Are there human rights?

Conclusion In conclusion, I have tried to show that if there are any rights at all, legal, moral and political, there are at least the sorts of human rights cited in the Universal Declaration, rights which extend beyond the slender base provided by Hart's right to be free and which include the right to an adequate human life for everyone, rights shared by all, rights that, as rights, imply correlative duties. Even though the duties thus implied are admittedly imperfect, as rights, they confer upon right-holders, the authority to obligate others.I have argued for the most part against regarding any rights, even some human, rights (interchangable here with manifesto rights, welfare rights, rights of recipience, social and economic rights, programme rights, Fawcett calls them, positive in rem rights) as claims to rights or proposals for adoption as rights. I have argued that to have a right of any kind, including especially a human right, one shared by and held equally by all human beings,while not unconditional or unalterable, is fundamentally important, - to return once again to Feinberg's definition at the opening of this paper. A human right is fundamentally important, however, only if it, too, implies an obligation on the part of other people, one in which other people are obligated to use their power and resources to make things happen. To havea right is to be in a position to impose corresponding obligations on others. As Kant pointed out, a right of any kind gives a right holder a title to compel.

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Unarticulated meaning

It is a common experience of mental life that we come to articulate meanings which we had initially grasped in only a sketchy way. In this paper, I consider how this idea of an initially unarticulated meaning may fit in a general theory of mental representation. I propose to identify unarticulated meanings with what I callspecific concepts, which are quite similar to Rosch's categories of basic objects and are distinct both from images and generic concepts (which come to articulate meanings). I argue that unarticulated meaning is non-representational in an important respect, a claim which relies on a distinction amonglevels of representation.     

Six-year-old children's understanding of sentences adjoined with time adverbs

The adjoining of clauses with temporal links is the basis for many sentences that convey sequence of events. The present study attempts to delineate 6-year-old children's (N=30) understanding of the meaning sequences imparted by sentences adjoined with after, before, and until. Their performance of the meaning sequence for each of 24 carefully constructed sentences is compared to an adult model. Analysis of the results (using a Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Signed Rank Test) indicated that: (1)Ss understood sentences adjoined with after according to an adult model more frequently than before adjoined sentences (P<0.01); (b) Until adjoined sentences with a negative marker in the main clause were understood according to an adult model more often than until adjoined sentences with no such negative element, but the difference was not significant at a=0.01; (3)Ss understood before adjoined sentences according to an adult model more often than until adjoined sentences, but the difference was not significant at a=0.01. In general, the results indicated that 6-year-olds have not yet completed development of an adult grammar with respect to adjoining clauses with temporal links, after, before, and until.     

A Gabbay-Rule Free Axiomatization of T×W Validity

The semantical structures called T×W frames were introduced in (Thomason, 1984) for the Ockhamist temporal-modal language, _O, which consists of the usual propositional language augmented with the Priorean operators P and F and with a possibility operator . However, these structures are also suitable for interpreting an extended language, _SO, containing a further possibility operator ^s which expresses synchronism among possibly incompatible histories and which can thus be thought of as a cross-history simultaneity operator. In the present paper we provide an infinite set of axioms in _SO, which is shown to be strongly complete forT ×W-validity. Von Kutschera (1997) contains a finite axiomatization of T×W-validity which however makes use of the Gabbay Irreflexivity Rule (Gabbay, 1981). In order to avoid using this rule, the proof presented here develops a new technique to deal with reflexive maximal consistent sets in Henkin-style constructions.     

Re-visioning resurrection: St. Paul and Swedenborg

St. Paul's spiritual body is envisaged as imaginal body, the wordimaginal standing for the intermediate realm of beings and events in Neoplatonism and Sufism. Swedenborg's world of spirits and angels conforms to this view and so is seen as contributing to a richer understanding of St. Paul in the sense of a good docetism. Crucial in this kind of revisioning the mystery of resurrection is the creative power of visionary imagination, which, in turn, is inseparable from the reality of the soul as thesitus of visionary events.     

