Conflicts involving end-of-life care between healthcare providers (HCPs) and surrogate decision-makers (SDMs) have received sustained attention for more than a quarter of a century, with early studies demonstrating a frequency of HCP-SDM conflict in ICUs ranging from 32–78% of all admissions (Abbott et al. 2001; Breen et al. 2001; Studdert et al. 2003; Azoulay et al. 2009). More recent studies not only acknowledge the persistence of clinical conflict in end-of-life care (Leland et al. 2017), but they have begun to focus (...) on the ways in which these conflicts escalate to verbal or physical violence in the ICU (Slack et al. 2023; Bass et al. 2024; Berger et al. 2024; Sjöberg et al. 2024). I will argue that part of the explanation for the persistence–and even escalation–of ICU disputes is the incommensurable value systems held by many conflicting HCPs and SDMs. I will argue that a common value system among HCPs can be understood as a “Best Interest Values” (BIV) hierarchy, which I will argue is irreconcilable with the set of “Life-Continuation Values” (LCV) held by a sizable minority of families in the United States. I argue this values-conflict undergirds many ICU disputes. If I am correct that an incommensurable value system underlies many ICU conflicts, then it is not just ineffectual for HCPs to impose their BIV system on LCV families, but also wrong given the American commitment to values pluralism. I conclude that the way to navigate continuous ICU surrogate wars is for BIV-focused healthcare institutions to engage more constructively with LCV stakeholders. (shrink)

This study examines the ethical values of respondents by level in the organizational hierarchy of a single firm. It also explores the possible impacts of gender, education and years of experience on respondents' values as well as their perceptions of how the organization and professional associations influence their personal values. Results showed that, although there were differences in individuals' ethical values by hierarchical level, significantly more differences were observed by the length of tenure with the organization. While respondents, as a (...) whole, were rather ambivalent in their perception of the organization's and professional associations' influence on their values, sales/service persons frequently felt pressured to modify their values in order to achieve company goals. (shrink)

This article describes how ethical issues in health are approached and resolved within the framework of Jewish bioethics. Its main purpose is to explore the range of sources and methodologies used to determine the appropriate hierarchy of values for various ethical scenarios. Its major thrust is to illustrate how a divinely based but humanly negotiated ethical code stands firm upon ‘red flag’ principles, while at the same time, allowing for ‘shades of gray’ flexibility informed by given contexts. It provides significant (...) insights and practical tools that can be instrumental in decision making for nurses and other health providers of all faiths. The following ethical domains are addressed: respect for patient autonomy, truth-telling and allocation of resources. (shrink)

Purpose : The purpose of this paper is to bring the concept of a 'hierarchy of action', as it is currently being used in other fields, into library and information science . Design/methodology/approach Hierarchy theory is adopted to describe three hierarchies of action, which include the human processes of semantic and social innovation, as well as a system of biological interpretence, from which human processes are thought to have evolved as a development of biosemiosis in nature. By way of (...) example, it is argued that a text is a complex achievement, and hierarchy theory shows how to account for this complexity; the everyday definition of text is augmented with accounts from different levels of observation. Findings: The concept of a hierarchy of action enables a person to account for a text as a meaning/symbolic product; include in that account the processes whereby texts are produced and used; and say why these processes are important to the health of the biosphere that is called home. Originality/value Hierarchy of action has been developed as a concept in biology and ecology; it belongs to a way of thinking whereby human reality, like nature, is construed as dynamical processes operating in symbiotic relationship with each other; it has not yet been adopted in LIS with reference to hierarchy theory and its potential is yet to be explored. Keywords Hierarchy theory, Complexity theory, Process philosophy, Natural philosophy, Hierarchies of action, Complex systems, Libraries, Information science Paper type Conceptual paper. (shrink)

Personal Information Management Systems (PIMS) aim to facilitate the sharing of personal information and protect privacy. Efforts to enhance privacy management, aligned with established privacy policies, have led to guidelines for integrating transparent notices and meaningful choices within these systems. Although discussions have revolved around the design of privacy-friendly systems that comply with legal requirements, there has been relatively limited philosophical discourse on incorporating the value of privacy into these systems. Exploring the connection between privacy and personal autonomy illuminates (...) the instrumental value of privacy and highlights the importance of intentionally embedding the value of privacy into these systems. To translate the value of privacy into concrete design requirements, this study constructs a values hierarchy consisting of values, norms, and design requirements. After analyzing the relationships between privacy and autonomy and identifying norms, the design requirements translated from the norms associated with the components of personal autonomy are specified at the lowest layer. These requirements include a design to prevent unauthorized access and dark patterns and to provide effective and efficient notices and choices. The findings contribute to expanding the requirements for designing the aspect of privacy as a legal requirement to incorporate the value of privacy into systems. (shrink)

Autonomy and valuing are two significant practical phenomena that have been analysed in terms of higher-order wanting. I argue that reference to higher-order capacities is indeed required to make sense of both concepts, but also that such analyses need a more differentiated understanding of "wanting to want" than has hitherto been proposed. Central for autonomy is the instantiation of four types of optative relationship by an accountable agent under conditions of rationality. Valuing requires the disposition to instantiate only one of (...) the relevant structures. Clarity on this allows an analysis of the precise relationships between the two phenomena. (shrink)

