSS). -/- Suas principais obras foram: A estrutura da ação social (1937), O sistema social (1951), Economia e sociedade (1956, com N. Smelser), Estrutura e processo nas sociedades modernas (1960), Sociedades: perspectivas evolucionárias e comparativas (1966), Teoria sociológica e sociedade moderna (1968), Política e estrutura social (1969), Sistemas sociais e a evolução da teoria da ação (1977) e Teoria da ação e a condição humana (1978). -/- 3. A Universidade Columbia -/- A King’s College foi fundada em 1754, em Nova York, nos Estados Unidos. Quando as colônias inglesas se declararam independentes da Grã-Bretanha, a instituição passou a se chamar Universidade Columbia. A partir da última década do século XIX, essa universidade se destacaria por uma importante produção no campo da Sociologia, tendo como pioneiro Franklin Giddings (1855-1931), fundador da cadeira de Sociologia. Fortemente marcado pelo evolucionismo e pelo pragmatismo, foi um dos primeiros a usar métodos quantitativos e experi-mentais no estudo dos fenômenos sociais. -/- Dois sociólogos de Columbia merecem destaque, por serem muito conhecidos no Brasil: Robert K. Merton e Charles Wright Mills. -/- 3.1 Robert King Merton (1910-2003) -/- Merton nasceu na Filadélfia e faleceu em Nova York. Graduou-se em Sociologia na Universidade Temple e pós-graduou-se na Universidade Harvard, onde trabalhou com Pitirim Sorokin e Talcott Parsons até a defesa de seu doutorado, em 1936. -/- Em 1941 Merton transferiu-se para a Universidade Columbia, onde permaneceu durante 38 anos, até aposentar-se. Nessa universidade procurou integrar teoria à prática sociológica. Estudou o comportamento desviante e os processos de adaptação social, tendo por base pesquisas qualitativas e quantitativas do exercício profissional em ambiente de solidariedade e de conflito. Com Paul Lazarsfeld (1901-1976), desenvolveu o Departamento de Pesquisa Social Aplicada. -/- O nome de Merton está vinculado à proposta de criação de teorias de alcance médio, segundo a qual os sociólogos seriam mais úteis à sociedade se deixassem de lado as grandes teorias (criticando Parsons) e criassem outras de médio alcance. Essas teorias estariam situadas entre as hipóteses de trabalho rotineiras na pesquisa e as amplas especulações. Mediariam, dessa forma, as abstrações, generalizações e fundamentos empíricos da pesquisa. -/- Merton tinha uma visão humanista da função social da ciência, demonstrando influência clara de Max Weber. Concebia a ciência como um conjunto de conhecimentos compartilhados por todos os membros da sociedade, que deveriam julgar a credibilidade das postulações científicas de acordo com suas expectativas e valores morais. Mas as decisões acerca do fazer científico não caberiam à sociedade, e sim ao próprio cientista, sempre adequando seus valores aos da sociedade. -/- 3.2 Charles Wright Mills (1916-1962) -/- Charles Wright Mills (1916-1962) nasceu em Waco, no Texas, Estados Unidos. Mestre em Artes, Filosofia e Sociologia pela Universidade do Texas, concluiu, em 1942, seu doutorado em Sociologia e Antropologia pela Universidade de Wisconsin. Foi professor de Sociologia nas universidades de Maryland e Columbia, onde passou a lecionar em 1947 e permaneceu até a morte, em 1962. -/- Charles Mills representa uma tendência quase marginal na Sociologia dos Estados Unidos, por apresentar uma visão crítica e militante da sociedade estadunidense e da própria Sociologia. -/- Influenciado por Karl Marx e Max Weber, Mills procurou conciliar o conceito de classe social com o de status, visando esclarecer processos e mecanismos dos conflitos e das mudanças sociais. Por meio de pesquisas, tentou elucidar a complexidade de estruturas de poder, particularmente das elites (em lugar de classes dominantes), e de seu papel na mudança social, fugindo da ideia de revolução como única via para a transformação social. -/- Charles Wright Mills é conhecido principalmente por seu livro A imaginação sociológica, publicado originalmente nos Estados Unidos em 1959. Nele, o autor propõe que os sociólogos, ao exercer a profissão, não deixem a imaginação e a criatividade de lado em favor de uma pretensa objetividade e neutralidade do trabalho científico. Para Mills, os grandes intelectuais da história nunca abriram mão da reflexão e da criatividade e mantiveram uma postura crítica diante da realidade. -/- Atribuindo aos sociólogos a responsabilidade de agentes ativos na sociedade, cabendo-lhes tomar parte nos debates públicos de sua época, Mills defendia a ideia de que a Sociologia deveria ser compreensível para o grande público. Para ele, a ciência social era inseparável da vida pessoal do cientista: a intuição, a imaginação e o comprometimento com o tempo em que se vivia eram fundamentais para compreender cientificamente a sociedade. Suas obras foram publicadas em vários idiomas. Além da citada anteriormente, as mais importantes são: A nova classe média (1951), A elite do poder (1956), Sobre o artesanato intelectual (1959) e Os marxistas (1962). -/- Mills escreveu também artigos em revistas e dois livros que tiveram grande exposição na mídia dos Estados Unidos, por seu caráter polêmico: As causas da Terceira Guerra Mundial (1958), no qual discute a corrida nuclear, e A Revolução em Cuba (1960), em que analisa a fase inicial da Revolução Cubana. -/- Outros sociólogos que defendem uma postura crítica na Sociologia estadunidense, continuadores ou não de Charles Wright Mills, são Irving Louis Horowitz (1929-2012), Martin Nicolaus (1928-) e Alvin Gouldner (1920-1980). -/- REFERENCIAL TEÓRICO -/- BOTTOMORE, T.; et al. Dicionário do pensamento social do século XX. Trad. Eduardo Francisco Alves. Álvaro Cabral. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1996. -/- COULON, A. A Escola de Chicago. Trad. Tomás R. Bueno. 1ª ed. Campinas: Papirus, 1995. -/- CUIN, C. H.; GRESLE, F. História da Sociologia. Trad. Roberto Leal Ferreira. São Paulo: Ensaio, 1994. -/- DOMINGUES, J. M. A sociologia de Talcott Parsons. 1ª ed. São Paulo: Annablume, 2008. -/- GASTALDO, É. (org.); et al. Erving Goffman, desbravador do cotidiano. 1ª ed. Porto Alegre: Tomo Editorial, 2004. -/- NOVA, S. V. Introdução à Sociologia. 6ª ed. São Paulo: Atlas, 2004. -/- SILVA, A. et al. Sociologia em movimento. 2ª ed. São Paulo: Ática, 2016. -/- VALLADARES, L. do P. A Escola de Chicago: impacto de uma tradição no Brasil e na França. 1ª ed. Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 2005. -/- VÁRIOS, autores. O livro da sociologia. As grandes ideias de todos os tempos. Trad. Rafael Longo. 1ª ed. São Paulo: Globo, 2015. -/- SBS - Sociedade Brasileira de Sociologia PUCRS - PPG em Ciências Sociais Avenida Ipiranga, 6681 - Partenon CEP: 90619-900 - Porto Alegre, RS [email protected] Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva ©2019 -/- Estimule a criatividade. Respeite os direitos autorais. (shrink)

