The construction of creative identity from a Vygotskian perspective is explored in this paper. A theoretical link is made between Vygotsky’s (Smolucha, 1992) claims about the development of creativity and Penuet and Wertsch’s (1995) use of Vygotskian theory to address identity formation. Narrative is suggested as the link between culturally organized activities, mediated mental functioning, and the storied self. Data from semi-structured interviews about creativity conducted with a second grade child and his parents illustrate how discourses from home and school (...) come together during the development of imagination and are used to construct identity. (shrink)

This theoretical expose explores the complex notion of argumentative style, which has so far been largely neglected in argumentation theory. After an introduction of the problems involved, the theoretical tools for identifying the properties of the discourse in which an argumentative style manifests itself are explained from a pragma-dialectical perspective and a theoretical definition of argumentative style is provided that does full justice to its role in argumentative discourse. The article concludes with a short reflection upon the next steps that (...) need to be taken in argumentation theory in further substantiating the notion of argumentative style. (shrink)

Leading scholars address the ethical and practical dimensions of Heidegger's thought.

In this book two of the leading figures in argumentation theory present a view of argumentation as a means of resolving differences of opinion by testing the acceptability of the disputed positions. Their model of a 'critical discussion' serves as a theoretical tool for analysing, evaluating and producing argumentative discourse. They develop a method for the reconstruction of argumentative discourse that takes into account all aspects that are relevant to a critical assessment. They also propose a practical code of behaviour (...) for discussants who want to resolve their differences in a reasonable way. This is a major contribution to the study of argumentation and will be of particular value to professionals and graduate students in speech communication, informal logic, rhetoric, critical thinking, linguistics, and philosophy. (shrink)

Food trade is of economic importance for both developed and developing countries. Food, however, is a special commodity. Firstly, the lack of food -- hunger, under-nourishment, and starvation -- is one of the world's pressing moral problems. But food is not only special because it is necessary for our survival; food is also special because it is strongly related to our social and cultural identity. Two recent transatlantic trade conflicts over food -- over the use of artificial growth hormones in (...) beef production and over the use of biotechnology in food production -- show that food is a specific commodity. In these trade-conflicts, the obligations flowing from free-trade treaties collide with the cultural and social meanings of food. Current international trade agreements neglect this point and force countries to fight their case in the field of food safety science. This causes a bias in the discussion. Europe's resistance towards artificial growth hormones and GM-food is not strictly science based; it is also culture based. For a fair resolution of trade-conflicts, this needs to be accommodated in international trade legislation. With the help of the notion of public reason I defend that precaution with regard to scientific uncertainty, and the possibility for compulsory labelling with regard to sensitive non-nutritional properties of foodstuffs, need to be incorporated in international food trade regulations. (shrink)

BackgroundConcerns about research misbehavior in academic science have sparked interest in the factors that may explain research misbehavior. Often three clusters of factors are distinguished: individual factors, climate factors and publication factors. Our research question was: to what extent can individual, climate and publication factors explain the variance in frequently perceived research misbehaviors?MethodsFrom May 2017 until July 2017, we conducted a survey study among academic researchers in Amsterdam. The survey included three measurement instruments that we previously reported individual results of (...) and here we integrate these findings.ResultsOne thousand two hundred ninety-eight researchers completed the survey. Results showed that individual, climate and publication factors combined explained 34% of variance in perceived frequency of research misbehavior. Individual factors explained 7%, climate factors explained 22% and publication factors 16%.ConclusionsOur results suggest that the perceptions of the research climate play a substantial role in explaining variance in research misbehavior. This suggests that efforts to improve departmental norms might have a salutary effect on behavior. (shrink)

O artigo visa homenagear a pensadora Marilena Chaui apontando sua especificidade de tratamento em relação às manifestações de junho de 2013 no Brasil. Por um lado, dialogando com seu artigo “Simulacro e poder: uma análise da mídia”, por outro lado, alargando a concepção de ideologia da competência. Neste último aspecto trata-se de pensar a figura do intelectual homologado como sendo aquele que, mesmo não ocupando lugar central no circuito midiático, torna-se uma das caricaturas mais palpáveis da redução do pensamento crítico (...) às artificialidades de um afeto estranhado e inautêntico. (shrink)

