Yet, he also says that it is philosophically indeterminate which criterion for what exists is correct. Nominalism is the view that certain objects ( i.e ., abstract objects) do not exist, and not the view that it is philosophically indeterminate whether or not they do. I resolve the dilemma that Azzouni's claims pose: Azzouni is a non-factualist about what exists, but he is a factualist about which criterion for what exists our community of speakers has adopted. It is in the (...) latter sense only that Azzouni can call himself a nominalist. My thanks to Jody Azzouni and to an anonymous referee for helpful suggestions. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

_A gripping account of the philosophers who supported Hitler's rise to power and those whose lives were wrecked by his regime_ Hitler had a dream to rule the world, not only with the gun but also with his mind. He saw himself as a "philosopher-leader" and astonishingly gained the support of many intellectuals of his time. In this compelling book, Yvonne Sherratt explores Hitler's relationship with philosophers and uncovers cruelty, ambition, violence, and betrayal where least expected—at the heart of (...) Germany's ivory tower. Sherratt investigates international archives, discovering evidence back to the 1920s of Hitler's vulgarization of noble thinkers of the past, including Kant, Nietzsche, and Darwin. She reveals how philosophers of the 1930s eagerly collaborated to lend the Nazi regime a cloak of respectability: Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, and a host of others. And while these eminent men sanctioned slaughter, Semitic thinkers like Walter Benjamin and opponents like Kurt Huber were hunted down or murdered. Many others, such as Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt, were forced to flee as refugees. The book portrays their fates, to be dispersed across the world as the historic edifice of Jewish-German culture was destroyed by Hitler. Sherratt not only confronts the past; she also tracks down chilling evidence of continuing Nazi sympathy in Western Universities today. (shrink)

This study focuses on the cultural context of ethical decision making by considering the relationship between power distance and ethical judgment. Specifically, we propose that this relationship exists because of the influence of peers on ethical judgment and perceptions of justice. Considering the importance of peers in stage three of Kohlberg's model of moral development, we argue that peers are the basis for social comparisons, social cues and social identification and, hence, are critical to an individual's beliefs about justice. Using (...) scenarios developed by Reidenbach and Robin, data were collected from German and Italian graduate business students. Germany and Italy differ substantially in power distance, but not in the three other cultural dimensions of Hofstede. Results show that the ethical assessment of the respondents from the two countries differs when justice criteria are used. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed. (shrink)

Women generally initiate, lead, and constitute the rank and file of environmental justice activism. However, there is little research on why there are comparatively so few men involved in these movements. Using the environmental justice movement in the Central Appalachian coalfields as a case study, we examine the ways that environmental justice activism is gendered, with a focus on how women’s and men’s identities both shape and constrain their involvement in gendered ways. The analysis relies on 20 interviews with women (...) and men grassroots activists working for environmental justice in the coalfields of Appalachia. We find that women draw on their identities as “mothers” and “Appalachians” to justify their activism, while the hegemonic masculinity of the region, which is tied to the coal industry, has the opposite effect on men, deterring their movement involvement. We explore the implications of these findings for understanding the relationship of gender to environmental justice activism. (shrink)

The goal of this dissertation is two-fold. It is, first, to reconstruct Kant's argument against self-murder, and, second, to analyze the function of the principle of self-preservation of reason with regard to the prohibition of self-murder. I argue that self-murder is contrary to the principle of self-preservation of reason and violates the trustee-relationship between the homo phaenomenon and the homo noumenon. The analysis shows that moral self-preservation in Kant is a rational principle which serves to secure the possibility of moral (...) faith and self-perfection. ;In the first part of the dissertation, I provide a comprehensive analysis of Kant's argument against self-murder by examining all of the relevant statements in his works, the Nachlass, as well as the lectures recorded by Herder, Powalski, Collins, and Vigilantius. Since self-murder violates a perfect duty to oneself, key-topics of the analysis are: the dual status of the duty of self-preservation as both inner duty of right and duty of virtue, the right and end of humanity, as well as Kant's model of self-possession in terms of proprietas. The analysis makes clear that self-murder destroys the moral self and must be distinguished from sacrificing one's life in order to preserve one's moral integrity. ;In the second part of the dissertation, I interpret the duty of self-preservation and the prohibition of self-murder in the context of Kant's doctrine of the faith of reason and the principle of self-preservation of reason. I first provide an overview of the debate on self-preservation and its implications for an understanding of modern rationality and summarize the different meanings of -preservation in Kant. I then argue that the "principle of self-preservation of reason" consists in what Kant calls "the maxim of healthy reason" and that it grounds the faith and the unity of reason. Against the background of this analysis, I interpret the trustee-relationship between the homo phaenomenon and the homo noumenon as a model of moral self-obligation. Entrusting the homo phaenomenon to the homo noumenon, I contend, means to entrust life to practical reason and to subject oneself to the moral law. (shrink)

