This monograph examines truth in fiction by applying the techniques of a naturalized logic of human cognitive practices. The author structures his project around two focal questions. What would it take to write a book about truth in literary discourse with reasonable promise of getting it right? What would it take to write a book about truth in fiction as true to the facts of lived literary experience as objectivity allows? It is argued that the most semantically distinctive feature of (...) the sentences of fiction is that they are unambiguously true and false together. It is true that Sherlock Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street and also concurrently false that he did. A second distinctive feature of fiction is that the reader at large knows of this inconsistency and isn't in the least cognitively molested by it. Why, it is asked, would this be so? What would explain it? Two answers are developed. According to the no-contradiction thesis, the semantically tangled sentences of fiction are indeed logically inconsistent but not logically contradictory. According to the no-bother thesis, if the inconsistencies of fiction were contradictory, a properly contrived logic for the rational management of inconsistency would explain why readers at large are not thrown off cognitive stride by their embrace of those contradictions. As developed here, the account of fiction suggests the presence of an underlying three - or four-valued dialethic logic. The author shows this to be a mistaken impression. There are only two truth-values in his logic of fiction. The naturalized logic of Truth in Fiction jettisons some of the standard assumptions and analytical tools of contemporary philosophy, chiefly because the neurotypical linguistic and cognitive behaviour of humanity at large is at variance with them. Using the resources of a causal response epistemology in tandem with the naturalized logic, the theory produced here is data-driven, empirically sensitive, and open to a circumspect collaboration with the empirical sciences of language and cognition. (shrink)

I argue that certain species of belief, such as mathematical, logical, and normative beliefs, are insulated from a form of Harman-style debunking argument whereas moral beliefs, the primary target of such arguments, are not. Harman-style arguments have been misunderstood as attempts to directly undermine our moral beliefs. They are rather best given as burden-shifting arguments, concluding that we need additional reasons to maintain our moral beliefs. If we understand them this way, then we can see why moral beliefs are vulnerable (...) to such arguments while mathematical, logical, and normative beliefs are not—the very construction of Harman-style skeptical arguments requires the truth of significant fragments of our mathematical, logical, and normative beliefs, but requires no such thing of our moral beliefs. Given this property, Harman-style skeptical arguments against logical, mathematical, and normative beliefs are self-effacing; doubting these beliefs on the basis of such arguments results in the loss of our reasons for doubt. But we can cleanly doubt the truth of morality. (shrink)

This is an opinionated overview of the Frege-Geach problem, in both its historical and contemporary guises. Covers Higher-order Attitude approaches, Tree-tying, Gibbard-style solutions, and Schroeder's recent A-type expressivist solution.

Despite the recent proliferation of scientific, clinical, and narrative accounts of auditory verbal hallucinations, the phenomenology of voice hearing remains opaque and undertheorized. In this article, we outline an interdisciplinary approach to understanding hallucinatory experiences which seeks to demonstrate the value of the humanities and social sciences to advancing knowledge in clinical research and practice. We argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH utilizes rigorous and context-appropriate methodologies to analyze a wider range of first-person accounts of AVH (...) at 3 contextual levels: cultural, social, and historical; experiential; and biographical. We go on to show that there are significant potential benefits for voice hearers, clinicians, and researchers. These include informing the development and refinement of subtypes of hallucinations within and across diagnostic categories; “front-loading” research in cognitive neuroscience; and suggesting new possibilities for therapeutic intervention. In conclusion, we argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH can nourish the ethical core of scientific enquiry by challenging its interpretive paradigms, and offer voice hearers richer, potentially more empowering ways to make sense of their experiences. (shrink)

Why do promises give rise to reasons? I consider a quadruple of possibilities which I think will not work, then sketch the explanation of the normativity of promising I find more plausible—that it is constitutive of the practice of promising that promise-breaking implies liability for blame and that we take liability for blame to be a bad thing. This effects a reduction of the normativity of promising to conventionalism about liability together with instrumental normativity and desire-based reasons. This is important (...) for a number of reasons, but the most important reason is that this style of account can be extended to account for nearly all normativity—one notable exception being instrumental normativity itself. Success in the case of promises suggests a general reduction of normativity to conventions and instrumental normativity. But success in the cases of promises is already quite interesting and does not depend essentially the general claim about normativity. (shrink)

I argue that we can and should extend Tarski's model-theoretic criterion of logicality to cover indefinite expressions like Hilbert's ɛ operator, Russell's indefinite description operator η, and abstraction operators like 'the number of'. I draw on this extension to discuss the logical status of both abstraction operators and abstraction principles.

