In this paper it is argued that no CSR program can be successful in a development context in general, and in South Africa in particular, unless skills development and therefore empowerment is integrated in every part of the program. The Chinese proverb, “give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach him to fish and he will eat for a lifetime,” is the theme of this paper. While it is good to provide people with financial and (...) other means in order to help them, sustainable development cannot be achieved if people are not equipped with the necessary skills to use these means, and thereby empowered to provide for themselves and others in the future. (shrink)

This book is devoted to the so-called moral virtues, especially those moral virtues of which Christian tradition upholds that they are given by God to the faithful. For instance patience, humility and justice. There are not only different interpretations of these infused moral virutes, but it is also not unambiguous in the theology of Aquinas how these virtues are related to the virtues human beings acquire on their own accord. What is the relationship with Scripture, how do these virtues clour (...) the imitation of Christ, and what do these virtues tell about the moral life of non-Christians? (shrink)

The terms 'transcendence' and 'immanence' are often used casually and as self-evident. The spatial imagery contained in their meaning determines the way they are understood and used: as opposites, like 'there' and 'here'. As a consequence, the two concepts are seen as mutually exclusive when applied to God's being and to his activity and presence in our world and in our history. This view on the relationship between God and world is characteristic not only of deism and pantheism, but also (...) of theism. However, in the view of Thomas Aquinas, such an opposition cannot adequately capture the central tenets of the Christian faith. This book explores Aquinas' thought on transcendence and immanence in his discussions of creation, analogy, the Trinity, grace and Christ, and offers interpretations in which God's transcendence and his immanence do not exclude but imply one another. >br/>The papers contained in this volume were originally presented at the third international conference of the Thomas Instituut at Utrecht in 2005. (shrink)

During the last two decades virtue ethics has become the focal point of renewed ethical and theological interest. To lead a good life, it proves useful to watch those who have mastered the art of living. The conviction that living is an art is at the heart of virtue ethics. Living a good life requires exercise, and is a question of acquiring a virtuous character rather than of complying with external ethical and legal rules. This renaissance partly builds on Thomas (...) Aquinas. He in turn recovered Aristotelian, Ciceronian and Augustinian thought on virtue ethics. The interpretation and development of virtues and vices form the core of his authorship, as the 'secunda pars' of his 'Summa Theologiae' readily displays. And yet, the most important virtues for him are not the moral ones, such as Justice, Temperance, Prudence and Fortitude, but those virtues that are both infused by and aimed at God: Faith, Hope and Love. These are virtues that the philosophers of antiquity were not aware of. To account for them, Aquinas had to adapt the classical understanding of virtues. For Aquinas, the moral virtues come to full fruition only when they are embedded in a life before God, a life lived exercising the God given theological virtues. By ignoring Faith, Hope and Love, the present discussion of virtue ethics not only ignores those virtues that were for Aquinas of utmost importance, but also fails to arrive at a complete understanding of his view of the moral virtues. (shrink)

This contribution discusses the expression ‘Image of the Father’ as a case in point to Aquinas's approach of naming Christ: Christology and Trinitarian theology, as well as the discussion of analogical naming in divinis, need to be taken together. ‘Image’ and ‘Father’ are predicated differently of Christ and God the Father than of human beings. Moreover, God is ‘Father’ in a different way towards the Son than regarding human beings. Christ is the unique image of the Father: the invisible image (...) of the invisible Father. (shrink)

Originally the Adoro te devote was not a liturgical hymn but a prayer, probably intended by Thomas Aquinas for personal use when attending mass. Quoting the at present most reliable version of the poem, the author studies Adoro te devote from the angle of transformation: poetic, Eucharistic and mystic or eschatological transformation. Structure and form are analysed, and a number of themes discussed: two alternative interpretations of adoration, several concepts of truth intended in the poem, the good thief and doubting (...) Thomas as symbols of moral and spiritual imperfection, and living in connection, in union with God. (shrink)

The conscious awareness of voluntary action is associated with systematic changes in time perception: The interval between actions and outcomes is experienced as compressed in time. Although this temporal binding is thought to result from voluntary movement and provides a window to the sense of agency, recent studies challenge this idea by demonstrating binding in involuntary movement. We offer a potential account for these findings by proposing that binding between involuntary actions and effects can occur when self-causation is implied. Participants (...) made temporal judgements concerning a key press and a tone, while they learned to consider themselves as the cause of the effect or not. Results showed that implied self-causation increased temporal binding. Since intrinsic motor cues of movement were absent, these results suggest that sensory evidence about the key press caused binding in retrospect and in line with the participant’s sense of being an agent. (shrink)

