This monograph treats the important topic of the epistemology of diagrams in Euclidean geometry. Norman argues that diagrams play a genuine justificatory role in traditional Euclidean arguments, and he aims to account for these roles from a modified Kantian perspective. Norman considers himself a semi-Kantian in the following broad sense: he believes that Kant was right that ostensive constructions are necessary in order to follow traditional Euclidean proofs, but he wants to avoid appealing to Kantian a priori intuition as the (...) epistemological background for these constructions.Norman's main argument is limited to the thesis that certain Euclidean arguments—in particular, that of Proposition 1.32, the internal-angle-sum theorem—require inferences from diagrams. Interestingly, Norman is not committed to the view that these arguments are proofs. This becomes clear only quite late in the book, when he distinguishes argument from proofs, remarking that the argument he has been focusing on is not rigorous, and so is not a proof. Norman does not, however, explicitly classify all Euclidean arguments as non-proofs. His view is that diagrammatic reasoning can in principle feature in rigorous proofs, but he is not committed to the thesis that any particular argument, Euclidean or otherwise, provides an example of this. Rather than proofs in particular, Norman is more interested in the general issue of justification in mathematics.The argument has three components. First, Norman argues against competing accounts of Euclidean arguments such as empiricism, and ‘Leibnizianism’—the view that diagrams play only a heuristic role. Second, he provides a more direct, or positive, argument that the way we actually follow the standard argument for 1.32 does appeal to the diagram. This is an appeal to the phenomenology of following the argument. Third, he articulates and defends his semi-Kantian position against some objections.The book has a very careful and …. (shrink)

This study explores the experiences of undergraduate nursing students learning about transgender and gender diverse (TGD) health. We discuss nursing education's perpetuation of discrimination and erasure of TGD people and upholding of gender norms (cisnorms) is not sufficiently preparing students to care for TGD patients. Further, this rampant cisnormativity harms TGD nursing students. This interpretive description drew on queer theory and Hafferty's three levels of curriculum and engaged 18 undergraduate nursing students in initial and 13 in follow‐up focus groups or (...) interviews. Three key themes included (1) cisnormativity is perpetuated in nursing education through pervasive power and norms across the three levels of curriculum; (2) “The Trans Problem”: Transgender and gender diverse people are othered in nursing education; and (3) Welcoming the other: Individual educators who welcome and affirm TGD people are crucial. Critical recommendations from students to advance gender inclusive and affirming practices are provided, including normalizing gender diversity in formal nursing education, the importance of accountability and representation in schools of nursing, and the need for nursing governing bodies to disrupt cisnormativity. (shrink)

This article aligns two complementary claims: that sexual penetration should be considered a wrong and that consent requires express words and conduct that manifest a person’s willingness or acquiescence towards the specific act. If sexual penetration is a wrong, it will only be justified if there are reasons that permit the action and if these were the ones that the defendant acted on. A person’s internal attitude of willingness or acquiescence towards the specific act can provide the necessary guiding reasons (...) to justify the wrong. However, words and conduct that manifest or express this internal attitude are also needed in order to provide the applicable explanatory reasons to justify the wrong. Alternatively, expressive consent can excuse the wrong by justifying the defendant’s mistake as to the applicable guiding reasons. Without the requirement of expressive consent, the criminal law is unable to capture the culpability of defendants whose deliberation over the use of force on another person did not include the other person’s expression of willingness to engage in a penetrative sexual act. (shrink)

The moral domain is broader than the empathy and justice concerns assessed by existing measures of moral competence, and it is not just a subset of the values assessed by value inventories. To fill the need for reliable and theoretically grounded measurement of the full range of moral concerns, we developed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire on the basis of a theoretical model of 5 universally available sets of moral intuitions: Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. We present evidence for the (...) internal and external validity of the scale and the model, and in doing so we present new findings about morality: Comparative model fitting of confirmatory factor analyses provides empirical justification for a 5-factor structure of moral concerns; convergent/discriminant validity evidence suggests that moral concerns predict personality features and social group attitudes not previously considered morally relevant; and we establish pragmatic validity of the measure in providing new knowledge and research opportunities concerning demographic and cultural differences in moral intuitions. These analyses provide evidence for the usefulness of Moral Foundations Theory in simultaneously increasing the scope and sharpening the resolution of psychological views of morality. (shrink)

Scholars have a history of crossing intellectual borders (Abbott, 2001). In particular, educators draw from a diversity of intellectuals upon which to base our understanding of, for example, schools and society, curriculum content, teaching, and learning. In addition to icons such as Marx, James, Freud, and Dewey, the works of the Frankfurt School (e.g., Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse), Foucault, Gilligan, Derrida, Gramsci, West, Arendt, and Fraser, just to name a few, have been used to guide our scholarship and practice. However, with (...) the exception of few scholars (e.g., Peters & Ghiraldelli, 2001), one of America's most controversial scholars,1 Richard Rorty, has been largely ignored. This situation is unfortunate .. (shrink)