Machine generated contents note: -- Clinical Theory -- 1. Psychiatry on schizophrenia: clinical pictures of a sublime object -- 2. Schizophrenia: the sublime text of psychoanalysis -- Cultural Theory -- 3. Antipsychiatry: schizophrenic experience and the sublime -- 4. Anti-Oedipus and the politics of the schizophrenic sublime -- 5. Schizophrenia, modernity, postmodernity -- 6. Postmodern schizophrenia -- 7. Glamorama, postmodernity and the schizophrenic sublime -- Conclusion.

As befits an emerging field of enquiry, there is on-going discussion about the scope, role and future of the medical humanities. One relatively recent contribution to this debate proposes a differentiation of the field into two distinct terrains, ‘medical humanities’ and ‘health humanities,’ and calls for a supersession of the former by the latter. In this paper, we revisit the conceptual underpinnings for a distinction between ‘the medical’ and ‘health’ by looking at the history of an analogous debate between ‘medical (...) geography’ and ‘the geographies of health’ that has, over the last few years, witnessed a re-blurring of the distinction. Highlighting the value of this debate within the social sciences for the future development of the medical humanities, we call for scholars to take seriously the challenges of critical and cultural theory, community-based arts and health, and the counter-cultural creative practices and strategies of activist movements in order to meet the new research challenges and fulfill the radical potential of a critical medical humanities. (shrink)

This paper is a critical reflection on the concepts of Responsible Innovation (RI) and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). We offer an account of the emergence of these related but different accounts of responsible innovation that have recently been adopted by funders. We further report on our exploration of the knowledge and understanding of these concepts through the views of senior scientists involved in synthetic biology research projects. Though most of our respondents struggled to provide a clear account of RI/RRI (...) we identified that existing “practices of responsibility” include many aspects of RI/RRI but that this often went unrecognized as such. Most respondents associated RI/RRI with risk avoidance. While some visions of RI/RRI see scientists as taking an active role in shaping the future of innovation, we suggest that it is not for such individuals to take decisions alone on the types of futures a society should have available to it. (shrink)

In this thesis I offer an interpretation of Arthur Schopenhauer’s pessimism. I argue against interpreting Schopenhauer’s pessimism as if it were merely a matter of temperament, and I resist the urge to find a single standard argument for pessimism in Schopenhauer’s work. Instead, I treat Schopenhauer’s pessimism as inherently variegated, composed of several distinct but interrelated pessimistic positions, each of which is supported by its own argument. I begin by examining Schopenhauer’s famous argument that willing necessitates suffering, which I defend (...) against the misrepresentative interpretation advocated by Ivan Soll. I also offer a metaphysical reading of Schopenhauer’s claim that no amount happiness can compensate for the mere fact of suffering, based upon his negative conception of happiness. I proceed by analysing Schopenhauer’s criticisms of two prominent optimists, Leibniz and Rousseau. I attempt to salvage something of Schopenhauer’s counterargument against Leibniz that this is the worse of all possible worlds, and I also examine Schopenhauer’s claim that the optimistic metaphysics of a priori rationalistic philosophy cannot cope with the evidence of meaningless suffering. In the case of Rousseau, I interpret Schopenhauer’s brief objection to Rousseau’s assumption of original goodness, by means of an examination of Schopenhauer’s conception of the contrary doctrine, original sin. Next I consider the metaphysics of Schopenhauer’s account of eternal justice. After defending it against a number of objections, I argue that the nature of his version of eternal justice, which he admits constitutes a justification for suffering, does not conflict with the fact that he so strongly condemns Leibniz’s and Rousseau’s optimistic justifications for suffering. Finally I assess whether and to what extent Schopenhauer’s ethics of salvation are either pessimistic or optimistic. I conclude that the mere fact that salvation is possible is not necessarily a cause for optimism, but that Schopenhauer’s doctrine of salvation is made partly optimistic by the higher form of cognition that he describes as part of it. I also argue that Schopenhauer’s views on the essentially mystical nature of the state of salvation ultimately commit him to being neither positively optimistic nor positively pessimistic about salvation. I conclude overall with some brief remarks about the meaning of Schopenhauer’s pessimism, and how in spite of its diverse nature, it is able to lay down a singular challenge to all future philosophers concerned with the question of suffering. (shrink)

