Three experiments are reported which show that in certain contexts subjects reject instances of the valid modus ponens and modus tollens inference form in conditional arguments. For example, when a conditional premise, such as: If she meets her friend then she will go to a play, is accompanied by a conditional containing an additional requirement: If she has enough money then she will go to a play, subjects reject the inference from the categorical premise: She meets her friend, to the (...) conclusion: She will go to a play. Other contexts suppress the conditional fallacies. The first experiment demonstrates the effects of context on conditional reasoning. The second experiment shows that the inference suppression disappears when the categorical premise refers to both of the antecedents, such as: She meets her friend and she has enough money. In this case, subjects make both the valid inferences and the fallacies, regardless of the contextual information. The third experiment establishes that when subjects are given general information about the duration of a situation in which a conditional inducement was uttered, such as: If you shout then I will shoot you, they reject both the valid inferences and the fallacies. The results suggest that the interpretation of premises plays an even more central role in reasoning than has previously been admitted. Trois expériences montrent que dans certains contextes les sujets rejettent des instances valides de modus ponens et de modus tollens dans des énoncés conditionnels. Par exemple, quand une prémisse conditionnelle comme: Si elle rencontre son ami, alors elle ira jouer, est accompagnée par une phrase contenant une condition supplémentaire: Si elle a assez d'argent, alors elle ira jouer, les sujets rejettent l'inférence liant la prémisse catégorielle: Elle rencontre son ami, à la conclusion: Elle ira jouer. D'autres contextes éliminent également les inférences conditionnelles fallacieuses. La premiére expérience démontre l'effet du contexte sur la raisonnement conditionnel. La deuxiéme expérience montre que la suppression de l'inférence disparait quand la prémisse catégorielle fait référence aux deux antécédants, comme: Elle rencontre son ami et elle a assez d'argent. Dans ce cas, les sujets font aussi bien les inférences valides et fallacieuses, quelle que soit l'information contextuelle. La troisiéme expérience établit que quand l'on donne aux sujets des informations générales à propos de la durée d'une situation dans laquelle une conditionnelle a été prononcée, comme Si tu cries, alors je te tire dessus, ils rejettent autant les inférences valides que les inférences fallacieuses. Ces résultats suggèrent que l'interprétation des prémisses joue un rŏle encore plus central dans le raisonnement que l'on admettait auparavant. (shrink)

Austrian immigration authorities frequently reject the family reunion applications of immigrant workers. They justify their decisions not only on legal grounds but also on the basis of their own often prejudiced judgements of the applicants' ability to `integrate' into Austrian society. A discourse-historical method is combined with systemic-functionally oriented methods of text analysis to study the official letters which notify immigrant workers of the rejection of their family reunion applications. The systemic-functionally oriented methods are used in a detailed analysis of (...) a sample of rejection letters while the discourse-historical method allows this analysis to be intertextually connected to other related genres of discourse and strategies of argumentation, and to the history of post-war immigration in Austria generally. (shrink)

I defend the suggestion that the rational probability in the Sleeping Beauty paradox is one third. The reasoning in its favour is familiar: for every heads-waking, there are two tails-wakings. To complete the defense, I rebut the reasoning which purports to justify the competing suggestion – that the correct probability is half – by undermining its premise, that no new information has been received.

In _Feminist Interpretations of John Rawls_, Ruth Abbey collects eight essays responding to the work of John Rawls from a feminist perspective. An impressive introduction by the editor provides a chronological overview of English-language feminist engagements with Rawls from his Theory of Justice onwards. She surveys the range of issues canvassed by feminist readers of Rawls, as well as critics’ wide disagreement about the value of Rawls’s corpus for feminist purposes. The eight essays that follow testify to the continuing (...) ambivalence among feminist readers of Rawls. From the perspectives of political theory and moral, social, and political philosophy, the essayists address particular aspects of Rawls’s work and apply it to a variety of worldly practices relating to gender inequality and the family, to the construction of disability, to justice in everyday relationships, and to human rights on an international level. The overall effect is to give a sense of the broad spectrum of possible feminist critical responses to Rawls, ranging from rejection to adoption. Aside from the editor, the contributors are Amy R. Baehr, Eileen Hunt Botting, Elizabeth Brake, Clare Chambers, Nancy J. Hirschmann, Anthony Simon Laden, Janice Richardson, and Lisa H. Schwartzman. (shrink)