In the 1920s, David Hilbert proposed a research program with the aim of providing mathematics with a secure foundation. This was to be accomplished by first formalizing logic and mathematics in their entirety, and then showing---using only so-called finitistic principles---that these formalizations are free of contradictions. ;In the area of logic, the Hilbert school accomplished major advances both in introducing new systems of logic, and in developing central metalogical notions, such as completeness and decidability. The analysis of unpublished material presented (...) in Chapter 2 shows that a completeness proof for propositional logic was found by Hilbert and his assistant Paul Bernays already in 1917--18, and that Bernays's contribution was much greater than is commonly acknowledged. Aside from logic, the main technical contribution of Hilbert's Program are the development of formal mathematical theories and proof-theoretical investigations thereof, in particular, consistency proofs. In this respect Wilhelm Ackermann's 1924 dissertation is a milestone both in the development of the Program and in proof theory in general. Ackermann gives a consistency proof for a second-order version of primitive recursive arithmetic which, surprisingly, explicitly uses a finitistic version of transfinite induction up to www . He also gave a faulty consistency proof for a system of second-order arithmetic based on Hilbert's &egr;-substitution method. Detailed analyses of both proofs in Chapter 3 shed light on the development of finitism and proof theory in the 1920s as practiced in Hilbert's school. ;In a series of papers, Charles Parsons has attempted to map out a notion of mathematical intuition which he also brings to bear on Hilbert's finitism. According to him, mathematical intuition fails to be able to underwrite the kind of intuitive knowledge Hilbert thought was attainable by the finitist. It is argued in Chapter 4 that the extent of finitistic knowledge which intuition can provide is broader than Parsons supposes. According to another influential analysis of finitism due to W. W. Tait, finitist reasoning coincides with primitive recursive reasoning. The acceptance of non-primitive recursive methods in Ackermann's dissertation presented in Chapter 3, together with additional textual evidence presented in Chapter 4, shows that this identification is untenable as far as Hilbert's conception of finitism is concerned. Tait's conception, however, differs from Hilbert's in important respects, yet it is also open to criticisms leading to the conclusion that finitism encompasses more than just primitive recursive reasoning. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to address the problem of what is usually called “self-consciousness” by studying Charles S. Peirce’s semeiotic treatment of self-referential statements. Peirce believes that an adequate study of the mind requires “to reduce all mental action,” including “self-consciousness,” “to the formula of valid reasoning” (W 2:214, EP 1:30, 5:267, 1868) and its semeiotic nature. While Peirce makes frequent use of the notion of “consciousness,” he is at the same time distant from the understanding of (...) the “conscious mind” that Descartes invented and made canonical (e.g., W 1:491, 1866), and which from the modern epoch stretches out to the contemporary discussion on, as David Chalmers put it, the “hard problem” of the mind. In what follows, I argue that Peirce puts forth a powerful theory of self-consciousness based on his semeiotic understanding of self-reference and indexicality. To the question, “How can we elucidate the phenomenon of self-consciousness?”, we should answer, with Peirce, “What we call self-consciousness corresponds to the practice of narratives and descriptions ultimately based on indexical self-referential statements, which are in turn rooted in very specific dimensions of human experience.” It is also important to underscore from the outset that the problem of indexical self-reference cannot be separated from Peirce’s concept of experience, which is one of the most interesting insights of Peirce’s philosophy and classical American pragmatism. In particular, it will be essential to see what are the experiential-perceptual conditions under which indexical self-referential statements can work as such. (shrink)

