What is a Natural Conception of the World?

Continental philosophers such as Heidegger and Nicolai Hartmann and analytic philosophers such as Ryle, Strawson, and Jennifer Hornsby may be interpreted as using competing intellectual strategies within the framework of one and the same research programme, the programme of developing a natural conception of the world. They all argue that the Manifest Image of the world (to use Sellars's terminology) is compatible with, or even more fundamental than, the Scientific Image. A comparative examination of these strategies shows that Hartmann's strategy of stratification is superior to those of Heidegger, Ryle, and Strawson.     

Is Natural Kindness a Natural Kind?

Philosophical Studies -     

Averting Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type in Women: Can Counselors Help?

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia in late life, taking its greatest toll on women over age 80. This article provides an overview of AD, including risk factors and counseling strategies targeting risk. Counseling strategies address stress, cardiovascular health, social integration, depression, and holistic wellness.     

Does the Subject of Experience Exist in the World?

In this paper I attempt to show, by considering a number of sources, including Wittgenstein, Sartre, Thomas Nagel and Spinoza, but also adding something crucial of my own, that it is impossible to construe the subject of experience as an object among other objects in the world. My own added argument is the following. the subject of experience cannot move in time along with material events and processes or it could not be aware of the passage of time, hence neither of change nor of motion. the subject cannot therefore be identified with any neural process, function, or location since whatever goes on in the CNS is necessarily objective and part of the temporal flux. However this does not imply any form of dualism for experiences exist only for the subject whose experiences they are and hence they have no objective reality.     

Can the Decoherence Approach Help to Solve the Measurement Problem?

This work examines whether the environmentally-induced decoherence approach in quantum mechanics brings us any closer to solving the measurement problem, and whether it contributes to the elimination of subjectivism in quantum theory. A distinction is made between ,collapse, and ,decoherence,, so that an explanation for decoherence does not imply an explanation for collapse. After an overview of the measurement problem and of the open-systems paradigm, we argue that taking a partial trace is equivalent to applying the projection postulate. A criticism of Zurek's decoherence approach to measurements is also made, based on the restriction that he must impose on the interaction between apparatus and environment. We then analyze the element of subjectivity involved in establishing the boundary between system and environment, and criticize the incorporation of Everett's branching of memory records into the decoherence research program. Sticking to this program, we end by sketching a proposal for ‘environmentally-induced collapse’. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Can Bioethics Survive in a Dying World?

Significant changes in the natural environment over the past 40 years pose key challenges to health and health care in the 21st century. Health care has not yet given serious attention to what the current environmental situation means for human health, or for maintaining an effective health care system. Bioethics is in a good position to help health professionals engage environmental questions. But bioethics, as a field, will first need to explore and integrate “ecological thinking”—thinking based in the concept of connectedness and committed to viewing humans are part of nature rather than exempt from it.     

Al-Ghazali's Use of the Terms “Necessity” and “Habit” in his Theory of Natural Causality

The present article aims at analyzing the terms “necessity” (Al-darura) and “habit” (al-āda) in al-Ghazali's (1058?–?1111) theory of natural causality (Al-Sbābiah al-Tabī'īa) by answering the following question: Why does Al-Ghazali use term “habit” and negation of “necessity” with regard to natural Causality? Al-Ghazali denies causal necessity that links cause and effect since this relationship does not draw on logical rules that make it necessary. This, however, does not mean that he denies the existence of a causal relationship between things, as he recognizes its existence. He, however, denies the necessity of that relationship, as he claims that the source of causal necessity stems from a psychological emotion rather than from being inherent in things themselves. Al-Ghazali also attempts to base causal necessity on “habit” by claiming that the similarity of event A as cause and event B as effect stems from observation, repetition and the sequencing of natural phenomena. Al-Ghazali, then, endeavors to prove that science is based on expectation and assumption that draws on observation, the senses, and repetition and does not consider it as constant and absolute.     

Can We Help Belligerent Counselees?

This article presents a framework and principles for counseling belligerent counselees. It integrates moral reasoning and behavior contracting with the counseling process and describes the limited rationales of victimization, guilt, and helplessness. Then, a moral reasoning framework is presented whereby counselors move the counselees from the punishment stage to a trade-off and socially responsive stages through contracting. Finally, the counseling and contract principles are delineated for establishing a relationship aimed at improved behavior, facilitating recognition that behavior causes consequences, inducing positive behavior through rewards, and encouraging transfer to new situations.     

Can First-Order Logical Truth be Defined in Purely Extensional Terms?

