Perhaps one of the most troubling passages in all three of Kant’s Critiques is a short, confusing passage in which Kant claims that a judgment of taste must precede the feeling of pleasure. Many interpreters have argued that such a claim necessitates a viciously circular argument. But this circularity might not be vicious at all. In fact, this revolving shape actually leads to the most important site of the entire Analytic: the logic of the “without” as in the famous “purposiveness (...) without purpose.” From an alternative position we will see that this spiraling shape repeats throughout the text, especially the four moments of the Analytic of Beauty. We will try to distinguish this aesthetic spiral from the classic hermeneutic circle, then return to the circular order of precedence in aesthetic judgment. Finally, we will try to clarify what is universally communicated in the demand on others involved in a judgment of taste. (shrink)

hroughout the century, scientists have had to rely on maddeningly oblique methods, laden with assumptions, for measuring the size of the universe. They've had to guess, from purely theoretical considerations, how bright a star or galaxy really is. Then from its apparent brightness, dimmed by the journey of the light through space, they judge its distance.

The relationship between mental models and ethical decision making, along with the mechanisms through which mental models affect EDM, are not well understood. Using the sensemaking approach to EDM, we empirically tested the relationship of mental models to EDM. Participants were asked to depict their mental models in response to an ethics case to reveal their understanding of the ethical dilemma, and then provide a response, along with a rationale, to a different ethical problem. Findings indicated that complexity of respondents’ (...) mental models was related to EDM, and that this relationship was mediated by sensemaking processes. The implications of these findings for improving integrity training in organizations, as well as ultimately understanding the role of mental models in EDM, are discussed. (shrink)

The paper shows that for any invalid polysyllogism there is a procedure for constructing a model with a domain with exactly three members and an interpretation that assigns non-empty, non-universal subsets of the domain to terms such that the model invalidates the polysyllogism.

The word dignity is frequently used both in clinical and philosophical discourse when referring to and describing the ideal conditions of the patient's treatment, particularly the dying patient. An exploration of the variety of meanings associated with the word dignity will note dignity's ambiguous usage and reveal instrumental concepts needed to better understand the discourse of the dying. When applied to a critique of recent and contemporary criticisms of the medical community's handling of the dying, such concepts might provide a (...) more coherent notion of dignity. Rather than a separate construct, a death with dignity might be viewed as an interactive process among the dying and their caretakers. Together, this interdependent amalgam engages in humanizing communication aimed toward understanding the final needs and wants of the patient. (shrink)

Usage-based approaches to language hold that we learn multiword expressions as patterns of language from language usage, and that knowledge of these patterns underlies fluent language processing. This paper explores these claims by focusing upon verb–argument constructions such as “V about n.” These are productive constructions that bind syntax, lexis, and semantics. It presents analyses of usage patterns of English VACs in terms of their grammatical form, semantics, lexical constituency, and distribution patterns in large corpora; patterns of VAC usage in (...) child-directed speech and child language acquisition; and investigations of VAC free-association and psycholinguistic studies of online processing. We conclude that VACs are highly patterned in usage, that this patterning drives language acquisition, and that language processing is sensitive to the forms of the syntagmatic construction and their distributional statistics, the contingency of their association with meaning, and spreading activation and prototypicality effects in semantic reference. Language users have rich implicit knowledge of the statistics of multiword sequences. (shrink)

Late 1980s economic theory failed to account for Japanese-style economies. Leading thinkers ignored the success and achievements of these systems by passing them off as exceptions due to “cultural uniqueness,” or by altering the facts to fit their theories. Chalmers Johnson argues that the success of the Japanese economy is neither random nor a function of culture but due to policy, particularly to Japanese industrial policy.

