This article addresses Augustine’s distinction between usus and fruitio—and O’Donovan’s critique of it—in order to consider the dangers of disordered love in the forms of idolatry and instrumentalisation in neighbourly relations on earth. Examining the christological heart of the pilgrimage image as articulated in De doctrina christiana addresses O’Donovan’s critique that the pilgrimage image instrumentalises one’s relationships to others in the progress of one’s own journey to God. In fact, this image presents a christological dialectic that establishes the (...) continuity of earthly and eschatological neighbour-love and thus protects the neighbour from being made either idol or instrument by securing their right place in the order of love. (shrink)

There is a parallel between the debate between Gottlob Frege and David Hilbert at the turn of the twentieth century and at least some aspects of the current controversy over whether category theory provides the proper framework for structuralism in the philosophy of mathematics. The main issue, I think, concerns the place and interpretation of meta-mathematics in an algebraic or structuralist approach to mathematics. Can meta-mathematics itself be understood in algebraic or structural terms? Or is it an exception to the (...) slogan that mathematics is the science of structure? (shrink)

According to ante rem structuralism a branch of mathematics, such as arithmetic, is about a structure, or structures, that exist independent of the mathematician, and independent of any systems that exemplify the structure. A structure is a universal of sorts: structure is to exemplified system as property is to object. So ante rem structuralist is a form of ante rem realism concerning universals. Since the appearance of my Philosophy of mathematics: Structure and ontology, a number of criticisms of the idea (...) of ante rem structures have appeared. Some argue that it is impossible to give identity conditions for places in homogeneous ante rem structures, invoking a version of the identity of indiscernibles. Others raise issues concerning the identity and distinctness of places in different structures, such as the the natural number 2 and the real number 2. The purpose of this paper is to take the measure of these objections, and to further articulate ante rem structuralism to take them into account. (shrink)

Some authors have claimed that ante rem structuralism has problems with structures that have indiscernible places. In response, I argue that there is no requirement that mathematical objects be individuated in a non-trivial way. Metaphysical principles and intuitions to the contrary do not stand up to ordinary mathematical practice, which presupposes an identity relation that, in a sense, cannot be defined. In complex analysis, the two square roots of –1 are indiscernible: anything true of one of them is true of (...) the other. I suggest that ‘i’ functions like a parameter in natural deduction systems. I gave an early version of this paper at a workshop on structuralism in mathematics and science, held in the Autumn of 2006, at Bristol University. Thanks to the organizers, particularly Hannes Leitgeb, James Ladyman, and Øystein Linnebo, to my commentator Richard Pettigrew, and to the audience there. The paper also benefited considerably from a preliminary session at the Arché Research Centre at the University of St Andrews. I am indebted to my colleagues Craige Roberts, for help with the linguistics literature, and Ben Caplan and Gabriel Uzquiano, for help with the metaphysics. Thanks also to Hannes Leitgeb and Jeffrey Ketland for reading an earlier version of the manuscript and making helpful suggestions. I also benefited from conversations with Richard Heck, John Mayberry, Kevin Scharp, and Jason Stanley. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Would Aquinas hold the view that a patient in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) is something other than a human being? Some recent interpreters have argued for this position. I contend that this reading is grounded in a false symmetry between the three stages of Aquinas’s embryology and the (alleged) three-stage process of death. Instead, I show that there are textual grounds for rejecting the view that the absence of higher brain activity in a patient would lead Aquinas to say (...) that the patient no longer has a rational soul. On my reading of Aquinas, the patient in PVS has a rational soul and is unequivocally a human being. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to delimit what can and cannot be claimed on behalf of second-order logic. The starting point is some of the discussions surrounding my Foundations without Foundationalism: A Case for Secondorder Logic.

