Logic,Rules and Intention: The Principal Aim Argument

Stephen Mumford develops his view of sport spectatorship partly through a rejection of an argument he attributes to Best, which distinguishes between two categories of sports, the ‘purposive’ and the ‘aesthetic’, on the basis of the claim that they have different principal aims. This paper considers the principal aim argument and one feature of Mumford’s rejection of that argument, namely, Best’s observation that the distinctions to which he draws attention are based on logical differences. The paper argues that Mumford misconstrues Best’s argument by taking it to be about the intentions of players and athletes, while it is actually about a specific feature of the rules of each sport.     

The perfect murder: A philosophical whodunit

In his Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit argues from the possibility of cases of fission and/or fusion of persons that one must reject identity as what matters for personal survival. Instead Parfit concludes that what matters is “psychological connectedness and/or continuity with the right kind of cause,” or what he calls an R-relation. In this paper, I argue that, if one accepts Parfit’s conclusion, one must accept that R-relations are what matter for moral responsibility as well. Unfortunately, it seems that accepting that the R-relation is what matters for both survival and moral responsibility leads to a contradiction. My goal, however, is not merely to point out a problem in Parfit’s account. Instead, I believe that once we understand the basic intuitions which lead to this contradiction, it is clear that there is no fully satisfactory way to account for what matters with respect to survival and moral responsibility.     

The Cognitive Development Society Best Authored Book Award

At the third biennial meeting of the Cognitive Development Society, held in San Diego, California, in October 2005, the Society was pleased to announce the winner of the first Best Authored Book Award. The volume selected for the award was Susan Gelman's The Essential Child: Origins of Essentialism in Everyday Thought (2003, Oxford University Press). The Best Authored Book Award was initiated by the third President of the Society, Susan Goldin-Meadow (2003-2005). The Essential Child is the first recipient of the award. It was selected from among 10 nominations of volumes published in 2002 or 2003; the other nominees are listed below. The volumes were considered by committee members Patricia Bauer (Chair), Judy DeLoache, Jean Mandler, Nora Newcombe, and Steve Reznick. Congratulations Susan Gelman, on receipt of the first Cognitive Development Society Best Authored Book Award.     

Using a new analysis of the best interests standard to address cultural disputes: Whose data,which values?

Clinicians sometimes disagree about how much to honor surrogates’ deeply held cultural values or traditions when they differ from those of the host country. Such a controversy arose when parents requested a cultural accommodation to let their infant die by withdrawing life saving care. While both the parents and clinicians claimed to be using the Best Interests Standard to decide what to do, they were at an impasse. This standard is analyzed into three necessary and jointly sufficient conditions and used to resolve the question of how much to accommodate cultural preferences and how to treat this infant. The extreme versions of absolutism and relativism are rejected. Properly understood, the Best Interests Standard can serve as a powerful tool in settling disputes about how to make good decisions for those who cannot decide for themselves.     

Three-Year Itch: Communicating Information to Minimize Faculty Anxiety During College and University Presidential Transition

Abstract

Through a mixed methodology study of college and university faculty and presidents’ perceptions as they experience presidential change in Christian higher education, researchers addressed these research questions: Are there factors present that contribute to successful change during administrative transition in Christian higher education? If so, what are these factors? Faculty were surveyed using the Best Christian Workplaces (BCW) instrument. Following analysis of survey results, faculty participated in focus groups to qualitatively respond to the BCW survey. Finally, an interim president and newly elected president were interviewed to assess their perceptions of presidential transitions in Christian higher education. Researchers affirm conclusions from the literature and explain a key finding that contributes to the field of presidential change in Christian higher education.     

What is an expert?

Experts play an important role in society, but there has been little investigation about the nature of expertise. I argue that there are two kinds of experts: those whose expertise is a function of what theyknow (epistemic expertise), or what theydo (performative expertise). Epistemic expertise is the capacity to provide strong justifications for a range of propositions in a domain, while performative expertise is the capacity to perform a skill well according to the rules and virtues of a practice. Both epistemic and performative experts may legitimately disagree with one another, and the two senses are conceptually and logically distinct.     

