In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and (...) rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

Democritus’ atomism aims to respond to threats of Parmenidean monism. In so doing, it deploys a familiar epistemological distinction between what is known by the senses and what is known by the mind. This turns out to be a risky strategy, however, leading to inadvertent skepticism with only diffuse and contrary ethical implications. Vasubandhu’s more explicitly metaphysical atomism, by contrast, relies on a different principle to get to its results, and aims to address different concerns. It leaves us with a (...) view that positively implies a concrete mode of practical engagement, and resources for a critical stance. Even if certain atoms end up proven incoherent, there is no danger of slipping into the morally fatal indifference of inadvertent skepticism. For the ethical implications, it matters how one arrives at one’s atomism. (shrink)

In "Digital Doppelgängers and Lifespan Extension: What Matters?", Iglesias et al. argue that “some of the aims or ostensible goods of person-span expansion could plausibly be fulfilled in part by creating a digital doppelgänger”. Since person-extension aims are deeply heterogeneous, however, no single type of doppelgänger system is likely to suffice to meet all such needs. We propose a partial typology of doppelgängers—the family heirloom, the research archive, the public legacy, the project surrogate—and suggest appropriate training methods, design features and (...) governing norms for each. Finally, we reflect on the implications of concurrent yet heterogeneous doubles for questions of personal identity. (shrink)

A couple of decades after becoming a major area of both public and philosophical concern, animal ethics continues its inroads into main- stream consciousness. Increasingly, philosophers, ethicists, professionals who use animals, and the broader public confront specific ethical issues regarding human use of animals as well as more fundamental questions about animals’ moral status. A parallel, related development is the explo- sion of interest in animals’ mental lives, as seen in exciting new work in cognitive ethology and in the plethora (...) of movies, television commercials, and popular books featuring apparently intelligent animals. -/- As we approach the turn of the twenty-first century, philosophical animal ethics is an area of both increasing diversity and unrealized poten- tial – a thesis supported by this essay as a whole. Following up on an earlier philosophical review of animal ethics (but without that review’s focus on animal research), the present article provides an updated narrative – one that offers some perspective on where we have been, a more detailed account of where we are, and a projection of where we might go. Each of the three major sections offers material that one is unlikely to find in other reviews of animal ethics: the first by viewing familiar territory in a different light (advancing the thesis that the utility-versus-rights debate in animal ethics is much less important than is generally thought); the second by reviewing major recent works that are not very well-known (at least to nonspecialists); and the third by identifying important issues that have been largely neglected. (shrink)

This is a transcription of Jean d’Ormesson’s speech at UNESCO at the 50th anniversary celebrations of Diogenes in 2003. He describes the journal’s origins, inspirations and editors, and the unique place it occupies in the promotion of international, interdisciplinary scholarship.

Inappropriate authorship is a common problem in biomedical research and may be becoming one in bioethics, due to the increase in multiple authorship. This paper investigates the authorship policies of bioethics journals to determine whether they provide adequate guidance for researchers who submit articles for publication, which can help deter inappropriate authorship. It was found that 63.3% of bioethics journals provide no guidance on authorship; 36.7% provide guidance on which contributions merit authorship, 23.3% provide guidance on which contributions do not (...) merit authorship, 23.3% require authors to take responsibility for their contributions or for the article as a whole, 20% provide guidance on which contributions merit an acknowledgement but not authorship, 6.7% require authors to describe their contributions, and only 3.3% distinguish between authorship in empirical and conceptual research. To provide authors with effective guidance and promote integrity in bioethics research, bioethics journals should adopt authorship policies that address several important topics, such as the qualifications for authorship, describing authorship contributions, taking responsibility for the research and the difference between authorship in empirical and conceptual research. (shrink)

This paper attacks two contrary views. One denies that nature has joints, taking the properties we call natural to be merely artefacts of our theories. The other accepts real natural properties but takes their naturalness to come by degrees. I argue that both are wrong: natural properties are real, and their naturalness no more comes by degrees than does the naturalness of the things that have them.1.

It is obvious that two contingent statements, each of which denies the existence of something, can be inconsistent with one another: for example, ‘There are no non-black ravens, and there is at least one raven’, and ‘There are no black ravens’. But it is also obvious that these two statements are inconsistent only because one of them, as well as denying the existence of something, asserts the existence of something. The mere denials of existence, ‘There are no non-black ravens’ and (...) ‘There are no black ravens’, are consistent with one another. Indeed, it must hold quite generally that two contingent statements cannot be inconsistent, where each is a mere denial of existence in the sense that it denies existence and does not also assert existence. For in order to be inconsistent with a mere denial of existence, a second statement must assert existence, whatever else it may do; and if it asserts existence, it is not itself a mere denial of existence. (shrink)