Graham Priest's In Contradiction (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987, chapter 3) contains an argument concerning the intuitive, or ‘naïve’ notion of (arithmetic) proof, or provability. He argues that the intuitively provable arithmetic sentences constitute a recursively enumerable set, which has a Gödel sentence which is itself intuitively provable. The incompleteness theorem does not apply, since the set of provable arithmetic sentences is not consistent. The purpose of this article is to sharpen Priest's argument, avoiding reference to informal notions, consensus, or (...) Church's thesis. We add Priest's dialetheic semantics to ordinary Peano arithmetic PA, to produce a recursively axiomatized formal system PA★ that contains its own truth predicate. Whether one is a dialetheist or not, PA★ is a legitimate, rigorously defined formal system, and one can explore its proof‐theoretic properties. The system is inconsistent (but presumably non‐trivial), and it proves its own Gödel sentence as well as its own soundness. Although this much is perhaps welcome to the dialetheist, it has some untoward consequences. There are purely arithmetic (indeed, Π0) sentences that are both provable and refutable in PA★. So if the dialetheist maintains that PA★ is sound, then he must hold that there are true contradictions in the most elementary language of arithmetic. Moreover, the thorough dialetheist must hold that there is a number g which both is and is not the code of a derivation of the indicated Gödel sentence of PA★. For the thorough dialetheist, it follows ordinary PA and even Robinson arithmetic are themselves inconsistent theories. I argue that this is a bitter pill for the dialetheist to swallow. (shrink)

Just about every theorist holds that vague terms are context-sensitive to some extent. What counts as ?tall?, ?rich?, and ?bald? depends on the ambient comparison class, paradigm cases, and/or the like. To take a stock example, a given person might be tall with respect to European entrepreneurs and downright short with respect to professional basketball players. It is also generally agreed that vagueness remains even after comparison class, paradigm cases, etc. are fixed, and so this context sensitivity does not solve (...) the problems with vague terms. In this paper, I briefly sketch the main features of my broadly contextualist account of vagueness, that of the late Ruth Manor, and that of Agustín Rayo, showing how the three accounts relate to, and reinforce, each other, noting a seeming difference. A key item used to articulate my own view is David Lewis's notion of conversational score. This is used to track which borderline cases have been called in the course of a conversation. Manor alludes to Lewis's notion of accommodation, a key aspect of the kinematics of conversation, and Rayo invokes Stalnaker's notion of common ground. I'll show how the conversational score could be employed to develop and extend their views, showing how vague terms, as they construe them, are (or can be) deployed in conversation, consistent with both the underlying indeterminacy of the terms and normal communicative goals. To help develop all three views further, I invoke Craige Roberts's notion of Retrievability, a tool developed to show how definites, such as definite descriptions, singular pronouns, and proper names, are deployed in conversation, in a Lewis-style scorekeeping framework. This, I think, is exactly the right way to understand conversations in what Manor calls non-sorities situations and, to invoke my own view, in sorites situations as well. (shrink)

These sixty contributions from researchers in ethology, ecology, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, and related fields delve into the behaviors and underlying mechanisms that allow animals and, potentially, robots to adapt and survive in uncertain environments. They focus in particular on simulation models in order to help characterize and compare various organizational principles or architectures capable of inducing adaptive behavior in real or artificial animals. Jean-Arcady Meyer is Director of Research at CNRS, Paris. Stewart W. Wilson is a Scientist at (...) The Rowland Institute for Science, Cambridge, Massachusetts. (shrink)

Business majors were tested for their attitudes toward the teaching of business ethics in university business education. Respondents indicated that they considered ethics an important part of a business curriculum and that they preferred integrating ethics into a number of different courses rather than taking a separate compulsory or elective ethics course. Ethical business practices were seen by respondents as increasing profit and return on investment and creating a positive work environment and public perception of the organization.