Spätestens am Beginn der 80er Jahre dieses Jahrhunderts entstand in den Geistes-und Sozialwissenschaften eine Renaissance des Ästhetischen, die bis heute andauert. Der Ästhetik wird, besonders unter dem Eindruck von Sinn­ verlust und Orientierungslosigkeit, eine besondere Leistungsfähigkeit zuge­ schrieben. Sie wird, beginnend bei speziellen Kunst-und Musiktherapien bis hin zur "Ästhetisierung des Alltags" als Mittel gegen gesellschaftliche und individuelle Probleme, seien es Jungendgewalt, Naturzerstörung, kulturelle Integration, Beziehungsschwierigkeiten oder Neurosen angeboten. Diese Beispiele stehen für ein Phänomen, welches in diesem Buch mit der Wen­ (...) dung "Versprechungen des Ästhetischen" gekennzeichnet wird. Diese Ver­ sprechungen werden heute in vielen gesellschaftlichen Bereichen als Innova­ tion offeriert und gefeiert, so daß der Eindruck vermittelt wird, daß das Medium des Ästhetischen zu keinem früheren historischen Zeitpunkt für sol­ che ethischen Absichten zur Verfügung gestanden habe. Dieser Eindruck ist indessen völlig falsch. Um zu zeigen, daß diese "Versprechungen des Ästhetischen" viel älter sind, ja daß diese Verspre­ chungen einen Toposcharakter haben, der besonders in gesellschaftlichen Krisenlagen eingesetzt wird, rekonstruiert Yvonne Ehrenspeck die Geschich­ te dieser Versprechungen seit dem Beginn ihrer modernen Version am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts. Dieser Beginn lag in der Transzendentalphilosophischen Grundlegung des Ästhetischen bei Kant, eine Konzeption, die keineswegs, wie besonders in der "postmodernen" Ästhetikrezeption gern behauptet, als gesellschaftli­ ches Versprechen intendiert war, sondern als systematisches Schlußstück für die Transzendentalphilosophie Kants. Das Buch zeigt, wie dieses systemati­ sche Interesse Kants durch Schillers Ästhetik gewissermaßen zweckentfrem­ det wird. (shrink)

Within contemporary health care, many of the decisions affecting the health and well-being of patients are not being made by the clinicians or health professionals, but by those involved in health care management. Existing literature on organizational ethics provides insight into the various structures, processes and strategies - such as mission statement, ethics committees, ethical rounds … - that exist to create an organizational climate, which fosters ethical practices and decision-making It does not, however, show how health care managers experience (...) their job as being intrinsically ethical in itself. In the present article, we investigate the way in which ethical values are present in the lived experiences and daily practice of health care management. What does it imply to take up a managing position within a health care institution and to try to do this in an ethically inspired way? We carried out a qualitative study (Grounded Theory Approach) to explore the essence of values-based leadership in health care. We interviewed 15 people with extensive experience in health care management in the fields of elderly care, hospital care and mental health care in the various regions of Flanders, Belgium. Six predominant themes, presented as metaphors, illustrate the essence of values-based leadership in health care management. These are: (1) values-based health care management as managing a large garden, (2) as learning and using a foreign language, (3) going on a trekking with an ethical compass, (4) embodying integrity and authenticity in a credible encounter with everyone, (5) being a present and trustworthy leader during sun and storm, and (6) contributing to human flourishing by giving people wings to fly. Notwithstanding the importance of organizing a good ethics infrastructure, values-based leadership in health care entails much more than that. It is about the co-creation of an integrated and comprehensive ethical climate of which community-model thinking and authentic leadership are essential components. As a never-ending process, the six metaphors can help leaders to take substantive proactive steps to shape a fruitful ethical climate within their organization. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the concept of virtue in nursing care. We particularly examine the description of ‘virtue’ offered by Aristotle, who considers it the mental constitution that forms the basis for laudable social behaviour. We then turn to Katie Eriksson's work on caritative caring ethics and draw parallels between the Aristotelian concept of virtue and being a good nurse. Eriksson suggests that embracing an ethos, a set of basic values, affects nurses’ attitudes as well as the way they (...) speak and take on their responsibility for the patient. We discuss these ideas in relation to a tentative ideal model of the movement from ethos to action to understand and address nurses’ ethical thinking and acting. Here, we focus on the catalytic role of virtue as a means for realizing a deliberate, intentional acting with the best of the patient in mind. As an outcome of our analysis, we suggest that the movement of virtue from ethos to action is most usefully conceptualized as knowledge about facts, habits of the heart, deeds of the hand and the power of words. Implications for nursing leadership are suggested, including incorporating organizational values through the means of ethical conversations. (shrink)