Three experiments examined whether the mere priming of potential action effects enhances people’s feeling of causing these effects when they occur. In a computer task, participants and the computer independently moved a rapidly moving square on a display. Participants had to press a key, thereby stopping the movement. However, the participant or the computer could have caused the square to stop on the observed position, and accordingly, the stopped position of the square could be conceived of as the potential effect (...) resulting from participants’ action of pressing the stop key. The location of this position was primed or not just before participants had to stop the movement. Results showed that priming of the position enhanced experienced authorship of stopping the square. Additional experimentation demonstrated that this priming of agency was not mediated by the goal or intention to produce the effect. (shrink)

Global society is facing formidable current and future problems that threaten the prospects for justice and peace, sustainability, and the well-being of humanity both now and in the future. Many of these problems are related to science and technology and to how they function in the world. If the social responsibility of scientists and engineers implies a duty to safeguard or promote a peaceful, just and sustainable world society, then science and engineering education should empower students to fulfil this responsibility. (...) The contributions to this special issue present European examples of teaching social responsibility to students in science and engineering, and provide examples and discussion of how this teaching can be promoted, and of obstacles that are encountered. Speaking generally, education aimed at preparing future scientists and engineers for social responsibility is presently very limited and seemingly insufficient in view of the enormous ethical and social problems that are associated with current science and technology. Although many social, political and professional organisations have expressed the need for the provision of teaching for social responsibility, important and persistent barriers stand in the way of its sustained development. What is needed are both bottom-up teaching initiatives from individuals or groups of academic teachers, and top-down support to secure appropriate embedding in the university. Often the latter is lacking or inadequate. Educational policies at the national or international level, such as the Bologna agreements in Europe, can be an opportunity for introducing teaching for social responsibility. However, frequently no or only limited positive effect of such policies can be discerned. Existing accreditation and evaluation mechanisms do not guarantee appropriate attention to teaching for social responsibility, because, in their current form, they provide no guarantee that the curricula pay sufficient attention to teaching goals that are desirable for society as a whole. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper, factual information is given about developments in European business ethics since it started on a more or less institutionalized basis, five or six years ago. In the second part some comments are presented on the meaning of the developments and the possible causes. Attention is given to resemblances and differences between American and European business ethics. In the short last part some suggestions are proposed about tasks business ethics will face in the next (...) decade. (shrink)

The hippocampal formation is known for its importance in conscious, declarative memory. Here, we report neuroimaging evidence in humans for an additional role of the hippocampal formation in nonconscious memory. We maskedly presented combinations of faces and written professions such that subjects were not aware of them. Nevertheless, the masked presentations activated many of the brain regions that unmasked presentations of these stimuli did. To induce a nonconscious retrieval of the faces and face-associated occupational information, subjects were instructed to view (...) the previously masked faces and to guess the professional category of each person—academic, artist, and workman. Guessing the professional category of previously masked versus new faces activated the left and right hippocampal formation and right perirhinal cortex as well as bilateral fusiform areas and fronto-temporal areas known to mediate the retrieval of semantic information. These activations within the semantic processing system suggest that conceptual knowledge acquired during masking was nonconsciously retrieved. Our data provide clues to an analogous role of the hippocampus in conscious and nonconscious memory. (shrink)

The Global Workspace theory of consciousness explains conscious-unconscious dichotomies in cognitive processing in the context of a proposal about the qualitative properties of the architecture of cognition . This represents a theoretical and methodological approach to the study of consciousness which, as I will argue in this commentary, has at least two major advantages. A first advantage is that GW theory as a proposal about the architecture of cognition has the potential to explain consciousness-related phenomena in mechanistic terms, thereby avoiding (...) the homunculus problem. A second advantage is that GW theory makes explicit use of conscious-unconscious dichotomies to specify a proposal about the architecture of cognition, thereby using an extra source of constraint which proponents of computational instantiations of such architectures have largely ignored in the past. (shrink)