Shows that value system is a desirable mode of behavior or the existence of the state, according to their relative needs of the sequences, some lasting organization. This so-called desirable patterns of behavior or the existence of the state, should bear some yet to be achieved, and wish to pursue and to achieve the ideal state. Accordingly, the value system can be divided into two aspects: First, the value of the ideal surface, because the total value (...) includes the "ought" of the ingredients, so in traditional Chinese culture and contemporary changes in value systems are ideal and should be However, the side, you can use philosophy and humanities research methods to be presented. Second, the value of face cards in fact, the performance of personal value system is also pursuing the target of real natural state, have to use empirical methods to be presented. Value system of traditional Chinese culture to the Republic since the change, I can not go back the way empirical research, only the literature of interpretation and historical reconstructions were; the mainland since 1949 for the value system, due to limited conditions , I can not discourse, expect more than Zhumo mainland scholars. For the value system in Taiwan, there are many empirical results can be presented in this article. (shrink)

The educationally emaciated, suffering from intellectual and spiritual bilumia, binge on facts and linear thinking. The imprimatur of clarity and the infatuation with quantification are accoutrements of this affliction, often characterized by apathy. Chaos is introduced as the wrecking ball for the hierarchical skyscrapers that overcrowd the educational skyline. The type of chaos proposed can be explained by the neutron bomb analogy. Chaos destroys all that is inessential but leaves standing the essential and promotes holistic rather than compartmentalized learning. The (...) authors further contend that one insight is better than a myriad of facts; in being vigilant of serendipity; that the value-aspect of facts is as important as the facts themselves. Such beliefs form a foundation for educational holism. Our goal is to popularize philosophy in the same way science has become popular without a mass understanding. Empiricism is criticized for creating the theoretical basis for fragmentation (forming the basis for an island ideology) by excising essence. Founded on inessential empirical ideology, efforts to teach multiculturalism merely exacerbate difference, promote alienation, and discourage tolerance. Within the framework of value hierarchies we favor, tolerance is not understood as open-armed acceptance of just anything, but the forbearance of an evil for the promise of greater good. Essence cannot be removed: even in the idiosyncratic we can find the essential. In the absence of chaotic methodology, critical thinking remains an apolitical, amoral, and atemporal process displaced from social and political reality. We propose a critical thinking that is not legalistic, but is action-oriented. The pipe dream for education is a political, moral, temporal, and decompartmentalized critical thinking that disseminates philosophy across the curriculum. Those who risk becoming pariahs and nomads are essential to the rejuvenation of the educational system. (shrink)

Using a sample of over 700 business people and students, this study tested the premise of promise-keeping as a core ethical value in the work place.The exercise consisted of in-basket planning for layoffs within an organization. Only one of the five employees within the group had been given an express commitment/promise of continued employment for a two year period. The layoffs were being considered six months after the two year promise had been made. All five employees were performing their (...) jobs adequately, and each had either personal or work attributes representing competing values that would have made it difficult to choose among them.Clearly, promise-keeping does not matter most in the workplace: subjects overwhelmingly ignored their promises even when legally bound to keep them. Further, promise-keeping consistently was found to rank last in a hierarchy of workplace values. The legal system was suggested as a viable mechanism for encouraging promise-keeping in the workplace. Although the possibility of legal sanctions increased the frequency with which promises were kept, overall fewer than one-third (30%) of the subjects kept their word. Of those respondents who expressly were told that the promise was legally enforceable, the number who stated that they would keep their promise increased to 57%. (shrink)

라벨에게 있어서 가치(valeur)의 개념은 인간행위의 원동력처럼 나타나고 있다. 모든 인간은 자신에게 ‘좋은 것’ ‘선한 것’ 혹은 ‘보다 나은 것’이라는 판단에 따라, 즉 가치가 있다고 판단되는 것을 추구하는 것이다. 따라서 가치는 행위의 목적과 관련된다. 단적으로 혹은 절대적으로 가치가 있는 것은 ‘행위의 최종 목적’일 것이며, 이는 ‘이데아적인 것’ 혹은 ‘존재자체’등으로 표현된다. 따라서 가치는 본질적으로 ‘가치의 위계질서’로 나타난다. 모든 가치는 최상의 가치로부터 최하의 가치에 이르기까지 정도의 차이를 가지고 질서를 가지고 있으며, 여기에서 가치의 보편성의 개념이 확보된다. 반면 한 개인의 실제적인 삶 속에서는 주어진 상황과 (...) 삶의 조건에 따라 가치가 지극히 상대적이고 개별적인 것으로 나타난다. 왜냐하면 가치는 존재나 대상 그 자체가 객관적으로 지니는 것이 아니라, 인간의 정신이 이 대상과 관계를 맺게 될 때, 정신이 느끼는 ‘가치감정’처럼 나타나기 때문이다. 여기서 가치의 보편성과 개별성의 불일치의 문제가 발생한다. 이러한 가치의 두 특성이 대립하게 될 때 갈등, 분열, 증오 등과 같은 부정적이고 파괴적인 양상이 발생하는데, 여기서 ‘가치의 전도’가 발생한다. 이러한 가치의 전도를 해결할 수 있는 유일한 인간의 능력이 ‘사랑(amour)’이다. 사랑은 최고의 가치가 아니라, 모든 가치들에 있어서 그것을 가치 있게 하는 공통의 근원이요, 그것을 추구할 수 있게 하는 공통적인 힘이다. 따라서 사랑은 가치의 보편적 특성과 개별적 특성 사이에 일치를 이루게 하는 원리가 된다. 또한 사랑은 끊임없이 최상의 가치를 지향하므로 가치들의 위계에서 우리를 항상 위로 상승시킨다. (shrink)

