Words like you, here, and tomorrow are different from other expressions in two ways. First, and by definition, they have different kinds of meanings, which are context-dependent in ways that the meanings of names and descriptions are not. Second, their meanings play a different kind of role in the interpretations of the utterances that contain them. For example, the meaning of you can be paraphrased by a description like "the addressee of the utterance." But an utterance of (1) doesn't say (...) the same thing as an utterance of (2). (shrink)

A visual imagery task is presented which is beyond the limits of normal human ability, and some of the factors contributing to its difficulty are isolated by comparing the difficulty of related tasks. It is argued that complex objects are assigned hierarchical structural descriptions by being parsed into parts, each of which has its own local system of significant directions. Two quite different schemas for a wire‐frame cube are used to illustrate this theory, and some striking perceptual differences to which (...) they give rise are described. The difficulty of certain mental imagery tasks is shown to depend on which of the alternative structural descriptions of an object is used, and this is interpreted as evidence that structural descriptions are an important component of mental images. Finally, it is argued that analog transformations like mental folding involve changing the values of continuous variables in a structural description. (shrink)

This groundbreaking book revisits the writings of classic theorists in an effort re-evaluate the importance and influence the psychology of esteem has on the economy. The authors explore ways the economy of esteem may be reshaped to improve overall social outcomes and offer new ways of thinking about how society works and may be made to work.

Macmillan papermac 3003. Bibliography: p. 80-81.

This work makes available to readers without specialized training in mathematics complete proofs of the fundamental metatheorems of standard (i.e., basically ...

The present work is a systematic study of five frameworks or perspectives articulating mathematical structuralism, whose core idea is that mathematics is concerned primarily with interrelations in abstraction from the nature of objects. The first two, set-theoretic and category-theoretic, arose within mathematics itself. After exposing a number of problems, the book considers three further perspectives formulated by logicians and philosophers of mathematics: sui generis, treating structures as abstract universals, modal, eliminating structures as objects in favor of freely entertained logical possibilities, (...) and finally, modal-set-theoretic, a sort of synthesis of the set-theoretic and modal perspectives. (shrink)

The principle of sufficient reason threatens modal collapse. Some have suggested that by appealing to the indefinite extensibility of contingent truth, the threat is neutralized. This paper argues that this is not so. If the indefinite extensibility of contingent truth is developed in an analogous fashion to the most promising models of the indefinite extensibility of the concept set, plausible principles permit the derivation of modal collapse.

This paper explores the relationship between attitudes to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the cultural dimensions of business activity identified by Hofstede & Hofstede using a sample of nearly 90,000 stakeholders drawn from 28 countries. We develop five general propositions relating attitudes to CSR to aspects of culture. We show that the propensity of consumers to punish firms for bad behaviour varies in ways that appear to relate closely to the cultural characteristics identified by Hofstede. Furthermore, this variation appears to (...) be understandable in terms of the standard interpretation of the Hofstede dimensions, suggesting that cultural variation in the attitudes of consumers may play an important role in helping us to understand variations in CSR across countries. This in turn has implications for how managers of multinational companies should implement CSR strategies in different cultural contexts. (shrink)

With developments in the 19th and early 20th centuries, structuralist ideas concerning the subject matter of mathematics have become commonplace. Yet fundamental questions concerning structures and relations themselves as well as the scope of structuralist analyses remain to be answered. The distinction between axioms as defining conditions and axioms as assertions is highlighted as is the problem of the indefinite extendability of any putatively all-embracing realm of structures. This chapter systematically compares four main versions: set-theoretic structuralism, a version taking structures (...) as sui generis universals, structuralism based on category theory, and a quasi-nominalist modal-structuralism. While none of the approaches is problem-free, it appears that some synthesis of the category-theoretic approach with modal-structuralism can meet the challenges set out, given the notion of “logical possibility.”. (shrink)