Arthura Kaufmanna filozofia prawa wyrasta przede wszystkim z neokantyzmu aksjologicznego reprezentowanego przez „późnego” Gustava Radbrucha, którego uważał on za najważniejszego ze swych nauczycieli, oraz z hermeneutyki filozoficznej Hansa-Georga Gadamera. W późniejszym okresie znaczący wpływ na Kaufmanna wywarł Charles S. Peirce, którego pracami posiłkował się opracowując problematykę analogii (wiążąc ją z opracowanym przez Pierca zagadnieniem abdukcji) oraz ontologii relacji. Niektóre wątki poglądów Kaufmanna nawiązują do egzystencjalizmu Karla Jaspersa oraz antropologii Karla Löwitha. Obecne są także inspiracje tomistyczne i arystotelesowskie. Jest to (...) filozofia prawa o charakterze maksymalistycznym. Kaufmann wpisuje się w sięgającą starożytności tradycję uprawiania filozofii, w której stawia się pytania o całość; filozofia pyta o to, co to jest "byt w ogóle", byt "w całości"; filozofia prawa stawia pytania o to, co to jest prawo "w całości", prawo "w ogóle" . Podejmuje wprost fundamentalne zagadnienia należące do zasadniczych dziedzin filozoficznych – epistemologiczne, ontologiczne, etyczne, nie stroniąc także od zagadnień z zakresu logiki. Uprawiana przez niego filozofia ma charakter systemowy, co sprawia, że jej zrozumienie zakłada ujęcie całości propozycji. Sam Kaufmann uważa, że systemy filozofii prawa należą już do historii, jednak ta uwaga jest o tyle jedynie trafna w odniesieniu do niego samego, że jego filozofia prawa – w zgodzie z jego deklaracjami – nie zmierza do „gotowych rozwiązań” konkretnych kwestii prawnych, ale zmierza do ukształtowania pewnego sposobu refleksji nad prawem. Jego koncepcja jest ważnym głosem w sporze klasycznego pozytywizmu z koncepcjami niepozytywistycznymi. Za prawo w pełnym tego słowa znaczeniu uznaje konkretne rozstrzygnięcie, co niewątpliwie łączy jego podejście z amerykańskim realizmem prawnym. Rekonstruowana przez Kaufmanna struktura procesu „urzeczywistniania” prawa, dokonywana w kontekście i na użytek kultury prawnej typu kodeksowego, kontynentalnego, uwyraźnia obecność elementów typowych dla kultury prawa precedensowego –wnioskowanie od przypadku do przypadku. Jednocześnie za istotny problem każdego porządku normatywnego uznaje uogólnienie. Jest to znamienny teoretyczny wyraz narastającej świadomości współwystępowania obok siebie zasadniczych elementów każdego z tych typów kultur prawnych. Kaufmann trafnie dostrzega, że w konkretnym rozstrzygnięciu są obecne elementy normatywne wykraczające poza to, co jest zawarte w aktach normatywnych. Podobnie jak Ronald Dworkin, Kaufmann wskazuje, że dokonujący rozstrzygnięcia, czy tego chce, czy nie, „stosuje” szereg elementów normatywnych spoza aktów normatywnych. Analizy prowadzą do wniosku, że propozycja Kaufmanna zawodzi, gdy przechodzi on do ontologicznych uogólnień, przede wszystkim przez brak uwzględnienia w swych podstawach takich punktów odniesienia, które są zewnętrzne wobec badanego procesu „urzeczywistniania” prawa. To, czym jest osoba, determinowane jest systemem prawnym i kulturą, w której prawo funkcjonuje. Przy takim ujęciu Kaufmann nie osiąga jednego z ważnych celów, do którego zmierzał, nie wskazuje kryteriów pozwalających stwierdzić, czy stopniowa – dokonywana zgodnie z odkrytymi przez hermeneutykę filozoficzną wymaganiami poprawnego rozumienia – zmiana normatywnego sensu systemu prawnego zmierza ku „ustawowemu bezprawiu”, czy też nie. (shrink)

