At the turn of the twentieth century, the American surgeon Harvey Cushing (1869-1939) chose to focus his surgical attention on the brain, an organ that had previously proved rather intractable to successful intervention. Over the course of the following decades he made this type of surgery a much safer procedure, reducing the mortality rate from a staggering 50% at the end of the nineteenth century to about 10%. Working first at Johns Hopkins and later at the Peter Bent (...) Brigham hospital in Boston, Cushing established a world-famous school of neurosurgery by training numerous residents and fellows. He also left an extraordinary collection of records and specimens that document his work in surgery: the Cushing Brain Tumor Registry. (shrink)

Critique of instrumental accounts of epistemic rationality.

In this paper I examine how the constituent elements of a firm's organizational structure affect the ethical behavior of workers. The formal features of organizations I examine are the compensation practices, performance and evaluation systems, and decision-making assignments. I argue that the formal organizational structure, which is distinguished from corporate culture, is necessary, though not sufficient, in solving ethical problems within firms. At best the formal structure should not undermine the ethical actions of workers. When combined with a strong culture, (...) however, the organizational structure may be sufficient in promoting ethical conduct. While helpful, ethics training and corporate codes are neither necessary nor sufficient in promoting ethical behavior within firms. (shrink)

The gap between Marx’s theoretical writings on political economy and his historical writings arises out of certain limitations that Marx placed upon his political-economic enquiries. These limitations are outlined in the Grundrisse where Marx distinguishes between the universality of the metabolic relation to nature, the generality of the laws of motion of capital, the particularities of distribution and exchange, and the singularities of consumption. What an analysis of the content of Capital shows is that Marx largely confined his efforts to (...) identifying the law-like character of production to the exclusion of all else. While this allowed him to identify certain laws of motion of capital within any form of the capitalist mode of production, it did not and could not constitute a total theory of a capitalist mode of production. A better understanding of what it is that Marx can do for us through his identification of the general laws of motion leads to a far better appreciation of what it is that we have to do for ourselves in order to make Marx’s theoretical findings applicable to particular conjunctural conditions, such as those that have arisen throughout the economic crisis that began in 2007. (shrink)

This edited volume explores the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics. It features papers from venues of the International Ontology Congress up to 2016. IOC is a worldwide platform for dialogue and reflection on the interactions between science and philosophy. The collection features philosophers as well as physicists, including David Albert, Harvey Brown, Jeffrey Bub, Otávio Bueno, James Cushing, Steven French, Victor Gomez-Pin, Carl Hoefer, Simon Kochen, Peter Lewis, Tim Maudlin, Peter Mittlestatedt, Roland Omnès, Juha Saatsi, Albert Solé, David (...) Wallace, and Anton Zeilinger. Since the early days of quantum mechanics, philosophers have studied the subject with growing technical skill and fruitfulness. Their efforts have unveiled intellectual bridges between physics and philosophy. These connections have helped fuel the contemporary debate about the scope and limits of realism and understanding in the interpretation of physical theories and scientific theories in general. The philosophical analysis of quantum mechanics is now one of the most sophisticated and productive areas in contemporary philosophy, as the papers in this collection illustrate. (shrink)

In his 1983 article, Paul A. Roth defends the Quinean project of naturalized epistemology from the criticism presented in my 1980 article. In this note I would like to respond to Roth's effort. I will argue that, while helpful in advancing and clarifying the issues, Roth's defense of naturalized epistemology does not succeed. The primary topic to be clarified is Quine's "no first philosophy" doctrine; but I will address myself to other points as well.

The existence of a definite tangent space structure (metric with Lorentzian signature) in the general theory of relativity is the consequence of a fundamental assumption concerning the local validity of special relativity. There is then at the heart of Einstein's theory of gravity an absolute element which depends essentially on a common feature of all the non-gravitational interactions in the world, and which has nothing to do with space-time curvature. Tentative implications of this point for the significance of the vacuum (...) solutions in general relativity, and for the issue of quantising gravity, are briefly examined. (shrink)

