We make comments on some problems Erdős and Hajnal posed in their famous problem list. Let X be a graph on $\omega _1$ with the property that every uncountable set A of vertices contains a finite set s such that each element of $A-s$ is joined to one of the elements of s. Does then X contain an uncountable clique? We prove that both the statement and its negation are consistent. Do there exist circuitfree graphs $\{X_n:n<\omega \}$ on $\omega _1$ (...) such that if $A\in [\omega _1]^{\aleph _1}$, then $\{n<\omega :X_n\cap [A]^2=\emptyset \}$ is finite? We show that the answer is yes under CH, and no under Martin’s axiom. Does there exist $F:[\omega _1]^2\to 3$ with all three colors appearing in every uncountable set, and with no triangle of three colors. We give a different proof of Todorcevic’ theorem that the existence of a $\kappa $ -Suslin tree gives $F:[\kappa ]^2\to \kappa $ establishing $\kappa \not \to [\kappa ]^2_{\kappa }$ with no three-colored triangles. This statement in turn implies the existence of a $\kappa $ -Aronszajn tree. (shrink)

We examine combinatorial aspects and consistency strength properties of almost Ramsey cardinals. Without the Axiom of Choice, successor cardinals may be almost Ramsey. From fairly mild supercompactness assumptions, we construct a model of ZF + ${\neg {\rm AC}_\omega}$ in which every infinite cardinal is almost Ramsey. Core model arguments show that strong assumptions are necessary. Without successors of singular cardinals, we can weaken this to an equiconsistency of the following theories: “ZFC + There is a proper class of regular almost (...) Ramsey cardinals”, and “ZF + DC + All infinite cardinals except possibly successors of singular cardinals are almost Ramsey”. (shrink)

In 5, Tait identifies a set of reflection principles called equation image-reflection principles which Peter Koellner has shown to be consistent relative to the existence of κ, the first ω-Erdős cardinal 1. Tait also defines a set of reflection principles called equation image-reflection principles; however, Koellner has shown that these are inconsistent when m > 2, but identifies restricted versions of them which he proves consistent relative to κ 2. In this paper, we introduce a new large-cardinal property, the α-reflective (...) cardinals. Their definition is motivated by Tait's remarks on parameters of third or higher order in reflection principles. We prove that if κ is ℶκ + α + 1-supercompact and 0 < α < κ then κ is α-reflective. Furthermore we show that α-reflective cardinals relativize to L, and that if κ exists then the set of cardinals λ < κ, such that λ is α-reflective for all α such that 0 < α < λ, is a stationary subset of κ. We show that an ω-reflective cardinal satisfies some restricted versions of equation image-reflection, as well as all the reflection properties proved consistent in 2. (shrink)

The relationship between humans and non-human animals has received considerable attention recently. Animal advocates insist that non-human animals must be included in the moral community. Consequently, eating meat is, at least in most cases, morally bad. In an article entitled “In Defense of Eating Meat”, Hsiao argued that for the membership in the moral community, the “root capacity for rational agency” is necessary. As non-human animals lack this capacity, so the argument runs, they do not belong to the moral community. (...) Consequently, harming non-human animals for human nutrition can be justified. In this short comment I would like to highlight some of the most important errors of the above argument, primarily from the perspective of a biologist. I conclude that assuming the existence of a mysterious “root capacity for rational agency” is a biological nonsense. It cannot be verified, and it only obscures reality. In my opinion, the greatest problem with Hsiao’s argument is that it tries to defend anthropocentrism, a view that has presumably been the very cause of the spoiled non-human–human relationships. Perhaps adopting a vegan lifestyle is a better solution than quieting one’s conscience. (shrink)

BackgroundCoaching is increasingly viewed as a dyadic exchange of verbal and non-verbal interactions driving clients' progress. Yet, little is known about how the trajectory of dyadic interactions plays out in workplace coaching.MethodThis paper provides a multiple-step exploratory investigation of movement synchrony of dyads in workplace coaching. We analyzed a publicly available dataset of 173 video-taped dyads. Specifically, we averaged MS per session/dyad to explore the temporal patterns of MS across the cluster of dyads that completed 10 sessions, and a set (...) of 173 dyadic interactions with a varied number of sessions. Additionally, we linked that pattern to several demographic predictors. The results indicate a differential downward trend of MS.ResultsDemographic factors do not predict best fitting MS curve types, and only client age and coach experience show a small but significant correlation.DiscussionWe provide contextualized interpretations of these findings and propose conceptual considerations and recommendations for future coaching process research and practice. (shrink)

Timothy Hsiao attempts to defend industrial animal farming by arguing that it is not inherently cruel. We raise three main objections to his defense. First, his argument rests on a misunderstanding of the nature of cruelty. Second, his conclusion, though technically true, is so weak as to be of virtually no moral significance or interest. Third, his contention that animals lack moral standing, and thus that mistreating them is wrong only insofar as it makes one more disposed to mistreat other (...) humans, is untenable on both philosophical and biological grounds. (shrink)

The classic, influential essay in 'descriptive metaphysics' by the distinguished English philosopher.

