The concept of vulnerability is widely used in bioethics, particularly in research ethics and public health ethics. The traditional approach construes vulnerability as inherent in individuals or the groups to which they belong and views vulnerability as requiring special protections. Florencia Luna and other bioethicists continue to challenge traditional ways of conceptualizing and applying the term. Luna began proposing a layered approach to this concept and recently extended this proposal to offer two new concepts to analyze the concept of vulnerability, (...) namely understanding external conditions that trigger vulnerability and layers of vulnerability with cascading effects. Luna's conception of vulnerability is useful, which we demonstrate by applying her layered view and the new analyses in multiple contexts. We begin by outlining Luna's view and we use vignettes from healthcare involving transgender patients, the care of patients in psychiatric contexts, and research involving prisoners to illustrate how each part of Luna's concept elucidates important moral issues. (shrink)

This second volume completes the biography of the influential philosopher, following Whitehead's move first from Trinity College, Cambridge to London, and then, at the age of 63, to America, where the focus of his work shifted from mathematics to philosophy. Lowe (philosophy emeritus, Johns Hopkins U.) died in 1988 with this biography not quite completed. Vol.2 was edited and seen through publication by J.B. Schneewind, chairman of the Philosophy Department at Johns Hopkins. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This paper attempts three things. It invites you to engage critically with me in the adjudication of a particular controversy. It attempts to argue for and exemplify important procedures which distinguish good and bad thinking in a critical mode. And it argues the case for the separate teaching of critical thinking (henceforth CT).

Sometimes Strauss argues as if he thought it possible to understand man without raising questions about his relations to other things, and hence about his place in the whole. But when they are viewed in their broader context, such arguments are seen not to be his final word. Man's humanity cannot be understood in its own terms alone. The human soul differs from everything else in that it is "... open to the whole and therefore more akin to the whole (...) than anything else is." In ordinary usage, "whole" implies completeness and autonomy. But the openness of the soul--i.e., of a part--to the whole can only mean that the whole is open to itself. The whole is, then, not, in the ordinary sense of the term, whole. Nor is the soul which is "open" to it. Stripped of myths, "... the human soul is... more akin to the whole than anything else is" because neither of them is whole. The same conclusion follows when one tries to understand the definition of the philosopher as the man animated by quest for knowledge of the whole. Qua philosopher he knows neither that there is a whole, nor what it might be if there were one. To define the philosopher as the man who knows that he does not know only paraphrases the difficulty. It does not solve it. For "know" is here used equivocally. The same equivocation is at play in the comment "... one cannot know that one does not know without knowing what one does not know". Admittedly "knowledge of ignorance is not ignorance." The philosopher believes and perhaps divines more than he actually knows. All men do. The essential difference between the philosopher and other men may well consist in the fact that the philosopher distinguishes more conscientiously than do others between what he knows and what he believes, and that he strives more single-mindedly than do they to transform as large a share of his beliefs as possible into knowledge. He may conceivably at some point be said to have reached the stage where his aspirations have become reasoned expectations. But that is as far as he can possibly go as long as he remains a philosopher and has not become a wise man or a god. Until and unless the philosopher knows, in the strong sense of the term, he can no more decide whether his aspirations could be fulfilled than he can swim before getting wet. (shrink)

Can subjects genuinely possess concepts they do not understand fully? A simple argument can show that, on the assumption that possession conditions are taken to fully individuate concepts, this question must be answered in the negative. In this paper, I examine this negative answer as possibly articulated within Christopher Peacocke’s seminal theory. I then discuss four central lines of attack to the view that possession of concepts requires full understanding. I conclude that theorists should acknowledge the existence of indefinitely many (...) cases of genuine concept possession for partially understood concepts and therefore face the determination challenge, namely, the challenge of fully determining concept individuation from concept possession conditions of partially understood concepts. (shrink)

We provide a quantifier-free axiom system for plane hyperbolic geometry in a language containing only absolute geometrically meaningful ternary operations (in the sense that they have the same interpretation in Euclidean geometry as well). Each axiom contains at most 4 variables. It is known that there is no axiom system for plane hyperbolic consisting of only prenex 3-variable axioms. Changing one of the axioms, one obtains an axiom system for plane Euclidean geometry, expressed in the same language, all of whose (...) axioms are also at most 4-variable universal sentences. We also provide an axiom system for plane hyperbolic geometry in Tarski's language L B which might be the simplest possible one in that language. (shrink)

The beginning of the 21st century witnesses a trend for business and leisure travelers to make accommodation decisions by referring to online reviews of hotel accommodation services and the hotel management’s responses to such reviews. The responses, termed review response genre in this study, have since attracted considerable research attention. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, it aims to identify the moves present in the review response genre; second, it aims to explore how the hotel management attempts to (...) achieve service recovery with the moves of the genre. A total of three obligatory moves are identified: Acknowledging Problem, Expressing Feeling and Thanking Reviewer. The findings will have significant implications for the hospitality and wider service industry practitioners responsible for handling negative online reviews. (shrink)

resumed version of a Philosophycal Anthropology, a PhD Thesis.

