Does ‘Ought’ Imply ‘Can’ from an Epistemic Point of View?

In this paper, I argue that the ??Ought Implies Can?? (OIC) principle, as it is employed in epistemology, particularly in the literature on epistemic norms, is open to counterexamples. I present a counterexample to OIC and discuss several objections to it. If this counterexample works, then it shows that it is possible that S ought to believe that p, even though S cannot believe that p. If this is correct, then OIC, considered from an epistemic point of view, is false, since it is supposed to hold for any S and any p.     

The Question of a Thing-Centred View of Education: Notes on Vlieghe and Zamojski’s Towards an Ontology of Teaching

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

From a Phono-Logical Point of View: Neutralizing Quine’s Argument Against Analyticity

Though largely unnoticed, in “Two Dogmas” Quine (1951, Two Dogmas of Empiricism, Philosophical Review 60, 20–43. Reprinted in From a Logical Point of View, 20–46) himself invokes a distinction: a distinction between logical and analytic truths. Unlike analytic statements equating ‘bachelor’ with ‘unmarried man’, strictly logical tautologies relating two word-tokens of the same word-type, e.g., ‘bachelor’ and ‘bachelor’ are true merely in virtue of basic phonological form, putatively an exclusively non-semantic function of perceptual categorization or brute stimulus behavior. Yet natural language phonemic categorization is not entirely free of interpretive semantic considerations. “Phonemic reductionism” in both its linguistic (Bloch 1953, Contrast, Language 29, 59–61) and behavioral (Quine 1990, The Phoneme’s Long Shadow, Emics and Etics: The Insider/Outsider Debate, T. Headland, K. Pike and M. Harris, (eds.), Newbury Park, CA, Sage Publications, 164–167) guise is false. The semantic basis of phonological equivalence, however, has repercussions vis-à-vis Quine’s critique of analyticity. A consistent rejection of meaning-based equivalencies eliminates not only analyticity, but imposes a form of phonological eliminativism too. Phonological eliminativism is the reductio result of applying Quinean meaning skepticism to the phonological typing of natural language. But unlike analyticity, phonology is presumably not subject to philosophical dismissal. The semantic basis of natural language phonology serves to neutralize Quine’s argument against analyticity: without the semantics of meaning, more than just synonymy is lost; basic phonology must also be forfeited. Let’s begin with the fact that even Quine has to admit that it is possible for two tokens of the same orthographic type to be synonymous, for that much is presupposed by his own account of logical truth. Paul Boghossian (1999, 343)     

Is Heidegger an Orientalist or an Occidentalist European Philosopher? Disclosing the Political Factor behind Heidegger’s Representation of Chinese Thinking

Though Heidegger became a kind of conceptual companion of comparative philosophers, and a methodological example for interpreters of Daoist philosophy claiming that Zhuangzi or Laozi embodied the overcoming of Western “onto-theology,” Heidegger himself not only stressed his disbelief in the notion that Asian thinking could save the West from its “civilizational crisis” but also clearly claimed that Western thinking could emerge only through its distinction from the “mythical East.” However, at the same time, Heidegger criticized the decadence of the West, claimed the necessity of cultural rejuvenation, and then, with the failure of Germany to perform this task, seemed to turn to Chinese sources to find alternative solutions. How to understand Heidegger’s complex relationship with China? Is Heidegger an Orientalist or an Occidentalist European philosopher? Moreover, how to understand the subtle and troubling connections between Heidegger’s complex relationship with China and Heidegger’s highly “problematic” (to say the least) intellectual engagement with Nazi ideology? To what extent are Orientalism and Occidentalism are linked to Heidegger’s belief in the Nationalist-Socialists’ claims about “saving” the “European spirit”?     

An Existential Foundation for an Ethics of Care in Heidegger’s Being and Time

Martin Heidegger’s existential account of care in Being and Time (2010) provides us with an opportunity to reimagine what the proper theoretical grounding of an ethic of care might be. Heidegger’s account of care serves to deconstruct the two primary foundations that an ethic of care is often based upon. Namely, that we are inevitably interdependent upon one another and/or possess an innate disposition to care for fellow humans in need. Heidegger’s account reveals that both positions are founded upon an ontic (meaning factual existence), as opposed to an ontological (which refers to the nature of being), understanding of care. The distinctions between an ontic and ontological understanding of care are significant. Yet, I maintain that they are not completely incompatible. Both Heidegger and care ethicists contend that our existence with others is understood through a relational ontology. Furthermore, there are certain ontological structures from Heidegger which resonate with an ethic of care. Two key existential structures are leaping-ahead and being-guilty. These existential structures are latent in care ethics, and by explicitly revealing them I reinforce the connection between Heidegger’s account and care theory. Lastly, I develop the theoretical foundations of care ethics by proposing an existential ethic of care.