We addressed the questions whether stimuli presented below the threshold of verbal awareness are nevertheless perceived and whether there are perceptual differences between the two cerebral hemispheres. Pictures of line drawn objects and animals were subliminally presented to each visual half-field for subsequent identification in a form as fragmented as possible. The performance of 40 healthy subjects was compared to that of 63 controls. Whereas identification performance after blank presentation in the experimental group did not differ from that of controls, (...) identification in a significantly more fragmented form was achieved after the presentation of the complete picture. This effect, however, occurred only after subliminal stimulation in the left visual field, i.e., of the right hemisphere. Our results show that pictures presented below the threshold of verbal awareness can be perceived, and that only the right hemisphere can perceive them and make use of the perception. It remains an open question whether this kind of hemispheric specialization represents a right hemisphere dominance for subliminal perception or reflects an inability of the left hemisphere to access and behaviorally use unaware percepts via fragmented picture identification, for which a right hemisphere advantage is known. (shrink)

Expressions in a language, whether words, phrases, or sentences, have meanings. So it seems reasonable to suppose that there are meanings that expressions have. Of course, it is fashionable in some philosophical circles to deny this.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 503 sufferings of Job, which she finds instructively different from the sort of account which would come naturally to people of our own time. We are apt to wonder how a good God could possibly permit the many and frightful evils which infest the world. Aquinas, however, believed that all human beings are afflicted with "a terminal cancer of soul," for which pain and suffering are the (...) divinely-appointed remedies (340). If we are not cured, we will lose for ever the ultimate bliss of communion with God. At this rate we are to expect that the best people are precisely those who are liable to suffer the most (342). Aquinas would agree with Pope Gregory, who says that it is frequently difficult to understand the ways of providence, but never more so than "when things go ill with good people and well with bad people" (343). Stump concludes that what Aquinas's interpretation of Job, and his overall account of evil, has to show us is "that our approach to the problem of evil is a consequence of our attitude towards much larger issues, such as the nature of human happiness and the goal of human life" (356). The reader will have inferred that this is a remarkable volume. None of the contributions is to be sneezed at, and some are very impressive indeed. HUGO MEYNELL University of Calgary Calgary, Alberta, Canada Christ the 'Name' ofGod: Thomas Aquinas on Naming Christ. By HENK J. M. SCHOOT. Nijmegen: Peeters Leuven, 1993. Pp. 231 (Paper). The hiddenness of God in Christ and "the relation between the Word Incarnate and human words for this Word" animate this study of Aquinas's christological epistemology; it is a study of Aquinas's understanding of "the mystery of Christ, and [of] human ways of signifying him" (1). And because "all human understanding and signification fails [sic] to reach Christ as he is," Schoot believes that all christological knowledge is primarily negative and heavily reliant on analogy (1). He applies to the names of Christ what another author (Mark Jordan) has applied to the divine names: "the surest approach to the divine is by the scrutiny of linguistic failure" (153). The structure of the book reflects these insights. In the first chapter the author stresses the negative character of christological language by reflecting upon Aquinas's use of mysterium in christology. The second chapter is an analysis of his use of "the concepts of signification, supposition, predication and reduplication," in the context of the most current knowledge of medieval grammar and logic (7). It is here that the author stresses Aquinas's strongly linguistic approach to christology, as well as the distinction between supposition ("standing for") and predication ("sig- 504 BOOK REVIEWS nification"), which will be crucial to his analysis of the hypostatic union in later chapters. In fact, "the whole of christology is built on the distinction between signification and supposition" (55). Schoot believes that Aquinas, following medieval "modist" grammarians, thought that "a fundamental parallel exists between different modes of signification, modes of understanding and modes of being" (43), and hence a linguistic approach is often a decisive entry into questions of theological (and christologiocal) epistemology and metaphysics. In this context, the author examines the distinction Aquinas made between a number of modes of signification. Chapter Three is devoted to Aquinas as a biblical theologian. His use of biblical names of Christ {over ninety in his commentary on Isaiah alone) suggests that "a large part of Aquinas' treatment of the person and life of the Word Incarnate is devoted to a discussion of names" (104), and that the fact that Christ is a mystery "is rooted in (his] being the 'name' of God" (105). Schoot finds that "Aquinas employs the same rules concerning signification examining those names as he does concerning the divine names" (193). Chapter Four applies the key insights of Aquinas's "theory of supposition to the theology of Christ incarnate" (194). Following an analysis of such key concepts as first and second substance, esse, suppositum, singularis, particularis, and individuum, Schoot concludes that The subject-term having both signification and supposition expresses a linguistic unity that Aquinas deems analogous to the... (shrink)