The mental competence of people requesting aid-in-dying is a key issue for the how the law responds to cases of assisted suicide. A number of cases from around the common law world have highlighted the importance of competence in determining whether assistants should be prosecuted, and what they will be prosecuted for. Nevertheless, the law remains uncertain about how competence should be tested in these cases. This article proposes a test of competence that is based on the existing common law (...) but which is tailored to cases of assisted suicide. The test will help doctors, other health professionals and lawyers determine whether the suicidal person was able to competently request assistance. Such knowledge will help to reduce some of the current uncertainty about criminal liability in cases of assisted suicide. (shrink)

Most recent discussions of truth ignore the fact that a few philosophers, past and present, have flirted with and sometimes openly subscribed to an identity theory, according to which a proposition's being true consists in its identity with the reality it is supposedly about. This neglect is probably due to the theory's counter-intuitiveness: it faces obvious and fundamental objections. The aim of this paper is to consider these objections and decide if there is a version of the theory which can (...) escape them, thereby becoming an at least initially plausible candidate for an account of truth. In this way the metaphysical price exacted by commitment to an identity theory can be assessed. (shrink)

Patient autonomy, as exercised in the informed consent process, is a central concern in bioethics. The typical bioethicist's analysis of autonomy centers on decisional capacity—finding the line between autonomy and its absence. This approach leaves unexplored the structure of reasoning behind patient treatment decisions. To counter that approach, we present a microeconomic theory of patient decision-making regarding the acceptable level of medical treatment from the patient's perspective. We show that a rational patient's desired treatment level typically departs from the level (...) yielding an absence of symptoms, the level we call ideal. This microeconomic theory demonstrates why patients have good reason not to pursue treatment to the point of absence of physical symptoms. We defend our view against possible objections that it is unrealistic and that it fails to adequately consider harm a patient may suffer by curtailing treatment. Our analysis is fruitful in various ways. It shows why decisions often considered unreasonable might be fully reasonable. It offers a theoretical account of how physician misinformation may adversely affect a patient's decision. It shows how billing costs influence patient decision-making. It indicates that health care professionals' beliefs about the ‘unreasonable’ attitudes of patients might often be wrong. It provides a better understanding of patient rationality that should help to ensure fuller information as well as increased respect for patient decision-making. (shrink)

This Special Issue has presented a series of conversational interviews with editors of leading journals in the field of philosophy of education. This concluding article synthesises the interviews and reflects on what this project offers to early career researchers including the interviewer-authors in this issue. The contributing writers are interested in their own prospects, as well as those of the field of philosophy of education, and indeed education, and society more generally, in the context of the turbulent changes currently remodelling (...) academic lives and institutions. This has been an inspiring project to work on, producing these six interviews, on which this conclusion and special issue is based: ; _Shaping the agenda of the global civil society: an interview with Michael Peters_, by Richard Heraud and Marek Tesar. ; _Publishing and intergenerational learning in philosophy of education: an interview with Paul Smeyers, _ by Daniella J. Forster. ; _Insights from an editor’s journey: an interview with Gert Biesta, _ by Christoph Teschers. ; _Writing in the margins: an interview with Bob Davis, _ by Kirsten Locke. ; _Emerging perspectives on editorial ethics: an interview with Chris Higgins, _ by Liz Jackson. ; _The long arc of knowledge: an interview with Nicholas Burbules, _ by Georgina Stewart. Most of the Editors commented on the large amount of work involved in editing a journal: a demanding, time-consuming, but very rewarding and satisfying job. Paul Smeyers spoke of taking on the role after being approached by the publisher, when he realised there were few alternative candidates. Gert Biesta spoke of being curious to find out about the process of publishing from the inside, as well as regarding it as an honour to be asked, and being motivated by a wish to help the field. Michael Peters said his editing philosophy includes helping academics to realise that editing and publishing are related to having control over one’s own ideas: more political and philosophical than simply the technical tasks of proofreading and editing. All the Editors are motivated by a wish to improve the field, and ultimately society. An editor clearly needs to read a great deal: some of the Editors spoke about reading everything submitted, and everything published in the journal; or of having read thousands of papers in their time as editor; and the daunting commitment of time involved—about half a day per paper, or more. Several Editors spoke about the impact of the job on their own research output: one view being that the sheer time involved in editing a journal is detrimental to being an active researcher. Conversely, reading the work of so many other scholars can provide an editor with more motivation to write, while having limited writing time available encourages more decisiveness, and less perfectionism. Journals and editors need to understand their consumers: who reads what, how and when. In recent decades, reading practices have undergone a major change from paper-based to screen-based, and some of the Editors speculated that paper-based journals will soon disappear entirely. The change to reading digitally is the latest in a series of historical iterations of how the disciplines of reading interact with the mediating technologies, with each change integrating new forms while retaining what is best in their heritage. Reading, and hence also writing, played an important part in the eighteenth-century European development of human rights and the concept of equality, through widespread readership of seminal texts. The contemporary situation, in which everything can be freely read, redefines the relationship of the reader to the author, whereby reading and writing constitute a form of creative labour on the self, involving self-transformation, self-recognition, and the kinds of links that are possible between people in a digital world. (shrink)