This article discusses anglophone readings of G. W. F. Hegel against the backdrop of German-language scholarship. The article starts by differentiating types of metaphysics (I). Following a taxonomy introduced by Paul Redding, I then discuss Charles Taylor’s Christian-mystical (II), the so-called »non-metaphysical« (III) and the »revised metaphysical« reading (IV). Terry Pinkard’s work serves as an example of (III) and Stephen Houlgate’s as an example of (IV). I highlight problematic aspects of each reading that concern: the meaning of »reason in (...) the world« (II), the anti-relativist clout of Hegel’s philosophy (III) and the difference between the development of logical concepts and the empirical origin of the world and human thinking (IV). The text ends (V) by pointing to the social implications of each type of reading. (shrink)

This book is a collection of articles dealing with criticisms of Robert S. Hartman’s theory of formal axiology. During his lifetime, Hartman wrote responses to many of his critics. Some of these were previously published but many are published here for the first time. In particular, published here are Hartman’s replies to such critics as Hector Neri Castañeda, Charles Hartshorne, Rem B. Edwards, Robert E. Carter, G. R. Grice, Nicholas Rescher, Robert W. Mueller, Gordon Welty, Pete Gunter, George Kimball (...) Plochmann, William Eckhardt, and Robert S. Brumbaugh. Crticial essays and responses to them developed by Rem B. Edwards, Frank G. Forrest, and Mark A. Moore after Hartman’s untimely death in 1973 are also included. (shrink)

This book presents Robert S. Hartman’s formal theory of value and critically examines many other twentieth century value theorists in its light, including A.J. Ayer, Kurt Baier, Brand Blanshard, Paul Edwards, Albert Einstein, William K. Frankena, R.M. Hare, Nicolai Hartmann, Martin Heidegger, G.E. Moore, P.H. Nowell-Smith, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Charles Stevenson, Paul W. Taylor, Stephen E. Toulmin, and J.O. Urmson.

