Assent and permission rejoinder

We share Roberts and Buckloh's (this issue) concern about issues of assent and permission in research with children and agree that our research cannot conclude legitimately that (a) researchers failed to obtain permission/assent, (b) children were put at risk, or (c) failure to report permission/assent procedures was, in any way, unethical. We never made these conclusions. Rather, we argue that publishing assent and permission would enhance compliance with ethical standards, sensitize researchers and readers to its importance, and shift publishing priorities in an appropriate direction.     

New foundations for counterfactuals

Philosophers typically rely on intuitions when providing a semantics for counterfactual conditionals. However, intuitions regarding counterfactual conditionals are notoriously shaky. The aim of this paper is to provide a principled account of the semantics of counterfactual conditionals. This principled account is provided by what I dub the Royal Rule, a deterministic analogue of the Principal Principle relating chance and credence. The Royal Rule says that an ideal doxastic agent’s initial grade of disbelief in a proposition \(A\) , given that the counterfactual distance in a given context to the closest \(A\) -worlds equals \(n\) , and no further information that is not admissible in this context, should equal \(n\) . Under the two assumptions that the presuppositions of a given context are admissible in this context, and that the theory of deterministic alethic or metaphysical modality is admissible in any context, it follows that the counterfactual distance distribution in a given context has the structure of a ranking function. The basic conditional logic V is shown to be sound and complete with respect to the resulting rank-theoretic semantics of counterfactuals.     

Conditional permission in deontic logic

Conclusion In the face of the considerations set forth above, I submit that Anderson's proposed definition (D) does not represent an acceptable construction of the concept of conditional permission. This, in turn, suggests that conditional permission must be viewed as a viable deontic relationship in its own right, and is not definable in terms of unconditional deontic concepts. It appears, then, that a reduction of conditional to unconditional deontic logic is not warranted.     

Theor of free choice permission

I argue that the conjunctive distribution of permissibility over or, which is a puzzling feature of free-choice permission is just one instance of a more general class of conjunctive occurrences of the word, and that these conjunctive uses are more directly explicable by the consideration that or is a descendant of oper than by reference to the disjunctive occurrences which logicalist prejudices may tempt us to regard as semantically more fundamental. I offer an account of how the disjunctive uses of or may have come about through an intermediate discourse-adverbial use of or, drawing a parallel with but, which, etymologically, is disjunctive rather than conjunctive and whose conjunctive uses seem to represent just such a discourse-adverbial application.     

Theological foundations for spiritual care

Five theological tenets are described which may undergird the integration of religious awareness and spiritual care into nursing curricula. The five all emphasize addressing the articulated needs of the patient within the context of the nursing process. These tenets, while Wesleyan in emphasis, suggest ways in which any nurse may engage in the common ministry of all Christians without usurping the role of clergy or chaplains.This article is a revision of a chapter of Dr. Brittain's doctoral dissertation from St. Mary's Seminary and University.     

A conditional logic for abduction

We propose a logic of abduction that (i) provides an appropriate formalization of the explanatory conditional, and that (ii) captures the defeasible nature of abductive inference. For (i), we argue that explanatory conditionals are non-classical, and rely on Brian Chellas’s work on conditional logics for providing an alternative formalization of the explanatory conditional. For (ii), we make use of the adaptive logics framework for modeling defeasible reasoning. We show how our proposal allows for a more natural reading of explanatory relations, and how it overcomes problems faced by other systems in the literature.     

Probabilistic foundations for coefficients of generalizability

This paper explores certain problems which arise within the context of the theory of generalizability put forward by Cornbach, Rajaratnam, and Gleser. In particular, a formal explication of their theory for the single observation is given, and the various coefflcients of generalizability which they define are related to the estimation of universe scores.This work is based on a Master's thesis submitted to the University of Illinois in 1963. The author is particularly indebted to Dr. Lee J. Cornbach and Dr. Ledyard R Tucker for their unstinted advice and help.     