Aristotle's syllogistic is extended to include denumerably many quantifiers such as 'more than 2/3' and 'exactly 2/3.' Syntactic and semantic decision procedures determine the validity, or invalidity, of syllogisms with any finite number of premises. One of the syntactic procedures uses a natural deduction account of deducibility, which is sound and complete. The semantics for the system is non-classical since sentences may be assigned a value other than true or false. Results about symmetric systems are given. And reasons are given (...) for claiming that syllogistic validity is relevant validity. (shrink)

In this paper we develop a general theory of algorithmic fairness. Drawing on Johnson King and Babic’s work on moral encroachment, on Gary Becker’s work on labor market discrimination, and on Strawson’s idea of resentment and indignation as responses to violations of the demand for goodwill toward oneself and others, we locate attitudes to fairness in an agent’s utility function. In particular, we first argue that fairness is a matter of a decision-maker’s relative concern for the plight of people (...) from different groups, rather than of the outcomes produced for different groups. We then show how an agent’s preferences, including in particular their attitudes to error, give rise to their decision thresholds. Tying these points together, we argue that the agent’s relative degrees of concern for different groups manifest in a difference in decision thresholds applied to these groups. (shrink)

It is a theorem of Rowbottom [12] that ifκis measurable andIis a normal prime ideal onκ, then for eachλ<κ,In this paper a natural structural property of ideals, distributivity, is considered and shown to be related to this and other ideal theoretic partition relations.The set theoretical terminology is standard and background results on the theory of ideals may be found in [5] and [8]. Throughoutκwill denote an uncountable regular cardinal, andIa proper, nonprincipal,κ-complete ideal onκ.NSκis the ideal of nonstationary subsets ofκ, andIκ= (...) {X⊆κ∣∣X∣<κ}. IfA∈I+ −I), then anI-partitionofAis a maximal collectionW⊆,P ∩I+so thatX∩ Y ∈IwheneverX, Y∈W, X≠Y. TheI-partitionWis said to be disjoint if distinct members ofWare disjoint, and in this case, fordenotes the unique member ofWcontainingξ. A sequence 〈Wα∣α<η} ofI-partitions ofAis said to be decreasing if wheneverα<β<ηandX∈Wβthere is aY∈Wαsuch thatX⊆Y.. (shrink)

Law wrangles with setting and applying standards for the practice of medicine in many different arenas. One of the most prominent is medical malpractice litigation in which the trial process examines a physician's performance and measures it against the standard of care. The profession's prevailing custom, with some substantial tolerance for “respectable minority” views, has been the gold standard for scrutinizing physician practice and treatment decisions in the malpractice context. Using the profession's custom as the measure against which a physician's (...) performance is judged defers to the expertise of medicine. Deference to the medical profession is attractive as a tool for reining in law. Reliance on customary practice is criticized, however, for driving physicians to the relative safety of the middle of the herd. Creating such a strong incentive for compliance with customary practice can dampen medical innovation and the diffusion of new clinical knowledge. The safety of the herd can also deprive individual patients of the best care in their particular circumstances.Several current trends are strengthening claims that professional practice patterns are an inappropriate tool for distinguishing between high‐quality and substandard care. In particular, advocacy for evidence‐based medicine aggressively asserts that the traditional way of making medical treatment decisions is largely untethered from scientific method or data, rendering professional judgment, even in the aggregate, suspect. (shrink)

Informed Consent: What Must Be Disclosed and What Must Be Understood seeks to challenge the “standard view” of consent. It seeks to do so by segregating the “disclosure function” from the “understa...

The mental model theory predicts that reasoners normally represent what is true, but not what is false. One consequence is that reasoners should make "illusory" inferences, which are compelling but invalid. Three experiments confirmed the existence of such illusions based on disjunctions of disjunctions. They also established a successful antidote to them: Reasoners are much less likely to succumb to illusions if the inferences concern disjunctions of physical objects (alternative newspaper advertisements) rather disjunctions of the truth values of assertions. The (...) results shed light both on the cause of the illusions and on the current controversy among different theories of reasoning. (shrink)

One of the most effective ways of winning an argument is to show that your opponent has begged the question. If you are sufficiently skilful in asking him leading questions and have a good sense of timing you can usually succeed in stripping him to his bare principles, with no ascertainable means for their support. That such a tactic of debate should be so effective suggests that it is more than just a ploy. Indeed some philosophers would say that it (...) takes advantage of a characteristic which is inherent in the nature of argument itself, for all arguments must be question-begging. However, few would voice this conviction publicly—for fear of being accused of begging the question. (shrink)

This article reviews some linguistic and philosophical work in lexical semantics. In Section 1, the general methods of lexical semantics are explored, with particular attention to how semantic features of verbs are associated with grammatical patterns. In Section 2, philosophical consequences and issues arising from this sort of research is reviewed.