As the field of clinical ethics consultation sets standards and moves forward with the Quality Attestation process, questions should be raised about what ethical issues really do arise in practice. There is limited data on the type and number of ethics consultations conducted across different settings. At Loyola University Medical Center, we conducted a retrospective review of our ethics consultations from 2008 through 2013. One hundred fifty-six cases met the eligibility criteria. We analyzed demographic data on these patients and conducted (...) a content analysis of the ethics consultation write-ups coding both the frequency of ethical issues and most significant, or key, ethical issue per case. Patients for whom ethics consultation was requested were typically male, white, between 50 and 69 years old, of non-Hispanic origin, and of Roman Catholic faith. Nearly half were in the intensive care unit and 44.2 % died in the hospital. The most frequent broad ethical categories were decision-making, goals of care/treatment, and end-of-life. More specifically, capacity, patient’s wishes/autonomy, and surrogate decision maker were the most frequent particular ethical issues. The most common key ethical issues were withdrawing/withholding treatment, patient wishes/autonomy, and capacity. Our findings provide additional data to inform the training of clinical ethics consultants regarding the ethical issues that arise in practice. A wider research agenda should be formed to collect and compare data across institutions to improve education and training in our field. (shrink)

This article explains the design and development of the pragma-dialectical approach to fallacies. In this approach fallacies are viewed as violations of the standards for critical discussion that are expressed in a code of conduct for reasonable argumentative discourse. After the problem-solving validity in resolving differences of opinion of the rules of this code has been discussed, their conventional validity for real-life arguers is demonstrated. Starting from the extended version of the theory in which the strategic maneuvering taking place in (...) argumentative discourse is included, the article explains that the violations of the rules that are committed in the fallacies involve derailments of strategic maneuvering. This culminates in a discussion of the exploitation of hidden fallaciousness as an unreasonable way of increasing the effectiveness of argumentative discourse – a vital topic of research in present-day pragma-dialectics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We outline a number of ethical objections to genetic technologies aimed at enhancing human capacities and traits. We then argue that, despite the persuasiveness of some of these objections, they are insufficient to stop the development and use of genetic enhancement technologies. We contend that the inevitability of the technologies results from a particular guiding worldview of humans as masters of the human evolutionary future, and conclude that recognising this worldview points to new directions for ethical thinking about genetic (...) enhancement technologies. (shrink)

Question 11 in Book 2 of John Buridan’s Questions on the Ten Books of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, concerns whether the good can be well divided into the honorable, the useful, and the pleasurable. Aristotle, according to Buridan, claims that it can. But should we follow Aristotle in this respect? Buridan argues that we should not. In his view, it is rather the case that the good is extensionally equivalent with the honorable, as well as with the useful and with the (...) pleasurable. According to Buridan, however, the relevant division is still important for our understanding of goodness. Several centuries before Franz Brentano, A. C. Ewing, and others, Buridan proposes a fitting attitude account of goodness. In its most general sense, he says, the good refers to the desirable, that is, to that which is (or would be) a fitting object of desire. However, we can distinguish between three different ways in which things may be desirable: in themselves (in which case they are honorable), as means to some other good (in which case they are useful) and for ourselves (in which case they are pleasurable). On the substantive level, these always coincide. But that does not follow from the more fundamental account of the nature of the good, according to Buridan. -/- In this paper, we will critically examine both Buridan’s case for thinking that the good is extensionally equivalent with the honorable, the useful, and the pleasurable, as well as his fitting attitude account of goodness. (shrink)