"This book describes the power of the human mind and the cognitive processes that take place through the use of our external senses. Among these cognitive processes is memory, which receives extensive coverage in the essays. The book also contains a preface section providing an account of the author's life and writings. This section is written by Dugald Stewart, who details the philosophy and publications of the deceased Thomas Reid, the book's author." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all (...) rights reserved). (shrink)

In the United States, only 6% of the 1.5 million faculty in degree-granting postsecondary institutions is Black. Research shows that, while many institutions tout the idea of diversity recruitment, not much progress has been made to diversify faculty ranks, especially at research-intensive institutions. We're Not Ok shares the experiences of Black faculty to take the reader on a journey, from the obstacles of landing a full-time faculty position through the unique struggles of being a Black educator at a predominantly white (...) institution, along with how these deterrents impact inclusion, retention, and mental health. The book provides practical strategies and recommendations for graduate students, faculty, staff, and administrators, along with changemakers, to make strides in diversity, equity, and inclusion. More than a presentation of statistics and anecdotes, it is the start of a dialogue with the intent of ushering actual change that can benefit Black faculty, their students, and their institutions. (shrink)

This paper investigates the impact of activism on a large, powerful corporation in Tasmania. Gunns Ltd was a large woodchip processor in Tasmania that fought a long-running battle with environmental activists regarding Gunns’ logging and processing activities. The study focuses on events in 2004–2005, when Gunns applied to build a pulp mill in rural northern Tasmania and began a legal case against activists. The research question is whether there is clear statistical evidence that these events were important, as is widely (...) believed, in the ultimate failure of Gunns in, just 6 years after being the largest and one of the most financially successful Tasmanian companies. We use a mixed methods approach that combines a detailed narrative informed by theory, to examine issues of corporate social responsibility and ethical behaviour, with an econometric time series analysis of the impact of activism on the market value of Gunns. Our analysis supports the contention that the events in 2004–2005 played a significant part in the decline of the long-run market value of Gunns over the subsequent period, through to its failure in 2011. We discuss the underlying causes for Gunns’ failure in terms of agency, stakeholder, legitimacy and leadership theories. Research frequently assesses effects such as those in the Gunns’ case through solely qualitative means. This paper integrates a quantitative analysis into a detailed qualitative narrative and theoretical interpretation of events, to provide additional precision to its findings. It contributes to research in CSR and the impact of activism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to CommentariesLauren Freeman (bio) and Heather Stewart (bio)We are grateful and humbled that this esteemed group of scholars and healthcare practitioners have dedicated the time to read and engage with our book. Their thoughtful, critical comments have given us new ways of reflecting on our own work, compelled us to develop and expand some of our claims, and have also nudged us to move in new directions (...) that we hope to explore in future research. In what follows, we reply to each of the commentaries, focusing on what we take to be the most central insights, critiques, and areas for further exploration from each contribution.Catherine Sherron (2024) offers an expansive commentary on chapter 4, "Epistemic Microaggressions," focusing on the nature of epistemic agency, situating epistemic agency within