Artificial agents (AAs), particularly but not only those in Cyberspace, extend the class of entities that can be involved in moral situations. For they can be conceived of as moral patients (as entities that can be acted upon for good or evil) and also as moral agents (as entities that can perform actions, again for good or evil). In this paper, we clarify the concept of agent and go on to separate the concerns of morality and responsibility of agents (most (...) interestingly for us, of AAs). We conclude that there is substantial and important scope, particularly in Computer Ethics, for the concept of moral agent not necessarily exhibiting free will, mental states or responsibility. This complements the more traditional approach, common at least since Montaigne and Descartes, which considers whether or not (artificial) agents have mental states, feelings, emotions and so on. By focussing directly on mind-less morality we are able to avoid that question and also many of the concerns of Artificial Intelligence. A vital component in our approach is the Method of Abstraction for analysing the level of abstraction (LoA) at which an agent is considered to act. The LoA is determined by the way in which one chooses to describe, analyse and discuss a system and its context. The Method of Abstraction is explained in terms of an interface or set of features or observables at a given LoA. Agenthood, and in particular moral agenthood, depends on a LoA. Our guidelines for agenthood are: interactivity (response to stimulus by change of state), autonomy (ability to change state without stimulus) and adaptability (ability to change the transition rules by which state is changed) at a given LoA. Morality may be thought of as a threshold defined on the observables in the interface determining the LoA under consideration. An agent is morally good if its actions all respect that threshold; and it is morally evil if some action violates it. That view is particularly informative when the agent constitutes a software or digital system, and the observables are numerical. Finally we review the consequences for Computer Ethics of our approach. In conclusion, this approach facilitates the discussion of the morality of agents not only in Cyberspace but also in the biosphere, where animals can be considered moral agents without their having to display free will, emotions or mental states, and in social contexts, where systems like organizations can play the role of moral agents. The primary cost of this facility is the extension of the class of agents and moral agents to embrace AAs. (shrink)

Moral reasoning traditionally distinguishes two types of evil:moral (ME) and natural (NE). The standard view is that ME is the product of human agency and so includes phenomena such as war,torture and psychological cruelty; that NE is the product of nonhuman agency, and so includes natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, disease and famine; and finally, that more complex cases are appropriately analysed as a combination of ME and NE. Recently, as a result of developments in autonomous agents in cyberspace, (...) a new class of interesting and important examples of hybrid evil has come to light. In this paper, it is called artificial evil (AE) and a case is made for considering it to complement ME and NE to produce a more adequate taxonomy. By isolating the features that have led to the appearance of AE, cyberspace is characterised as a self-contained environment that forms the essential component in any foundation of the emerging field of Computer Ethics (CE). It is argued that this goes someway towards providing a methodological explanation of why cyberspace is central to so many of CE's concerns; and it is shown how notions of good and evil can be formulated in cyberspace. Of considerable interest is how the propensity for an agent's action to be morally good or evil can be determined even in the absence of biologically sentient participants and thus allows artificial agents not only to perpetrate evil (and fort that matter good) but conversely to `receive' or `suffer from' it. The thesis defended is that the notion of entropy structure, which encapsulates human value judgement concerning cyberspace in a formal mathematical definition, is sufficient to achieve this purpose and, moreover, that the concept of AE can be determined formally, by mathematical methods. A consequence of this approach is that the debate on whether CE should be considered unique, and hence developed as a Macroethics, may be viewed, constructively,in an alternative manner. The case is made that whilst CE issues are not uncontroversially unique, they are sufficiently novel to render inadequate the approach of standard Macroethics such as Utilitarianism and Deontologism and hence to prompt the search for a robust ethical theory that can deal with them successfully. The name Information Ethics (IE) is proposed for that theory. Itis argued that the uniqueness of IE is justified by its being non-biologically biased and patient-oriented: IE is an Environmental Macroethics based on the concept of data entity rather than life. It follows that the novelty of CE issues such as AE can be appreciated properly because IE provides a new perspective (though not vice versa). In light of the discussion provided in this paper, it is concluded that Computer Ethics is worthy of independent study because it requires its own application-specific knowledge and is capable of supporting a methodological foundation, Information Ethics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Abstract Most modern knowledge is not science. The physical sciences have successfully validated theories to infer they can be used universally to predict in previously unexperienced circumstances. According to the conventional conception of science such inferences are falsified by a single irregular outcome. And verification is by the scientific method which requires strict regularity of outcome and establishes cause and effect. -/- Medicine, medical research and many “soft” sciences are concerned with individual people in complex heterogeneous populations. These populations (...) cannot be tested to demonstrate strict regularity of outcome in every individual. Neither randomised controlled trials nor observational studies in medicine are science in the conventional conception. Establishing and using medical and other “soft science” theories cannot be scientific. It requires conceptually different means: requiring expert judgement applying all available evidence in the relevant available factual matrix. -/- The practice of medicine is observational. Prediction of outcomes for the individual requires professional expertise applying available medical knowledge and evidence. Expertise in any profession can only be acquired through experience. Prior cases are the fundament of knowledge and expertise in medicine. Case histories, studies and series can provide knowledge of extremely high reliability applicable to establishing reliable general theories and falsifying others. Their collation, study and analysis should be a priority in medicine. Their devaluation as evidence, the failure to apply their lessons, the devaluation of expert professional judgement and the attempt to emulate the scientific method are all historic errors in the theory and practice of modern medicine. (shrink)