University of Virginia, USA, lel3f{at}virginia.edu ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> The strategy of this article is to consider republicanism in contrast with liberalism. We focus on three aspects of this contrast: republicanism’s emphasis on ‘social goods’ under various conceptualizations of that category; republicanism’s emphasis on political participation as an essential element of the ‘good life’; and republicanism’s distinctive understanding of freedom (following the lines developed by Pettit). In each case, we are skeptical that what republicanism (...) offers is superior to the liberal alternative and indicate the grounds for that skepticism. Key Words: republicanism • liberalism • social goods • political participation • republican freedom. (shrink)

Berkeley is one of the most influential and yet most misunderstood of eighteenth-century philosophers. In this new, revised edition of his classic introduction, G.J. Warnock examines all Berkeley's major philosophical works and discusses his most original and interesting contributions to questions still debated by philosophers today. The aim of the book is to help the reader learn not so much about Berkeley, but rather, through Berkeley, something about philosophy itself.

A plurality of approaches to foundational aspects of mathematics is a fact of life. Two loci of this are discussed here, the classicism/constructivism controversy over standards of proof, and the plurality of universes of discourse for mathematics arising in set theory and in category theory, whose problematic relationship is discussed. The first case illustrates the hypothesis that a sufficiently rich subject matter may require a multiplicity of approaches. The second case, while in some respects special to mathematics, raises issues of (...) ontological multiplicity and relativity encountered in the natural sciences as well. (shrink)

The value of rational choice theory for the social sciences has long been contested. It is argued here that, in the debate over its role, it is necessary to distinguish between claims that people maximise manifest payoffs, and claims that people maximise their utility. The former version has been falsified. The latter is unfalsifiable, because utility cannot be observed. In principle, utility maximisation can be adapted to fit any form of behaviour, including the behaviour of non-human organisms. Allegedly 'inconsistent' behaviour (...) is also impossible to establish without qualification. This utility-maximising version of rational choice theory has the character of a universal 'explanation' that can be made to 'fit' any set of events. This is a sign of weakness rather than strength. In its excessive quest for generality, utility-maximising rational choice theory fails to focus on the historically and geographically specific features of socio-economic systems. As long as such theory is confined to ahistorical generalities, then it will remain highly limited in dealing with the real world. Instead we have to consider the real social and psychological determinants of human behaviour. (shrink)

1. Is consciousness vague? This paper will argue that it is. But, first, we need to get clear on the meaning of the question.I will take vagueness to consist in the possibility of borderline cases....

I argue that the effectiveness of forgiveness in the healing of relationships is dependent on both the givers and recipients of forgiveness understanding that once it has been granted, forgiveness is not normally able to be retracted. When we forgive, we make a firm commitment not to return to our former state of moral resentment against the offender, replacing it by good-will. This commitment can be broken only where the forgiving party makes some significant cognitive adjustment to her appraisal of (...) either the offender or the offence, believing that her original forgiveness was granted in error. I reject the view that forgiveness can lapse or be withdrawn on the basis of a return of hurt or disappointed feelings, arguing that these do not amount to a restoration of the resentment that is extinguished when forgiveness is granted. I contend that a person who ‘forgives’ and later takes back that ‘forgiveness’ because certain negative feelings have returned either did not genuinely forgive in the first place or shows that she has not fully grasped the nature of forgiveness. (shrink)

This book brings together several internationally known authors with conflicting views on the subject, providing a lively and informative overview of this...

