Philosophical arguments stemming from the public health ethics arena suggest that public health interventions ought to be subject to normative inquiry that considers relational values, including concepts such as solidarity, reciprocity and health equity. As yet, however, the extent to which ‘public’ values influence the ‘autonomous’ decisions of the public remains largely unexplored. Drawing on interviews with 50 men in Vancouver, Canada, this study employs a critical discourse analysis to examine participants’ decisions and motivations to voluntarily access HIV testing and/or (...) to accept a routine HIV test offer. Within a sub-set of interviews, a transactional discourse emerged in which the decision to test features an arrangement of ‘giving and receiving’. Discourses related to notions of solidarity emphasize considerations of justice and positions testing as a ‘public’ act. Lastly, ‘individualistic’ discourses focused on individual-level considerations, with less concern for the broader public ‘good’. These findings underscore how normative dimensions pertaining to men’s decisions to test are dialectically interrelated with the broader social and structural influences on individual and collective health-related behaviour, thereby suggesting a need to advance an explicit empirical-normative research agenda related to population and public health intervention research. (shrink)

Despite the evidence showing the promise of HIV treatment as prevention (TasP) in reducing HIV incidence, a variety of ethical questions surrounding the implementation and “scaling up” of TasP have been articulated by a variety of stakeholders including scientists, community activists and government officials. Given the high profile and potential promise of TasP in combatting the global HIV epidemic, an explicit and transparent research priority-setting process is critical to inform ongoing ethical discussions pertaining to TasP.

On September 3, 2015, the Political Epistemology/ideas, Knowledge, and Politics section of the American Political Science Association sponsored a roundtable on epistemic democracy as part of the APSA’s annual meetings. Chairing the roundtable was Daniel Viehoff, Department of Philosophy, University of Sheffield. The other participants were Jack Knight, Department of Political Science and the Law School, Duke University; Hélène Landemore, Department of Political Science, Yale University; and Nadia Urbinati, Department of Political Science, Columbia University. We thank the participants for (...) permission to republish their remarks, which they edited for clarity after the fact. (shrink)

Do lawmakers have a greater ethical responsibility to compromise than ordinary citizens? How does one rectify what is at stake when lawmakers concede to compromise for the sake of reaching resolution? Is compromise necessarily equalizing and is it a reasonable mode of problem solving and dispute resolution? In this latest installment from the NOMOS series, distinguished scholars across the fields of political science, law, and philosophy tackle the complex set of questions that relate to the practice of compromise and its (...) implications for social and political life in modern societies. -/- The volume, edited by Jack Knight, brings together a range of perspectives – in both disciplinary and substantive terms – on representation, political morality, disagreement, negotiation, and various forms of compromise. The ten essays reflect a variety of considerations across interdisciplinary lines, and provide a new and thought-provoking discussion of the policy, practice, and philosophy of compromise, covering a number of specific topics including alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and conscientious objection. -/- Examining these issues and more, Compromise offers new and thought provoking insights into the pressing issue of the importance of compromise in social and political affairs. (shrink)

This book provides a study of the forces underlying the development of economic thought at Cambridge University during the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. The primary lens it uses to do so is an examination of how Arthur Cecil Pigou’s thinking, heavily influenced by his predecessor, Alfred Marshall, evolved. Aspects of Pigou’s context, biography and philosophical grounding are reconstructed and then situated within the framework of Ludwik Fleck’s philosophy of scientific knowledge, most notably by (...) drawing on the notions of ‘thought styles’ and ‘thought collectives’. In this way, Knight provides a novel contribution to the history of Pigou's economic thought. (shrink)

The usual treatment of a dinner table utterance of ‘Can you pass the salt?’ is that it involves an indirect request to pass the salt as well as a direct question about the hearer’s ability to do so: an indirect speech act. These are held to involve two illocutionary forces and two illocutionary acts. Rod Bertolet has raised doubts about whether consideration of such examples warrants the postulation of indirect speech acts and illocutionary forces other than the literal ones. In (...) a recent article, Mary Kate McGowan, Shan Shan Tam, and Margaret Hall claim to show that these doubts are unfounded. The purpose of this paper is to show that they have not established this. (shrink)

Traces the development of recursive functions from their origins in the late nineteenth century to the mid-1930s, with particular emphasis on the work and influence of Kurt Gödel.