There is now an established literature on the link between later Wittgenstein and enactivist approaches in cognitive science. However, is this link not just a matter for card carrying Wittgensteinians? Can enactivists not manage perfectly well without Wittgenstein? In this paper, I show why some enactivists should care about Wittgenstein. Focusing on the enactivist view, “Sensorimotor Identity”. I argue that proponents of this view can use Wittgensteinian considerations to resolve an issue confronting their view and thereby shore up their proposed (...) dissolution of the explanatory gap. Some enactivists thus have in fact much to gain by engaging with Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Resumo:É pretendido, neste pequeno texto, mostrar como Leibniz se insere de modo bem peculiar na tradicional discussão filosófica acerca da liberdade do agente num mundo governado pelo princípio de razão suficiente. A questão posta por Arnauld, em carta de 13 de março de 1686, além de forçar Leibniz a dar esclarecimentos sobre a solução que adotou, também é importante por carregar certos resquícios do modo pelo qual Aristóteles abordou este tema. Também deve ser notado que, apesar da ruptura que a (...) solução leibniziana faz com a tradição aristotélica, vários outros pontos da filosofia de Aristóteles são aceitos para a construção e resolução do problema. (shrink)

The word “Hermeneutics” has an exotic aura that may seem uncharacteristic of Locke. It was not one that he employed, nor is it commonly used by his contemporary interpreters, which are reasons enough to require an explanation of its prominence in the title and in the discussion that follows. “Locke’s theory and practice of interpretation” may seem a plainer and more suitable choice of words to characterize the subject of this study, although it is a less convenient alternative, employing several (...) words to express what could be said well enough by one. However, my choice of “hermeneutics” has been prompted by other considerations than the mere economy of words. It is to be preferred, because of its rich associations, which, I believe, direct interpreters to themes in Locke’s philosophy that otherwise might go unnoticed. And this should lead to the discovery of a more fulsome and deeper, although perhaps more problematic wisdom, than is commonly supposed to be found in his writings, and perhaps also to a sense of greater, although here also more problematic, unity among them. The meaning of the word and its cognates afford us a more informative philosophical prospect than the more limited Early Modern, by harking back to Antiquity and pointing forward to Kant and beyond, facilitating the discovery in Locke’s writings of resonances with past tradition and anticipations of philosophical problems and solutions with which it is commonly supposed he had little to do. The aim of this exercise is not to fit Locke into new surroundings, but to consider him anew, hermeneutically, which necessitates that attention be paid to internal contexts of Locke’s several writings, and the “thread and coherence” of his various discourses. A comparison of these internal contexts should make it possible to decide whether there may not be a mode of thinking common to them all that, once identified and clarified, may serve as a trace or connector that unites them into a single expression of thought. (shrink)

This book explores three worlds shared by the humans in their collective experiences. It identifies and explores the world of commonsense, the world of religion, and the world of science as three essential dimensions of human experience. The book helps understand that humans can gain comfort and pleasure in commonsense, achieve meaning and purpose from religion, and attain truth and rationality through science. It actively applies theories to and develops theoretical explanations from different domains or situations of human existence. This (...) book is of interest to theorists, researchers, instructors, and students across major academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Germán Cano Gedisa Barcelona, 2023 149 páginas ISBN: 978-8419406002.

In this book the main emphasis is twofold: on autonomous machine intelligence, and on mind uploading. This chapter shows that, while science fiction (SF) has depicted the extreme embrace of the “prosthetic impulse,” most notoriously in Star Trek's“Borg,” this is used as a warning of the potential Faustian consequences of such tendencies. The Star Trek franchise has also highlighted the converse, the Pinocchio syndrome, a reverse prosthetic impulse, most notably in the android Commander Data. Data is a sentient android and (...) a full member of the Enterprise starship crew in Star Trek: The Next Generation. The inverse of the Pinocchio syndrome, the prosthetic impulse, is arguably exemplified by Star Trek's Borg, who constitute a relentless inhuman tide that threatens to overwhelm every species violently, assimilating all individual beings into the Borg collective, stifling their lan vital and incorporating them as part of a hive mind, with an inexorable “insect mentality”. (shrink)

This study measures the importance of finalizing university higher education in the income of Peruvian workers. Thus, information from the National Household Survey of Peru is analyzed, estimating three regression models based on who finished university studies and who did not. Our results show that completing university presents higher private returns than not doing it, and that the gap in returns by sex is shortened in those who finish their studies. In addition, there are higher returns in urban areas, capital (...) cities, quality universities, and in those who do not study an education career. (shrink)

This article examines the possibility of establishing a Department of Peace (DOP) as a Department of the Government of Canada. The topic has been introduced in Parliament twice, as Bill C-447 in 2009 and as Bill C-373 in 2011, without any further actions beyond the formal First Reading. The introduction of the bills could only happen on the basis of significant support among Canadians. At present efforts to introduce the DOP continue, although in somewhat muted form. Based largely on oral (...) interviews, this article assesses the potential for establishing a DOP in the context of the Canadian peace tradition as well as global developments. It concludes that a DOP has great potential to move the peace agenda forward but that, in view of the priorities of the current government and the general mood in Canadian society, it is not realistic to expect a DOP to be implemented at present. (shrink)