In both The Right and the Good and Foundations of Ethics, W. D. Ross maintains that any amount of the non-instrumental value of virtue outweighs any amount of the non-instrumental value of pleasure or avoidance of pain. The chapter raises two challenges to the status that Ross accords the value of virtue relative to the value of pleasure (pain). First, it argues that Ross fails to provide a good argument for thinking that virtue is always better (...) than pleasure and that it is in any case implausible to think that any amount of virtue (or avoidance of vice) is better than the avoidance of any amount of pain or suffering. Second, it argues that the inflexibility of Ross’s value theory exhibited in his claim about the relative value of virtue produces tension with and mars the attractive heterarchical structure of his theory of rightness or prima facie duties. (shrink)

Democracy as one of the forms of a governance and political process is at the same time a political value. The value’s aspects of democracy are closely connected with the character of democratic political regime, democratic process and democratic political culture of society. in the structure of democratic values one may roughly point out horizontal facet of them and vertical one. Horizontal values include following values: general social domain; the sphere of political institutions; the aspects of political process (...) and procedures; cultural sphere. As a rule, these values are out of doubt, though this fact doesn’t preclude there critic from various opponents of democracy. On the contrary, it’s a hierarchy of democratic values, which is the vertical facet of them is the point at scientific andpolitical debates. This fact also causes various approaches to democracy. The problems of democratic values inseparably linked with the questions about there universal character. Under an analysis of the universal character of democratic values it’s necessary to take into account its socioantropological aspect. The point is about developing essence of the human being under the impact of diverse internal and external factors. (shrink)

Approaches to truth and the Liar paradox seem invariably to face a dilemma: either appeal to some sort of hierarchy, or declare apparently perfectly coherent concepts incoherent. But since both options lead to severe expressive restrictions, neither seems satisfactory. The aim of this paper is a new approach, which avoids the dilemma and the resulting expressive restrictions. Previous approaches tend to appeal to some new sort of semantic value for the truth predicate to take. I argue that such approaches (...) inevitably lead to the dilemma in question. In contrast, the present proposal sticks with classical semantic values, but allows the compositional rules associated with these to admit of exceptions. I show how such an approach can be developed systematically. (shrink)

A comparative study of business related values among business students was conducted over the last 10 years in two neighbouring countries. Although Estonia and Finland are culturally related, according to an empirical study of managerial values, including the ethical values of business students, the two countries display significant differences. During the last decade, Estonia has changed from being a country characterised by an authoritarian, centralized, totalitarian state socialism, to a democratic country with a free market economy and different attitudes and (...) values. At the same time Finland has experienced almost a century of capitalism and democracy. It is argued that the differences in values exhibited by these two countries could be explained by using the institutional and historical context. The authors propose a model of value hierarchies in relation to institutionalism. (shrink)

We consider fine hierarchies in recursion theory, descriptive set theory, logic and complexity theory. The main results state that the sets of values of different Boolean terms coincide with the levels of suitable fine hierarchies. This gives new short descriptions of these hierarchies and shows that collections of sets of values of Boolean terms are almost well ordered by inclusion. For the sake of completeness we mention also some earlier results demonstrating the usefulness of fine hierarchies.

Using a sample of over 700 business people and students, this study tested the premise of promise-keeping as a core ethical value in the work place.The exercise consisted of in-basket planning for layoffs within an organization. Only one of the five employees within the group had been given an express commitment/promise of continued employment for a two year period. The layoffs were being considered six months after the two year promise had been made. All five employees were performing their (...) jobs adequately, and each had either personal or work attributes representing competing values that would have made it difficult to choose among them. (shrink)

This paper seeks to resolve a fairly simple question in ethics: Why do seemingly reasonable people disagree about ethical problems? My paper seeks both to analyze this question and attempts to find a solution. My premise is that disagreement happens because of differences in hierarchical value ranking, or quite simply because some problems are more important to some people than others. Theories of choice, however, influenced by concepts such as "freedom of choice," conceal the hierarchical nature of our choices, (...) leading to confusion over the nature and degree of our ethical disagreements. I propose then that ethical disagreements can be reduced when we understand hierarchy as an essential element in moral choice theory. (shrink)

In this paper, a way of constructing many-valued paraconsistent logics with weak double negation axioms is proposed. A hierarchy of weak double negation axioms is addressed in this way. The many-valued paraconsistent logics constructed are defined as Gentzen-type sequent calculi. The completeness and cut-elimination theorems for these logics are proved in a uniform way. The logics constructed are also shown to be decidable.