It is possible that a fair coin tossed infinitely many times will always land heads. So the probability of such a sequence of outcomes should, intuitively, be positive, albeit miniscule: 0 probability ought to be reserved for impossible events. And, furthermore, since the tosses are independent and the probability of heads (and tails) on a single toss is half, all sequences are equiprobable. But Williamson has adduced an argument that purports to show that our intuitions notwithstanding, the probability of an (...) infinite sequence is 0. In this paper, I rebut his argument.No Abstract. (shrink)

Robert Alexy develops his influential theory of legal reasoning exploring the nature of legal argumentation and its relation to practical reasoning. In doing so he sheds light on fundamental questions of law and rationality, which are as crucial to practising lawyers and law students as they are to scholars of legal theory.

Corruption poisons corporations in America and around the world, and has devastating consequences for the entire social fabric. In this article, we focus on organizational corruption, described as the abuse of authority for personal benefit, and draw on Weber’s three ideal-types of legitimate authority to develop a theoretical model to better understand the antecedents of different types of organizational corruption. Specifically, we examine the types of business misconduct that organizational leaders are likely to engage in, contingent on their legitimate authority, (...) motives, and justifications. We conclude by suggesting managerial implications of our theoretical model and propose directions for future research. (shrink)

: This article considers what contribution the work of John Rawls can make to questions about animal ethics. It argues that there are more normative resources in A Theory of Justice for a concern with animal welfare than some of Rawls's critics acknowledge. However, the move from A Theory of Justice to Political Liberalism sees a depletion of normative resources in Rawlsian thought for addressing animal ethics. The article concludes by endorsing the implication of A Theory of Justice that we (...) look for ways other than rights discourse to respect and protect the well-being of animals. (shrink)

This paper compares ethics in countries with different cultural dimensions based on empirical data from 12 countries. The results indicate that dimensions of national culture could serve as predictors of the ethical standards desired in a specific society. The author divided societal cultural practices into desired and undesired practices. According to this study, ethics could be seen as the means for achieving a desired state in a society: for reducing some societal characteristics and increasing others. Finally, a model of the (...) impact of cultural dimensions on desired ethical standards is proposed. (shrink)

Summary Popular science journalism flourished in the 1860s in England, with many new journals being projected. The time was ripe, Victorian men of science believed, for an ?organ of science? to provide a means of communication between specialties, and between men of science and the public. New formats were tried as new purposes emerged. Popular science journalism became less recreational and educational. Editorial commentary and reviewing the progress of science became more important. The analysis here emphasizes those aspects of popular (...) science which have been identified by Frank Turner as ?public science? and by Thomas Gieryn as ?boundary-work?. The religious, intellectual, and utilitarian values claimed for science by editors and contributors in their tasks of persuading the public to support science and of distinguishing science from what they often called ?applied science? are discussed. These values are shown to vary among editors and, for the editors examined here, Shirley Hibberd, Henry Slack, James Samuelson, William Crookes, and Henry Lawson, to differ significantly from those of T. H. Huxley, John Tyndall, and Norman Lockyer, on whom much study of the popularization of science in the 1860s has focused. (shrink)

While it is uncontroversial to point to the liberal roots of feminism, a major issue in English-language feminist political thought over the last few decades has been whether feminism's association with liberalism should be relegated to the past. Can liberalism continue to serve feminist purposes? This book examines the positions of three contemporary feminists - Martha Nussbaum, Susan Moller Okin and Jean Hampton - who, notwithstanding decades of feminist critique, are unwilling to give up on liberalism. This book examines why, (...) and in what ways, each of these theorists believes that liberalism offers the normative and political resources for the improvement of women's situations. It also brings out and tries to explain and evaluate the differences among them, notwithstanding their shared allegiance to liberalism. In so doing, the books goes to the heart of recent debates in feminist and political theory. (shrink)