Thinking about the Needy: A Reprise

This article discusses Jan Narvesons Welfare and Wealth, Poverty and Justice in Todays World, and Is World Poverty a Moral Problem for the Wealthy? and their relation to my Thinking about the Needy, Justice, and International Organizations. Section 2 points out that Narvesons concerns differ from mine, so that often his claims and mine fail to engage each other. For example, his focus is on the poor, mine the needy, and while many poor are needy, and vice versa, our obligations may differ regarding the poor than regarding the needy. Also, Narveson invokes a narrow conception of morality as those rules that government or society may compel people to follow. Given a broader, more plausible, conception of morality, many of Narvesons claims actually support my substantive views. Section 3 shows that many of Narvesons claims are relevant to the best means of aiding the needy, but do not challenge the validity of that end. This is true, for example, of his claims about the role of poor governments, the importance of freedom, the undesirability of mere handouts, and the effects of bad economic policies. Section 4 defends the importance of my distinction between acting justly and acting for reasons of justice. It illustrates that on several widely shared conceptions of justice there might be agent-neutralreasons of justice to aid the needy, even if from an agent-relative perspective one would not be acting unjustly if one failed to do so. Section 5 contests Narvesons portrayal of egalitarianism as concerned about inequality of wealth, per se, as insensitive to prior wrongs, and as holding that the worse-off have a right to be made better off at the expense of the well-off. In addition, it rejects Narvesons contention that egalitarians violate impartiality, and aim to impose their personal tastes on others. Section 6 challenges a fundamental assumption underlying Narvesons doctrine of mutual advantage. In addition, it denies that egalitarians are irrational merely because equality can conflict with the pareto principle. More generally, by appealing to impersonal ideals, it challenges the widely held view that the pareto principle is a condition of rationality. Section 7 argues that Narvesons meta-ethical assumptions are controversial, internally inconsistent, in tension with his normative views, and ultimately a version of skepticism. In addition, it challenges Narvesons view about the role intuitions play in moral theory. Section 8 clarifies points where Narvesons discussion of my views may be misleading. Finally, the paper notes the role that moral reasons may play in deliberation and action, but emphasizes the philosophical and theoretical nature of my work. My aim is to determine the moral considerations that are relevant to how people should act regarding the needy. Whether people will actually be moved to so act, for those reasons or otherwise, is another matter.     

Utility theory with inexact preferences and degrees of preference

a–b* c–d is taken to mean that your degree of preference for a over b is less than your degree of preference for c over d. Various properties of the strength-of-preference comparison relation * are examined along with properties of simple preferences defined from *. The investigation recognizes an individual's limited ability to make precise judgments. Several utility theorems relating a–b * c–d to u(a)–u(b) are included.     

On the structure of lattices of subquasivarieties of congruence-noetherian quasivarieties

We study the structure of algebraic -closed subsets of an algebraic lattice L, where is some Browerian binary relation on L, in the special case when the lattice of such subsets is an atomistic lattice. This gives an approach to investigate the atomistic lattices of congruence-Noetherian quasivarieties.V. A. Gorbunov has died in January 1999Special issue of Studia Logica: Algebraic Theory of Quasivarieties Presented by M. E. Adams, W. Dziobiak, and A. V. Kravchenko     

An Appreciation of Hal Childs' Critique of Historical Jesus Research

Biblical scholars have been exceedingly slow to grasp the implications of the Heisenberg principle, namely, that the observer is always a part of the field being observed, and disturbs that field by the very act of observation. In terms of the interpretive task, this means that there can be no question of an objective view of Jesus as he really was. Objective view; is itself an oxymoron; every view is subjective, from a particular angle of vision. We always encounter the biblical text with interests. We always have a stake in our reading of it. We always have angles of vision that can be helpful or harmful in interpreting texts. Historical writing does not treat reality; it treats the interpreter's relation to it, according to Brian Stock. All history, said the poet Wallace Stevens, is modern history. And historical criticism is a form of criticism of the present, according to Walter Kasper. All that is true, but only partially. For historical criticism can still help us recover an understanding of that past that holds out to us present meaning.     