The Belief‐Desire model (the B‐D model) of reasons for action has been subject to much criticism lately. Two of the most elaborate and trenchant expositions of such criticisms are found in recent works by Jonathan Dancy (2000) and Fred Stoutland (2002). In this paper we set out to respond to the central pieces of their criticisms. For this purpose it is essential to sort out and regiment different senses in which the term ‘reason’ may be used. It is necessary to (...) go beyond common philosophical practice and distinguish not merely between two such different uses but to make a tripartite distinction. Our aim is largely conciliatory: we grant the main parts of the points made by Stoutland and Dancy but argue that once the B‐D model has been properly stated, and different uses of the term ‘reason’ sufficiently regimented, the B‐D proponent is able to accommodate their respective criticisms within the framework of the B‐D model and thereby undermine their case against the model. (shrink)

Waal shows how ethical behavior is as much a matter of evolution as any other trait.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

It is often claimed that the exceptional severity of the Spanish flu, one of the most deadly events in recorded human history, is an unsolved mystery. However, even detailed aspects such as its W-shaped mortality curve are well explained by Paul Ewald’s theory of the evolution of virulence. Understanding the causes of the Spanish flu will help to prevent future epidemics.

What is the highest good? In the ethics of René Descartes, we can distinguish between at least seven different answers to this question: God; the sum of all the different goods that “we either possess... or have the power to acquire” ; free will; virtue; love of God; wisdom; and supernatural beatitude. In this paper, I argue that each of these answers, in Descartes’s view, provides the correct particular conception, relative to a distinct sense or concept of the highest good. (...) Just as there are seven different conceptions of the highest good, according to Descartes, there are thus also seven different senses or concepts of the highest good. (shrink)

The issues addressed in philosophical papers on quotation generally concern only a particular type of quotation, which I call 'closed quotation'. The other main type, 'open quotation', is ignored, and this neglect leads to bad theorizing. Not only is a general theory of quotation out of reach: the specific phenomenon of closed quotation itself cannot be properly understood if it is not appropriately situated within the kind to which it belongs. Once the distinction between open and closed quotation has been (...) drawn and properly appreciated, it is tempting to consider that only closed quotation is relevant to semantics. Open quotation is more a matter of pragmatics: it is a matter of what people do with words, rather than a matter of content and truth-conditions. In this way one can provide the beginning of a justification for the neglect of open quotation in current semantic theorizing. There is some truth in this view, yet the phenomenon of 'mixed quotation', investigated at length in this paper, is interesting precisely because it shows that things are not so simple. Important issues concerning the interface between semantics and pragmatics will thus be raised. (shrink)

Mathematicians suggest that some proofs are valued for their explanatory value. This has led to a philosophical debate about the distinction between explanatory and non-explanatory proofs. In this paper, we explore whether contrasting views about the explanatory value of proof are possible and how to understand these diverging assessments. By considering an epistemic and contextual conception of explanation, we can make sense of disagreements about explanatoriness in mathematics by identifying differences in the background knowledge, skill corpus, or epistemic aims of (...) mathematicians or mathematical communities. We focus on the relation between explanation, epistemic aims and diverging explanatory assessments by looking at cases from mathematical practice. (shrink)

Leibniz verwendet viele Bilder, urn die Eigenschaften und Aktivitäten Gottes zu erklären, denn verstehen können Menschen seine Vollkommenheiten nicht. Durch eine Analyse der Gottesbilder aus einigen zentralen Werken wird gezeigt, daß Leibniz für die Vernunftwahrheiten Gottes mehrere Metaphern gebraucht, hauptsächlich nach dem Modell von Naturereignissen. Für die Glaubenswahrheiten Gottes werden dagegen viele Analogien aufgeführt, die vor allem an menschlichen Modellen ausgerichtet sind. Trotzdem bleiben diese Bilder deterministisch.