Extrait de la couverture : ""Here, for the first time, is a book that brings women's writings out of exile to rethink anthropology's purpose at the end of the century.... As a historical resource, the collection undertakes fresh readings of the work of well-known women anthropologists and also reclaims the writings of women of color for anthropology. As a critical account, it bravely interrogates the politics of authorship. As a creative endeavor, it embraces new Feminist voices of ethnography that challenge (...) prevailing definitions of theory and experimental writing.". (shrink)

If liberal theory is to move forward, it must take the political nature of family relations seriously. The beginnings of such a liberalism appear in Mary Wollstonecraft's work. Wollstonecraft's depiction of the family as a fundamentally political institution extends liberal values into the private sphere by promoting the ideal of marriage as friendship. However, while her model of marriage diminishes arbitrary power in family relations, she seems unable to incorporate enduring sexual relations between married partners.

Television medical dramas frequently depict the practice of medicine and bioethical issues in a strikingly realistic but sometimes inaccurate fashion. Because these shows depict medicine so vividly and are so relevant to the career interests of medical and nursing students, they may affect these students' beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions regarding the practice of medicine and bioethical issues. We conducted a web-based survey of medical and nursing students to determine the medical drama viewing habits and impressions of bioethical issues depicted in (...) them. More than 80% of medical and nursing students watch television medical dramas. Students with more clinical experience tended to have impressions that were more negative than those of students without clinical experience. Furthermore, viewing of television medical dramas is a social event and many students discuss the bioethical issues they observe with friends and family. Television medical dramas may stimulate students to think about and discuss bioethical issues. (shrink)

Moral sceptics maintain that there are no objective moral values, or that there is no moral knowledge, or no moral facts, or that what looks like a statement which makes a moral judgment is not really a statement and does not have a truth-value. All of this is rather, unclear because all of it is negative. It will be necessary to remove some of this unclarity because my aim in this paper is to establish a proposition which may be summarized (...) by saying: even if there are no objective moral values in one sense, there are objective moralvalues in another sense, and the latter values are good enough to do some of the jobs that objective values in the first sense would have done. A useful analogy might be that of a person who has lost her hand and has been given a prosthesis. In one sense the prosthesis is not as real as the hand, in another sense it is just as real ; most importantly, the person can do with the prosthesis enough of what she could do with the hand to make do. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

ABSTRACT. This is an invited comment on “Physical Time Within Human Time”. The topic is the nature of time and its various representations in physical theory vs. our experience. In this Comment, I dissent from the standard formulation of the topic as involving a “Two Times Problem,” in which physical time is taken as being at odds with the human sense of a “flow of time.” I provide a brief overview of the case to be made for the contrary view: (...) namely, that physical theory is indeed consistent with a genuine temporal dynamism that takes into account the quantum level in connection with spacetime emergence, the latter being supervenient on specific quantum processes. (shrink)

