Questions concerning the proof-theoretic strength of classical versus nonclassical theories of truth have received some attention recently. A particularly convenient case study concerns classical and nonclassical axiomatizations of fixed-point semantics. It is known that nonclassical axiomatizations in four- or three-valued logics are substantially weaker than their classical counterparts. In this paper we consider the addition of a suitable conditional to First-Degree Entailment—a logic recently studied by Hannes Leitgeb under the label HYPE. We show in particular that, by formulating the theory (...) PKF over HYPE, one obtains a theory that is sound with respect to fixed-point models, while being proof-theoretically on a par with its classical counterpart KF. Moreover, we establish that also its schematic extension—in the sense of Feferman—is as strong as the schematic extension of KF, thus matching the strength of predicative analysis. (shrink)

A century ago, John Dewey remarked that when home changes radically, school must change as well. With home, family, and gender roles dramatically altered in recent years, we are faced with a difficult problem: in the lives of more and more American children, no one is home. The Schoolhome proposes a solution. Drawing selectively from reform movements of the past and relating them to the unique needs of today's parents and children, Jane Martin presents a philosophy of education that (...) is responsive to America's changed and changing realities. As more and more parents enter the workforce, the historic role of the domestic sphere in the education and development of children is drastically reduced. Consequently, Martin advocates removing the barriers between the school and the home--making school a metaphorical "home," a safe and nuturant environment that provides children with the experience of affection and connection otherwise missing or inconsistent in their lives. In this proposition, the traditional schoolhouse where children are drilled in the three Rs is transformed into a "schoolhome" where learning is animated by an ethic of social awareness. At a time when many school reformers are calling for a return to basics and lobbying for skills education and quick-fix initiatives, Martin urges us to reconsider the distinctive legacies of Dewey and Montessori and to conceive of a school that integrates the values of the home with those of social responsibility. With cultural diversity and gender equality among its explicit goals, the schoolhome expands upon Dewey's edict to educate the "whole child," seeking instead to educate all children in the culture's whole heritage. Martin eloquently challenges reformers to reclaim the founding fathers' vision of the nation as a domestic realm, and to imagine a learning environment whose curriculum and classroom practice reflect not merely an economic but a moral investment in the future of our children. More than a summons to action, this remarkable book is a call to rethink the assumptions we bring to the educational enterprise, and so, to act wisely. (shrink)

Say that two goals are normatively coincident just in case one cannot aim for one goal without automatically aiming for the other. While knowledge and justification are distinct epistemic goals, with distinct achievement conditions, this paper begins from the suggestion that they are nevertheless normatively coincident—aiming for knowledge and aiming for justification are one and the same activity. A number of surprising consequences follow from this—both specific consequences about how we can ascribe knowledge and justification in lottery cases and more (...) general consequences about the nature of justification and the relationship between justification and evidential probability. Many of these consequences turn out to be at variance with conventional, prevailing views. (shrink)

In ‘The normative role of knowledge’ (2012), Declan Smithies defends a ‘JK-rule’ for belief: One has justification to believe that P iff one has justification to believe that one is in a position to know that P. Similar claims have been defended by others (Huemer, 2007, Reynolds, forthcoming). In this paper, I shall argue that the JK-rule is false. The standard and familiar way of arguing against putative rules for belief or assertion is, of course, to describe putative counterexamples. My (...) argument, though, won’t be like this – indeed I doubt that there are any intuitively compelling counterexamples to the JK-rule. Nevertheless, the claim that there are counterexamples to the JK-rule can, I think, be given something approaching a formal proof. My primary aim here is to sketch this proof. I will briefly consider some broader implications for how we ought to think about the epistemic standards governing belief and assertion. (shrink)

The “ontological turn” is a recent movement within cultural anthropology. Its proponents want to move beyond a representationalist framework, where cultures are treated as systems of belief (concepts, etc.) that provide different perspectives on a single world. Authors who write in this vein move from talk of many cultures to many “worlds,” thus appearing to affirm a form of relativism. We argue that, unlike earlier forms of relativism, the ontological turn in anthropology is not only immune to the arguments of (...) Donald Davidson’s “The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” but it affirms and develops the antirepresentationalist position of Davidson’s subsequent essays. (shrink)

ISBN-13: 978-0-8229-4317-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8229-4317-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Science — Philosophy. 2. Science — Social aspects. 3. Values. 4. Science and civilization. I. Carrier, Martin. II. Howard, Don, professor. III. Kourany ...