John Rawls’s writings on just war, though limited, shed important light on the ethics of political violence. This chapter explores Rawls’s contribution to just war theory, paying particular attention to how he differs from his contemporary, Michael Walzer, as well as from future methodological sympathizers, the “revisionists,” who also turn to analytical philosophy to draw insights about just war. In contrast to the “revisionists,” however, Rawls does not take the reductive individualist turn. Rather, he extends the original position that defines (...) the domestic setting to peoples inhabiting the international level. This assumption sets the stage for his theorizing about just war, which tracks closely with Kant (on democratic peace theory) and Walzer (on supreme emergency), while offering insights into just war against “outlaw” states, individual conscientious objection in response to unjust wars, and the role that just war tenets might play in setting the stage for peace. Ultimately, Rawls’s thinking about the place of political collectives in the international domain offers insights for better navigating the methodological disagreements between traditional and revisionist views of just war from a largely untapped but analytically rigorous, perspective. (shrink)

Continental Philosophy of Social Science demonstrates the unique and autonomous nature of the continental approach to social science and contrasts it with the Anglo-American tradition. Yvonne Sherratt argues for the importance of an historical understanding of the Continental tradition in order to appreciate its individual, humanist character. Examining the key traditions of hermeneutic, genealogy, and critical theory, and the texts of major thinkers such as Gadamer, Ricoeur, Derrida, Nietzsche, Foucault, the Early Frankfurt School and Habermas, she also contextualizes contemporary (...) developments within strands of thought stemming back to Ancient Greece and Rome. Sherratt shows how these modes of thinking developed through medieval Christian thought into the Enlightenment and Romantic eras, before becoming mainstays of twentieth-century disciplines. Continental Philosophy of Social Science will serve as the essential textbook for courses in philosophy or social sciences. (shrink)

Background: Within nursing, the concepts of home and homelike have been used indiscriminately to describe characteristics of healthcare settings that resemble a home more than an institution. Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the concept of home ( hem in Swedish). The main questions were as follows: What does the concept of home entail etymologically and semantically? Of what significance is the meaning of the concept to caring science and nursing? Design and methods: This study had a (...) qualitative design with a hermeneutical approach guided by Gadamer. Eriksson’s model of concept determination was partly used to determine the etymology and semantics, the essence and epistemic category of the concept of home. In this study, etymological dictionaries and 17 Swedish language dictionaries published between 1850 and 2001 were investigated. Ethical consideration: In all parts of this study, ethical guidelines have been followed concerning both gathering data from dictionaries and other sources and during the interpretation of these sources. Findings: The home, framed as the ethos of caring, can be drawn as a three-dimensional picture where the three dimensions have a common core, enclosed and inviolable. Symbolically, the picture of home can be seen as the ethos of the human being’s innermost room, the human being’s manner of being and the tone expressed in the external or abstract room where the human being lives and interacts with others. Conclusion: Based on the findings in this study, we conclude that home as ethos is an inner ethical dimension within the human being. Human beings who are in contact with their ethos, the self, feel at home and dare to follow the voice of their heart. Nurses who experience at-homeness have an ability to invite the patient into a caring relationship. The home and the feeling of being at home have significant meaning in terms of human beings’ health and well-being. (shrink)