the bioethical context of the principle of autonomy, considering epistemic microaggressions and the phenomenon of silencing of patients, asking whose evidence counts when making claims within medical contexts, and questioning how we might develop a system of reward and admonishment to healthcare professionals who respectively mitigate and commit microaggressions. She presents far more content than we can adequately respond to here. We have chosen to focus on Sherron's specific point about why certain patients experience epistemic microaggressions and what they can do about it. Her line of reasoning echoes an argument found in popular articles about women's health and healthcare that, while seemingly reasonable at first glance, is fraught with problematic assumptions and implications that we would like to draw out and reflect on. Doing so helps pinpoint where the locus of our attention should be in our aim to diminish microaggressions in medical contexts, without placing that burden on the very people who experience and are harmed by them.Within the context of discussing possible contributing factors that perpetuate epistemic microaggressions for patients, Sherron mentions the reality that "patients often don't have good scientific or medical literacy, or education generally, so they might not be in a position to advocate for themselves as epistemic [End Page 169] agents" (150). We surmise that Sherron's more complete argument runs something like this. Many patients lack scientific or medical literacy, postsecondary and postgraduate education, and the language, concepts, and frameworks to be fully empowered epistemic agents and best communicate with healthcare professionals on their terms. As a consequence—and combined with other factors pertaining to their identities and the accompanying stereotypes and biases that healthcare professionals (and all of us) hold—patients who are members of marginalized groups are often not treated as epistemic equals or epistemic peers by healthcare professionals; they are also unable to best advocate for themselves or to speak up in the aftermath of experiencing microaggressions (or macroaggressions) in medical contexts. Thus, if patients were more literate, educated, and able to speak the language of healthcare professionals, they would be able to better advocate for themselves, and they would be better positioned to speak up and respond when epistemic microaggressions (and other injustices and harms) occur. As a result, their situation and relationships with healthcare professionals, their epistemic credibility, and consequently, their care (and maybe even their health outcomes) would improve. Thus, the line o argument implies that we ought to focus our attention on empowering patients: helping them learn how to better educate and advocate for themselves so that they can improve their epistemic situation and, consequently, receive better medical care.This line of argument is common in popular books and articles about women's health (see Dusenbery [2018], who criticizes the argument and Gainty [2023], Jacqueline [2024], Lichtman et al. [2015], Onque [2022], and Singh [2015] where the argument is promoted). The consensus seems to be that yes, there is a problem: women and members of marginalized groups are not getting adequate healthcare, and if only they took better control of and responsibility for their care, they could and would receive better care. We are highlighting this line of reasoning because it is commonplace, problematic, and dangerous.Such an argument is worrisome for at least two reasons. First, the suggested solution—that members of marginalized groups just need to become better advocates for themselves—is not only a form of (unintentional... (shrink)

Intersectionality, the attempt to bring theories on race, gender, disability and sexuality together, has existed for decades as a theoretical framework. The essays in this volume explore how intersectionality can be applied to modern philosophy, as well as looking at other disciplines.