W. V. Quine thinks logical truth can be defined in purely extensional terms, as follows: a logical truth is a true sentence that exemplifies a logical form all of whose instances are true. P. F. Strawson objects that one cannot say what it is for a particular use of a sentence to exemplify a logical form without appealing to intensional notions, and hence that Quine's efforts to define logical truth in purely extensional terms cannot succeed. Quine's reply to this criticism is confused in ways that have not yet been noticed in the literature. This may seem to favour Strawson's side of the debate. In fact, however, a proper analysis of the difficulties that Quine's reply faces suggests a new way to clarify and defend the view that logical truth can be defined in purely extensional terms.     

Can there be a Uniform Application of Direct Reference?

There are two interpretations of what it means for a singular term to be referentially direct, one truth-conditional and the other cognitive. It has been argued that on the former interpretation, both proper names and indexicals refer directly, whereas on the latter only proper names are directly referential. However, these interpretations in fact apply to the same singular terms. This paper argues that, if conceived in purely normative terms, the linguistic meaning of indexicals can no longer be held to make these terms referentially indirect under the second interpretation. This result is then generalized to proper names, by ascribing them a normative meaning as well.     

What Kind of Normativity is the Normativity of Grammar?

The overall goal of this article is to show that aesthetics plays a major role in a debate at the very center of philosophy. Drawing on the work of David Bell, the article spells out how Kant and Wittgenstein use reflective judgment, epitomized by a judgment of beauty, as a key in their respective solutions to the rule‐following problem they share. The more specific goal is to offer a Kantian account of semantic normativity as understood by Wittgenstein. The article argues that Wittgenstein's reason for describing language as a collection of language games is to allow for a perspective that shows those games as internally purposive without any extralinguistic purpose. This perspective also allows for that union of the general rule and its particular application in practice that the original paradox of rule‐following is wanting.     

Can Contractualism Save Us from Aggregation?

This paper examines the efforts of contractualists to develop an alternative to aggregation to govern our duty not to harm (duty to rescue) others. I conclude that many of the moral principles articulated in the literature seem to reduce to aggregation by a different name. Those that do not are viable only as long as they are limited to a handful of oddball cases at the margins of social life. If extended to run-of-the-mill conduct that accounts for virtually all unintended (in the sense of undesired) harm to others—noncriminal activities that impose some risk of harm on others—they would rule out all action. Moreover, because such conduct poses an irreducible conflict between freedom of action and freedom from expected harm, it can be regulated only by principles that accept the necessity of making precisely the sorts of interpersonal trade-offs that contractualism is foundationally committed to reject: trade-offs in which the numbers count, such that a risk of serious harm to one person can be justified by small benefits to the many.     

‚Mirroring‘ the Ethics of Biobanking: What Analysis of Consent Documents Can Tell Us?

Biobanks have been recognized as a key research infrastructure and how to approach ethical questions has been a topic of discussion for at least a decade by now. This article explores the characteristics of donors’ participation in European biobanks as reflected in the consent documents of a selection of different biobanks from various European countries. The primary aim of this study is to understand how donors are informed about their participation in biobanking. Also the paper discusses what the most important thematic issues of information are to be given to the biobank participants and how this information should be presented in the consent documents. For these purposes, we analyse consent documents from 14 biobanks in 11 countries for six ethically relevant issues: (1) model of consent, (2) scope of future research, (3) access to medical data, (4) feedback to the participants, (5) consent withdrawal, and (6) role of research ethics committee. In order to compare different trends of informing donors of human biological material and medical data, we interpret the six analysed issues in the context of respect to donor’s autonomy paradigm. Although the results of the paper reflect the heterogeneity of biobank consent document policies applied in different European countries, we uncovered some trends and suggested several examples of good practices to balance the interests of the donors with those of the researchers and future patients.     

Curing Psychopathology: Can Philosophy Help?

Abstract

It is argued that philosophers can contribute indirectly to the cure of psychopathology by helping to resolve problems that impede the development of effective treatments. Two such problems are discussed. The first arises because different schools of therapy use conflicting criteria in evaluating therapeutic outcomes. A theory of Defective Desires is developed to deal with this problem. The second issue, which divides the field of psychotherapy, concerns the need for experiments, especially in validating claims of therapeutic efficacy. An epistemological foundation is developed to support the need for experiments.     

Genetics: Can Moral Theology Help?

The article discusses Marc Lappé's use of the Principle of Double Effect (PDE) for justifying Germ Line Gene Therapy as a secondary effect of Somatic Gene Therapy. The author argues that Lappés argumentation is mistaken because it is based on a inadequate interpretation of the PDE's scope and function as a means of moral justification. Through an investigation into the history of PDE in Catholic theology, the author gives arguments that use of PDE relies upon some form of deontological framework which is not present in contemporary bioethics. The author concludes that isolated use of PDE, as Lappé seems to suggest, does therefore not warrant moral justification.