To augment the consumption of the ever growing production of processed foods, food companies are specifically targeting children with their advertisements. Advertising has even infiltrated the educational system in the form of corporate sponsored “educational materials.” This paper discusses the effects such aggressive forms of advertising have on the development of personal autonomy, or self-governance. I argue that the bad reasoning skills such advertisements promote undermine the development of the very abilities children need to become adults capable of making rational (...) choices. A detailed look at several types of food advertisements aimed at children supports this claim. (shrink)

This book represents the most comprehensive attempt to date to explore and test Derrida's contribution and influence on the study of theology, biblical studies, and the philosophy of religion. Over the course of the last decade, the writings of Derrida and the key concepts that emerge from his work such as the gift, apocalypse, hospitality, and messianism have wrought far-reaching and irresistible changes in the way that scholars approach biblical texts, comparative religious studies, and religious violence, for instance, as well (...) as the way they understand basic religious themes as myth, creation, forgiveness, one-ness, and multiplicity. In addition to original contributions from over twenty highly-regarded scholars including John Caputo, Daniel Boyarin, Edith Wyschogrod, Tim Beal, and Gil Anidjar, the volume opens with a lengthy interview with Derrida. (shrink)

This book offers an interpretation of the work of Theodor Adorno. In contrast to the conventional view that Adorno's is in essence a critical philosophy, Yvonne Sherratt traces systematically a utopian thesis that pervades all the major aspects of Adorno's thought. She places Adorno's work in the context of German Idealist and later Marxist and Freudian traditions, and then analyses his key works to show how the aesthetic, epistemological, psychological, historical and sociological thought interconnect to form a utopian image. (...) The book will be eagerly sought out by students and specialists in philosophy, social and political theory, intellectual history, literary theory and cultural studies. (shrink)

Distributed Cognition is a hybrid approach to studying all aspects of cognition, from a cognitive, social and organisational perspective. The most well known level of analysis is to account for complex socially distributed cognitive activities, of which a diversity of technological artefacts and other tools and representations are an indispensable part.

In 2009, with the enactment of the Lisbon Treaty, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union entered into force. Under Article 8 of the Charter, for the first time, a stand-alone fundamental right to data protection was declared. The creation of this right, standing as a distinct right to the right to privacy, is undoubtedly significant, and it is unique to the European legal order, being absent from other international human rights instruments. This commentary examines the parameters of (...) this new right to data protection, asking what are the principles underpinning the right. It argues that the right reflects some key values inherent in the European legal order, namely: privacy, transparency, autonomy and nondiscrimination. It also analyses some of the challenges in implementing this right in an era of ubiquitous veillance practices and Big Data. (shrink)

Yvonne C. Zimmerman offers a groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between freedom and sexual regulation in American approaches to human trafficking.

Taiwan and Kurdistan appear to have little in common, but the progressive values of these two societies embedded within hostile regions make them both natural allies and important strategic assets in the U.S.’s and international community’s long-term fight against authoritarianism and radical religious theocracies. Instead, they have been ignored and/or exploited in the pursuit of short-term geopolitical and economic interests in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions, which comes at great cost to American and international values as well as long-term (...) strategic interests, so both citizens and policymakers must consider new approaches. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 10, Page 12-14, October 2012.

Ontological naturalism is the view that our best construal of what there is, is what science says there is. This paper argues that while such a doctrine is very appealing, unfortunately, determining what there is, is neither as simple, nor as straightforward, as ontological naturalism would have it seem. Determining what there is, it is claimed, involves three steps. First, one must decide which part of scientific discourse should be taken as true. One must then regiment that part of scientific (...) discourse, and finally, one has to apply a criterion for ontological commitment to that regimented discourse. This paper will concentrate on the first and third of these tasks. It is argued that resolving the tasks these steps put before us requires the employment of philosophical maneuvers, that is, maneuvers that neither originate within, nor are ratified by, the practice of science. But these are maneuvers that the ontological naturalist is not entitled to. Thus, ontological naturalism is not a feasible doctrine. (shrink)