This chapter deals with the ways in which entrepreneurships driven by industrial design and the strategies for interconnecting design for innovation are articulated. In the first instance, current practices are recognized in order to analyze the different processes that entrepreneurial dynamics go through. This analysis is carried out from a systemic perspective, at three levels of abstraction: designer, entrepreneurship and ecosystem. The theoretical and conceptual framework will be structured based on the innovations driven by design, which occur around the designer, (...) his personal projects, and the possible interactions and singularities offered by living spaces. The objective of this work is to unravel the eventual relationships of the entrepreneurial designer in the ecosystem and to highlight the potential added by emerging connections, which allow for the projection of synergistic actions with other actors to create value(s). In this way, other possible views of the entrepreneurial process are provided, where the cultural and philosophical dimension that characterizes industrial designers allows them to achieve a higher quality of life, designing and producing collectively (in) their environment. (shrink)

Dag Prawitz’s theory of grounds proposes a fresh approach to valid inferences. Its main aim is to clarify nature and reasons of their epistemic power. The notion of ground is taken to denote what one is in possession of when in a state of evidence, and valid inferences are described in terms of operations that make us pass from grounds we already have to new grounds. Thanks to a rigorously developed proof-as-chains conception, the ground-theoretic framework permits Prawitz to overcome some (...) conceptual difficulties of his earlier proof-theoretic explanation. Though from different points of view, anyway, the two accounts share an issue of recognizability of relevant operational properties. (shrink)

We investigate the semantics of the logical systems obtained by introducing the modalities and into the family of substructural implication logics (including relevant, linear and intuitionistic implication). Then, in the spirit of the LDS (Labelled Deductive Systems) methodology, we "import" this semantics into the classical proof system KE. This leads to the formulation of a uniform labelled refutation system for the new logics which is a natural extension of a system for substructural implication developed by the first two authors in (...) a previous paper. (shrink)

The generic Bohmian trajectories are calculated for an isolated particle in an approximate energy eigenstate, for an arbitrary one-dimensional potential well. It is shown that the necessary and sufficient condition for there to be a negligible probability of the trajectory deviating significantly from the classical trajectory at any stage in the motion is that the state be a narrowly localised wave packet. The properties of the Bohmian trajectories are compared with those in the interpretation recently proposed by García de Polavieja. (...) The reasons why the latter tend to be much more nearly classical are discussed. The implications for other trajectory interpretations are considered. (shrink)

Notice is given of the discovery of two reports and an accompanying manuscript map by Andrew Ramsay, on the geology of the St David's area, Pembrokeshire. This adds to previously published information on early geological work in this important region: Ramsay's report throw some light on his attitude towards Murchison's ideas on Welsh stratigraphy. The map is the earliest known version of the Survey's St David's sheet.

Contributed papers on concept of False and Indivisibles (Philosophy) in Hindu philosophy presented at Seminar organized by Department of Advaita Vedanta, Rāṣṭrīyasaṃskr̥tavidyāpīṭham, Tirupati from December 31, 2005 to January 01, 2006).

In his book Intuition, Elijah Chudnoff develops an account of how we might, by having intuitions, be made aware of abstract objects. While the conditions under which we enjoy such awareness are, on his account, happily free of objectionable metaphysics or dubious mechanisms, it is not clear that the conditions bear the epistemic weight they need to carry. To flesh out this worry, I develop an example that is parallel in all relevant respects to cases of intuitive awareness as described (...) by Chudnoff but in which the subject lacks awareness. This paper is a descendant of remarks delivered at the 2014 conference of the Florida Philosophical Association during a book symposium on Elijah Chudnoff’s Intuition. (shrink)

Placing Goodenough and Deacon’s “From Biology to Consciousness to Morality” against the background of the ethical naturalism of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British moral theory, Yeager highlights the contribution the authors make to the moral sense tradition as well as indicating the limitations of such accounts of moral agency, judgment, and conduct. Yeager also identifies two strands of the essay that seem to open toward a more comprehensive account than the authors actually give. The first concerns the “interplay between self-interest and (...) pro-sociality,” and the other concerns the ethical implications of coevolution. On the latter point, the work of G. H. Mead is offered as an illuminating contrast. (shrink)

What roles do women play in world politics? Who are these women, and what impact do they have on international relations? D'Amico and Beckman have assembled a diverse array of contributors who provide a variety of answers. Some contributors consider women as national leaders and profile Chamorro, Gandhi, Thatcher, and Aquino as examples. Autobiographical essays and interviews describe the experiences of Margaret Anstee, Benazir Bhutto, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Golda Meir. Other contributors analyze international women's movements, the roles of women in (...) the Green Movement and in the revolutionary movements in Cuba and Nicaragua, and the work of Jane Addams in the peace movement. Some analyze the attitudes and beliefs of America's leading opinion makers on the subject of women and men in leadership roles. Written for beginning students in comparative politics and international relations, their work is both fundamental as an introductory text and pioneering in scope and conception. (shrink)

In this article, the editor and scientific director of Nietzsche Source, Professor Paolo D'Iorio, aims at describing the two editions of Nietzsche’s work currently published on this scientific Web site Firstly, the critical edition, the Digitale Kritische Gesamtausgabe Werke und Briefe (eKGWB), which provides an electronic version of the German edition of Nietzsche's complete works, based on the critical text established by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. Secondly, the facsimile edition, the Digitale Faksimile-Gesamtausgabe (DFGA), which reproduces all the documents relating (...) to Nietzsche's life and work. Both editions can be consulted free of charge through the Internet and are regularly used by the German philosopher specialists around the world. (shrink)