We examine the framing mechanisms used to maintain a cross-sector partnership that was created to address a complex long-term social issue. We study the first 8 years of existence of an XSP that aims to create a market for recycled phosphorus, a nutrient that is critical to crop growth but whose natural reserves have dwindled significantly. Drawing on 27 interviews and over 3000 internal documents, we study the evolution of different frames used by diverse actors in an XSP. We demonstrate (...) the role of framing in helping actors to avoid some of the common pitfalls for an XSP, such as debilitating conflict, and in creating sufficient common ground to sustain collaboration. As opposed to a commonly held assumption in the XSP literature, we find that collaboration in a partnership does not have to result in a unanimous agreement around a single or convergent frame regarding a contentious issue. Rather, successful collaboration between diverse partners can also be achieved by maintaining a productive tension between different frames through “optimal” frame plurality—not excessive frame variety that may prevent agreements from emerging, but the retention of a select few frames and the deletion of others toward achieving a narrowing frame bandwidth. One managerial implication is that resources need not be focussed on reaching a unanimous agreement among all partners on a single mega-frame vis-à-vis a contentious issue, but can instead be used to kindle a sense of unity in diversity that allows sufficient common ground to emerge, despite the variety of actors and their positions. (shrink)

Various claims have been made, recently, that Darwin's argumentation in the Origin instantiates and so supports some general philosophical proposal about scientific theorizing, for example, the "semantic view". But these claims are grounded in various incorrect analyses of that argumentation. A summary is given here of an analysis defended at greater length in several papers by the present author. The historical and philosophical advantages of this analysis are explained briefly. Darwin's argument comprises three distinct evidential cases on behalf of natural (...) selection, cases, that is, for its existence, its adequacy and its responsibility. Theorizing, today, about evolution by natural selection involves a similar structure of evidential and explanatory concerns. (shrink)

In this article, transhumanism is considered to be a quasi-medical ideology that seeks to promote a variety of therapeutic and human-enhancing aims. Moderate conceptions are distinguished from strong conceptions of transhumanism and the strong conceptions were found to be more problematic than the moderate ones. A particular critique of Boström’s defence of transhumanism is presented. Various forms of slippery slope arguments that may be used for and against transhumanism are discussed and one particular criticism, moral arbitrariness, that undermines both weak (...) and strong transhumanism is highlighted. (shrink)

Adverbial modification is probably one of the least understood areas of linguistics. The essays in this volume all address the problem of how to give an analysis of adverbial modifiers within truth-conditional semantics. Chapters I-VI provide analyses of particular modifiers within a possible worlds framework, and were written between 1974 and 1981. Original publication details of these chapters may be found on p. vi. Of these, all but Chapter I make essential use of the idea that the time reference involved (...) in tensed sentences should be a time interval rather than a single instant. The final chapter (Chapter VII) was written especially for this volume and investigates the question of how the 'situation semantics' recently devised by Jon Barwise and John Perry, as a rival to possible-worlds semantics, might deal with adverbs. In addition I have included an appendix to Chapter III and an introduction which links all the chapters together. (shrink)

These two texts are fundamental for the understanding not only of Neoplatonism but also of the conventions of biography in late antiquity. Neither has received such extensive annotation before in English, and this new commentary makes full use of recent scholarship. The long introduction is intended both as a beginner’s guide to Neoplatonism and as a survey of ancient biographical writing.