It seems to be important to recollect that if there were no names in the history of philosophy except those belonging to the creators of new systems, this would mean the extermination of culture, and thereby the death of philosophy itself. The very word "culture" and the inherent meaning in philosophy presuppose a continuity. For this reason they evoke disciples, imitators and followers who weave a living and indestructible chain. In other words, a tradition is sown, the fruits of which (...) are perpetually gathered in values, reassuring man of the ultimate and eternal harmony of all being, reaffirming the truth that nothing finally that is contingent or fleeting, nothing that is exclusively material or functional within life can sustain life, and reestablishing that only from that which lies beyond the phenomena can mankind gain access to all the abundance of spiritual resources indispensable for dealing with life. And it is tradition that constitutes an everlasting re-dedication to the life and the immortality of the spirit. Such re-dedication is Mumford's fruitful contribution to the philosophy of history and of ideas. He keeps the concept alive. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the distinction between classical liberalism and libertarianism and in particular with the claim of the latter to offer a theory of the good society which is independent of, and different from, that offered by classical liberalism. My argument is naturalistic in the following sense. A good society is one which delivers whatever is good for people, so that a theory of the good society (to ~ a theory of the good society) must say something about (...) what people are like and what is good for them. That is to say, it must be capable of making such judgments coherently and on its own terms. I shall argue that libertarianism is incapable of making such judgments because it rests on a Hobbesian radical individualism in which, by analogy with classical physics, people exist only as particulars, as individuals. If there are no general classes we cannot say what people have in common; if we cannot say what they have in common, the only "general" good is the negative liberty which enables them to pursue their own goals in their own way. Radical individualism leads by the shortest of routes to moral subjectivism. Thus libertarianism derives such plausibility as it has by drawing illicitly on aspects of classical liberalism which do not depend on radical individualism. In doing so it undermines not only its claim to be a distinct theory with its own foundations, but most of its own claims about what is good for people. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the idea of digital technologies as truth‐bearers in health care and argue that devices like SenseCam, which facilitate reflection and memory recall, have a potentially vital role in healthcare situations when questions of veracity are at stake (e.g., when best interest decisions are being made). We discuss the role of digital technologies as truth‐bearers in the context of nursing people with dementia, as this is one area of health care in which the topic of truth‐telling (...) has been hotly debated. People with dementia have been excluded from research studies and decisions that affect their lives because they are not regarded as truth‐bearers—that is, as being capable of giving truthful accounts of their experiences. Also, considerable research has focused on the ethics of lying to and deceiving people with dementia. Given their increasing prominence in healthcare settings, there has been surprisingly little discussion of what role digital technologies might play in relation to these questions of truth and deception. Drawing on theories from science and technology studies (STS), we explore their possible future role in some of the truth‐making processes of health care. In particular, we discuss the potential value of constraints on use of SenseCam to support the accounts of people with dementia as part of their care. (shrink)

The study draws attention to the transfer of management theories and practices from traditional capitalist countries such as the USA and UK to post-socialist countries that are currently experiencing radical change as they seek to introduce market reforms. It is highlighted that the efficacy of this transfer of management theories and practices is, in part, dependent upon the extent to which work-related attitudes and values vary between traditional capitalist and former socialist contexts. We highlight that practices such as Human Resource (...) Management (HRM) and Organization Development (OD) are inextricably associated with conceptions surrounding culture and society, as well as to variables such as job satisfaction and organisational commitment. The main aim of this study is to compare various attitudes and values of employees in traditional capitalist countries and post-socialist countries. On the basis of the findings of an attitudinal survey of (N = 5914) workers in 15 countries we conclude that certain aspects of the attitudes and values of workers in post-socialist countries and traditional capitalist countries differ significantly. Specifically, these differences were found in respect of context-related and job-related attitudes, and also in relation to the importance that the respondents attached to the subject of ethics more generally. The implications of the study are discussed particularly in relation to the transfer of management theory and practices between traditional capitalist and post-socialist contexts. (shrink)

The biggest contemporary challenge to democratic legitimacy gravitates around the crisis of democratic representation.

This article examines the 2008 report of the Quebec Government’s Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences which was co-authored by Charles Taylor. Summarizing its main themes, it identifies points of intersection with Taylor’s political thought. Issues of citizen equality, including gender equality, secularism, integration and interculturalism, receive special attention.