We argue that the Standard Model (SM) in the Higgs phase does not suffer from a “hierarchy problem” and that similarly the “cosmological constant problem” resolves itself if we understand the SM as a low energy effective theory emerging from a cutoff-medium at the Planck scale. We actually take serious Veltman’s “The Infrared–Ultraviolet Connection” addressing the issue of quadratic divergences and the related huge radiative correction predicted by the SM in the relationship between the bare and the renormalized theory, usually (...) called “the hierarchy problem” and claimed that this has to be cured. We discuss these issues under the condition of a stable Higgs vacuum, which allows extending the SM up to the Planck cutoff. The bare Higgs boson mass then changes sign below the Planck scale, such that the SM in the early universe is in the symmetric phase. The cutoff enhanced Higgs mass term as well as the quartically enhanced cosmological constant term provide a large positive dark energy that triggers the inflation of the early universe. Reheating follows via the decays of the four unstable heavy Higgs particles, predominantly into top–antitop pairs, which at this stage are massless. Preheating is suppressed in SM inflation since in the symmetric phase bosonic decay channels are absent at tree level. The coefficients of the shift between bare and renormalized Higgs mass as well as of the shift between bare and renormalized vacuum energy density exhibit close-by zeros at about $$7.7 \times 10^{14}\ \hbox {GeV}$$ and $$3.1 \times 10^{15}\ \hbox {GeV}$$, respectively. The zero of the Higgs mass counter term triggers the electroweak phase transition, from the low energy Higgs phase and to the symmetric phase above the transition point. Since inflation tunes the total energy density to take the critical value of a flat universe and all contributing components are positive, it is obvious that the cosmological constant today is naturally a substantial fraction of the total critical density. Thus taking cutoff enhanced corrections seriously the Higgs system provides besides the masses of particles in the Higgs phase also dark energy, inflation and reheating in the early universe. The main unsolved problem in our context remains the origin of dark matter. Higgs inflation is possible and likely even unavoidable provided new physics does not disturb the known relevant SM properties substantially. The scenario highly favors to understand the SM and its main properties as a natural structure emerging at long distance. This in particular concerns the SM symmetry patterns and their consequences. (shrink)

Gynecological surgery prompts women to consider the meanings of their uteruses and ovaries, generally taken for granted as “natural” components of female bodies. Analysis of 44 in-depth interviews with women who underwent hysterectomy indicates that a preponderance of respondents conceptualized a socially constructed hormonal hierarchy based on the degree to which ovaries were excised in the course of surgery. While retained ovaries may not always produce actual physiological benefits, respondents placed great symbolic value on ovaries as the source of (...) female normality. This reflects cultural understandings that hormones produced by the ovaries are the essential determinants of sexual difference. The interweaving of social constructionist and biological perspectives in respondents' narratives helps to elucidate the complicated interaction between the material body and the social body. (shrink)

Prominence hierarchy effects such as the animacy hierarchy and definiteness hierarchy have been a puzzle for formal treatments of case since they were first described systematically in Silverstein 1976. Recently, these effects have received more sustained attention from generative linguists, who have sought to capture them in treatments grounded in well-understood mechanisms for case assignment cross-linguistically. These efforts have taken two broad directions. In the first, Aissen 1999, 2003 has integrated the effects elegantly into a competition model of grammar using (...) OT formalisms, where iconicity effects emerge from constraint conjunctions between constraints on fixed universal hierarchies (definiteness, animacy, person, grammatical role) and a constraint banning overt morphological expression of case. The second direction grows out of the work of Jelinek and Diesing, and is found most articulated in Jelinek 1993, Jelinek and Carnie 2003, and Carnie 2005. This work takes as its starting point the observation that word order is sometimes correlated with the hierarchies as well, and works backwards from that to conclusions about phrase structure geometries. In this paper, I propose a particular implementation of this latter direction, and explore its consequences for our understanding of the nature of case assignment. If hierarchy effects are due to positional differences in phrase structures, then, I argue, the attested cross-linguistic differences fall most naturally out if the grammars of these languages countenance polyvalent case—that is, assignment of more than one case value to a single nominal phrase. (shrink)