Jesse Prinz argues that recent work in philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology supports two radical hypotheses about the nature of morality: moral values are based on emotional responses, and these emotional responses are inculcated by culture, not hard-wired through natural selection. In the first half of the book, Jesse Prinz defends the hypothesis that morality has an emotional foundation. Evidence from brain imaging, social psychology, and psychopathology suggest that, when we judge something to be right or wrong, we are (...) merely expressing our emotions. Prinz argues that these emotions do not track objective features of reality; rather, the rightness and wrongness of an act consists in the fact that people are disposed to have certain emotions towards it. In the second half of the book, he turns to a defense of moral relativism. Moral facts depend on emotional responses, and emotional responses vary from culture to culture. Prinz surveys the anthropological record to establish moral variation, and he draws on cultural history to show how attitudes toward practices such as cannibalism and marriage change over time. He also criticizes evidence from animal behavior and child development that has been taken to support the claim that moral attitudes are hard-wired by natural selection. Prinz concludes that there is no single true morality, but he also argues that some moral values are better than others; moral progress is possible. Throughout the book, Prinz relates his views to contemporary and historical work in philosophical ethics. His views echo themes in the writings of David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche, but Prinz supports, extends, and revises these classic theories using the resources of cutting-edge cognitive science. The Emotional Construction of Morals will stimulate and challenge anyone who is curious about the nature and origin of moral values. (shrink)

In Furnishing the Mind, Jesse Prinz attempts to swing the pendulum back toward empiricism.

Since Protagoras' classic “man is the measure of all things,” claims of relativism and counter-claims have been tendered. The nineteenth century saw Durkheim, Levy-Bruhl, Westermarck, Pareto, Marx, and others, suggesting that institutions, customs, moral codes, and the like, are “relative” both to the culture and to the time. At the crest of this wave of “relativism” surged a vicious claim: that truth and knowledge itself were merely functions of particular conditions. The “validity” of knowledge was said to be at the (...) whim of historic, social factors. Not only is no theory really true; no particular statement is ever so. Not only is no theory or statement really true; no theory of knowledge has thus far ever been free from the bias of its genesis. There have been no absolute insights for epistemology. Or so, at least, it was claimed. (shrink)

Forest ecosystems provide a suite of goods and services, including wood products as well as an array of ecosystem services and other non-timber goods and services. Despite an increasing emphasis on managing forests as holistic systems providing a portfolio of goods and services, silvicultural research has focused on maximizing production of commodities, particularly wood products. Although there has been investment in understanding how silviculture affects wildlife habitat, water resources, recreation, and other non-timber objectives, the emphasis has been on understanding these (...) impacts as side-effects of a silviculture predicated on the production of wood. Commoditization theory provides a lens through which to understand the selection pressures that drive this emphasis on wood production. This article briefly reviews the historical role of commoditization in influencing how modern American silviculture has developed and highlights research needed to create silvicultural knowledge useful in managing for both commodity and noncommodity products. (shrink)

Postmodernism is a dead concept, which claims a relativistic moralism. Applying a simple razor to postmodernist theory demonstrates that there is instead, an objective truth in the world that moral realism seeks to explore and explain. The semantic and hypocritical construction of postmodernism has caused more harm to social causes, than its experts claim to represent. Postmodernism should be abandoned entirely, rather than replaced with another theory that cannot withstand a simple razor test.

The early calculus is a popular example of an inconsistent but fruitful scientific theory. This paper is concerned with the formalisation of reasoning processes based on this inconsistent theory. First it is shown how a formal reconstruction in terms of a sub-classical negation leads to triviality. This is followed by the evaluation of the chunk and permeate mechanism proposed by Brown and Priest in, 379–388, 2004) to obtain a non-trivial formalisation of the early infinitesimal calculus. Different shortcomings of this application (...) of C&P as an explication of inconsistency tolerant reasoning are pointed out, both conceptual and technical. To remedy these shortcomings, an adaptive logic is proposed that allows for conditional permeations of formulas under the assumption of consistency preservation. First the adaptive logic is defined and explained and thereafter it is demonstrated how this adaptive logic remedies the defects C&P suffered from. (shrink)

“Free software” is software that respects the users’ freedoms by granting them access to the source code, and allowing them to modify and redistribute the software at will. Richard Stallman, founder of the Free software movement, has argued that creating and distributing non-Free software is always a moral injustice. In this essay, I try to identify the ethical foundations of Stallmanism. I identify three major trends in Stallman’s thinking—libertarian, utilitarian, and communitarian—and I argue that none is sufficient to justify the (...) radical claim that distributing non-Free software is always wrong. I recommend thinking of Stallmanism as an attempt to optimize the satisfaction of a number of core values, including freedom, cooperation, and happiness, and I stress the importance of connecting the Free software movement to other political struggles against oppression. (shrink)

On the life and works of the Indian philosopher Aurobindo Ghose, 1872-1950.