Theodicy and Toleration Seem at first glance to be an unlikely pair of topics to treat in a single paper. Toleration usually means putting up with beliefs or actions with which one disagrees, and it is practiced because the beliefs or actions in question are not disagreeable enough to justify interference. It is usually taken to be a topic for moral and political philosophy. Theodicy, on the other hand, is the attempt to solve the problem of evil; that is, to (...) explain the origin of suffering and sin in a way that does not make God a moral cause of those evils.1 While theodicy concerns the notions of good and evil, and could therefore be considered a moral topic, historical and contemporary discussions of it have .. (shrink)

While evil has always fascinated philosophers, it is only in modern times that the existence of evil has been seen as a serious challenge to belief in the existence of a powerful and benevolent God. In order to demonstrate this, the following chapter traces the historical emergence of what philosophers today call “the problem of evil” through an analysis of the writings of Plato, Epicurus, Sextus Empiricus, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Descartes, Bayle, and Hume.

One central argument in favor of perceptual accounts of emotions concerns recalcitrant emotions: emotions that persist in the face of repudiating judgments. For, it is argued, to understand how the conflict between recalcitrant emotions and judgment falls short of incoherence in judgment, we need to understand recalcitrant emotions to be something like perceptual illusions of value, so that in normal, non-recalcitrant cases emotions are non-illusory perceptions of value. I argue that these arguments fail and that a closer examination of recalcitrant (...) emotions reveals important disanalogies with perception that undermine the perceptual model of emotions. (shrink)

Attempting to compare scientific theories requires a philosophical model of meaning. Yet different scientific theories have at times—particularly in early chemistry—pre-supposed disparate theories of meaning. When two theories of meaning are incommensurable, we must say that the scientific theories that rely upon them are meta-incommensurable. Meta- incommensurability is a more profound sceptical threat to science since, unlike first-order incommensurability, it implies complete incomparability.

Two types of formal models - landscape search tasks and two-armed bandit models - are often used to study the effects that various social factors have on epistemic performance. I argue that they can be understood within a single framework. In this unified framework, I develop a model that may be used to understand the effects of functional and demographic diversity and their interaction. Using the unified model, I find that the benefit of demographic diversity is most pronounced in a (...) functionally homogeneous group, and decreases with the increase of functional diversity. (shrink)

In the literature on expert trust, it is often assumed that track records are the gold standard for evaluating expertise, and the difficulty of expert identification arises from either the lack of access to track records, or the inability to assess them. I show, using a computational model, that even in an idealized environment where agents have a God’s eye view on track records, they may fail to identify experts. Under plausible conditions, selecting testimony based on track records ends up (...) reducing overall accuracy, and preventing the community from identifying the real experts. (shrink)