Sugar, pork, beer, corn, cider, scrapple, and hoppin' John all became staples in the diet of colonial America. The ways Americans cultivated and prepared food and the values they attributed to it played an important role in shaping the identity of the newborn nation. In A Revolution in Eating, James E. McWilliams presents a colorful and spirited tour of culinary attitudes, tastes, and techniques throughout colonial America. Confronted by strange new animals, plants, and landscapes, settlers in the colonies and West (...) Indies found new ways to produce food. Integrating their British and European tastes with the demands and bounty of the rugged American environment, early Americans developed a range of regional cuisines. From the kitchen tables of typical Puritan families to Iroquois longhouses in the backcountry and slave kitchens on southern plantations, McWilliams portrays the grand variety and inventiveness that characterized colonial cuisine. As colonial America grew, so did its palate, as interactions among European settlers, Native Americans, and African slaves created new dishes and attitudes about food. McWilliams considers how Indian corn, once thought by the colonists as "fit for swine," became a fixture in the colonial diet. He also examines the ways in which African slaves influenced West Indian and American southern cuisine. While a mania for all things British was a unifying feature of eighteenth-century cuisine, the colonies discovered a national beverage in domestically brewed beer, which came to symbolize solidarity and loyalty to the patriotic cause in the Revolutionary era. The beer and alcohol industry also instigated unprecedented trade among the colonies and further integrated colonial habits and tastes. Victory in the American Revolution initiated a "culinary declaration of independence," prompting the antimonarchical habits of simplicity, frugality, and frontier ruggedness to define American cuisine. McWilliams demonstrates that this was a shift not so much in new ingredients or cooking methods, as in the way Americans imbued food and cuisine with values that continue to shape American attitudes to this day. (shrink)

This study examines how our personal values influence our judgment of the morality of some workplace behaviours. Sixty-nine undergraduates were asked to rank order separately Rokeach''s instrumental and terminal values in terms of their importance as guiding principles in their life. Subjects then read four scenarios, each of which described ethically questionable behaviour of the sort that might be encountered in business. They were then asked to rate whether or not the behaviour of the person described in the scenario was (...) ethical, and whether or not they had any intentions to rectify the situation. People with different value hierarchies perceived the targeted behaviours differently. For example, subjects who valued honesty perceived the behaviour as more immoral than subjects who did not value honesty. While the ranking of the instrumental valuehonesty was the best predictor of people''s judgments about the morality of the behaviour, their ranking of the instrumental valueambition was the best predictor of their behavioural intentions. (shrink)

This essay explores a creative argument that Cicero offers to answer a fundamental question: how are we to judge among different ways of life? Is there a natural hierarchy of human types? In response to this problem, Cicero gives an account of a person’s possessing two natures. All of us participate in a general human nature, the characteristics of which provide us with certain universal duties and a natural moral hierarchy. But, we also each possess an individual nature, qualities that (...) make us unique and which we have an obligation to cultivate. By employing different concepts of natura to refer either to common human nature or to particular individual nature, Cicero establishes a basis for a normative standard that manages to affirm the superiority of certain especially valuable types of life, such as the philosopher and the statesman. At the same time, he advances a coherent account of individuality that places high value on natural human diversity. (shrink)

What is it to "value" something, in the semi-technical sense of the term that Gary Watson establishes? I argue that valuing something consists in caring about it. Caring involves not only emotional dispositions of the sort that Agnieszka Jaworska has elaborated, but also a distinctive cognitive disposition – namely, a (defeasible) disposition to believe the object cared about to be a source of agent-relative reasons for action and for emotion. Understood in this way, an agent's carings have a stronger (...) claim to "speak for" her as her values than do other attitudes that have been proposed for this role. In particular, an agent's carings establish more robust psychological continuities and cross-temporal connections than do self-governing policies of the sort that Michael Bratman has described; and they forge diachronic coherence not just in her deliberation and action, as self-governing policies do, but also in her cognitive and emotional life. An agent's carings thus help to constitute her identity as a temporally persisting subject . Self-governing policies are at best ersatz -values, which an agent may choose to adopt when she finds that her proper values – her cares – leave her course underdetermined. (shrink)

This paper defines natural hierarchies of function and relation classes □i,kc and Δi,kc, constructed from parallel complexity classes in a manner analogous to the polynomial-time hierarchy. It is easily shown that □i−1,kp □c,kc □i,kp and similarly for the Δ classes. The class □i,3c coincides with the single-valued functions in Buss et al.'s class , and analogously for other growth rates. Furthermore, the class □i,kc comprises exactly the functions Σi,kb-definable in Ski−1, and if Tki−1 is Σi,kb-conservative over Ski−1, then □i,kp (...) is completely parallelizable. All functions in □i,kc are Σi,kb-definable in Rki; this suffices to show that if the known Σi,kb conservativity between R3i and S3i−1 extends to R2i and S2i−1, then NC = NC1 relative to an oracle in PH. We prove a KPT-style witnessing theorem for Ski using constantly many rounds of □i,kc interactive computation, and thus show that if Ski ≡ Rki+1 then the bounded arithmetic hierarchy collapses, provably in Ski. (shrink)

Fundamental questions in value sensitive design include whether and how high-tech products/artefacts could embody values and ethical ideals, and how plural and incommensurable values of ethical and social importance could be chosen rationally and objectively at a collective level. By using a humanitarian cargo drone study as a starting point, this paper tackles the challenges that VSD’s lack of commitment to a specific ethical theory generates in practical applications. Besides, it highlights how mainstream ethical approaches usually related to VSD (...) are incapable of solving main ethical dilemmas raised by technological design for well-being in democratic settings. Accordingly, it is argued that VSD’s ethical-democratic import would substantially be enhanced by the espousal of a procedural ethics stance and the deliberative approach to value and welfare entailed by Amartya Sen’s capability approach. Differently from rival ethical–political theories, its normative and meta-ethical foundations better handle human diversity, value-goal pluralism, conflicting vested interests as well as the epistemic-moral disagreements typical of contemporary complex democracies. Particularly, Sen’s capability approach procedural-deliberative tenets result in an “objective-impartial” choice procedure selecting a “hierarchy” of plural incommensurable values and rational goals thus, suitable to validate an applied science such as welfare-oriented technological design in concrete social environments. Conclusions suggest that refining VSD with a capability-based procedural approach to ethics fosters the concern for democracy and social justice while preserving vital scientific-technical standards. Major advantages are at an applied level to delivering ethically and socially justified, but yet highly functional technologies and high-tech products/artefacts. (shrink)