*North American Society for Social Philosophy (NASSP) Book Award 2019.* -/- *International Studies Association (ISA) - International Ethics Section Book Award 2021.* -/- Although military mores have relied primarily on just war theory, the ethic of cooperation in warfare (ECW)—between enemies even as they are trying to kill each other—is as central to the practice of warfare and to conceptualization of its morality. Neither game theory nor unilateral moral duties (God-given or otherwise) can explain the explicit language of cooperation in (...) developing and enforcing principles of military ethics and the law of armed conflict. -/- The ethic of cooperation is borne of various motivations: reciprocity, self-preservation, and efficiency, to be sure, but also a sense of warrior honor and concern with human rights. This shared morality can persist despite making it more difficult for one side or the other to win and, unfortunately, its well-meaning motivations often lead to unintended tragic consequences. -/- This book explores three manifestations of this significant yet overlooked ethic of cooperation in warfare: (1) for a “fair fight,” (2) to protect classes of individuals (e.g., non-combatants or prisoners of war), and (3) to end the war quickly. Such cooperation can take unexpected forms, from ad hoc decisions on the battlefield to institutionalization in international law, and is the source of some critical tensions in one of the most significant developments in warfare in recent years: namely, how to handle terrorism or other forms of warfare that lie outside the purview of international law. -/- Each type of ECW raises questions internal to that ethic, such as inconsistencies in the concept of “parity” across different weapons bans, contradictions within the warrior ethic that heavily influence—and therefore confuse—notions of the “fair fight,” the disconnect between what protections a person receives and his responsibility for the war (e.g., political leaders), or the limited decisiveness of outcomes generated by very short wars. -/- Their simultaneous application also generates significant tensions and raises questions about the proper relationship of ECW to the immediate goal of war itself, which is to win, and thus yield either a political settlement or a justicial decision. For example, the ECWs for a “fair fight” and to protect classes of individuals can make it harder to win the war, but even more concerning is that they can also kill more people, which in the latter case contravenes its very purpose. -/- Human history is in some ways the story of trying to concurrently wage and tame war, and the architecture of warfare itself is informed by the ECW, in particular: (a) the political nature of war, (b) the abdication from jus ad bellum judgments in order to concentrate on justice within war (jus in bello), and (c) the ways in which modern nation-states collude to define “legitimacy” in war. -/- The combination of these three features leave questions of justicial right and responsibility for war disturbingly unresolved, it also generates new challenges in a geopolitical context in which cooperative and non-cooperative (e.g. contemporary terrorism) forms of warfare clash. (shrink)

Contemporary international law separates the international justice of war from the domestic justice of society, but empirically, there is a correlation between democratic governance and military effectiveness, which could have a number of causes. A contemporary reconstruction from _The Seven Military Classics_ of Chinese military philosophy offers potential lessons for how domestic virtues may yield military and geopolitical victory. This chapter reconstructs arguments from the seven treatises into a collective an amalgamated conception of “good governance” that weaves together military strategy (...) and virtue ethics and maintains that good governance at home actually wins wars abroad. A reconstructed classical Chinese conception of “good governance” presents theoretical and ethical challenges, but also offers viable justicial content for contemporary jus ad bellum considerations beyond sovereign self-defense or human rights. It presents a way of instantiating the sprawling conception of human rights that falls short in contemporary discourse. (shrink)

Non-uniformed combat morally infringes on civilians’ fundamental right to immunity and exacts an impermissible form of unofficial conscription that is morally prohibited even if the civilians knowingly consent to it. It is often argued that revolutionary groups burdened by resource disparities relative to the state or who claim alternative sources of political legitimacy (such as national self-determination or the constitution of a political collective) are justified in using unconventional tactics such as non-uniformed combat. Neither those reasons nor the provision of (...) public goods, however, are sufficient to justify such rights violations and this form of conscription, and it calls into question the suitability of current international legal protections for the non-uniformed. (shrink)

The social media industry lacks developed principles of professional ethics that it would need in order to better navigate the ethics of conforming to local media laws in authoritarian countries that lack meaningful protections for privacy, personal and political expression, and intellectual property. This chapter analyzes this question through three frameworks of professional ethics—journalism ethics, technology ethics, and business ethics—and the ways that social media resembles and crucially differs from these three industries.