In the article "What Sin Is: A Differential Analysis," Jesse Couenhoven delves into the definitions and categorizations of sin according to various Christian doctrines. The author critically examines traditional definitions, such as those provided by the Westminster Confession and catechisms, and argues that they fail to adequately distinguish between sin and evil, often conflating natural evils with sinful acts. Couenhoven also considers gray areas of ethical behavior, such as the actions of a schizophrenic who curses against God or the (...) mistakes made by medical residents that result in harm to patients, and questions whether these actions should be classified as sin. The primary question driving the article is how sin is differentiated from that which is "merely" evil. To address this, Couenhoven analyzes and evaluates three views of sin, testing their coherence with Christian beliefs and practices. The article aims to provide a more nuanced and sufficient understanding of sin within the Christian tradition, going beyond the necessary elements of the doctrine of sin to better identify and differentiate sin from evil. (shrink)

À travers quels langages, outils et pratiques pouvons-nous comprendre la destruction écologique et la violence racialisée en tant que processus unifié à l’œuvre dans la production du monde? Comment pouvons-nous, à la fois, habiter et interrompre cette conjoncture catastrophique? Qui sommes-nous pour cela, d’ailleurs? Je m’inspire de la provocation de Christina Sharpe (2016) en faveur du « travail de sillage » pour étudier ces questions dans le contexte du monde océanique. En travaillant à travers différents genres et en puisant dans (...) diverses sources, j’expérimente des thèmes de perte, de sensation, d’échelle, d’incertitude, de persistance et de temps, pour chercher un récit qui pourrait suggérer un avenir différent au milieu d’une catastrophe en cours. (shrink)

Demonstrates the yoga positions and describes their effects on mental and physical health in addition to recounting the author's experiences with the ancient philosophy.

Psychologism is defined as “the doctrine that the laws of mathematics and logic can be reduced to or depend on the laws governing thinking” (Moran & Cohen, 2012 266). And for Husserl, the laws of logic include the laws of meaning: “logic evidently is the science of meanings as such [Wissenschaft von Bedeutungen als solchen]” (Husserl ( 1975 ) 98/2001 225). I argue that, since it is sufficient for a theory to be psychologistic if the empiricistic theory of abstraction is (...) employed, it follows that neural networks are psychologistic insofar as they use this theory of abstraction, which I demonstrate is the case (Husserl ( 1975 ) 191/2001 120). It’s sufficient for psychologism because, according to Husserl, the theory in question reduces one’s phenomenological ability to intend types (or universals) to one’s past history of intending tokens (or particulars), usually amalgamated in some fashion (classically via associations; recently via autoencoders) (ibid; Kelleher, 2019 ). Similarly dynamical systems theory entails psychologism. For dynamical systems theory ties content to the temporal evolution of a system, which, according to Husserl, violates the fact that intentionality toward validities and objectivities does not pertain to "particular temporal experience[s]" (Husserl ( 1975 ) 194/2001 121). It follows that neither the species (neural networks), nor the genus (dynamical systems), can avoid psychologism and intend objects "in specie" (ibid). After critiquing these two approaches, I proceed to give an account based on the essentialist school of cognitive psychology of how we may intend objects "in specie" while avoiding the empiricistic theory of abstraction (Keil, 1989, Carey, 2009, Marcus & Davis, 2019 ). Such an account preserves the type-token distinction without psychologistic reduction to the temporal evolution of a dynamical system (Hinzen, 2006 ). This opens the way toward a truly unifying account of Husserlian phenomenology in league with cognitive science that avoids Yoshimi's ( 2016 ) and neurophenomenology's psychologistic foundation (herein demonstrated) and builds upon Sokolowski's ( 2003 ) syntactic account of Husserlian phenomenology. (shrink)

The present article examines how people’s belief in an afterlife, as well as closely related supernatural beliefs, may open an empirical backdoor to our understanding of the evolution of human social cognition. Recent findings and logic from the cognitive sciences contribute to a novel theory of existential psychology, one that is grounded in the tenets of Darwinian natural selection. Many of the predominant questions of existential psychology strike at the heart of cognitive science. They involve: causal attribution (why is mortal (...) behavior represented as being causally related to one’s afterlife? how are dead agents envisaged as communicating messages to the living?), moral judgment (why are certain social behaviors, i.e., transgressions, believed to have ultimate repercussions after death or to reap the punishment of disgruntled ancestors?), theory of mind (how can we know what it is “like” to be dead? what social-cognitive strategies do people use to reason about the minds of the dead?), concept acquisition (how does a common-sense dualism interact with a formalized socio-religious indoctrination in childhood? how are supernatural properties of the dead conceptualized by young minds?), and teleological reasoning (why do people so often see their lives as being designed for a purpose that must be accomplished before they perish? how do various life events affect people’s interpretation of this purpose?), among others. The central thesis of the present article is that an organized cognitive “system” dedicated to forming illusory representations of (1) psychological immortality, (2) the intelligent design of the self, and (3) the symbolic meaning of natural events evolved in response to the unique selective pressures of the human social environment. (shrink)

Writers in the propositions literature consider the Benacerraf objection serious, often decisive. The objection figures heavily in dismissing standard theories of propositions of the past, notably set-theoretic theories. I argue that the situation is more complicated. After explicating the propositional Benacerraf problem, I focus on a classic set-theoretic theory of propositions, the possible worlds theory, and argue that methodological considerations influence the objection’s success.