This collection of new essays presents cutting-edge research on the semantic conception of logic, the invariance criteria of logicality, grammaticality, and logical truth. Contributors explore the history of the semantic tradition, starting with Tarski, and its historical applications, while central criticisms of the tradition, and especially the use of invariance criteria to explain logicality, are revisited by the original participants in that debate. Other essays discuss more recent criticism of the approach, and researchers from mathematics and linguistics weigh in on (...) the role of the semantic tradition in their disciplines. This book will be invaluable to philosophers and logicians alike. (shrink)

Neofregeanism and structuralism are among the most promising recent approaches to the philosophy of mathematics. Yet both have serious costs. We develop a view, structuralist neologicism, which retains the central advantages of each while avoiding their more serious costs. The key to our approach is using arbitrary reference to explicate how mathematical terms, introduced by abstraction principles, refer. Focusing on numerical terms, this allows us to treat abstraction principles as implicit definitions determining all properties of the numbers, achieving a key (...) neofregean advantage, while preserving the key structuralist advantage, which objects play the number role does not matter. (shrink)

Buttercups, GNP's and Quarks: Are Fallacies Theoretical Entities?

This article explores the social and ethical elements of cultural safety and combines them in a model of culturally safe practice that should be of interest and relevance for nurses, nurse educators and nurse ethicists in other cultures. To achieve this, the article briefly reviews and critiques the main underpinnings of the concept from its origins and development in New Zealand, describes its sociocultural and sociopolitical elements, and provides an in-depth exploration of the key socioethical elements. Finally, a model is (...) presented to illustrate the strong connection between the social and ethical components of cultural safety that combine to produce culturally safe practice through the activities of a ‘socioethical’ nurse. (shrink)

Abstract In the last few decades, a growing number of commentators have questioned the appropriateness of the 'justice view' of ethics as a suitable approach in health care ethics, and most certainly in nursing. Essentially, in their ethical deliberations, it is argued that nurses do not readily adopt the high degree of impartiality and objectivity that is associated with a justice view; instead their moral practices are more accurately reflected through the use of alternative approaches such as relational or care-based (...) ethics. Yet, it has also been argued that this viewpoint does not necessarily 'do justice' to the broader moral responsibilities of nurses towards humanity in general, i.e. to the wider socio-cultural and socio-political issues in society, and to the concept of social justice in particular. This criticism has triggered a much closer examination of relational and care-based ethics in nursing at levels beyond individual responsiveness within relationships and brought into the spotlight the need for a more ethically refined nursing response to an increasingly complex set of socio-cultural inequalities. This article explores a relational ethic within nursing practices with contemporary ideas regarding social justice. In particular, it is argued that the synergy between the two actually produces an ethic that is capable of not only challenging the continuing predominance of justice-based ethics within health care, but of replacing it. Subsequently, in the discussion that follows, it is suggested that a combined social justice and relational care-based approach, as a social ethic, should guide the moral deliberations and actions of nurses. It is maintained that such an approach is not only possible, but crucial if nurses are to realize their full potential as ethical agents for individual and social good. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. (shrink)

It is plausible that there are epistemic reasons bearing on a distinctively epistemic standard of correctness for belief. It is also plausible that there are a range of practical reasons bearing on what to believe. These theses are often thought to be in tension with each other. Most significantly for our purposes, it is obscure how epistemic reasons and practical reasons might interact in the explanation of what one ought to believe. We draw an analogy with a similar distinction between (...) types of reasons for actions in the context of activities. The analogy motivates a two-level account of the structure of normativity that explains the interaction of correctness-based and other reasons. This account relies upon a distinction between normative reasons and authoritatively normative reasons. Only the latter play the reasons role in explaining what state one ought to be in. All and only practical reasons are authoritative reasons. Hence, in one important sense, all reasons for belief are practical reasons. But this account also preserves the autonomy and importance of epistemic reasons. Given the importance of having true beliefs about the world, our epistemic standard typically plays a key role in many cases in explaining what we ought to believe. In addition to reconciling (versions of) evidentialism and pragmatism, this two-level account has implications for a range of important debates in normative theory, including the interaction of right and wrong reasons for actions and other attitudes, the significance of reasons in understanding normativity and authoritative normativity, the distinction between ‘formal’ and ‘substantive’ normativity, and whether there is a unified source of authoritative normativity. (shrink)