We introduce insertion domains that support the placement of new, higher, vertices into finite trees. We prove that every nonincreasing insertion domain has an element with simple structural properties in the style of classical Ramsey theory. This result is proved using standard large cardinal axioms that go well beyond the usual axioms for mathematics. We also establish that this result cannot be proved without these large cardinal axioms. We also introduce insertion rules that specify the placement of new, higher, vertices (...) into finite trees. We prove that every insertion rule greedily generates a tree with these same structural properties; and every decreasing insertion rule generates (or admits) a tree with these same structural properties. It is also necessary and sufficient to use the same large cardinals (in the precise sense of Corollary D.25). The results suggest new areas of research in discrete mathematics called "Ramsey tree theory" and "greedy Ramsey theory" which demonstrably require more than the usual axioms for mathematics. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider how the four key team emergent states for team learning identified by Bell, Kozlowski and Blawath (2012), namely psychological safety, goal orientation, cohesion, and efficacy, operate as a system that produces the team’s learning climate (TLC). Using the language of systems dynamics, we conceptualize TLC as a stock that rises and falls as a joint function of the psychological safety, goal orientation, cohesion, and efficacy that exists in the team. The systems approach highlights aspects of (...) TLC management that are traditionally overlooked, such as the simultaneous influence of and feedback between the four team emergent states and the inertia that TLC can have as a result. The management of TLC becomes an issue of controlling the system rather than each state as an independent force, especially because changing one part of the system will also affect other parts in sometimes unintended and undesirable ways. Thus the value is to offer a systems view on the leadership function of team monitoring with regards to team emergent states, which we term team state monitoring. This view offers promising avenues for future research as well as practical wisdom. It can help leaders remember that TLC represents an equilibrium that needs balance, in addition to pointing to the various ways in which they can influence such equilibrium. (shrink)

Modern insolubility proofs of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics not only differ in their complexity and degree of generality, but also reveal a lack of agreement concerning the fundamental question of what constitutes such a proof. A systematic reworking of the (incomplete) 1970 Fine theorem is presented, which is intended to go some way toward clarifying the issue.

Analysis of Emmy Noether's 1918 theorems provides an illuminating method for testing the consequences of coordinate generality, and for exploring what else must be added to this requirement in order to give general covariance its far-reaching physical significance. The discussion takes us through Noether's first and second theorems, and then a third related theorem due originally to F. Klein. Contact will also be made with the contributions of, principally, J.L. Anderson, A. Trautman, P.A.M. Dirac, R. Torretti and the father of (...) the whole business, A. Einstein. (shrink)

This article considers the way beneficence was treated in an important journal toward the end of the Old Regime. It finds that the Journal de Paris during the years 1783 and 1784 not only publicized acts of beneficence, but also mediated between members of the public who, on their own initiative, contributed to those in need and officials and organizations which in practice cared for the disadvantaged, especially a committee that freed prisoners for debts to wet nurses and the Société (...) philanthropique of Paris. While the notion of beneficence has sometimes been found to offer a secularized version of the traditional value of charity, this article finds that in practice religious and secular people worked together to support those they deemed worthy of aid. The relation of beneficence to self-interest is also considered, and it is suggested that the initiatives of the better-off members of civil society rather than government opened the way toward something approaching a welfare state. (shrink)

We examine the writings of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman regarding their interpretation and use of the concept of self-interest.We argue that neither Smith nor Friedman considers self-interest to be synonymous with selfishness and thus devoid of ethicalconsiderations. Rather, for both writers self-interest embodies an other-regarding aspect that requires individuals to moderate theiractions when others are adversely affected. The overriding virtue for Smith in governing individual actions is justice; for Friedman it isnon-coercion.

The notion of interpretation is absolutely fundamental to mathematical logic and the foundations of mathematics. It is also crucial for the foundations and philosophy of science - although here some crucial conditions generally need to be imposed; e.g., “the interpretation leaves the mathematical concepts unchanged”.

Should advance directives (ADs) such as living wills be employed to direct the care of the severely demented? In considering this question, I focus primarily on the claims of Rebecca Dresser who objects in principle to the use of ADs in this context. Dresser has persuasively argued that ADs are both theoretically incoherent and ethically dangerous. She proceeds to advocate a Best Interest Standard as the best way for deciding when and how the demented ought to be treated. I put (...) forth a compromise position: both ADs and the Best Interest Standard have roles to play in guiding the care of the severely demented. (shrink)

Is 'education' a thick epistemic concept? The answer depends, of course, on the viability of the 'thick/thin' distinction, as well as the degree to which education is an epistemic concept at all. I will concentrate mainly on the latter, and will argue that epistemological matters are central to education and our philosophical thinking about it; and that, insofar, education is indeed rightly thought of as an epistemic concept. In laying out education's epistemological dimensions, I hope to clarify the degree to (...) which it makes sense to regard the concept as 'thick'. I also discuss the relationship between philosophy of education and virtue epistemology and the sense in which being educated might itself be thought to be an epistemic virtue. Finally, I urge virtue epistemologists in particular and epistemologists generally to turn their attention to questions of education, to further both the philosophy of education and epistemology itself. (shrink)

Dispositionalist accounts of colour concepts are now largely discarded. But a number of recent and influential objections to this type of theory can be readily answered providing the dispositionalist account contains the key elements it should---which actual versions in the literature do not. I explicate some of the conceptual components needed in such an account once we correctly understand the anthropocentricity of the colour concepts involved. When these components are incorporated into dispositionalism, including one crucial distinction in particular, some powerful (...) seeming objections against this revised dispositionalism fail. In addition, dispositionalism has extra advantages over the far more popular physicalist theories, and I therefore contend that we should explore vigorously this kind of enriched dispositionalist account. (shrink)

Certainty (and the lack thereof) is a major issue in mathematics and computer science. Mathematicians strongly believe in a special kind of certainty for their theorems.