Descartes' account of the material world relies heavily on time. Most importantly, time is a component of speed, which figures in his fundamental conservation principle and laws. However, in his most systematic discussion of the concept, time is treated as some-how reducible both to thought and to motion. Such reductionistic views, while common among Descartes' late scholastic contemporaries, are very ill-suited to Cartesian physics. I show that, in spite of the apparent identifications with thought and motion, Cartesian time retains—in the (...) form of what I will call 'successive duration'—precisely the intrinsic structure necessary to serve as an independent parameter of quantitative physics. As is often the case with Descartes, he gives the impression of embracing traditional doctrines while in fact radically transforming the underlying concepts to serve his scientific agenda. His theory of time, though formulated in Aristotelian terms, anticipates Newton in important respects. (shrink)

discounting the future' is one on which philosophers and economists have divergent professional views. There is a lot of talking at cross-purposes across the disciplinary divide here; but there is a fair bit of confusion (I think) within disciplines as well. My aim here is essentially clarificatory. I draw several distinctions that I see as significant: • between inter-temporal and intergenerational questions • between price (discount rate) and quantity (inter-temporal and intergenerational allocations) as the ethically relevant magnitude, and • between (...) price change and preference change as the primary instrument of change. I show that discounting does not violate the principle of inter-temporal and intergenerational neutrality, but I also cast some doubt on whether making adequate allowance for future generations has really been the problem that economists and philosophers seem to have taken it to be. Key Words: discount rates • intergenerational justice • future generations • `feasibility' analysis. (shrink)

To what extent can constructive mathematics based on intuitionistc logic recover the mathematics needed for spacetime physics? Certain aspects of this important question are examined, both technical and philosophical. On the technical side, order, connectivity, and extremization properties of the continuum are reviewed, and attention is called to certain striking results concerning causal structure in General Relativity Theory, in particular the singularity theorems of Hawking and Penrose. As they stand, these results appear to elude constructivization. On the philosophical side, it (...) is argued that any mentalist-based radical constructivism suffers from a kind of neo-Kantian apriorism. It would be at best a lucky accident if objective spacetime structure mirrored mentalist mathematics. the latter would seem implicitly committed to a Leibnizian relationist view of spacetime, but is it doubtful if implementation of such a view would overcome the objection. As a result, an anti-realist view of physics seems forced on the radical constructivist. (shrink)

When economists pay homage to the wisdom of the distant past it is more likely that a work two decades old is being admired than one two centuries old. Economics is a science, and the sciences are noteworthy for their digestion and assimilation of the work of previous generations. Contributions remain only as accretions to the accepted body of knowledge; the writings and the writers disappear almost without trace. A conspicuous exception to this rule of professional cannibalization is Adam Smith. (...) Since 1776 he has not lacked for honors that have escaped even his most illustrious peers. Who, after all, wears a David Ricardo necktie? So to the author of The Wealth of Nations, all praise! (shrink)

Eye movements were recorded during the display of two images of a real-world scene that were inspected to determine whether they were the same or not . In the displays where the pictures were different, one object had been changed, and this object was sometimes taken from another scene and was incongruent with the gist. The experiment established that incongruous objects attract eye fixations earlier than the congruous counterparts, but that this effect is not apparent until the picture has been (...) displayed for several seconds. By controlling the visual saliency of the objects the experiment eliminates the possibility that the incongruency effect is dependent upon the conspicuity of the changed objects. A model of scene perception is suggested whereby attention is unnecessary for the partial recognition of an object that delivers sufficient information about its visual characteristics for the viewer to know that the object is improbable in that particular scene, and in which full identification requires foveal inspection. (shrink)

The article focuses on stories and storytelling practices as explanatory resources in standardization processes. It draws upon an ethnographic study of the development of a technical standard for data sharing in an ecological research community, where participants struggle to articulate the difficulties encountered in implementing the standard. Building from C. Wright Mills’ classic distinction between private troubles and public issues, the authors follow the development of a story as it comes to assist in transforming individual troubles in standard implementation into (...) an institutional issue for the ecological scientific community. The authors present the “hands-on” social science collaboration in this study as an example of a mechanism for supporting institutionalization of issues. Finally, the authors argue that narratives can serve as effective organizing principles within institutional settings, thereby providing an approach to understand the practical, substantive difficulties that occur in work with data in the sciences. (shrink)

Starting from a behavioural-economics critique of standard rational choice theory Sugden seeks to restate the case for classical liberalism. That case has three strands: a refutation of libertarian...