This reissue of his collection of early essays, Logico-Linguistic Papers, is published with a brand new introduction by Professor Strawson but, apart from minor ...

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

War is almost always conducted with various restrictions in the form of rules, rituals, and taboos. Many of the norms that regulate warfare can be found in the tradition of just war. This tradition seeks to provide a middle ground between an unrealistic (at least for politicians) pacifism that does not even allow war in self-defence and a too realistic realism that claims there is no place for ethics in war. The tradition of just war does not have the force (...) of law; it provides, above all, a vocabulary to discuss war in moral terms. At the same time, the tradition does have an impact: it forms the basis of humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions. Just like with laws, it is recognised here that imperfect adherence to these principles does not necessarily diminish their validity. Most proponents of the tradition believe that the principles of just war, even though some date back centuries, are sufficiently general to be applicable to contemporary conflicts, such as the Russo-Ukrainian War. If we apply the norms of the just war tradition to the current situation in Ukraine, we see that Russia is waging an unjust war in an unjust manner. (shrink)

For more than thirty years, in most of the world, the irreversible cessation of all brain function, more commonly known as brain death, has been accepted as a criterion of death. Yet the philosophical basis on which this understanding of death was originally grounded has been undermined by the long-term maintenance of bodily functions in brain dead patients. More recently, the American case of Jahi McMath has cast doubt on whether the standard tests for diagnosing brain death exclude a condition (...) in which the patient is not dead, but in a minimally conscious state. I argue that the evidence now clearly shows that brain death is not equivalent to the death of the human organism. We therefore face a choice: either we stop removing vital organs from brain dead patients, or we accept that it is not wrong to kill an innocent human who has irreversibly lost consciousness. (shrink)

Originally published in Norwegian in 1941, this is the magnum opus of one of Norway's most celebrated philosophers, now made available in English for the first time. It examines the concept of the tragic and attempts to construct a more precise and useful definition, on the basis of a "biosophical" look at the situation of organisms in their environment and their attempt to realize interests on multiple fronts through abilities they possess in a variety of degrees. This is a theory (...) of genius, and of the dangers that frequently accompany it, and a sober account of the perils of consciousness for the human species. The robust and thorough treatment includes in-depth analysis of the relationship between real-world tragedies and those portrayed in theater and literature. This widely anticipated translation will be of interest to academics as well as to all readers who are interested in philosophical pessimism and tragedy. (shrink)

In der 1970 gegründeten Reihe erscheinen Arbeiten, die philosophiehistorische Studien mit einem systematischen Ansatz oder systematische Studien mit philosophiehistorischen Rekonstruktionen verbinden. Neben deutschsprachigen werden auch englischsprachige Monographien veröffentlicht. Gründungsherausgeber sind: Erhard Scheibe (Herausgeber bis 1991), Günther Patzig (bis 1999) und Wolfgang Wieland (bis 2003). Von 1990 bis 2007 wurde die Reihe von Jürgen Mittelstraß mitherausgegeben.

Crutchfield and Redinger (2024) maintain that “being conscious is a basic liberty,” and infer from this that without informed consent, deep sedation, by intruding upon one’s consciousness, is an in...