Hume's Moral Philosophy and Contemporary Psychology, edited by Philip A. Reed and Rico Vitz, is a collection of 14 essays intended to explore fruitful connections between David Hume's theory of the passions and ethics and contemporary experimental and cognitive psychology. Although recent moral philosophers have become interested in psychological discoveries in order to refine their normative approach to morality by means of a better empirical understanding of the workings of the mind, this trend has been typically developed by Aristotelian scholarship. (...) Hence, the purpose of this volume is to "fill a gap in the literature" by introducing Hume as a powerful interlocutor in the field of moral psychology, and... (shrink)

On August 28, 2008, Michael Marmot, Chair of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health, formally handed over the Commission’s Final Report to Margaret Chan, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. It was a significant moment. Dr. Chan addressed a hall packed with representatives of the world’s communications media in a speech that was remarkably direct. Dr. Chan reiterated the Commission’s position that to improve health and health equity action needs to be (...) taken not just across the health sector but across all social and economic policy areas, and stated, “Social deprivation is not a matter of fate. It is a marker of policy failure.” This was a bold statement from one of the world’s leading diplomats. Policy failure! The phrase echoes the Commission’s assertion that “a toxic combination of poor social policies, unfair economic arrangements and bad politics is killing people on a grand scale.” The Commission’s messages are far reaching. (shrink)

Hausman has recently provided an argument against identifying well-being with preference-satisfaction. I will focus on two of his premises. Hausman’s arguments for the first, I will suggest, fail. If the third premise is correct, I shall then argue, it can be used to undermine other plausible conceptions of the good.

In this paper we adopt the hypothesis that languages are mechanisms for interaction, and that grammars encode the means by which such interaction may take place, by use of procedures that construct representations of meaning from strings of words uttered in context, and conversely strings of words are built up from representations of content in interaction with context. In a review of the systemic use of ellipsis in dialogue and associated split-utterance phenomena, we show how, in Dynamic Syntax, words give (...) rise to a range of procedures for the building of representations of the content of some utterance, which both speakers and hearers use. We then extend the discussion to take account of adjuncts, showing how they contribute to content construction both in single utterances and across speakers. The same mechanisms are then shown to underlie the building of inferential extensions of meaning in context, giving rise to the creation of the ad hoc concepts expressed by phrases or single words in relation to the utterance context and ultimately to the creation of metaphorical uses of language. (shrink)

Cheerfulness and seriousness are an integral part of philosophizing in Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Jaspers. The main reason for this lies in the fact that both regard philosophers as being inseparable from their respective philosophies. Yet also the fact that their respective philosophies have multiple meanings shifts the focus away from truth toward style and rhetoric, that is, from the true and false to mood and laughter as well as to passionate interpretation and playful conversation.

At the time of writing, in the summer of 2024, we are confronted with a ‘polycrisis’ (e.g., Tooze 2022). This term is used to describe a situation in which multiple crises do not simply add up to a somewhat bigger crisis, but rather create a significantly different, amplified crisis in which the sub-crises influence each other in interdependent ways. As numerous studies have demonstrated (e.g., Heitmeyer 2024; Roberts 2022; Nowotny 2016), crises engender feelings of uncertainty, insecurity, and subsequently fear (Bauman (...) 2006). The aim of this paper is to pose the overarching question: How do governments and citizens cope with such uncertainties? Les crises provoquent la peur, la panique, l’incertitude et l’impuissance. L’incertitude et l’insécurité mettent à l’épreuve tous les acteurs concernés ; chacun attend des instructions, une planification, des explications et la sécurité. Cependant, nous affrontons des alarmismes, des simplifications, une série de stratégies de légitimation et d’erreurs. Plus précisément, les erreurs sont souvent placées avant les intérêts communautaires, nationaux ou même locaux. Ces évolutions sont illustrées par une analyse qualitative et quantitative détaillée du discours des débats en Autriche, à l’été 2023. Je soutiens que les appels fallacieux au bon sens et à la normalité dépendent de leur contexte, avec des contenus, des fonctions et des effets différents observables. De tels appels instrumentalisent une « politique des émotions » de différentes manières. Ainsi, une nouvelle logique politique est normalisée, remplaçant le discours rationnel, la délibération et la formulation de politiques dirigées par des experts. (shrink)

From the stance of cognitive developmental theories, claims that general g is an entity of the mind are compatible with notions about domain-general development and age-invariant individual differences. Whether executive function is equated with general g or fluid g, research into the mechanisms by which development occurs is essential to elucidate the kinds of environmental inputs that engender effective intervention. (Published Online April 5 2006).