Scientific discoveries are often to some degree influenced by luck. Whether luck’s influence is at odds with common-sense intuitions about responsibility, is the central concern of the philosophical debate about moral luck. Do scientists acknowledge that luck plays a role in their work and – if so – do they consider it morally problematic? The present article discusses the results of four focus groups with scientists, who were asked about their views on luck in their fields and its moral implications. (...) The participants underscored circumstantial luck as a key dimension of luck in science. Nevertheless, most participants insisted that there are ways of executing ‘control’ in science: They believe that virtues and skills can increase one’s chances for success. The cultivation of these skills and virtues was considered a reasonable ground for pride. Prizes and rewards were rarely tied to personal desert, but instead to their societal function. (shrink)

What is happiness? How is it related to morality and virtue? Does living with illusion promote or diminish happiness? Is it better to pursue happiness with a partner than alone? Philosopher Mike W. Martin addresses these and other questions as he connects the meaning of happiness with the philosophical notion of "the good life." Defining happiness as loving one's life and valuing it in ways manifested by ample enjoyment and a deep sense of meaning, Martin explores the ways (...) in which happiness interacts with all other dimensions of good lives--in particular with moral decency and goodness, authenticity, mental health, self-fulfillment, and meaningfulness. He interweaves a variety of examples from memoirs, novels, and films along the way, connecting his discussion of the philosophical issues to related topics that interest all of us: virtue, love, philanthropy, suffering, simplicity, balancing work and leisure, and much more. Drawing on wide-ranging and robust evidence, Martin also makes the case that we need a "politics of happiness" whereby government would apply the results of recent "happiness studies" in psychology to public policy. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to clarify the relation between genealogy and history and to suggest a methodological reading of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. I try to determine genealogy's specific range of objects, specific mode of explication, and specific textual form. Genealogies in general can be thought of as drastic narratives of the emergence and transformations of forms of subjectivity related to power, told with the intention to induce doubt and self-reflection in exactly those readers whose (collective) history is (...) narrated. The main interest in understanding the concept of genealogy and revisiting Nietzsche's introduction of it into philosophy lies in understanding how a certain way of writing and a certain textual practice function that successfully call into question current judgments, institutions and practices. Nietzsche's example, I argue, can provide a paradigm for a critical practice that accounts for historical processes of subject formation in terms of power and turns them against given forms of subjectivity. (shrink)

This is the best collection of essays on Rorty’s philosophy that has been published in the last decade. It will be of great interest not only to Rorty specialists but to anyone concerned with the difficulties contemporary analytic philosophy faces in its search for a viable self-understanding. The contributors are Barry Allen, Akeel Bilgrami, Jacques Bouveresse, Robert Brandom, James Conant, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Jürgen Habermas, John McDowell, Hilary Putnam, Bjørn Ramberg, and Michael Williams. Rorty himself has also written an (...) essay, plus individual and fairly extensive replies to each of his critics. (shrink)

The study of engineering ethics tends to emphasize professional codes of ethics and, to lesser degrees, business ethics and technology studies. These are all important vantage points, but they neglect personal moral commitments, as well as personal aesthetic, religious, and other values that are not mandatory for all members of engineering. This paper illustrates how personal moral commitments motivate, guide, and give meaning to the work of engineers, contributing to both self-fulfillment and public goods. It also explores some general frameworks (...) for thinking about these commitments and calls for further exploration of them. (shrink)