Access to abortion services in the United States continues to decline. It does so not because of significant changes in legislation or court rulings but because fewer and fewer physicians wish to perform abortions and because most states now have "conscientious objection" legislation that makes it easy for physicians to refuse to do so. We argue in this paper that physicians have an obligation to perform all socially sanctioned medical services, including abortions, and thus that the burden of justification lies (...) upon those who wish to be excused from that obligation. That is, such persons should have to show how requiring them to perform abortions would represent a serious threat to their fundamental moral or religious beliefs. We use current California law as an example of legislation that does not take physicians' obligations into account and thus allows them too easily to declare conscientious objection. (shrink)

Holmes Rolston has defended certain forms of hunting and meat eating when these activities are seen as natural participation in the food chains in which we evolved. Ned Hettinger has suggested that some of Rolston’s principles that govern our interactions with plants and animals might appear to be inconsistent with Rolston’s defense of these activities. Hettinger attempts to show that they are not. We argue that Rolston’s principles are not consistent with hunting, given Hettinger’s modifications. In his defense of Rolston, (...) Hettinger has challenged animal welfare ethicists to show that they can value animal predation while consistently condemning human hunting. We answer that hunting and meat eating by humans are “cultural” rather than “natural” activities. (shrink)

Conditionals has at its center an extended essay on this problematic and much-debated subject in the philosophy of language and logic, which the widely respected Oxford philosopher Michael Woods had been preparing for publication at the time of his death in 1993. It appears here edited by his eminent colleague David Wiggins, and is accompanied by a commentary specially written by a leading expert on the topic, Dorothy Edgington. This masterly and original treatment of conditionals will demand the attention (...) of all philosophers working in this area. (shrink)

One of our purposes here is to expose something of the elementary logical structure of abductive reasoning, and to do so in a way that helps orient theorists to the various tasks that a logic of abduction should concern itself with. We are mindful of criticisms that have been levelled against the very idea of a logic of abduction; so we think it prudent to proceed with a certain diffidence. That our own account of abduction is itself abductive is methodological (...) expression of this diffidence. A second objective is to test our conception of abduction's logical structure against some of the more promising going accounts of abductive reasoning. We offer our various suggestions in a benignly advisory way. The primary targets of our advice is ourselves, meant as guides to work we have yet to complete or, in some instances, start. It is possible that our colleagues in the abduction research communities will find our counsel to be of some interest. But we repeat that our first concern is to try to get ourselves straight about what a logic of abduction should encompass. (shrink)

A slippery slope argument is an argument to this twofold effect. First, that if a policy or practice P is permitted, then we lack the dialectical resources to demonstrate that a similar policy or practice P* is not permissible. Since P* is indeed not permissible, we should not endorse policy or practice P. At the heart of such arguments is the idea of dialectical impotence, the inability to stop the acceptance of apparently small deviations from a heretofore secure policy or (...) practice from leading to apparently large and unacceptable deviations. Using examples of analogical arguments and sorites arguments I examine this phenomenon in the context of collapsing taboos. (shrink)

I show that the model-theoretic meaning that can be read off the natural deduction rules for disjunction fails to have certain desirable properties. I use this result to argue against a modest form of inferentialism which uses natural deduction rules to fix model-theoretic truth-conditions for logical connectives.

In their book, Relevance, Sperber and Wilson make an important contribution towards constructing a credible theory of this unforthcoming notion. All is not clear sailing, however. If it is accepted as a condition on the adequacy of any account of relevance that it not be derivable either that nothing is relevant to anything or that everything is relevant to everything, it can be shown that Sperber and Wilson come close to violating the condition.

I discuss Greg Restall’s attempt to generate an account of logical consequence from the incoherence of certain packages of assertions and denials. I take up his justification of the cut rule and argue that, in order to avoid counterexamples to cut, he needs, at least, to introduce a notion of logical form. I then suggest a few problems that will arise for his account if a notion of logical form is assumed. I close by sketching what I take to be (...) the most natural minimal way of distinguishing content and form and suggest further problems arising for this route. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to communicate some developments in what we call the new logic. In a nutshell the new logic is a model of the behaviour of a logical agent. By these lights, logical theory has two principal tasks. The first is an account of what a logical agent is. The second is a description of how this behaviour is to be modelled. Before getting on with these tasks we offer a disclaimer and a warning. The disclaimer (...) is that although the new logic is significantly different from it, we have no inclination to see the new logic as a rival of mathematical logic. We do not advocate the displacement of, e.g. model theory, but rather its supplementation or adaptation. The warning is that, whereas mathematical logic must eschew psychologism, the new logic cannot do without it. The fuller story of the new logic must eschew psychologism, the new logic cannot do without it. The fuller story of the new logic is part of our book, The Reach of Abduction, scheduled to appear in 2001 or early 2002. (shrink)