Neuroethics has developed rapidly, driven in large part by developments in neuroscience. This article reviews neuroethics from the standpoint of its growing real-world relevance. It opens up with an analysis of the history of neuroscience that suggests the reason for the emergence of neuroethics now, in the early twenty-first century. It proceeds to survey current applications of neuroscience to diverse real-world problems. Published research in the field of neuromarketing is more focused on academic issues, such as the nature of the (...) brain activity underlying consumer behavior and the accuracy of brain-behavior predictions, than it is on the real-world utility of neuromarketing for improving business. Finally, this article concludes with a discussion of the ethical issues raised by these developments, and outlines three general challenges for society in the age of neuroscience. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the case of Tay, the Microsoft AI chatbot that was launched in March, 2016. After less than 24 hours, Microsoft shut down the experiment because the chatbot was generating tweets that were judged to be inappropriate since they included racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic language. We contend that the case of Tay illustrates a problem with the very nature of learning software that interacts directly with the public, and the developer's role and responsibility associated with it. (...) We make the case that when LS interacts directly with people or indirectly via social media, the developer has additional ethical responsibilities beyond those of standard software. There is an additional burden of care. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a view beyond that which would narrowly reduce the role of parents in medical decision making to acting as custodians of the best interests of children and toward an account of family authority and family autonomy. As a fundamental social unit, the good of the family is usually appreciated, at least in part, in terms of its ability successfully to instantiate its core moral and cultural understandings as well as to pass on such commitments to (...) future generations. The putative rights of children to expression, information, freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and to freedom of association with others are, in this essay, assessed from the perspective of those conditions necessary for the family to function as a moral community. In so doing, I respond to the move to liberate children from parental authority and to effect the transformation of the family as implied by the United Nations’ "Convention on the Rights of the Child" and the pediatric bioethics it supports. (shrink)

David Lewis's modal realism claims that nothing can exist in more than one world or time, and that statements about how something would have been are to be analysed in terms of its counterpart. I first explain why the counterpart relation depends on de re modal statements in an intensional language, so that intuitive properties of similarity relations cannot be used to show that the counterpart relation is not an equivalence relation. I then look at test sentences in (the intensional) (...) natural language, and show that none of them provide compelling evidence that a counterpart semantics is needed. (shrink)

I distinguish between sentences like(1) Last Thursday we drove from Wellington to Waikanae and (2) Last Thursday my copy of Aspects of the Theory of Syntax remained on my bookshelf. Sentence (2) has the subinterval property. If it is true at an interval t it is true at every subinterval of t. (1) lacks this property. (1) reports an event. (2) reports a state. Events do not have the subinterval property but states do have it, and so do objects. If (...) something is a linguist at an interval t then that person is a linguist at all subintervals of t. I argue that exists applies to things which have the subdinterval property, and occurs applies to things which lack it. (shrink)

We consider the desirability, or otherwise, of various forms of induction in the light of certain principles and inductive methods within predicate uncertain reasoning. Our general conclusion is that there remain conflicts within the area whose resolution will require a deeper understanding of the fundamental relationship between individuals and properties.

Two experiments examined similarities and differences in the effects of consciously and unconsciously perceived rewards on the active maintenance of goal-relevant information. Participants could gain high and low monetary rewards for performance on a word span task. The reward value was presented supraliminally or subliminally at different stages during the task. In Experiment 1, rewards were presented before participants processed the target words. Enhanced performance was found in response to higher rewards, regardless whether they were presented supraliminally or subliminally. In (...) Experiment 2, rewards were presented after participants processed the target words, i.e., during maintenance. Performance increased in response to relatively high rewards when they were presented subliminally, but decreased when they were presented supraliminally. We conclude that both consciously and unconsciously perceived rewards boost resources supporting the maintenance of task-relevant information. Conscious processing of rewards can, however, heavily interfere with an ongoing maintenance process and impair performance. (shrink)

The Geological Society of London was the first learned society to be devoted solely to geology, and its members were responsible for much of the spectacular progress of the science in the nineteenth century. Its distinctive character as a centre of geological discussion and research was established within the first five years from its foundation in 1807. During this period its activities were directed, and its policies largely shaped, by its President, George Bellas Greenough, on whose unpublished papers this account (...) is chiefly based.The Society began as a small scientific dining club in London, but it developed rapidly into a learned society with a nation-wide membership. It became so independent in outlook and so active in research that it was felt to threaten the esteem of the Royal Society; and little more than a year after its foundation it clashed with the Royal Society so violently that its continued existence was for a time uncertain.Its development into a large independent society was the outcome of its ‘Baconian’ view of the importance of collecting geological facts as a surer basis for geological theories. For this purpose it initiated an ambitious scheme for co-operative research, which would unite the efforts of ‘philosophers’ with those of ‘practical men’. Only personal reasons seem to have kept the most prominent of the practical men—William Smith—from co-operating with the Society. (shrink)