The Concept of Hierarchy, as well as various problems, aspects and doctrines attaching to it, was preposterously overrated in Greek philosophy, especially Platonic and Neo-platonic; probably even more so in medieval Scholastic philosophy which attempted to rationalize its supernaturalistic obsession with arguments taken from Greek, chiefly Aristotelian and thus semi-Platonic perfectionalism as a putative “natural” basis for it. Some great exponents of the modern German philosophy of Value, Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann, represent the same tradition in a doubtless more (...) critical and more properly philosophic, less naively metaphysical, but still in a pretty dogmatically intuitional fashion. The counterpart to this we find to be rampant in modern English-speaking philosophy dominated by the thought-style of Logical Positivism, though many of its more recent representatives would disown that label. Mouthpieces of an egalitarian, machine-ridden and utilitarian and functional society intolerant of the idea of kings, aristocrats, slaves, serfs, even rich and poor nay literate and illiterate, these thinkers idolize human “wanting” as such, whatever its contents and characteristics, would reduce all value to “needs” or “desires” and their different “intensities” and in their turn, I venture to say, seek preposterously to evade the very concept of Hierarchy, not only on the plane of social philosophy but also in the context of Axiology. They postulate a flattened world from which the experience of Verticality is all but wholly excluded. (shrink)

Hierarchy is a difficulty for theories of equality, and especially those that define equality in relational or social terms. In ideal egalitarian circumstances it seems that hierarchies should not exist. However, a liberal egalitarian defence of some types of hierarchies is common. Hierarchies of esteem have no further consequences than praise or admiration for valued individual features. Hierarchies of status, with differential reward, can, it is often argued, also be justified when they serve a justified social (...) purpose and meet conditions of genuine equality of opportunity. However, group hierarchies remain problematic, and evidence suggests that they are pervasive in human societies above a subsistence level of production. It has also been argued that group hierarchies are impossible to eliminate, and enormous cost is associated with attempting, and failing, to remove them. However, the perspective of ‘real-world’ political philosophy suggests measures to mitigate group hierarchy, starting with those that are either the easiest to address, the most damaging, or the most consequential. (shrink)

The paper studies semiotic values in advertisements appearing in German Catholic periodicals in Silesia in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The study is grounded in the Tartu School of Semiotics and shows shifts and hierarchies in the semiotic valuations of particular commodities. Collected advertisements were classified into four main groups: (1) books, (2) church art, (3) church and devotional accessories, (4) everyday life commodities. We motivate the claim that the group (2) of the advertisements (...) in the Catholic press we analyzed was the driver for the introduction of the remaining two categories of ads, hence the study of this group is pivotal for our analysis. The parameters of center, periphery, and “border,” as between the sacred and the profane are also taken into account, within the structural interrelation of Sr (religious system) (cf. Zaliźniak et al. 1975 [1962]) and Sc (commercial code). Assuming the usefulness of explanatory mechanisms, in conclusion a heuristic interpretation is provided in terms of the relations of semiotic primes. (shrink)

The trend in environmental management toward more adaptive, community-based, and holistic approaches will require new approaches to environmental valuation. In this paper, we offer a new valuation approach, one that embodies the core principles of adaptive management, which is experimental, multi-scalar, and place-based. In addition, we use hierarchy theory to incorporate spatial and temporal variability of natural systems into a multi-scalar management model. Our approach results in the consideration of multiple values within community-based ecosystem management, rather than an attempt to (...) maximise a single variable such as economic efficiency. We then offer two heuristics – one procedural and one evaluative – to guide a community toward shared goals, and to develop indicators to measure progress toward these goals. We illustrate our approach by application to environmental and developmental decisions in the Southern Appalachians. (shrink)