The family of discounted Shapley values is analyzed for cooperative games in coalitional form. We consider the bargaining protocol of the alternating random proposer introduced in Hart and Mas-Colell. We demonstrate that the discounted Shapley values arise as the expected payoffs associated with the bargaining equilibria when a time discount factor is considered. In a second model, we replace the time cost with the probability that the game ends without agreements. This model also implements these values in transferable utility games, (...) moreover, the model implements the α\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\alpha $$\end{document}-consistent values in the nontransferable utility setting. (shrink)

Charles Taylor's work has recently taken a religious turn, with Taylor becoming more explicit about his own religious faith and its influence on his thinking. Ian Fraser offers a systematic, critical exploration of the nature of Taylor's Catholicism as it appears in his writings. This reply to Fraser endorses his belief in the importance of looking carefully at Taylor's religious views. However, it raises doubts about some of Fraser's particular arguments and conclusions, and aims to foster a clearer understanding of (...) Taylor's religious beliefs. It poses questions for Fraser about what Taylor is setting out to do in A Catholic Modernity?; why he invokes the figure of Matteo Ricci; whether he believes that acts of practical benevolence are impossible without a religious foundation; and whether his religiously-inspired pluralism suffers an inherent contradiction. (shrink)

Don Cupitt's version of religious non‐realism based as it is on linguistic constructivism, radical relativism and the view that culture forms human nature has been attacked with devastating effect by realists in the last few years. I argue that there is another strand in Cupitt's thinking, his biological naturalism, that supports a different version of religious non‐realism and that he failed to see this possibility because of his global non‐realism and commitment to the strong programme in the sociology of scientific (...) knowledge. Cupitt's biological naturalism should have led smoothly into evolutionary psychology, which has an account of religious belief that supports a non‐realist interpretation. Evolutionary psychology shows that religious beliefs are natural, normal and about matters of the deepest significance to humans. They gain their character from the operation of evolved structures of the mind and cannot be reduced to other sorts of belief. I argue that the form of religious non‐realism that emerges from taking biological naturalism seriously has a future because it respects the nature of religious belief and seeks to build on its capacity as a unique source of meaning in people's lives. There is also enough common ground with religious realism for there to be genuine dialogue between the two. (shrink)

This article examines the excitement that Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments generated in France during the French Revolution, focusing particularly on the writings of political theorists, participants and commentators such as the abbé Sieyès, Pierre-Louis Rœderer, the Marquis de Condorcet and Sophie de Grouchy Condorcet, who were dismayed at their political opponents’ use of Rousseau, and looked to Smith for an understanding of the passions that was compatible with democratic sovereignty and representative government. In the political context of the (...) early 1790s, clarifying the concept of natural sociability, which Rousseau had rejected, but Smith and Helvétius, in different ways, each regarded as indispensible to a society dependent on advanced division of labour, became a central concern in the public lectures delivered by Pierre-Louis Rœderer as the Terror took hold. ☆ My thanks to Emma Rothschild, Michael Sonenscher, Brian Young and other participants in the History of Political Thought Seminar, Oxford, and The Hexagonal Forum, Cambridge, where earlier versions of this paper were presented and helpfully discussed. I’m also grateful for comments on an earlier draft from Carolina Armenteros, Clare Jackson, Duncan Kelly, Michael Sonenscher and Richard Whatmore. (shrink)

This article presents a sociological analysis of the changing role of women in the Catholic church over the past twenty years. The theoretical framework is drawn from The Social Construction of Reality by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. Data are derived from the documents of Vatican II, the revised Code of Canon Law, research from 1965 to the present, and exploratory interviews with Catholic women recently appointed as church administrators. The article concludes with a discussion of future prospects regarding the (...) new social reality for Catholic women. (shrink)