The aim of this paper is to examine the current state of development of Mäori science curriculum policy, and the roles that various discourses have played in shaping these developments. These discussions provide a background for suggestions about a possible future direction, and the presentation of a new concept for Mäori science education.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Borges on Language and TranslationJon StewartAlthough Jorge Luis Borges had years of philosophical training and expressed a number of philosophical theories in his literary works, he never published a philosophy treatise. The result is that his oeuvre has often been viewed as purely literary and been largely neglected by trained philosophers. However, by ignoring the philosophical aspects of Borges’s thought, criticism has neglected a vast dimension of his work (...) and has thus frequently misunderstood and misinterpreted many aspects of it. As I have tried to demonstrate in an earlier article, 1 there are important philosophical themes in the short stories of Borges, which have yet to be considered. In the present essay, I take up one of these heretofore neglected themes.We can find perhaps no better example of the literary exposition of Borges’s philosophical ideas than in his short story or cuento, “Averroes’ Search.” 2 There Borges reconstructs for us a culture and an age radically different and temporally distant from our own. He recounts the story of Averroes, the Arab philosopher living in Spain in the second half of the twelfth century. The history of philosophy knows Averroes as one of the great medieval commentators on the works of Aristotle. Borges recreates the historical moment and the passion of Averroes in his task of translating and providing a commentary for the texts of the great Greek philosopher who remains forever distant from him. The story takes as its point of departure Renan’s observation about a curious misinterpretation of Aristotle found in Averroes: “S’imaginant que la tragédie n’est autre chose que l’art de louer...”(p. 180). Borges poses [End Page 320] the question of why Averroes, who had dedicated his life to understanding the work of Aristotle, had so badly misunderstood the concept of tragedy treated by the Greek philosopher. To answer this question, Borges brilliantly employs the faculty of historical imagination in order to think himself back into Averroes’s particular time period and cultural context. The short story presents us with a thesis about the intimate connection between culture and language and the ultimate futility of translation and crosscultural knowledge and comprehension. In the present essay, I wish to argue that the point of Borges’s story about the fate of Averroes is (1) to refute the common view which sees language as an entity neutral with respect to culture and history, and (2) to bring to light the comprehensive nature and scope of particular culturally and historically determined ways of thinking and perceiving the world. These philosophical elements have been neglected by the various literary scholars who have treated the works of Borges. 3 Moreover, Borges anticipates many of the most celebrated epistemological and hermeneutical theories of our day from philosophers such as Gadamer, Davidson and Quine, and presents them in literary form.IThere is a common view according to which the manifold languages of the various peoples and cultures of the world are more or less interchangeable. According to this linguistics of common sense, language is something secondary and accidental which is only an inessential corollary to our basic understanding and perception of the world. Human perception and cognition are thought of as constants for all humans everywhere. A dog will be perceived as a dog regardless of time period, place or culture, and the words we create to represent “dog” in the medium of language are secondary and even arbitrary. As a result, individual words in one language correspond to individual words in another. Dog in English corresponds straightforwardly to Hund in German or perro in Spanish, and nothing could be more simple. The gifted translator is merely someone with a great capacity to memorize words and to effect rapid replacement changes, and translation is regarded as a more or less mechanical process with little room for creativity. The diversity of languages is neither epistemologically necessary nor important, but rather explained as an historical accident as in the etiological tale of the Tower of Babel. Language has no necessary connection to the time period in which it is spoken or to the culture of [End Page 321] the people who speak it. That we... (shrink)

Hawe et al. raise concerns about Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs) taking a risk-averse and litigation-sensitive approach to ethical review of research proposals. HRECs are tasked with reviewing proposals for compliance with the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research for the purpose of promoting the welfare of participants. While these guidelines intentionally include a significant degree of discretion in HREC decision making, there is also evidence that HRECs sometimes request changes that go beyond the guidance provided by the (...) National Statement. When HRECs request changes outside their remit, inconsistencies between individual HRECs become more common, contributing to delays in ethical review and reducing the quality of HREC decision making. Improvements to the HREC regulatory system are needed to promote transparency and accountability. (shrink)

The author argues that Luther 's two-kingdoms doctrine rests upon a limited conception of law: "criminal" law, to use the terminology of British legal philosopher H. L. A. Hart. In contrast, "contract" law is the potent means through which networks of political, economic, and social relations have been built up since Luther 's day. Using the 1523 Leisnig experiment in social governance as an example, the author suggests that Lutheran ethicists need to pay more attention to "cooperative self- obligation " (...) as the basic device through which social covenants are established and sustained. The essay concludes with four emphases that Lutheran ethicists might bring to such a rethinking of law as an ethical concept. (shrink)