Moral life as the obstacle to the development of ethical theory

It is often taken for granted that there is a crucial dichotomy between positive science, with its interest in what is the case, and morality, with its supposed interest in what ought to be the case. This assumption takes its departure from a belief in the notion of unconditional or categorical obligation or ‘the moral’ as ‘that whose nature it is to be required or demanded’. The notion of unconditional or categorical obligation, together with the assumption that there is a dichotomy between considerations of what is the case and what ought to be the case, however widespread and entrenched this notion and assumption might be, are logically confused. But to demonstrate this logical confusion is not the only task confronting ethical theory. Another, and often neglected task, is to draw attention to the ethical origins of this confusion in a particular way of life. Hegel's distinction between Moralität (Moral Life) and Sittlichkeit (Ethical Life) is of critical importance here. The obstacle to the development of ethical theory, then, is not some abstract ’logical confusion’, but is, rather, the way of life (Moral Life) of which this confusion is a natural expression.     

Linear relations amongk sets of variables

A family of solutions for linear relations amongk sets of variables is proposed. It is shown how these solutions apply fork=2, and how they can be generalized from there tok3.The family of solutions depends on three independent choices: (i) to what extent a solution may be influenced by differences in variances of components within each set; (ii) to what extent the sets may be differentially weighted with respect to their contribution to the solution—including orthogonality constraints; (iii) whether or not individual sets of variables may be replaced by an orthogonal and unit normalized basis.Solutions are compared with respect to their optimality properties. For each solution the appropriate stationary equations are given. For one example it is shown how the determinantal equation of the stationary equations can be interpreted.     

Arts-of-Living

The term 'art-of-living' refers to capabilities for leading a good life. Since there are different views on what a good life is, there could also be a difference in the capabilities called for. In this paper I distinguish two main views on the good life: the 'virtuous' life and the 'enjoyable' life and describe variants of each. I explore what competencies are required for living such lives and conclude that these differ indeed. So there are different arts-of-living. The set of capabilities required for leading a happy life can be identified by means of empirical research. This capability-profile comes close to the notion of 'positive mental health'. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

ONTOLOGICAL NATURALISM*

Abstract: 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.     

Grading matters in theological education

Grading systems matter more to the teaching and learning enterprise than many teachers may realize, as demonstrated in the author's experience of adopting a new one. Different systems emphasize different values such as excellence vs. perfection, achievement vs. talent, and second chances vs. partial credit. The author relates her experiment with specifications grading, an outcome‐based, pass/fail, rubric‐based, and contractual grading system, and demonstrates its promise. She then addresses three questions her experiment raised: Should I grade at all and if so, toward what end? Exactly what am I grading when I grade? and Is there any way to lessen the sting of failure?     

“A GREATEST MIRACLE”: STANLEY CAVELL,MORAL PERFECTIONISM,AND THE ASCENT INTO THE ORDINARY

What to make of “the ordinary,”“the everyday,” and their common “eventfulness”? What to think of what Veena Das, in her recent book Life and Words, prefaced by Stanley Cavell, has called our need to “descent into the ordinary”? Is there a parallel figure of “ascent,” again, into the same “ordinary,” that we might we want to juxtapose with it and that resembles the motif of “change,” even “conversion,” that Cavell analyzes at some length in The Claim of Reason and throughout his oeuvre as a whole? And what could be our reasons for doing so? This essay will draw on Cavell's reading of Ibsen's work in the volume Cities of Words to spell out what such an “ascent” might mean.     

Is rowe committed to an expanded version of theism?

I argue in this paper two theses. First, I argue that the internal consistency of the argument from evil demands that it take into account some form of EST. Thus, there is no ground for the atheist to chide the theist when the theist appeals to an expanded version of theism. Second, I show that it isprima facie probable that RST does in fact ential EST. I show this by capitalizing on the distinction between what is contained in a concept and what is entailed by a concept. What a term or concept means is different from what it may entail. What a concept or term entails is conceptually more robust than what it simply means. I call this the “containment objection” and if is true, then the restricted conjunction rule cannot apply since a version of theism sufficient to deflate the evidential argument would not be logically independent from RST,pace Rowe.     