This paper aims to show that Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical phenomenology has significance for philosophy of mind, in particular for recent theories of enactivism, one of the most significant latest developments in cognitive theory. While philosophy of mind often finds its inspiration in hermeneutics and phenomenology, especially in Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s, the later development of hermeneutical phenomenology under the influence of Gadamer and Ricoeur, as it evolved into the theory of the interpretation of narratives and lived existence, is often lost sight (...) of in recent debates about embodied cognition. I defend the thesis, however, that combining Ricoeur’s phenomenology with enactivism shows that embodied cognition has an intrinsic ethico-political aspect. The central argument is that, if we take that imagination and narrative lie at the heart of basic embodied cognition as interaction with the world (planning, motor skills, coordination), as both recent theories of enactivism and Ricoeur hold, then embodied cognition or the way in which we experience and gain knowledge in embodied cognitive relations with the world is ethically and politically significant in that it gets shaped by the ethical and political contexts in which these relations take place (e.g., cultural body images and morals in subcultures). These contexts contain ethical and political narratives and our imaginations are influenced by and work with these narratives in order to gain knowledge. This essay thus attempts to explore some of the possibilities of phenomenological hermeneutics for the philosophy of mind today. Keywords: phenomenology, hermeneutics, philosophy of mind, embodied cognition, ethico- political world. (shrink)

In Part III of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith declares that people desire to be both esteemed and to be esteem-worthy, but that the latter desire both does and ought to take priority. The main object of this paper is to challenge that priority claim—mainly in its descriptive aspect. If that claim were true, then: agents would be at pains to eliminate any distortions in their self-evaluations; and the effects of the size (especially of total secrecy) and the (...) character of audience on behaviour would be second-order. Empirical evidence suggests otherwise. Moreover the normative claim seems to overlook some advantages of inflated self-evaluation; and to allow no independent room for norms of modesty/humility. (shrink)

This article introduces the concept of economic medicalization where non-medical problems are transformed into medical problems in order to achieve the objective of corporate shareholder wealth maximization. Following an overview of the differences in ethical norms applicable to medical ethics and business ethics, the economic medicalization of medical research practice and publication is examined in some detail. This motivates a general discussion of the problems involved in the ethical approval process for medical research that balances the interests of both business (...) and government in the market for medical products and services. (shrink)

The application of evolutionary ideas to socioeconomic systems has been an increasingly prominent theme in the work of Friedrich Hayek, and the motif has become dominant in his recent book. In an earlier issue of this journal, Viktor Vanberg raises two substantive criticisms of Friedrich Hayek' theory of cultural evolution that invoke some important questions concerning use of the evolutionary analogy in social science.

This highly original collection of essays, first published in 1989, is concerned with the nature of children and their moral and political status. The international team of contributors explore, and in some cases criticise and revise popular thought on children and their place in society. The book is divided into three parts: the first deals with the historical, social and psychological framework of contemporary perspectives on children and childhood; a second set of papers takes up questions about the position of (...) the young in democracy, the limits of parental authority and the appropriateness of characterising only child-adult relationships in terms of a social contract; the final essays are concerned with adult attitudes toward children's lives and experiences. These essays will interest philosophers, political scientists, as well as all those professionally concerned with the education and care of children. (shrink)

Contemporary archaeologists commonly acknowledge moral responsibilities to the descendants of the subjects whose remains they disturb. There has been comparatively little reflection within the professional community on whether they have duties to the dead themselves. I argue that doing wrong to the dead is not reducible to harming their successors; that there are ways in which archaeologists can wrong the dead qua the living persons they once were; and that nevertheless this may not have such radical implications for the practice (...) of archaeology as might first be imagined. (shrink)