Drawing on the puzzling behavior of ordinary knowledge ascriptions that embed an epistemic (im)possibility claim, we tentatively conclude that it is untenable to jointly endorse (i) an unfettered classical logic for epistemic language, (ii) the general veridicality of knowledge ascription, and (iii) an intuitive ‘negative transparency’ thesis that reduces knowledge of a simple negated ‘might’ claim to an epistemic claim without modal content. We motivate a strategic trade-off: preserve veridicality and (generalized) negative transparency, while abandoning the general validity of contraposition. (...) We criticize various approaches to incorporating veridicality into domain semantics, a paradigmatic ‘information-sensitive’ framework for capturing negative transparency and, more generally, the non-classical behavior of sentences with epistemic modals. We then present a novel information-sensitive semantics that successfully executes our favored strategy: stable acceptance semantics, extending a vanilla bilateral state-based semantics for epistemic modals with a knowledge operator loosely inspired by the defeasibility theory of knowledge. (shrink)

The impossibility theorem of Dekel, Lipman and Rustichini has been thought to demonstrate that standard state-space models cannot be used to represent unawareness. We first show that Dekel, Lipman and Rustichini do not establish this claim. We then distinguish three notions of awareness, and argue that although one of them may not be adequately modeled using standard state spaces, there is no reason to think that standard state spaces cannot provide models of the other two notions. In fact, standard space (...) models of these forms of awareness are attractively simple. They allow us to prove completeness and decidability results with ease, to carry over standard techniques from decision theory, and to add propositional quantifiers straightforwardly. (shrink)

In clinical ethics, there remains a great deal of uncertainty regarding the appropriateness of attempting cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for certain patients. Although the issue continues to receive ample attention and various frameworks have been proposed for navigating such cases, most discussions draw heavily on the notion of harm as a central consideration. In the following, I use emerging philosophical literature on the notion of harm to argue that the ambiguities and disagreement about harm create important and oft-overlooked challenges for the (...) ethics of CPR. I begin by elucidating the standard account of harm, called the Counterfactual Comparative Account (CCA). I then show that three challenges to the CCA—preemptive harms, the harm of death, and non-experiential harms—are particularly salient when assessing potential harms for candidates of CPR and likely impact-related decision-making and communication. I extend this argument to explore how the ambiguities of harm might extend to other realms of clinical decision-making, such as the use and limitations of life-sustaining treatments. To address these challenges, I propose two strategies for identifying and minimizing the impact of such uncertainty: first, clinicians and ethicists ought to promote pluralistic conversations that account for different understandings of harm; second, they ought to invoke harm-independent considerations when discussing the ethics of CPR in order to reflect the nuances of such conversations. These strategies, coupled with a richer philosophical understanding of harm, promise to help clinicians and ethicists navigate the prevalent and difficult cases involving patient resuscitation and many other harm-based decisions in the clinical setting. (shrink)

The attachment for download here merely references my 5,500-word final and extended article, criticising those who seek to justify Israeli attacks on Gaza. The article is published online by Daily Philosophy, 5th January 2024, link shown below. -/- After a background of facts (probably well-known by readers concerned about the matters), the article examines typical arguments much used in the media as attempts to justify Israel’s determined destruction of Gaza, involving well over twenty thousand Palestinians killed, hundreds of thousands suffering (...) appalling injuries and two million having their lives and livihoods shattered. -/- I expose inconsistencies, poor reasoning and immoralities of those who support Israeli actions. There is a final touch of Kant and Nietzsche - and use of the saying attributed to Jesus: For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? (shrink)

We examine Margaret Cavendish’s ecological views and argue that, in the Appendix to her final published work, Grounds of Natural Philosophy (1668), Cavendish is defending a normative account of the way that humans ought to interact with their environment. On this basis, we argue that Cavendish is committed to a form of what, for the purposes of this paper, we call ‘deep ecology,’ where that is understood as the view that humans ought to treat the rest of nature as something (...) of intrinsic value. The reading of Cavendish we defend in this paper also commits her to a naturalistic account of ‘moral facts’ about how humans ought to interact with their environment. That is, on our reading of Cavendish, ‘moral facts’ (i.e., facts about how we ought and ought not to behave, and what it is right or wrong for us to do) are grounded in facts about nature—and, in Cavendish’s case, its (ir)regularity. Such facts are hypothetical, rather than categorical: they are facts about how we ought to act if we wish to attain happiness or flourishing. We thus contend that Cavendish anticipates, at least loosely speaking, movements in both deep ecology and in naturalistic meta-ethics that came to prominence well after the time in which she was writing. (shrink)

The critical theory of the Frankfurt School starts with an explanatory-diagnostic analysis of the social pathologies of the present followed by anticipatory-utopian reflection on possible treatments for these disorders. This approach draws extensively on parallels to medicine. I argue that the ideas of social pathology and crisis that pervade the methodological writings of the Frankfurt School help to explain critical theory’s contention that the object of critique identifies itself when social institutions cease to function smoothly. However, in reflecting on the (...) role that reason and self-awareness play in the second stage of social criticism, I contend that this model is actually better conceptualized through the lens of the psychoanalyst rather than the physician. Although the first generation’s explicit commitment to psychoanalysis has dissipated in recent critical theory, faith in a rationalized ‘talking cure’ leading to greater self-awareness of existing pathologies remains at the core of the Frankfurt School. (shrink)