Philosophical foundations of respect for autonomy

Understanding the philosophical foundations of the principle of respect for autonomy is essential for its proper application within medical ethics. The foundations provided by Immanuel Kant's principle of humanity and John Stuart Mill's principle of liberty share substantial areas of agreement including: the grounding of respect for autonomy in the capacity for rational agency, the restriction of this principle to rational agents, and the important distinction between influence and control. Their work helps to clarify the scope and role of the principle of respect for autonomy in health care delivery; its implications for truth telling, informed consent, and confidentiality; and its relationship to other moral principles, such as beneficence and distributive justice.     

Metascientific foundations for pluralism in psychology

In this paper, I explore the metascientific basis for pluralism in psychology. In the first half, I outline the two levels of the metaparadigm: the epistemological and the methodological. The epistemological level includes the dichotomy between an internal, first-person point of view and an external, third-person one. The methodological level includes the dichotomy between explanation and understanding. The continuing debate regarding methodology, explanation versus understanding, has distinguished the human sciences from the natural sciences. Similarly, the continuing debate regarding the epistemological point of view has distinguished psychology from other sciences. I illustrate these points by placing various trends in psychology into the two-dimensional space formed by the two coordinate axes depicting the methodological and the epistemological dimensions. Each quadrant represents one definition of the object of psychology: quadrant 1 (internal, first-person - explanation) represents “consciousness;” quadrant 2 (internal, first-person - understanding) represents “experiences;” quadrant 3 (external, third-person - understanding) represents “meaningful acts and expressions;” and quadrant 4 (external, third-person - explanation) represents “behaviors and higher processes of the brain.” All of the trends within the history of psychology can be placed within this two-dimensional space. In the second half of the paper, I introduce the third level of the metaparadigm: the metapsychological level. This level includes the three different, and incompatible conceptions of humans: the first-person, the second-person, and the third-person conceptions. A third-person conception of humans is most compatible with trends placed in quadrant 4. A second-person conceptualization is most congruent with quadrant 3, and so on. Thus, the unification of psychologies emerges as not only difficult but actually unreasonable, because the plurality of psychological paradigms originates from the epistemological, methodological, and metapsychological levels of the metaparadigm.     

Understanding standing: permission to deflect reasons

Standing is a peculiar norm, allowing for deflecting that is rejecting offhand and without deliberation interventions such as directives. Directives are speech acts that aim to give directive-reasons, which are reason to do as the directive directs because of the directive. Standing norms, therefore, provide for deflecting directives regardless of validity (i.e., regardless of whether or not a directive succeeds in giving a directive-reason) or the normative weight of the rejected directive. The logic of the normativity of standing is, therefore, not the logic of invalidating directives or of competing with directive-reasons but of ‘exclusionary permission’. That is, standing norms provide for permission to exclude from practical deliberation directive-reasons if given without the requisite standing, regardless of their normative weight. As such, standing is a type of second-order norm. Numerous everyday practices involve the deflection of directives, such as pervasive practices of deflecting hypocritical and officious directives. Of various possible models, the one that best captures the normative structure of these practices of deflection is the standing model. Accordingly, the normativity of standing is pervasive in our everyday practices. Establishing that standing, although a neglected philosophical idea, is a significant and independent normative concept.     

A gentzen system for conditional logic

Conditional logic is the deductive system , where is the set of propositional connectives {, ,} and is the structural finitary consequence relation on the absolutely free algebra that preserves degrees of truth over the structure of truth values C, . HereC is the non-commutative regular extension of the 2-element Boolean algebra to 3 truth values {t, u, f}, andf<u<t. In this paper we give a Gentzen type axiomatization for conditional logic.Presented byJan Zygmunt     

Revision algebra semantics for conditional logic

The properties of belief revision operators are known to have an informal semantics which relates them to the axioms of conditional logic. The purpose of this paper is to make this connection precise via the model theory of conditional logic. A semantics for conditional logic is presented, which is expressed in terms of algebraic models constructed ultimately out of revision operators. In addition, it is shown that each algebraic model determines both a revision operator and a logic, that are related by virtue of the stable Ramsey test.The author is grateful for a correction and several other valuable suggestions of two anonymous referees. This work was supported by the McDonnell Douglas Independent Research and Development program.