Boarding school is a major educational option for many students (e.g., students living in remote areas, or whose parents are working interstate or overseas, etc.). This study explored the motivation, engagement, and achievement of boarding and day students who are educated in the same classrooms and receive the same syllabus and instruction from the same teachers (thus a powerful research design to enable unique comparisons). Among 2,803 students (boardingn= 481; dayn= 2,322) from 6 Australian high schools and controlling for background (...) attributes and personality, we found predominant parity between boarding and day students in their motivation, engagement, and achievement. We also found that classroom-average motivation, engagement, and achievement was not significantly affected by the number of boarders (relative to day students) in the classroom. In addition, the effects of boarding were generally not moderated by students’ background or personality attributes. We conclude that boarders have academic opportunities and outcomes that are comparable to their day student counterparts. Implications for students, teachers, and parents are discussed. (shrink)

The question concerning the meaning of life is important, but it immediately confronts the present authors with insurmountable obstacles from a philosophical standpoint, as it would require us to define not only what we hold to be life, but what we hold to be meaning in addition, requiring us to do both in a properly researched context. We unconditionally surrender to that challenge. Instead, we offer a vernacular, armchair approach to life’s origin and meaning, with some layman’s thoughts on the (...) meaning of origins as viewed from the biologist’s standpoint. One can observe that biologists generally approach the concept of biological meaning in the context of evolution. This is the basis for the broad resonance behind Dobzhansky’s appraisal that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”. Biologists try to understand living things in the historical context of how they arose, without giving much thought to the definition of what life or living things are, which for a biologist is usually not an interesting question in the practical context of daily dealings with organisms. Do humans generally understand life’s meaning in the context of history? If we consider the problem of life’s origin, the question of what constitutes a living thing becomes somewhat more acute for the biologist, though not more answerable, because it is inescapable that there was a time when there were no organisms on Earth, followed by a time when there were, the latter time having persisted in continuity to the present. This raises the question of where, in that transition, chemicals on Earth became alive, requiring, in turn, a set of premises for how life arose in order to conceptualize the problem in relation to organisms we know today, including ourselves, which brings us to the point of this paper: In the same way that cultural narratives for origins always start with a setting, scientific narratives for origins also always start with a setting, a place on Earth or elsewhere where we can imagine what happened for the sake of structuring both the problem and the narrative for its solution. This raises the question of whether scientific origins settings convey meaning to humans in that they suggest to us from what kind of place and what kinds of chemicals we are descended, that is, to which inanimate things we are most closely related. (shrink)

Contrary to Mele's suggestion, not all garden-variety self-deception reduces to bias-generated false beliefs (usually held contrary to the evidence). Many cases center around self-deceiving intentions to avoid painful topics, escape unpleasant truths, seek comfortable attitudes, and evade self-acknowledgment. These intentions do not imply paradoxical projects or contradictory belief states.

We congratulate Fox and her colleagues (2007) for contributing to the published empirical literature on ethics consultation in United States hospitals. Their study demonstrates the continued wide v...

This essay argues that to understand much that is most central to and characteristic of the nature and behaviour of law, one needs to supplement the time-free conceptual staples of modern jurosprudence with an understanding of the nature and behaviour of traditions in social life. The article is concerned with three elements of such an understanding. First, it suggests that traditionality is to be found in almost all legal systems, not as a peripheral but as a central feature of them. (...) Second, it questions the post-Enlightenment antinomy between tradition and change. Third, it argues that in at least two important senses of tradition, the traditionality of law is inescapable. (shrink)

Recent discussions of “German Idealism ” have laid new emphasis on its central concern with the self-determining or “unconditioned” status of self-consciousness, its critique of “reflective” or “foundationalist” epistemologies and metaphysics, and its account of “Reason” or conceptuality as immanent in all human experience and social life. This article contends that this revaluation throws new light upon Karl Marx’s 1841 doctoral dissertation on ancient Greek atomism. It argues that Marx’s interest in comparing the atomistic theories of Democritus and Epicurus lies (...) in their being historical species of reflective or “essentialist” thinking that attempts to identify an underlying “principle” behind or “beyond” sensible “appearance.” Epicurus is accorded praise by Marx on account of his clear awareness of the necessary contradiction at the heart of any such structure, and his oblique demonstration of its internal link with the individualism and alienation of the post-Hellenic world. Intimately related themes are then shown to animate the rhetorical declarations against religion, in the name of “Reason” and “Self-consciousness”, that frame the dissertation. The precise manner in which Marx formulates this opposition, it is argued, indicate a closer and more conscious affinity with the original project of post-Kantian Idealism than has hitherto been appreciated. While Marx is sure to have intended more than a simple recycling of this tradition, it is suggested that a greater sensitivity to its role in shaping his outlook will prove suggestive—if not conclusive—for thinking about where he means to take it. (shrink)