There are various ways of achieving an enlarged understanding of a concept of interest. One way is by giving its proper definition. Another is by giving something else a proper definition and then using it to model or formally represent the original concept. Between the two we find varying shades of grey. We might open up a concept by a direct lexical definition of the predicate that expresses it, or by a theory whose theorems define it implicitly. At the other (...) end of the spectrum, the modelling-this-as-that option also admits of like variation, ranging from models rooted in formal representability theorems to models conceived of as having only heuristic value. There exist on both sides of this divide further differences still. In one of them, both the definiendum and definiens of a definition are words or phrases of some common natural language. In others, the item of interest is a natural language expression and its representation is furnished by the artificial linguistic system that models it. The modern history of these approaches is both very large and growing. Much of this evolution has given too short a shrift to the history of the demotion of ‘intuitive’ concepts in favour of the artificially contrived ones intended to model them. A working assumption of this article is that in the absence of a good understanding of what motivated the modelling-turn in the foundations of mathematics and the intuitive theory of truth, the whole notion of formal representability will have been inadequately understood. In the interests of space, I will concentrate on seminal issues in set theory as dealt with by Russell and Frege, and in the theory of truth in natural languages as dealt with by Tarski. The nub of the present focus is the representational role of model theory in the logics of formalized languages. (shrink)

We analysed research ethics committee (REC) letters. We found that RECs frequently identify process errors in applications from researchers that are not deemed “favourable” at first review. Errors include procedural violations (identified in 74% of all applications), missing information (68%), slip-ups (44%) and discrepancies (25%). Important questions arise about why the level of error identified by RECs is so high, and about how errors of different types should be handled.

This paper presents, from the perspectives of both social scientists and microbiologists, a case study of the implementation and practice of Responsible Innovation (RI) in a UK-based synthetic biology project. We highlight the impact of interdisciplinary working and examine the benefits that arise from creating the time and space for shared reflection on research. Our discussions over the course of the project included concerns about the potential escape to the environment of laboratory-constructed genetic material and alternatives to the role that (...) antibiotic resistance genes play in synthetic biology. As a result, the design of a key product of the project was altered in ways that go beyond normal institutional requirements. We highlight our view of the importance of continued interdisciplinary collaboration and the utility of the framework of Responsible Innovation in achieving this. We conclude with observations on the difficulties of sustaining such collaborations. (shrink)

Background: Acting ethically, in accordance with professional and personal moral values, lies at the heart of nursing practice. However, contextual factors, or obstacles within the work environment, can constrain nurses in their ethical practice – hence the importance of the workplace ethical climate. Interest in nurse workplace ethical climates has snowballed in recent years because the ethical climate has emerged as a key variable in the experience of nurse moral distress. Significantly, this study appears to be the first of its (...) kind carried out in New Zealand. Aim/objective: The purpose of this study was to explore and describe how registered nurses working on a medical ward in a New Zealand hospital perceive their workplace ethical climate. Research design/participants/context: This was a small, qualitative descriptive study. Seven registered nurses were interviewed in two focus group meetings. An inductive method of thematic data analysis was used for this research. Ethical considerations: Ethics approval for this study was granted by the New Zealand Ministry of Health’s Central Regional Health and Disability Ethics Committee on 14 June 2012. Findings: The themes identified in the data centred on three dominant elements that – together – shaped the prevailing ethical climate: staffing levels, patient throughput and the attitude of some managers towards nursing staff. Discussion: While findings from this study regarding staffing levels and the power dynamics between nurses and managers support those from other ethical climate studies, of note is the impact of patient throughput on local nurses’ ethical practice. This issue has not been singled out as having a detrimental influence on ethical climates elsewhere. Conclusion: Moral distress is inevitable in an ethical climate where the organisation’s main priorities are perceived by nursing staff to be budget and patient throughput, rather than patient safety and care. (shrink)