     

What’s in a Dao?: Ontology and Semiotics in Laozi and Zhuangzi

The present essay examines the conflicting ontological assumptions that one can find behind the word dao in the texts of the Laozi and Zhuangzi and argues that the relative indifference to these texts toward whether or not dao has an ontic reality should not be considered a flaw of early Daoism. Rather, the historical process by which the term dao collects various possible ontological implications can be thought of as a philosophical stance in its own right. That is, if the terms which one is obliged to use in discussing the immaterial necessarily hide, at least as much as they explain, the nature of Being, then it is a reasonable response to decline to ground one??s ethics in an ontology, and that while the resulting philosophy may not qualify as a fully-adumbrated system, this does not diminish its potential usefulness.     

Collective self-legislation as an Actus Impurus: a response to Heidegger’s critique of European nihilism

Heidegger’s critique of European nihilism seeks to expose self-legislation as the governing principle of central manifestations of modernity such as science, technology, and the interpretation of art as aesthetics. Need we accept the conclusion that modern constitutional democracies are intrinsically nihilistic, insofar as they give political and legal form to the principle of collective self-legislation? An answer to this question turns on the concept of power implied in constituent and constituted power. A confrontation of the genealogies of modern subjectivity proposed by Heidegger and Blumenberg suggests that there is indeed a metaphysical core to the concept of constituent power developed by various political theorists, including Schmitt and Habermas. By contrast, closer consideration of the paradoxical relation between constituent and constituted power illuminates the ambiguity of collective self-legislation, which means both enactment of a legal order by a collective self and the enactment of a collective self by a legal order. To the extent that constitutional democracies are a way of preserving rather than dissolving this ambiguity, they imply an interpretation of power and human finitude that parries the charge of nihilism.     

What is Original in Merleau-Ponty’s View of the Phenomenological Reduction?

Despite the recent increase of interest in the work of Merleau-Ponty there is still a persistent tendency to overlook the uniqueness of the philosophical position he advances in Phenomenology of Perception. In this article I present a reading of Merleau-Ponty’s account of the phenomenological reduction that explains how it is original. I do this by contrasting his presentation of the reduction with that of the early Husserl, highlighting how his emphasis on the phenomenology of the ‘perceived world’ leads him to reject Husserl’s conception of phenomenology as a ‘philosophical science,’ and the Kantian language in which the this account is framed. I go on to critically discuss the interpretations of the reduction advanced by Stephen Priest and Joel Smith as examples of readings that fail to fully grasp Merleau-Ponty’s account of the ‘natural attitude’ as resting on the inherent objectivizing structure that is built into perception itself. The way that these authors misinterpret Merleau-Ponty helps to make maximally clear the profound philosophical significance that he places on the phenomenology of the ‘perceived world’.     

What’s in an object file? Evidence from priming studies

Six experiments were conducted to investigate the nature of the contents of object files, temporary representations that store information about objects. Experiment 1 used a lexical priming paradigm with a lexical decision task, in which the prime and target could appear in either the same or different locations. The results indicated a greater priming effect when the prime and target appeared in the same location than when they appeared in different locations (object- or location-specific priming). Experiment 2 replicated these findings for objects that changed position during the display. Experiment 3 demonstrated that these findings reflected the inclusion of abstract identity information, rather than physical form, in object files. Three additional experiments tested for the presence of three types of semantic information (related concepts, semantic features, and category membership) in object files. No object-specific priming effects were found. Taken together, these experiments suggest that an object file includes identity information, but not semantic information. Implications of the results for object file theory are discussed.     

Infant shifting attention from an adult’s face to an adult’s hand: a precursor of joint attention

Two experiments were designed to investigate shifting attention from an adult’s face to an adult’s hand by 3- and 4-month-olds. In Experiment 1, 24 infants were presented with five types of hand gestures by their mothers and a stranger. Experiment 2 was given to 22 infants with the same procedures, except for the addition of a head inclining while pointing to objects. The results were: (1) after encountering an averted head repeatedly, the infants shifted their attention from the adult’s face to the moving hand and objects; they oriented to what the adult was attending to. (2) The moving head improved the rate of infants turning their heads to the same direction as the adult. The conclusion was averted head and eyes play a major role in infants’ orienting to an adult’s hand. A hand was a shared visual target during the adult’s object performance, indicating that infants’ orientation to the adults’ hand is a precursor stage of joint visual attention.     