Tyler Burge famously argues in his 1993 paper "Content Preservation" that it is not only a priori true that we enjoy a prima facie warrant to take what others assert as true, but also that there our warrant to believe what we are told in certain special cases is a priori. So just as our warrant for believing certain mathematical truths might be a priori, so too there are cases of belief through testimony that are a priori. Then in a (...) 2013 Postscript to "Content Preservation" he took it all back. All of Burge's ideas and arguments for and against are interesting and important, and deepen our understanding of testimony, comprehension, warrant, and the a priori. But his ideas and arguments are hard to understand. This paper explains all of ideas and arguments, both for and against, in a clear and comprehensive way. Along the way, Anna-Sara Malmgren's interpretation and criticism of Burge's position is also expounded and criticized. (shrink)

Despite attempts to apply causal modeling techniques to quantum systems, Wood and Spekkens argue that any causal model purporting to explain quantum correlations must be fine tuned; it must violate the assumption of faithfulness. This paper is an attempt to undermine the reasonableness of the assumption of faithfulness in the quantum context. Employing a symmetry relation between an entangled quantum system and a “sideways” quantum system consisting of a single photon passing sequentially through two polarizers, I argue that Wood and (...) Spekkens’s analysis applies equally to this sideways system also. As a result, we must either reject a causal explanation in this single photon system, or the sideways system must be fine tuned. If the latter, a violation of faithfulness in the ordinary entangled system may be more tolerable than first thought. Thus, extending the classical “no fine-tuning” principle of parsimony to the quantum realm may be too hasty. (shrink)

‘British Empiricism’ is a name traditionally used to pick out a group of eighteenth-century thinkers who prioritised knowledge via the senses over reason or the intellect and who denied the existence of innate ideas. The name includes most notably John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. The counterpart to British Empiricism is traditionally considered to be Continental Rationalism that was advocated by Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, all of whom lived in Continental Europe beyond the British Isles and all embraced innate (...) ideas. This article characterizes empiricists more broadly as those thinkers who accept Locke’s Axiom that there is no idea in the mind that cannot be traced back to some particular experience. It includes British-Irish Philosophy from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century. As well as exploring the traditional connections among empiricism and metaphysics and epistemology, it examines how British empiricists dealt with issues in moral philosophy and the existence and nature of God. The article identifies some challenges to the standard understanding of British Empiricism by including early modern thinkers from typically marginalised groups, especially women. Finally, in showing that there is nothing uniquely British about being an empiricist, it examines a particular case study of the eighteenth-century philosopher Anton Wilhelm Amo, the first African to receive a doctorate in Europe. (shrink)

Academic integrity is becoming increasingly important to managing academic institutions. Accordingly there are efforts to uniformly assess campus attitudes to such issues as cheating in assessments along with the policies and procedures in place to address them. This paper seeks to summarize and understand the attitude of the students and academic staff at an Australian university towards academic integrity, as reflected in the results of a campus-wide survey, using both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The main finding of the quantitative results (...) was the disconnect between academic staff and students belief’s about academic honesty and the reactions of students and academics to dishonest behaviour. Four key themes of academic honesty were identified through qualitative analysis, being those of cheating, student, solutions to cheating and general concerns. (shrink)

: Most of us tend to be Aristotelians when it comes to anger. While admitting that uncontrolled anger is harmful and ought to be avoided, we reject as undesirable a state of being that would not allow us to express legitimate outrage. Hence, we seem to find a compelling moral attitude in Aristotle’s belief that we should get angry at the right time and for the right reasons and in the right way. Buddhism and Stoicism, however, carve out a position (...) on the issue of anger that stands in marked contrast to the Aristotelian conception. This article considers the similarities between these two views of anger, contrasts the Buddhist with the much more common (at least in the West) Aristotelian one, and, finally, considers the objections of a prominent Western scholar to this shared Buddhist/Stoic conception. (shrink)

Governments standardly deploy a distinction between goods and services in assessing economic health and tracking national income statistics, of which medical goods and services carry significant importance. In what follows we draw on Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) to introduce a third kind of entity called patterns, which help capture the various ways in which goods and services are intertwined and help also to show how many services generate a new kind of non-goods-related products. Patterns are an overlooked yet essential features (...) of many economic sectors including medicine. Studying patterns offers new insights into various components of economic analysis, including outcomes-oriented evaluations of medical services and the value of human capital in the medical sphere. (shrink)