It turns out, time and time again, in order to make serious progress in f.o.m., we need to take actual reasoning and actual development into account at precisely the proper level. If we take these into account too much, then we are faced with information that is just too difficult to create an exact science around - at least at a given state of development of f.o.m. And if we take these into account too little, our findings will not have (...) the relevance to mathematical practice that could be achieved. (shrink)

Responding to claims to the contrary, this essay shows how liberal education, the education of critical exposure, indoctrinates students into a style of belief and belief formation. It argues that a common liberal view about what constitutes freedom from indoctrination is precisely the form of indoctrination feared by many conservative communitarians. While I support the style and procedures of liberal education, I argue that we cannot excise all indoctrinating components from it by semantic, logical or epistemic analyses of what indoctrination (...) or education means. (shrink)

Let ℜ be an o-minimal expansion of (ℝ, <+) and (φk)k∈ℕ be a sequence of positive real numbers such that limk→+∞f(φk)/φk+1=0 for every f:ℝ→ ℝ definable in ℜ. (Such sequences always exist under some reasonable extra assumptions on ℜ, in particular, if ℜ is exponentially bounded or if the language is countable.) Then (ℜ, (S)) is d-minimal, where S ranges over all subsets of cartesian powers of the range of φ.

We give a consistency proof within a weak fragment of arithmetic of elementary algebra and geometry. For this purpose, we use EFA (exponential function arithmetic), and various first order theories of algebraically closed fields and real closed fields.

A wide-ranging collection of authoritative accounts covering all major areas of current research in Early Christian studies by a distinguished team of international authors. It is thematically arranged to encompass the inter-disciplinary nature of the field, examining history, literature, thought, practices, and material culture.

We present several selection theorems for Borel relations, involving only Borel sets and functions, all of which can be obtained as consequences of closely related theorems proved in [DSR 96,99,01,01X] involving coanalytic sets. The relevant proofs given there use substantial set theoretic methods, which were also shown to be necessary. We show that none of our Borel consequences can be proved without substantial set theoretic methods. The results are established for Baire space. We give equivalents of some of the main (...) results for the reals. (shrink)

We have been recently engaged in this search, and have announced a long series of successively simpler and more convincing examples. See [Fr09-10].

This is an immediate conse-quence of a more general combinatorial theorem called Ramsey’s theorem, but it is much simpler to state. We call this adjacent Ramsey theory.

I. WKL0 is a conservative extension of PRA for ’-0-2 sentences. II. ACA0 is a conservative extension of PA for arithmetic sentences. III. ATR0 is a conservative extension of IR for arithmetic sentences. IV. ’-1-1-CA0 is a conservative extension of ID(

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The goal is to show that various exotic prefix classes can be "tamed by large cardinals". I.e., every statement in the class is either provable or refutable using presently formulated large cardinals. Some of these exotic prefix classes consist entirely of explicitly P01 sentences.

This paper proposes a reconsideration of Karl Mannheim and his work from the viewpoint of the needs of sociological theory. It points out certain affinities between Mannheim and some contemporary theorists, such as Gramsci and Foucault, and then reflects on certain problems in Mannheim's work, particularly the response to "relativism" and the hope of creating new "syntheses" through the sociology of knowledge. Finally, it proposes ways to draw on the sociology of intellectuals, inspired by Mannheim, in order to advance the (...) understanding of social theory. (shrink)

We present some new set and class theoretic independence results from ZFC and NBGC that are particularly simple and close to the primitives of membership and equality. They are shown to be equivalent to familiar small large cardinal hypotheses. We modify these independendent statements in order to give an example of a sentence in set theory with 5 quantifiers which is independent of ZFC. It is known that all 3 quantifier sentences are decided in a weak fragment of ZF without (...) power set. (shrink)

An unprovable theorem is a mathematical result that can-not be proved using the com-monly accepted axioms for mathematics (Zermelo-Frankel plus the axiom of choice), but can be proved by using the higher infinities known as large cardinals. Large car-dinal axioms have been the main proposal for new axioms originating with Gödel.