The principal question of this paper is: Why are religious values special in refusal of lifesaving medical treatment? This question is approached through a critical examination of a common kind of refusal of treatment case, one involving a rational adult. The central value cited in defence of honouring such a patient's refusal is autonomy. Once autonomy is isolated from other justificatory factors, however, possible cases can be imagined which cast doubt on the great valuational weight assigned it by strong anti-paternalists. (...) This weight is sufficient, in their estimation, to justify honouring the patient's refusal. There is thus a tension between the strong anti-paternalist's commitment to the sufficiency of autonomy and our intuitions respecting such cases. Attempts can be made to relieve this tension, such as arguing that patients aren't really rational in the circumstances envisaged, or that other values, such as privacy or bodily integrity, if added to autonomy, are sufficient to justify an anti-paternalistic stance. All such attempts fail, however. But what does not fail is the addition of religious freedom, freedom respecting a patient's religious beliefs and values. Why religious freedom reduces the tension is then explained, and the specialness of religious beliefs and values examined. (shrink)

In Roper v. Simmons (2005) the United States Supreme Court announced a paradigm shift in jurisprudence. Drawing specifically on mounting scientific evidence that adolescents are qualitatively different from adults in their decision-making capacities, the Supreme Court recognized that adolescents are not adults in all but age. The Court concluded that the overwhelming weight of the psychological and neurophysiological data regarding brain maturation supports the conclusion that adolescents are qualitatively different types of agents than adult persons. The Supreme Court further solidified (...) its position regarding adolescents as less than fully mature and responsible decisionmakers in Graham v. Florida (2010) and Miller v. Alabama (2012). In each case, the Court concluded that the scientific evidence does not support the conclusion that children under 18 years of age possess adult capacities for personal agency, rationality, and mature choice. This study explores the implications of the Supreme Court decisions in Roper v. Simmons, Graham v. Florida, and Miller v. Alabama for the “mature minor” standard for medical decision making. It argues that the Supreme Court’s holdings in Roper, Graham, and Miller require no less than a radical reassessment of how healthcare institutions, courts of law, and public policy are obliged to regard minors as medical decisionmakers. The “mature minor” standard for medical decision making must be abandoned. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper, factual information is given about developments in European business ethics since it started on a more or less institutionalized basis, five or six years ago. In the second part some comments are presented on the meaning of the developments and the possible causes. Attention is given to resemblances and differences between American and European business ethics. In the short last part some suggestions are proposed about tasks business ethics will face in the next (...) decade. (shrink)

Semantic Indexicality shows how a simple syntax can be combined with a propositional language at the level of logical analysis. It is the adoption of such a base language which has not been attempted before, and it is this which constitutes the originality of the book. Cresswell's simple and direct style makes this book accessible to a wider audience than the somewhat specialized subject matter might initially suggest.

Truth of x (independently of any description of x) that it is f. A property f which holds of x but is not per se of x is said to hold per accidens of x. The essence of an individual is the sum of its per se properties. We can formulate the following: doctrine a: concrete individuals do not have essences though abstract entities do. Doctrine b: concrete individuals have essences but they do not individuate, whereas abstract entities have essences (...) which do individuate. Assumption i: we shall say that a thing exists insofar as it has an essence. Assumption ii: we shall say that we know a thing when we know what its per se properties are. We argue that plato held doctrine a and aristotle doctrine b (with assumptions i and ii). (edited). (shrink)

Although smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980, there are fears that stocks of the virus manufactured for military purposes by the Soviet Union may have fallen into the hands of “rogue nations” or terrorists. Worries about bioterrorism have thus sparked debate about whether or not the smallpox vaccine, which can be dangerous, should be offered to the general public. Meaningful public debate on this issue requires expert information about the likelihood that the virus will in fact be used as a (...) weapon. Informed voluntary individual decision making, about whether to get vaccinated if vaccine is made available to the public, would similarly require appreciation of the likelihood of attack. Public deliberation and private deliberation thus both require briefing by the intelligence community. (shrink)

The paper investigates interpretations of propositional and firstorder logic in which validity is defined in terms of partial indices; sometimes called possibilities but here understood as non-empty subsets of a set W of possible worlds. Truth at a set of worlds is understood to be truth at every world in the set. If all subsets of W are permitted the logic so determined is classical first-order predicate logic. Restricting allowable subsets and then imposing certain closure conditions provides a modelling for (...) intuitionistic predicate logic. The same semantic interpretation rules are used in both logics for all the operators. (shrink)