In a recent Opinion article, Sui and Humphreys [1] argue that experimental findings suggest self is ‘special’, in that self-reference serves a binding function within human cognitive economy. Contrasting their view with other functionalist positions, chiefly Dennett's [2], they deny that self is a convenient fiction and adduce findings to show that a ‘core self representation’ serves as an ‘integrative glue’ helping to bind distinct types of information as well as distinct stages of psycho- logical processing. In other words, where (...) Dennett regards self as analogous to a center of gravity, a simplification posited by observers, Sui and Humphreys regard self as a function that modulates mental processes. In practice, however, the concept of ‘self’ they employ is not unlike Dennett's. We side with Sui and Humphreys in hold- ing that self-reference modulates mental processes: reference to self during a task can bind memory to source, increase perceptual integration, and link attention to decision making, among other things. What is more, these functions are not reducible to other factors such as semantic coding, familiarity, or reward [3]. But whereas Sui and Humphreys contribute important empirical detail, the binding functions they describe are compatible with Dennett's version of functionalism, which treats self as an artifact of social process. (shrink)

In his influential book Truth, Paul Horwich deploys a philosophical method focused on linguistic usage, that is, on the function(s) the concept of truth serves in actual discourse. In doing so Horwich eschews abstract metaphysics, arguing that metaphysical or ontological conceptions of truth rest on basic misconceptions. From this description, one might reasonably expect Horwich's book to have drawn inspiration from, or even embodied philosophical pragmatism of some kind. Unfortunately Horwich relies upon Russell's tired caricature of pragmatism about truth (''p' (...) is true if and only if it is useful to believe p' (Ibid., p. 34, p. 47)), and as a result underestimates the challenge it poses to Minimalism. This paper develops a pragmatist critique of minimalism that focuses on the seemingly central, plausibly constitutive role played by the concept of truth in the speech-act of assertion. The critique suggests that Horwich's Minimalism does not and cannot accomplish its stated goal of explaining all of the facts involving truth. Indeed, the kind of thorough-going deflationism sought by Horwich and others (including pragmatist sympathizer Bob Brandom) is incompatible with an adequate account of assertion, and perhaps other concepts (like belief, judgement and inquiry) as well. (shrink)

In this paper I uncover and critically analyze a methodological assumption in the literature on conscientious refusals in health care. The assumption is what I call the “Priority of Conscience Principle,” which says the following: to determine the moral status of any act of conscientious refusal, it is first necessary to determine the nature and value of conscience. I argue that it is not always necessary to discuss conscience in the debate on conscientious refusals, and that discussing conscience is even (...) problematic, since it can lead authors to beg the question. (shrink)

This seminal paper, which marks a turning point of the chemical revolution, is presented for the first time in a complete English translation. In this first half Lavoisier undermines phlogiston chemistry by arguing that his French contemporaries had replaced Stahl’s original theory with radically different systems that conceptualised the phlogiston principle in completely incompatible ways. He refutes their claims by showing that these later models were riddled with inconsistencies as to phlogiston’s weight, its ability to penetrate glass and its role (...) as a source of colour and odour in chemical compounds. (shrink)

In his critical and his later work, Kant recommends apathy to the moral agent faced with pathological phenomena. Notoriously, Kant even rejects compassion (Mitleiden) as pathological. A deconstruction of Kant's 'apathology', i.e. of his systematic treatment of compassion, reveals disgust as quasi-transcendental affect at the roots of the moral agent's apathy.

This paper explores the question of whether the United Nations should engage in preventive military actions. Correlatively, it asks whether UN preventive military actions could satisfy just war principles. Rather than from the standpoint of the individual nation state, the ethics of preventive war is discussed from the standpoint of the UN. For the sake of brevity, only the legitimate authority, just cause, last resort, and proportionality principles are considered. Since there has been disagreement about the specific content of these (...) principles, a third question also is explored: How should they be formulated? Moreover, these questions are addressed in the context of a particular issue: the goals of the non-proliferation and the abolition of weapons of mass destruction. (shrink)

an essay on monsters, science and categories from Diderot to Baudelaire.

The idea of ‘reversion’ or ‘atavism’ has a peculiar history. For many authors in the latenineteenth and early-twentieth centuries – including Darwin, Galton, Pearson, Weismann, and Spencer, among others – reversion was one of the central phenomena which a theory of heredity ought to explain. By only a few decades later, however, Fisher and others could look back upon reversion as a historical curiosity, a non-problem, or even an impediment to clear theorizing. I explore various reasons that reversion might have (...) appeared to be a central problem for this first group of figures, focusing on their commitment to a variety of conceptual features of evolutionary theory; discuss why reversion might have then ceased to be an interesting phenomenon; and, finally, close with some more general thoughts about the death of scientific problems. (shrink)