Quantum logic as genuine non-classical logic provides no solution to the "paradoxes" of quantum mechanics. From the minimal condition that synonyms be substitutable salva veritate, it follows that synonymous sentential connectives be alike in point of truth-functionality. It is a fact of pure mathematics that any assignment Φ of (0, 1) to the subspaces of Hilbert space (dim. ≥ 3) which guarantees truth-preservation of the ordering and truth-functionality of QL negation, violates truth-functionality of QL ∨ and $\wedge $ . Thus, (...) from within both the classical framework and that of any QL that preserves elementary set theory, two distinct (nonsynonymous) sets of connectives are discernible. Classical derivations of QM paradoxes are all available unless the language of QM is not classically closed. Maintaining this requires a strong and selfdefeating verification theory of meaning, the philosophical cornerstone of the Copenhagen interpretation to which QL was to provide an alternative. (shrink)

As argued in Hellman (1993), the theorem of Pour-El and Richards (1983) can be seen by the classicist as limiting constructivist efforts to recover the mathematics for quantum mechanics. Although Bridges (1995) may be right that the constructivist would work with a different definition of 'closed operator', this does not affect my point that neither the classical unbounded operators standardly recognized in quantum mechanics nor their restrictions to constructive arguments are recognizable as objects by the constructivist. Constructive substitutes that may (...) still be possible necessarily involve additional 'incompleteness' in the mathematical representation of quantum phenomena. Concerning a second line of reasoning in Hellman (1993), its import is that constructivist practice is consistent with a 'liberal' stance but not with a 'radical', verificationist philosophical position. Whether such a position is actually espoused by certain leading constructivists, they are invited to clarify. (shrink)

We list, with discussions, various principles of scientific realism, in order to exhibit their diversity and to emphasize certain serious problems of formulation. Ontological and epistemological principles are distinguished. Within the former category, some framed in semantic terms (truth, reference) serve their purpose vis-a-vis instrumentalism (Part 1). They fail, however, to distinguish the realist from a wide variety of (constructional) empiricists. Part 2 seeks purely ontological formulations, so devised that the empiricist cannot reconstruct them from within. The main task here (...) is to characterize "independence of mind". A pair of notions, "physical invariance" and "anti-determination", seem to work. They enable us to assess anew "the problem of constructing the physical out of the phenomenal" (yielding certain clarifications demanded by Goodman). Modern cosmology, especially, is seen to present insuperable obstacles to such empiricist approaches to science. The final section on epistemological principles reveals a morass better avoided in favor of an elementary claim about perception, together with a rejection of any absolute observation/theory dichotomy. Finally, a positive, realist notion of "observable-in-principle" is sketched, and it is suggested that, from the perspective of relativistic cosmology, even this defines no boundary to potential knowledge. (shrink)

BackgroundRegularity effect can affect performance in prospective memory, but little is known on the cognitive processes linked to this effect. Moreover, its impacts with regard to aging remain unknown. To our knowledge, this study is the first to examine regularity effect in PM in a lifespan perspective, with a sample of young, intermediate, and older adults.Objective and designOur study examined the regularity effect in PM in three groups of participants: 28 young adults, 16 intermediate adults, and 25 older adults. The (...) task, adapted from the Virtual Week, was designed to manipulate the regularity of the various activities of daily life that were to be recalled. We examine the role of several cognitive functions including certain dimensions of executive functions, short-term memory, and retrospective episodic memory to identify those involved in PM, according to... (shrink)

Medical humanities purchases its presence on the medical side of university campuses by adopting as its own the ends of medicine and medical ethics. It even justifies its presence by asserting promotion of those ends as an ethical imperative, most of all to improve the caring in medical care. As unobjectionable, even praiseworthy, as this imperative appears, it actually constrains the possibilities for interpersonal relationship in the context of medical practice. Development of those possibilities requires openness of self to the (...) existentially challenging ethical imperative to care also literally for nothing at all. (shrink)