To be a proposition is to possess propositional properties and to stand in inferential relations. This is the organic intuition, [OI], concerning propositional recognition. [OI] is not a circular characterization as long as those properties and relations that signal the presence of propositions are independently identified. My take on propositions does not depart from the standard approach widely accepted among philosophers of language. Propositions are truth-bearers, the arguments of truth-functions (‘not’, ‘or’, ‘and’, ‘if’), the arguments of propositional-attitude verbs (‘know’, ‘believe’, (...) ‘doubt’, ‘assume’, ‘reject’) and the kind of entity capable of standing in inferential relations (which are basically implication and incompatibility). The aim of this paper is to argue for [OI]. In doing so, I will show that even what is probably the most repeated argument against non-descriptivism, the so-called Frege-Geach Argument (FGA), presupposes something like [OI], a presupposition that Geach shares with his critics. Despite the huge success of FGA, a thorough analysis of the actual scope of this argument has yet to be given. I will provide such an analysis in section 3 below. In this paper, I argue that [OI] is a meta-theoretical principle which is neutral with respect to specific metaphysical debates about the nature of propositions, as well as specific proposals about the semantics of declarative sentences. (shrink)

Criticisms of the ethical justification of antidoping legislation are not uncommon in the literatures of medical ethics, sports ethics and sports medicine. Critics of antidoping point to inconsistencies of principle in the application of legislation and the unjustifiability of ethical postures enshrined in the World Anti-Doping Code, a new version of which came into effect in January 2009. This article explores the arguments concerning the apparent legal peculiarities of antidoping legislation and their ethically salient features in terms of: notions of (...) culpability, liability and guilt; aspects of potential duplication of punishments and the limitations of athlete privacy in antidoping practice and policy. It is noted that tensions still exist between legal and ethical principles and norms that require further critical attention. (shrink)

In “Imposing Risks,” Judith Thomson gives a case in which, by turning on her stove, she accidentally causes her neighbor’s death. She claims that both the following are true: (1) she ought not to have caused her neighbor’s death; (2) it was permissible for her to turn her stove on. In this paper it is argued that it cannot be that both (1) and (2) are true, that (2) is true, and that therefore (1) is false. How this is so (...) is explained, and the implications of this position regarding the relation between rights and duties is explored. (shrink)

It has become almost commonplace to recognise that teaching is an embodied practice. Most analyses of teaching as embodied practice focus on the embodied nature of the teacher as subject. Here, we use Butler's concept of performativity to analyse the reiterated acts that are intelligible as—performatively constitute—teaching, rather of the teacher as subject. We suggest that this simultaneously helps explain the persistence of teaching as a narrow repertoire of actions recognisable as ‘teaching’, and the policing of conformity to teaching thus (...) embodied. However, like performatively accomplished subjectivity, this repertoire is unstable and ambiguous, and thus open to change and disruption. Moreover, teacher subjectivities may lead them to mobilise these possibilities of disruption. (shrink)

Business ethics has gradually acquired a stable status, both as an academic discipline and as a practice. Stakeholdership is recognised as a guiding concept, business has widely accepted that it has a license to operate to win from society at large, and operational instruments such as codes of ethics and forms of ethical auditing and accounting take shape more and more. Yet lacunae remain. Three are mentioned explicitly. Business ethics has to improve its relations with business law, the concept of (...) competition deserves much more ethical attention than it has received up to now, and the shifting relations between the market, governmental agencies and civil society require the elaboration of an institutional business ethics. (shrink)

Television medical dramas sometimes depict medical professionalism and bioethical issues, but their nature and extent are unclear. The authors systematically analysed the bioethical and professionalism content of one season each of Grey's Anatomy and House M.D., two of the most popular current television medical dramas. The results indicate that these programmes are rife with powerful portrayals of bioethical issues and egregious deviations from the norms of professionalism and contain exemplary depictions of professionalism to a much lesser degree.

The aim of this paper is to consider some logical aspects of the debate between the view that the present is the only 'real' time, and the view that the present is not in any way metaphysically privileged. In particular I shall set out a language of first-order predicate tense logic with a now predicate, and a first order (extensional) language with an abstraction operator, in such a way that each language can be shewn to be exactly translatable into the (...) other. I shew that this translation is preserved at the metalinguistic level, so that equivalent truth conditions can be defined in a tensed metalanguage or an indexical metalanguage. I then make some remarks about the connection between proofs of relative consistency and metaphysical truth; and some historical remarks about Arthur Prior's use of formal logic in expressing his presentist views. (shrink)