What’s in a Purse? Maybe a Woman’s Reputation

Does a woman’s reputation suffer when others discover condoms in her possession? Fifty-two male and female predominantly white undergraduates from a small, private, Catholic university in the northeast USA examined the contents of a purse to formulate an impression of its owner. Unflattering inferences were drawn about the character of the target when her purse contained condoms. A follow-up study with 55 comparable participants confirmed that these inferences were indeed uncomplimentary. The results are discussed in terms of the multi-dimensional price women pay when assuming responsibility for their sexual health.     

What’s in a name, what’s in a place? The role of verbal labels in distinct cognitive tasks

The effects of congruent and incongruent labelling on two simple cognitive tasks, sequence learning and place learning, were investigated. The results of both studies indicate the greater cognitive importance of information derived from the object compared to information derived from the verbal label.     

Speaking of One’s Life: What Can We Learn from Transcultural Studies?

The work by Demuth et al. (Integrative Psychological and Bahavioral Science 45:1–20, 2011) is very important in the scenario of transcultural research, as it goes beyond the specific contexts of India and Germany. They successfully explored the dialogic relation between remembered autobiography, the self and the culture from a trans-generational development perspective, managing to identify common and unique processes of each culture. I, however, using a dynamical systems approach, present a supplementary way to the one chosen in the study, with the goal of analyzing how these new perspectives might contribute to the understanding of this phenomenon. The dynamical systems is a perspective sensitive to non-linearity of phenomena and interested in understanding how processes emerge, as it may be useful to analyze the family as a dynamical system under constant interaction with other systems, which makes the emergence of the self, possible. Besides, it would enable the identification of trajectories that individuals build over time, the moments of change and variability, as well as identifying different types of patterns in the process of construction of the self.     

Conflict of interest from a Romanian geneticist’s perspective

This paper examines Romanian bioethics regulations for biomedical sciences, looking in particular at the genetics area as a source for conflict of interest. The analysis is focused on the organizational level, national regulations, the sources for generating conflicts of interest, and management of conflicts. Modern biotechnology and gene technology are among the key technologies of the twenty-first century. The application of gene technology for medical and pharmaceutical purposes is widely accepted by society, but the same cannot be said of the development and application of gene technology in agriculture and food processing. Because the use of a technology in the production and processing of food is regarded more sceptically than in the production of biomedical products, there can be areas of conflict in many cases when communication is undertaken about gene technology in the agro-food sector. Ethical concerns play an important factor in this, but a society’s attitude to a developing technology is an amalgam of many effects which are beyond ethics as such. This paper contains a study carried out by the author for the Romanian Association for Consumer Protection about the attitudes of consumers towards genetically modified (GM) foods. This study revealed that in Romania more than 98% of consumers did not know anything about GM foods and frequently were confused about the definitions of these terms. In conclusion, it is necessary to say that there is a low level of knowledge regarding biotechnology in Romania and this is an important reason why there is neither public acceptance of gene technology products nor is there a rejection. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an International Conference on “Conflict of Interest and its Significance in Science and Medicine” held in Warsaw, Poland on 5–6 April, 2002. Ioana Ispas, MD in Molecular Biology, is a scientific researcher and Member of the Romanian Association for Consumer Protection, NCP for FP5-Quality of life and management of living resources.     

Can the World Help Us in Fixing the Reference of Natural Kind Terms?

According to Putnam the reference of natural kind terms is fixed by the world, at least partly; whether two things belong to the same kind depends on whether they obey the same objective laws. We show that Putnam's criterion of substance identity only “works” if we read “objective laws” as “OBJECTIVE LAWS”. Moreover, at least some of the laws of some of the special sciences have to be included. But what we consider to be good special sciences and what not depends upon our values. Hence, “objective laws” cannot be read as “OBJECTIVE LAWS”. It follows that the reference of natural kind terms cannot be fixed by the world, not even partly. The final conclusion applies to a variety of realisms. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Receptivity’s Construction in Public Schools: a Component of Immigrant Integration in an Emerging Gateway

Community receptivity, a critical component in integration processes, is a place’s collective response to newcomers. It is a constructed context in which the experiences of settlement and adjustment for both immigrants and non-immigrants occur. Receptivity is fluid, shaped by multi-scalar components of a community’s political, economic, social, and cultural spheres. In traditional gateways, the evolving interplay of long-established forces guides receptivity. But in new gateways, front line providers that encounter the initial settlement needs of immigrants are the vanguard of constructing the broader community’s warmth of immigrant welcome. This case study of three elementary schools in Charlotte, NC demonstrates the role of public schools as a site of receptivity’s early construction within an emerging gateway. We argue that teachers are creating receptivity building blocks within their classrooms, guiding the construction of receptivity within their schools, among the school board, the school district, and the city as a whole.