This study examines the shame that drives the rite of confession of guilt and sin in the Toraja tradition and then dialogues with the Christian faith. In this study, a qualitative research method was used with an ethnographic approach. Observations and interviews were conducted with figures who knew the topic. The results show that Toraja people experience collective shame when community members commit moral violations. A sense of shame before others or social shame is felt. However, spiritual shame is an (...) aspect that cannot be ignored. Behind the social violations, there are efforts to interpret the relationship with God (Toraja language, Puang Matua), which needs to be brought back to lead people to repentance. Contribution: This article combines tradition and theology, particularly missional and contextual theology. The results of this study are expected to increase the efforts of each respondent to interpret God in every social violation committed to lead people to repentance. (shrink)

Already more than sixty years Paul Ricoeur enriches the international philosophical patrimony with an astonishing number of highly technical books and enlightening reflections on actual problems and situations. To serve the community of researchers in philosophy I have already published two systematic bibliographies of (and on) Ricoeur in 1985 and 1995. Encouraged by friends and colleagues I present now another updated bibliography as exhaustive as possible.

Mathematics seems to have a special status when compared to other areas of human knowledge. This special status is linked with the role of proof. Mathematicians often believe that this type of argumentation leaves no room for errors and unclarity. Philosophers of mathematics have differentiated between absolutist and fallibilist views on mathematical knowledge, and argued that these views are related to whether one looks at mathematics-in-the-making or finished mathematics. In this paper we take a closer look at mathematical practice, more (...) precisely at the publication process in mathematics. We argue that the apparent view that mathematical literature, given the special status of mathematics, is highly reliable is too naive. We will discuss several problems in the publication process that threaten this view, and give several suggestions on how this could be countered.Las matemáticas parecen tener un estatuto especial cuando se las compara con otras áreas del conocimiento humano. Este estatuto especial está conectado con el papel de la demostración. Los matemáticos creen con frecuencia que este tipo de argumentos no deja margen para el error o la falta de claridad. Los filósofos de la matemática han distinguido entre una concepción absolutista y una falibilista del conocimiento matemático, argumentando que estas concepciones están relacionadas con una consideración de las matemáticas-en-proceso o en tanto que matemáticas ya hechas. En este artículo examinamos más de cerca la práctica matemática, más en concreto el proceso de publicación en matemáticas. Argumentaremos que la idea preconcebida de que la literatura matemática, dado el estatuto especial de las matemáticas, es altamente fiable, es demasiado ingenua. Discutiremos algunos problemas del proceso de edición que amenazan esta visión y haremos algunas sugerencias sobre cómo enfrentarlos. (shrink)

In the pragma-dialectical approach, fallacies are considered incorrect moves in a discussion for which the goal is successful resolution of a dispute. Ten rules are given for effective conduct at the various stages of such a critical discussion (confrontation, opening, argumentation, concluding). Fallacies are discussed as violations of these rules, taking into account all speech acts which are traditionally recognized as fallacies. Special attention is paid to the role played by implicitness in fallacies in everyday language use. It is stressed (...) that identifying and acknowledging fallacies in ordinary discussions always has a conditional character. Differences between the pragma-dialectical perspective, the Standard Treatment, and the formal logic approach to fallacy analysis are discussed. (shrink)

Não obstante as críticas de Giambattista Vico ao pensamento de Espinosa, é possível estabelecer uma relação de proximidade entre os dois. Se as críticas distanciam, o interesse histórico-filológico aproxima. Com efeito, para o estabelecimento de certa convergência entre os propósitos filosóficos dos dois autores, elencam-se os seguintes pressupostos: _i)_ tanto na _Ciência Nova_, quanto no _Tratado Teológico-Político_, a _filologia_ não é apenas conhecimento textual das línguas, porém via de acesso à história de um povo, pois guarda as mutações temporais da (...) vida civil e a memória do mundo de sentido no qual se gesta; _ii)_ a língua não é uma criação do rigor do entendimento, isto é, não é criação dos filósofos, mas da imaginação, portanto do _vulgo_. Desse modo, toda via de acesso ao conhecimento do passado passa inevitavelmente pela potência da _imaginação-fantasia_: questão que interpela Espinosa na _história dos hebreus_ e Vico na _natureza comum das nações_. (shrink)

Interviews met wijsgeren en andere wetenschapsmensen over de reden waarom zij zich met de persoon en het werk van de Oostenrijks-Engelse filosoof (1889-1951) bezighouden.