The paper proposes a radical change of focus for understanding the fundamental purpose and value of literary interpretation. It criticises an orthodox view in analytical philosophy of literature, according to which theories of meaning in the philosophy of language, in particular Gricean or speech act or other pragmatic theories, offer the most illuminating way to grasp the relevant principles of interpretation. The argument here is that the application of such theories in this context is not just wrong in detail (this (...) or that theory needs revising) but wrong in principle. The focus is wrong. The importation of philosophy of language distorts the essential character of interpretation, which should be seen as involving not so much meaning as value, not individual sentences but whole works, not obsessed with authorial intention but focused on the protocols of reading. (shrink)

According to a standard interpretation of Aristotle, a material substance, like a dog, is a hylomorphic composite of matter and form, its “essential” parts. Is such a composite some thing in addition to its essential parts as united? The moderate reductionist says “no,” whereas the anti-reductionist says “yes.” In this paper, I will clarify and defend Durand of St.-Pourçain’s surprisingly influential version of moderate reductionism, according to which hylomorphic composites are nothing over and above their essential parts and the union (...) of those parts, where this union is explained by the presence of two modes: a mode of inherence on the side of form and a mode of substanding on the side of matter. (shrink)

Widespread tax evasion and avoidance have recently led to both significant reforms of international tax governance and increased attention from theorists of global tax justice. Against the background of an analysis of the double challenge of effectiveness and distribution facing the taxation of multinational enterprises, this paper puts forward a taxonomy of recent contributions of the tax justice literature. This taxonomy not only opens up an original angle of interpretation on global tax justice, but also provides a vantage point from (...) which to evaluate recent reforms by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (shrink)

In a recent reply to Takacs and Bourrat’s article (Biol Philos 37:12, 2022), Autzen and Okasha (Biol Philos 37:37, 2022) question our characterization of the relationship between the geometric mean and arithmetic mean measures of fitness. We here take issue with the claim that our characterization falls prey to the mistakes they highlight. Briefly revisiting what Takacs and Bourrat (Biol Philos 37:12, 2022) accomplished reveals that the key issue of difference concerns cases of deterministic but nonconstant growth. Restricting focus to (...) such cases shows that there is in fact no reason for disagreement. (shrink)

Blumenthal-Barby (2024) presents strong arguments that bioethicists should stop using the concept “personhood.” She points out that “person,” meaning an entity with full moral rights, is defined in...

Volume 32, Issue 6, December 2024, Page 1498-1502.

We suggest that in the particular context of medical education, ethics can be considered in a similar way to other kinds of knowledge that are categorised and shaped by academics in the context of wider society. Moreover, the study of medical ethics education is translational in a manner loosely analogous to the study of medical education as adjunct to translational medicine. Some have suggested there is merit in the idea that much as translational research attempts to connect the laboratory scientist's (...) work to its implications for patient care, translational ethics focuses on bringing ethics scholarship into the sphere of personal and public action. We distinguish the term ‘translational ethics’ (the study of ethics being translated between academy, classroom and clinic) from other prominent definitions in the bioethics literature. To do this, we build off a notion of knowledge translation that focuses on the nonlinear movement of information that comes to professionals through multiple competing sources. We suggest that this knowledge, and particularly knowledge about ethics, becomes embodied by the individual. It is through a reflective practice that internally embedded ethics knowledge might be modified, and this work might be best carried out with a moral community that maintains a sense of practical wisdom. Applying this translational approach to the study of medical ethics education can be both academically relevant and practically useful. This view of translation can help bridge the evident, multidirectional relationships between research, education and performance. It might also create further opportunities to develop medical ethics education theory. (shrink)

This article concerns challenges arising from the development of economic globalization as the so-called “creator of a new world order“ and its tendency to deteriorate the foundation of a global order in terms of social justice, solidarity, and human dignity. As main point of referral functions, the report of the “Commission Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi cs“ on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress that refers to the European Commission's strategy of development, acknowledges the need for these values. On (...) behalf of this reflection, this article is based on the recent outcomes of the exploration of these social quality issues in a recent published book by the Foundation on Social Quality. The article argues that indicators are needed in order to understand the effects of societal changes in response to the current economic globalization, which increases inequality and the fragmentation of the labor market. (shrink)