Ethnic Amalgamation, Like it or not: Inheritance in Early Modern Jewish Rome

Roman Jewry was a composite group in the early sixteenth century, including new arrivals from southern Italy, as well as Sicily and the Iberian Peninsula. There were Italians Jews, and Ashkenazim. By the middle of the century, they had amalgamated well. The out-marriage rate between the different groups was constantly increasing. One reason for this was the need to unify administrative procedures. This is especially noticeable with respect to laws of inheritance, in which, thanks to the Jewish Rabbinic notaries, the father and son Judah and Isaac Piattelli, it had become standard for a widower to return to his father-in-law one-third of the dowry, irrespective of how long the marriage had lasted. Jews found themselves adopting Christian procedures, yet also modifying them for Jewish use, thus creating unified Jewish procedure, but allowing for continued acculturation, even during the ghetto period.     

Analysis of variance for correlated observations

Two different linear models are presented for the four-dimensional classification system in which correlations exist between certain pairs of observations. Except for the assumption of correlated observations, classical assumptions associated with classification systems are made. The models considered are modifications of those which underlie the split-plot design and the split-split-plot design. In the first model the correlations between observations of the levels of one dimension are all set equal to. In the second model the observations of the levels of one dimension are assumed correlated to degree ₁, whereas the observations of a second dimension are correlated to degree ₂. Analyses for the two models and tests of hypotheses for various parameters are indicated.     

Quantified Hintikka-style epistemic logic

This paper contains a formal treatment of the system of quantified epistemic logic sketched in Appendix II of Carlson (1983). Section 1 defines the syntax and recapitulates the model set rules and principles of the Appendix system. Section 2 defines a possible worlds semantics for this system, and shows that the Appendix system is complete with respect to this semantics. Section 3 extends the system by an explicit truth operatorT it is true that and considers quantification over nonexistent individuals. Section 4 formalizes the idea of variable identity criteria typical of Hintikkian epistemic logic.     

John Nash's Postdelusional Period: A Case of Transformed Narcissism

This article concludes the psychoanalytic study of mathematical genius John Nash begun in previous articles (Capps 2003a, 2003b) by focusing on his recovery from paranoid schizophrenia after more than a decade of being under control of his delusions. I develop the idea that Nash was a highly narcissistic personality, the primary focus of which was his beautiful mind, in the years preceding his mental breakdown. I attribute his recovery primarily to the transformation of his narcissistic personality and support this attribution by means of Heinz Kohut's identification of five major expressions of transformed narcissism in his classic essay on the forms and transformations of narcissism.     

Fitting the factor analysis model

When the covariance matrix (p×P) does not satisfy the formal factor analysis model for m factors, there will be no factor matrix (p×m) such that =(-) is diagonal. The factor analysis model may then be replaced by a tautology where is regarded as the covariance matrix of a set of residual variates. These residual variates are linear combinations of discarded common factors and unique factors and are correlated. Maximum likelihood, alpha and iterated principal factor analysis are compared in terms of the manner in which is defined, a maximum determinant derivation for alpha factor analysis being given. Weighted least squares solutions using residual variances and common variances as weights are derived for comparison with the maximum likelihood and alpha solutions. It is shown that the covariance matrix defined by maximum likelihood factor analysis is Gramian, provided that all diagonal elements are nonnegative. Other methods can define a which is nonGramian even when all diagonal elements are nonnegative.A modified version of this paper forms part of a Ph.D. thesis submitted to the University of South Africa.Presently at the National Institute for Personnel Research, South Africa.     