What determines biological fitness? The problem of the reference environment

Organisms’ environments are thought to play a fundamental role in determining their fitness and hence in natural selection. Existing intuitive conceptions of environment are sufficient for biological practice. I argue, however, that attempts to produce a general characterization of fitness and natural selection are incomplete without the help of general conceptions of what conditions are included in the environment. Thus there is a “problem of the reference environment”—more particularly, problems of specifying principles which pick out those environmental conditions which determine fitness. I distinguish various reference environment problems and propose solutions to some of them. While there has been a limited amount of work on problems concerning what I call “subenvironments”, there appears to be no earlier work on problems of what I call the “whole environment”. The first solution I propose for a whole environment problem specifies the overall environment for natural selection on a set of biological types present in a population over a specified period of time. The second specifies an environment relevant to extinction of types in a population; this kind of environment is especially relevant to certain kinds of long-term evolution.     

Die Mathematisierung der Erfahrung: Vorg?nger zu Carnaps “Aufbau”

At present, there is a renewed interest in thoseaspects of Rudolf Carnap's LogischerAufbau der Welt that cannot just be reduced tothe tradition of logical positivism. There is, however,one of these aspects which seems to have beenneglected by the historical analyses of theAufbau's background: what may be called aprogram for the mathematization of sense experience,as developed by Carnap in the most difficult partof his work, Chapter IV/A. It is the program of applying settheory and topology to the reconstruction of phenomenal structures,quite independently of any other general philosophical aim.I claim that there are three forerunners of this program:Henri Poincaré's essayPourquoi l'espace a trois dimensions (1912), Chapter 4of Bertrand Russell's Our Knowledge of the ExternalWorld (1914), and Jean Nicod's La géométriedans le monde sensible (1923). This article provides acomparison of these different instances of theabove-mentioned program.     

Kant,wittgenstein and the limits of logic

This paper has two purposes. (1) To justify the claim that there is an important distinction underlying the saying/showing distinction of the Tractatus; the distinction which Kant characterises as that between historical and rational knowledge. (2) To argue that it is because the Tractatus accepts Frege/Russell logic as a complete representation of all thought according to laws, that what is shown cannot be recognised as knowledge. This is done by interpolating Frege's logical innovations between the views of Kant and Wittgenstein on logic and mathematics.     

“Love of same,love of other”

The positions in feminist theory and theology tend to be polarized between so‐called essentialists and constructionists. Yet, despite apparent anthropological dissension, both parties try to substantiate political and ecclesiastical claims through definitions: what is sexual difference, what is gender, what is a woman, what is she not. For the purpose of mending how we usually approach these questions, I claim instead that the most important theological issue in the realities of males and females is not that their bodies “work” differently, nor that their social positions usually are different and “mean” differently in different cultures, but that they take part in the constitution, recreation and representation of different human subject positions of which there are everywhere and always at least two. My tentative arguments are developed from engaging with the Swiss theologian Karl Barth and the French philosopher Luce Irigaray.     

Say What? On Grice On What Is Said

Abstract: In this paper I argue that there is a very important, though often neglected, dissimilarity between the two Gricean conceptions of ‘what is said’: the one presented in his William James Lectures and the one sketched in the ‘Retrospective Epilogue’ to his book Studies in the Way of Words. The main problem lies with the idea of speakers' commitment to what they say and how this is to be related to the conventional, or standard, meaning of the sentences uttered in the act of saying. Since the later notion of ‘what is said’, or ‘dictiveness’, is claimed to be logically independent from ‘formality’ (roughly, conventional meaning), Grice seems to maintain that there are cases in which content that is not expressed by a sentence in a context may nevertheless count as what is said. I propose an account of what is said that brings together the two apparently irreconcilable approaches. The price to be paid for a Gricean, however, is to accept a duality of behaviour between (natural language counterparts of) logical constants and logical variables.