The concept of responsibility in the ethics of self-defense and war

Philosophical Studies - The focus of this paper is an influential family of views in the ethics of self-defense and war: views that ground the agent’s liability to be attacked in self-defense...     

The concept of measurement-precision

The science of metrology characterizes the concept of precision in exceptionally loose and open terms. That is because the details of the concept must be filled in—what I call narrowing of the concept—in ways that are sensitive to the details of a particular measurement or measurement system and its use. Since these details can never be filled in completely, the concept of the actual precision of an instrument system must always retain some of the openness of its general characterization. The idea that there is something that counts as the actual precision of a measurement system must therefore always remain an idealization, a conclusion that would appear to hold very broadly for terms and the concepts they express.     

The concept of attitude

Current conceptions of attitude do not adequately distinguish between attitudes and factual beliefs on the one hand, or between attitudes and preferences on the other. To hold an attitude is to ascribe an objective moral property to the attitude‐object; however, the conception of such properties rests on an incoherent theory of relations as constitutive of their terms, and the belief in them has only pseudo‐cognitive content. Moralism, or the maintaining of attitudes, is a special technique for disguising and promoting interests. Attitudes serve as rationalizations for concealed or unconscious impulses and are themselves defended by further rationalizations. These considerations call into question some common techniques of attitude‐assessment. Some apparent exceptions, namely ‘aesthetic attitudes’ and ‘authentic values’, reveal themselves to be either (a) factual beliefs about aesthetic properties or about human motivation respectively, (b) preferences, or (c) moral attitudes as defined. Moralism is not essential to socialization and is inimical to the ‘social feelings’.     

The concept of validity

This article advances a simple conception of test validity: A test is valid for measuring an attribute if (a) the attribute exists and (b) variations in the attribute causally produce variation in the measurement outcomes. This conception is shown to diverge from current validity theory in several respects. In particular, the emphasis in the proposed conception is on ontology, reference, and causality, whereas current validity theory focuses on epistemology, meaning, and correlation. It is argued that the proposed conception is not only simpler but also theoretically superior to the position taken in the existing literature. Further, it has clear theoretical and practical implications for validation research. Most important, validation research must not be directed at the relation between the measured attribute and other attributes but at the processes that convey the effect of the measured attribute on the test scores.     

The concept of intelligence

Rosch's theory of concepts, applied to the concept of intelligence, suggests that one's intelligence is just the degree to which one resembles a prototypically intelligent person. Because no single characteristics defines the prototype, there can be no adequate process-based definition of intelligence. In principle, a combination of many empirically derived measures into a single index—as in a Binet test—would be appropriate. In practice, many of the relevant characteristics are simply impossible to measure.     

The placebo concept

Throughout the medical, psychological, and psychiatric literature, the terminology used to characterize placebos is misleading, imprecise, and conducive to conceptual confusion in research on their effects. To remedy this situation, the present paper does the following: (1) It fills the conceptual lacunae left by the defective traditional locutions; (2) It proposes a lucid and precise new vocabulary to supplant the traditional obscure language in which the results of placebo research are couched; and (3) It illustrates the important conceptual refinement accruing from using the new expressions by thoroughly recasting A.K. Shapiro's influential definition of ‘placebo.’     

民主的概念

The core elements of modern democracy are citizens who share equally in mutually-compatible basic rights, serve as the final decision-makers on the community’s constitution, and choose whom to be entrusted with legislative and executive powers, while at the same time wielding final veto power over the present government. The rule of the majority in modern democracy is no longer a fundamental principle, but rather a derivative principle the validity of which is based on the above-mentioned core elements. Translated by Hu Jinglei from Tianjin Shehui Kexue 天津社会科学 (Tianjin Social Sciences), 2007, (5): 7–12