Moral Responses and Moral Theory: Socially-based Externalist Ethics

The paper outlines a view called social (or two-level) response-dependency as an addition to standard alternatives in metaethics that allows for a position intermediate between standard versions of internalism and externalism on the question of motivational force. Instead of taking psychological responses as either directly supplying the content of ethics (as on emotivist or sentimentalist accounts) or as irrelevant to its content (as in classical versions of Kantian or utilitarian ethics), the view allows them an indirect role, as motivational props to moral teaching and thus to the general institution of moral discourse. However, they are not implied by any particular moral judgment (or speaker), so that amoralism comes out as possible. The response that defines the distinctively moral notion of wrong on this account is the second-level (social) response of forbidding some behavior; but this is ultimately to be understood in terms of (variable) individual reactions. Natural human emotion tendencies thereby constrain the content of ethics, while allowing for some degree of social variation in moral codes.     

Naive realism about operators

A source of much difficulty and confusion in the interpretation of quantum mechanics is a naive realism about operators. By this we refer to various ways of taking too seriously the notion of operator-as-observable, and in particular to the all too casual talk about measuring operators that occurs when the subject is quantum mechanics. Without a specification of what should be meant by measuring a quantum observable, such an expression can have no clear meaning. A definite specification is provided by Bohmian mechanics, a theory that emerges from Schrödinger's equation for a system of particles when we merely insist that particles means particles. Bohmian mechanics clarifies the status and the role of operators as observables in quantum mechanics by providing the operational details absent from standard quantum mechanics. It thereby allows us to readily dismiss all the radical claims traditionally enveloping the transition from the classical to the quantum realm — for example, that we must abandon classical logic or classical probability. The moral is rather simple: Beware naive realism, especially about operators!     

Visual discrimination and response programming

Summary Choice reaction time (RT) depends on the relationship between responses, and these dependencies are usually interpreted in terms of the advance-specification assumption. According to this assumption characteristics that are the same for the choice responses can be specified in advance of the response signal, thus allowing faster RTs. Since the advance-specification assumption is called into question by some of the available data, an alternative interpretation is suggested and formalized in terms of an accumulator model. According to the programming-interactions assumption, stimulus processing is tightly linked to response programming, so that both the possible responses are programmed as long as there is uncertainty with regard to stimulus identity. This gives rise to interactions between simultaneous processes of motor programming. Predictions of this assumption for the joint effects of signal similarity and the relationship between responses are tested and confirmed.This research was supported by grant no. He 1187/3–1 from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft     

Desirable features in neuropsychological tests

Seven desirable features are presented as guidelines for the design and evaluation of neuropsychological tests. Such features are not systematically present in most commonly used testing procedures because the field's methods have been borrowed from disciplines whose theories and measurement goals are quite different from those of modern neuropsychology. In the course of the presentation, three meanings of the term deficit are differentiated.     

The content of mother stereotypes

Although there is considerable empirical support for the existence of social stereotypes about different types of mothers, the content of those stereotypes is less clear. The purpose of this study was to identify the content of stereotypes related to different types of mothers. Stereotyped attributes of married mothers, stepmothers, divorced mothers, and never married mothers were generated by several samples and combined into one list. A subsequent sample was asked to indicate the percentage of each type of mother possessing each characteristic. The content of mother stereotypes was examined, and the results discussed in light of effects on social interactions, the self-image of women, and future attempts to assess family-related stereotypes.     

Religious Parties, Religious Political Identity, and the Cold Shoulder of Liberal Democratic Thought

Elements of the relation between religion and politics are standard themes in political theory: toleration and free exercise rights; the parameters of separation of church and state; arguments for and against constraints imposed on religious discourse by philosophic norms of public reason. But religious parties and partisanship are no part of political theory, despite contemporary interest in value pluralism and in liberal democratic theory's capacity to address multicultural, religious, and ethnic group claims. This essay argues that religious parties are missing elements in discussions of identity politics. They play an important role not just in expressing but also in constructing and mobilizing religious political identity. Political activity linked to parties is a principal way of bringing diffuse, politically unorganized groups, whose leaders are self-appointed and not regularly accountable for the way they represent co-religionists in political life, into the democratic mainstream. With political organization and especially partisanship, the fact of pluralism is made concrete for democratic purposes.