For Quine, the ontological commitments of a discourse are what fall under its (objectual) quantifiers. The recent literature, however, is beginning to move away from this picture. There are direct challenges to Quine's criterion, and there are also attempts to provide alternatives. Azzouni suggests that the ontological commitments of a discourse should be determined by an existence predicate instead. The availability of this alternative forces an adjudication between Qune's criterion and the predicate approach to ontological commitment. I argue that to (...) adjudicate between these criteria for ontological commitment, we need first to adjudicate between criteria for what exists. (shrink)

Background: The school is a key environment for establishing good health habits among pupils. School nurses play a prominent role in health promotion, since they meet with every single adolescent. Research aim: To describe care ethics in the context of school nurses’ health-promoting activities among adolescents in secondary schools. Research design: An explorative descriptive methodology in which semi-structured interviews were used to collect data and content analysis was performed. Participants and research context: Data were collected from eight school nurses in (...) a municipality in Western Sweden. Ethical considerations: This study was conducted according to the ethical principles of the Swedish Research Council (2011), and the written informed consent of the participants was obtained. Findings/discussion: A caring relation, based on care ethics, is the basis for successful health-promoting activities among adolescents. The school nurses show strong engagement in and commitment to caring for and caring about adolescents by being attentive and listening to their expressed feelings and needs, both spoken and unspoken. Furthermore, the school nurses have a deep sense of responsibility in supporting and empowering adolescents to trust their own capabilities. To enhance health and well-being, school nurses emphasize low-threshold counselling, flexibility, openness, early intervention and continuity, as well as good collaboration with the health team at school and with parents. Conclusion: Strengthening person-centred healthcare can provide adolescents with the recognition and support they need to grow into healthy adults. For successful health promotion, all aspects of the ethics of care should be considered as part of an integrated whole based on the integrity of care. (shrink)

The Finnish nursing theorist Katie Eriksson's (1943–2019) theory of caritative caring represents a non‐medical paradigm concerning the phenomena of nursing. The aim of this article was to present an oversight of the development of Eriksson's theory of caritative caring from a human science point of view. The historical development of the theory is outlined, combined with a brief overview of its philosophical connections, its impact on contemporary caring science research and its implications for nursing care. Caring science is considered a (...) human science in the Nordic tradition, as it is deeply rooted in basic issues of human life and existence. The key ideas of Eriksson's theory of caritative caring are linked to the metaparadigm concepts of human being, health and suffering, caring and environment. All of these are permeated with the ethos of caritative caring, that is, the caritas thought of human love and mercy, and the honouring of the absolute dignity of human beings. Epistemologically, Gadamer is the most influential philosopher when it comes to the theory of caritative caring. Eriksson's theory is used in, for example, intercultural caring, caring for patients suffering from addiction, the importance of aesthetic surroundings, providing ethically good care for older people and mothers as patients in psychiatric care. In these fields of research, Eriksson's ideas of ethics, caring and suffering are highlighted in various clinical contexts. Beyond the areas of nursing care in which Eriksson's work has been cited and developed, there are at least two areas that have been actively enhanced by her works: the field of leadership and education for nursing teachers. According to Eriksson, it is momentous to ponder scientific results as not limited to empirically strengthened, randomized outcomes. Part of making the results of scientific work evident is up to the individual nurses and their being in the world. (shrink)

Community based participatory research is an effective tool in engaging under-represented minorities in research. To be successful, CBPR must be culturally sensitive, re...

This paper argues that, contrary to the views of Nancy Cartwright and Brian Ellis, explanations are factive: if a statement is taken to be an explanation, it also has to be accepted as true. Taking explanations to be true, in turn, seems to imply that all the entities posited in explanations are real. But this is precisely what some philosophers, such as Cartwright and Ellis, want to deny. What these philosophers do not want to deny, however, is that such statements (...) do explain. As a result, they see themselves forced to reject the facticity of explanation, a strategy that is unacceptable in my view. In order to avoid the further conclusion that all of the entities explanations posit exist, I propose to separate truth from ontology: explanations can be true, but the truth of these explanations alone does not commit us to the entities that these explanations posit. To determine where the ontological commitments of our statements lie, we must instead start with a criterion (a necessary and sufficient condition) for what exists. For instance, if all and only entities with causal powers are real, then this tells us that the only entities our true statements are committed to are entities with causal powers. (shrink)