Can Pascal's wager for the existence of God be turned against the religious believer and used as an argument for not believing in God? Although such an argument has been very briefly sketched by others its details have remained undeveloped. In this paper this argument is worked out in detail in the context of decision theory and is defended against objections. The result is a plausible argument for atheism.

This article tracks the historical emergence of a new visual convention in the representation of the risks associated with climate change. The “reasons for concern” or “burning embers” diagram has become a prominent visual element of the climate change debate. By drawing on a number of cultural resources, the image has gained a level of discursive power which has resulted both in material mobility and epistemic transformation as the diagram itself has become a tool for a variety of actors to (...) reason with. The case brings to light a number of challenges associated with attempts to know and visualize abstract concepts such as risk and danger, including the social organisation of knowledge production and the role of expert judgment in contexts where science is asked to retreat from normativity. (shrink)

Expanded version of a chapter to appear in The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Analytic Philosophy, edited by Frank Jackson and Michael Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

The National Women's Hospital research scandal saw women being involved in medical research without their knowledge and without the opportunity to make a choice about their participation. The 1988 Cartwright Inquiry into this decades-long study established a template for ethics review in New Zealand. Ethics committees were subsequently established to independently assess the potential benefits as well as risks of research. This book describes the gradual undermining of the independence of New Zealand ethics review and the politicisation of ethics committees (...) between 1988 and 2014. The authors, involved continuously in ethics review matters over the period, have seen substantial change brought about by government in response to another medical research crisis - in Gisborne in the late 1990s - and then between 2008 and 2010 an economic crisis involving foreign pharmaceutical companies. Some New Zealand medical researchers claimed that the ethics review process for clinical trials was too slow and was losing the country its economic advantage. This book traces the changes and the implications for a robust ethics review process in all research environments in New Zealand, especially those affecting Maori. The book includes a set of suggestions and recommendations aimed at enhancing independent ethics review, best practice, and the provision of adequate protection for all citizens. (shrink)

Research has confirmed the existence of a robust relationship between certain conditions of work (high demand/low control, high effort/low reward) and a variety of adverse health outcomes including cardiovascular disease, mental disorders, and immune system dysfunctions. Recently, these same conditions have been implicated in the defeat of certain capacities, such as adaptability, coping, ability, memory, and creativity. Such conditions appear also to influence the likelihood of making successful recovery from illness or injury and of returning to productive employment. The dynamic (...) processes linking these conditions and outcomes nonetheless remains somewhat unclear. In this article, the role of fairness as a mediator of these connections is explored. In particular, the psychoneuro- immunological significance of promises explicit or implicit in the employment relationship is identified as being crucial to our understanding of how stress affects health and capacities. Practical implications are explored. (shrink)

This chapter is about how Deleuze read Hume and how that reading contributed to his idea of a transcendental empiricism. In particular it discusses, first, Deleuze's engagement with Hume's empiricism, which he understands to be founded on a thesis of the externality of relations; and, second, what Deleuze calls the problem of subjectivity, which is what he takes Hume's account of human nature to concern. The chapter provides some support for Deleuze's innovative readings and concludes with remarks on a contrast (...) between Deleuze's and Kant's transcendental philosophies, tracing a source for the contrast in Deleuze's and Kant's responses to Hume. (shrink)

From overcrowded lifeboats to the censor's pen, Martin Cohen's stimulating and amusing dilemmas will have you scratching your head and laughing out loud in equal measure.