The organizational history of American government during the past 100 years has been written principally in terms of the creation of larger and larger public organizations. Beginning with the Progressive movement, no matter the goal, the reflexive response has been to consolidate and centralize into formal hierarchies. That efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability, and the coordination necessary to achieve them, are promoted by such reorganizations has become widely accepted. Borrowing from social psychology, sociology, political science, and public administration, and using (...) the public transit system of the San Francisco Bay area for illustrative purposes, Donald Chisholm directly challenges this received wisdom. He argues that, contrary to contemporary canons of public administration, we should actively resist the temptation to consolidate and centralize our public organizations. Rather, we should carefully match organizational design with observed types and levels of interdependence, since organizational systems that on the surface appear to be tightly linked webs of interdependence on closer examination often prove decomposable into relatively simpler subsystems that may be coordinated through decentralized, informal organizational arrangements. Chisholm finds that informal channels between actors at different organizations prove remarkably effective and durable as instruments of coordination. Developed and maintained as needed rather than according to a single preconceived design, informal channels, along with informal conventions and contracts, tend to match interorganization interdependence closely and to facilitate coordination. Relying on such measures reduces the cognitive demands and obviates the necessity for broadscale political agreement typical of coordination by centralized, formal organizations. They also advance other important values that are frequently absent in formally consolidated organizations, such as reliability, flexibility, and the representation of varied interests. _Coordination Without Hierarchy_ is an incisive, penetrating work whose conclusions apply to a wide range of public organizations at all levels of government. It will be of interest to a broad array of social scientists and policymakers. In an earlier version, _Coordination Without Hierarchy_ received the American Political Science Association 1985 Leonard D. White Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of public administration, including broadly related problems of policy formation and administrative theory. (shrink)

"This book examines the longstanding debate between philosophical optimism and pessimism in the history of philosophy, focusing on Aristotle, Maimonides, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Camus. Philosophical optimists maintain that the world is optimally arranged and is accordingly valuable, and that the existence of human beings is preferable over their nonexistence. Philosophical pessimists, by contrast, hold that the world is in a woeful condition and ultimately valueless, and that human nonexistence would have been preferable over our existence. Schopenhauer criticizes the optimism (...) he locates in the Hebrew Bible and in Spinoza for being unable to square the presumed perfection of the world and its parts, including human life, with the suffering and misfortunes observable in them, and for leading to egoism and thereby to cruelty. Nietzsche, in turn, criticizes Schopenhauer's overtly pessimistic view, inter alia, for furtively positing a perfect state for one to aspire to, thus being latently optimistic. Similarly, Camus charges Nietzsche, who announces his rejection of both optimism and pessimism, with deifying the world and oneself, thereby reverting to optimism. Interestingly, Aristotle countenances an optimistic theory, later adopted and developed by Maimonides, that is arguably capable of facing Schopenhauer's challenge. Aristotelian optimism accounts for the perfection of the world in terms of a hierarchy of value between its parts, with human beings ranked relatively low, and recommends an attitude congruent with that ranking"--. (shrink)

Recently, some philosophers have argued that we should take quantification of any (finite) order to be a legitimate and irreducible, sui generis kind of quantification. In particular, they hold that a semantic theory for higher-order quantification must itself be couched in higher-order terms. Øystein Linnebo has criticized such views on the grounds that they are committed to general claims about the semantic values of expressions that are by their own lights inexpressible. I show that Linnebo’s objection rests on the assumption (...) of a notion of semantic value or contribution which both applies to expressions of any order, and picks out, for each expression, an extra-linguistic correlate of that expression. I go on to argue that higher-orderists can plausibly reject this assumption, by means of a hierarchy of notions they can use to describe the extra-lingustic correlates of expressions of different orders. (shrink)

In their recent article “A Hierarchy of Classical and Paraconsistent Logics”, Eduardo Barrio, Federico Pailos and Damien Szmuc present novel and striking results about meta-inferential validity in various three valued logics. In the process, they have thrown open the door to a hitherto unrecognized domain of non-classical logics with surprising intrinsic properties, as well as subtle and interesting relations to various familiar logics, including classical logic. One such result is that, for each natural number n, there is a logic which (...) agrees with classical logic on tautologies, inferences, meta-inferences, meta-meta-inferences, meta-meta-...-meta-inferences, but that disagrees with classical logic on n + 1-meta-inferences. They suggest that this shows that classical logic can only be characterized by defining its valid inferences at all orders. In this article, I invoke some simple symmetric generalizations of BPS’s results to show that the problem is worse than they suggest, since in fact there are logics that agree with classical logic on inferential validity to all orders but still intuitively differ from it. I then discuss the relevance of these results for truth theory and the classification problem. (shrink)

The value of knowledge and deeds of the methodology of the reasoning defined such as “due to they have a common effective cause (ʿilla), the provision of principle (aṣl) is given to the branch (farʿ)” has been the subject of debate from the first period. That is, on the one hand there are some who reject the method of analogical reasoning by saying that although the authority of legislation belongs to Shāri’only, this method is to make legislation in the (...) religion and that its value in knowledge is condemned as conjecture by the injunction (naṣṣ). They also put forward some arguments as well. However, on the other hand the majority accepts the method of reasoning as an essential and sharʿī (religious) argument. This study will not compare the opinions of those who reject qiyās and that of those who approve it. By means of religious and rational evidences this study will deal with that the method of analogical reasoning is not a rational effort simply, that the knowledge gained by it is not a conjecture criticised by the injunctions, that it is the highest ranking conjecture based on the proof, and that it is sufficient to practice in the field of law. After a general frame is drawn about qiyās, this article has been limited with the place of qiyās in the hierarchy of evidence and its value concerning knowledge and practice. This article wants to clarify the discussions related to the value of knowledge and deeds of the methodology of the reasoning. (shrink)

Introduction -- Creative actualization -- Modes of value -- Moral justification -- Creative actualization and the world -- Critical evaluation of metaphysical value theories -- Critical evaluation of subjective value theories -- Critical evaluation of relational value theories -- Conclusion : value hierarchies and value autonomy.