There is an enduring debate in nursing regarding the art–science dualism, involving an articulation of two distinct ‘kinds’ of disciplinary knowledge: objective/scientific and subjective/artistic. Nursing identifies both as necessary, yet unbridgeable, which creates problems in constructing a coherent disciplinary knowledge base. We describe how this problem arises based on an ontological assumption of two different kinds of ‘stuff’ in the world: that with essential determinate properties and that without essential properties. We experiment with a solution by ontologically understanding the world (...) as made from a single kind: That the most irreducible element of the world is process, in that reality is a continuous construction whereby subject and object are products, not independent constituents, of reality. Process philosophy overcomes nursing's ontological bifurcation and enables nursing's art–science dualism to be re‐conceptualized as a cohesive logic of skilled reality production. An unavoidable implication of a process turn in nursing philosophy is that the disciplinary goal no longer becomes a privileged ‘body of knowledge’ that authorizes, which has always been a defining challenge in nursing. Rather, and more productively perhaps, the aim is for greater sophistication and plurality in its ongoing commitment to attuning to reality in ways that shape disciplinary attainment. (shrink)

A content analysis of 48 children's realistic animal stories shows an emphasis on pets and petkeeping that can both challenge and support traditional human-animal boundaries. The genre's sympathetic portrayal of pet animals and the condemnation of theirmistreatment invite the reader to challenge such boundaries. Yet the genre's stereotypical portrayal of these animals also constrains our conceptualization of the human-animal bond. The author discusses these and other narrative elements which render this form of popular culture ambiguous terrain for negotiating an ethic (...) of respect for nonhuman others which goes beyond most contemporary arrangements. (shrink)

There is ongoing ethical and legal debate about withdrawing life sup- port for patients with disorders of consciousness (DOCs). Frequently fu- eling the debate are implicit assumptions about the value of life in a state of impaired consciousness, and persistent uncertainty about the quality of life (QoL) of these persons. Yet there are no validated methods for assessing QoL in this population, and a significant obstacle to doing so is their inability to communicate. Recent neuroscientific discoveries might circumvent that problem (...) and help shed light on QoL in DOCs. There is an ethical imperative to prioritize QoL research in this patient population, to provide evidence to inform treatment, research, and end of life decisions. A minimalist and pragmatic model of QoL is proposed, targeting positive and negative affect as domains for which there is po- tential to reach across the communication gap, and restore to these voiceless persons some measure of control. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to review and reconsider what scholars, including historians, archaeologists, and those in other disciplines, are trying to get at when they attempt a “social interpretation” of English late medieval domestic buildings. I focus on the definition and interpretation of “meaning,” and I examine critically a series of concepts routinely deployed in social interpretations in the past, including my own work, such as type, zeitgeist, and intention. I argue that some of these concepts and interpretive (...) moves are problematic and rather than aiding in our understanding, raise further questions in their turn about how buildings were lived in and understood by their medieval inhabitants. I argue for a shift in language and jargon away from “planning” and “meaning” to that of “lived experience”. I explore such a possible shift with reference to different understandings of and debates over the late medieval castle of Bodiam in southeastern England. Such a shift from meaning to lived experience raises fresh challenges for the development and empirical evaluation of interdisciplinary research on medieval buildings, but it also raises fresh possibilities and insights. (shrink)

Submission by 31st July 2021The relationship between pragmatism and critical realism is open to many interpretations. On the one hand, compared to more traditional approaches, the two approaches sh...

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 5, Page 685-687, August 2012.

ABSTRACTPolitical rule depends upon public discourse as it requires negotiation and compromise of conflicting interests. Public discourse includes activities that can be described as cause lawyering, lobbying, and rule entrepreneurship. The rule of law supports public discourse through, inter alia, the right to petition. The right to petition requires identification of those engaged in public discourse through petition. This requirement reflects a principle of general application. Solicitors owe an ethical duty to support the rule of law, including the right to (...) petition. Lawyers without a specific duty to uphold the rule of law have ethical duties to maintain the reputation of the legal system and their legal profession. Lawyers, including solicitors, are frequent contributors to public discourse. Lawyers sometimes resist identifying the clients or client groups they represent in public discourse on the ground of the need to protect client confidentiality. This resistance is not ethically well reasoned, a... (shrink)