Ethics, Value, and Reality is a collection of essays written after Kolnai settled in England in 1955. These essays from Kolnai's mature years sit atop a remarkable gestation of moral and political thinking. At the heart of his thought is the special role of privilege in a good social order. Kolnai relies heavily on the work of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century value theorists such as Alexius Meinong, Nicolai Hartmann, and Max Scheler. He blends this continental tradition of (...) ethics with British intuitionism and Scottish Enlightenment articulations. For Kolnai, ethical life cannot be adequately understood except by reference to moral emphasis, and thus, Kolnai can be thought of as a liberal conservative. He acknowledges myriad values, moral and non-moral, and accepts that all can have some claim upon us. Low values as much as high values have a legitimate claim. His is a tolerant conservatism though not for a moment does he forgo the necessity of judgment: a readily graspable hierarchy keeps the respective demands of values in proportion. Kolnai welcomes the call to seriousness, which is the hallmark of existentialism. The ground of Kolnai's thought is the idea of emotion as cognitive. He saw the typical analytical philosopher's fascination with simplicity of explanation not only thoroughly refuted by the gains in understanding wrought by phenomenological method, with its deference to the richness of phenomena, but sensed in the monistic inclination he dreaded a harbinger of totalitarianism. Never denying his emotionalism, he nonetheless made his points well enough by adopting an analytical approach to philosophy and ethics. This is a major work crossing moral and political philosophy. (shrink)

By means of a survey of Thoreau's writings, this article analyses his thoughts on health, emphasising some features that fit well with contemporary debates in the philosophy of medicine. Thoreau understands health as an environmental value, one that cannot be achieved without a personal relation to nature, but he does not provide a static definition of health within a fixed hierarchy of values. Thus he avoids a certain degree of essentialism that, when imposed on his work, makes it seem (...) more utopian and anti-scientific than it really is. The meaning of health for Thoreau is often contradictory and hard to disambiguate, and his context was different in many respects to ours, but his ideas on this topic still serve to criticise some of modern medicine's views on health and disease, and to steer it towards a more environmentally-informed approach to these phenomena. (shrink)

Abstract.This essay sketches an interpretation of human experience utilizing the perspective of’ process philosophy. Beauty is a key notion, and emergent evolution is a central theme. The following topics are addressed: the emergence of modern evolutionary thinking and alternative responses to it; the nature of human nature in a process perspective; the place of humans in nature; the immanence of laws; emergent evolution on this planet; some implications of the hierarchy of nature for the interpretation of human life, human morality, (...) and human values; and human religious experience. (shrink)

The paper presents the role of the experience of historical transformation in the modifications of the historical conscience: the fragmentation, the marginality and the removal from the rational foundation of values. It associates the postmodern world with different forms of losing the sense of values, the lack of measure and nuance in appreciation, the weak preoccupation for identity, authenticity, conscience of values in human behavior. In order to discuss the theory of values the paper introduces Rickertʼs theory of the autonomy (...) of value, Andreiʼs and Vianuʼs conceptions on the system of values, Schelerʼs hierarchy of values, and Hartmannʼs concept of knowledge of value. (shrink)

In the following paper, both Max Scheler and Edgar Sheffield Brightman’s rankings of value are compared. In so doing, Brightman’s table of values is found wanting along the lines of Scheler’s value rankings. The reason is, in part, that Scheler’s ordering of preference and hierarchy of feelings more readily explain what Brightman’s account presupposes: affective intentionality. What is more, we can apply Brightman’s test of consistency to Scheler’s account and find it more desirable than how Brightman defines what (...) values are in his A Philosophy of Religion. Between both thinkers an account will emerge that can help clarify the commensurability of values in experience-based accounts of value in both thinkers. In doing so, a blended account reaches three conclusions about how each personalist might adopt points the other would have suggested to him. Love is the process of coalescement in rough outlines; The ordo amoris should reflect the rational coherence of Brightman’s more systematic laws; And the demand of coherence means that phenomenology in Scheler becomes a system of idealistic metaphysics concerning values despite the fact that Brightman thinks the moral law system will hold phenomenologically regardless of which metaphysical interpretation of reality holds sway about values. (shrink)

A very simple many-valued predicate calculus is presented; a completeness theorem is proved and the arithmetical complexity of some notions concerning provability is determined.

Abstract:This article suggests that there are individual differences in how people define important moral values, and that these differences are made manifest in differences in the situations. It identifies five dimensions along which individuals can differ in their understandings of values: 1)value category(where the value lies in the hierarchy), 2)agent(how voluntary the action is and whether it is morally required of the agent), 3)object(how close the self is to the object of the action; whether the action offends God) (...) 4)effect(whether the effect of the action is to harm or help), and 5)intention(whether the intention of the action is to harm or help). It then addresses four important values entailing moral dimensions: respect for life, respect for property, honest communication, and respect for religion. The article suggests that empirical research, classroom teaching, and business practice can be strengthened by considering these dimensions. (shrink)