We report on some recent work centered on attempts to understand when one set is more random than another. We look at various methods of calibration by initial segment complexity, such as those introduced by Solovay [125], Downey, Hirschfeldt, and Nies [39], Downey, Hirschfeldt, and LaForte [36], and Downey [31]; as well as other methods such as lowness notions of Kučera and Terwijn [71], Terwijn and Zambella [133], Nies [101, 100], and Downey, Griffiths, and Reid [34]; higher level randomness notions (...) going back to the work of Kurtz [73], Kautz [61], and Solovay [125]; and other calibrations of randomness based on definitions along the lines of Schnorr [117].These notions have complex interrelationships, and connections to classical notions from computability theory such as relative computability and enumerability. Computability figures in obvious ways in definitions of effective randomness, but there are also applications of notions related to randomness in computability theory. For instance, an exciting by-product of the program we describe is a more-or-less naturalrequirement-freesolution to Post's Problem, much along the lines of the Dekker deficiency set. (shrink)

The first book in English on Gadamer's relationship to Heidegger, this study illustrates the philosophical power Gadamer's thinking has achieved by departing from Heidegger's at certain crucial moments.

As a natural example of a 1-random real, Chaitin proposed the halting probability Ω of a universal prefix-free machine. We can relativize this example by considering a universal prefix-free oracle machine U. Let [Formula: see text] be the halting probability of UA; this gives a natural uniform way of producing an A-random real for every A ∈ 2ω. It is this operator which is our primary object of study. We can draw an analogy between the jump operator from computability theory (...) and this Omega operator. But unlike the jump, which is invariant under the choice of an effective enumeration of the partial computable functions, [Formula: see text] can be vastly different for different choices of U. Even for a fixed U, there are oracles A =* B such that [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] are 1-random relative to each other. We prove this and many other interesting properties of Omega operators. We investigate these operators from the perspective of analysis, computability theory, and of course, algorithmic randomness. (shrink)

Robert I. Soare, Automorphisms of the Lattice of Recursively Enumerable Sets. Part I: Maximal Sets.Manuel Lerman, Robert I. Soare, $d$-Simple Sets, Small Sets, and Degree Classes.Peter Cholak, Automorphisms of the Lattice of Recursively Enumerable Sets.Leo Harrington, Robert I. Soare, The $\Delta^0_3$-Automorphism Method and Noninvariant Classes of Degrees.

A splitting of an r.e. set A is a pair A1, A2 of disjoint r.e. sets such that A1 A2 = A. Theorems about splittings have played an important role in recursion theory. One of the main reasons for this is that a splitting of A is a decomposition of A in both the lattice,, of recursively enumerable sets and in the uppersemilattice, R, of recursively enumerable degrees. Thus splitting theor ems have been used to obtain results about the structure (...) of, the structure of R, and the relationship between the two structures. Furthermore it is fair to say that questions about splittings have often generated important new technical developments in recursion theory. In this article we survey most of the results and techniques associated with splitting properties of r.e. sets in ordinary recursion theory. (shrink)

Economic theory is built on assumptions about human behavior—assumptions embodied in rational-choice theory. Underlying these assumptions are implicit notions about how we think and learn. These implicit notions are fundamentally important to social explanation. The very plausibility of the explanations that we develop out of rational-choice theory rests crucially on the accuracy of these notions about cognition and rationality. But there is a basic problem: There is often very little relationship between the assumptions that rational-choice theorists make and the way (...) that humans actually act and learn in everyday life. This has significant implications for economic theory and practice. It leads to bad theories and inadequate explanations; it produces bad predictions and, thus, supports ineffective social policies. (shrink)

We describe punctual categoricity in several natural classes, including binary relational structures and mono-unary functional structures. We prove that every punctually categorical structure in a finite unary language is${\text {PA}}(0')$-categorical, and we show that this upper bound is tight. We also construct an example of a punctually categorical structure whose degree of categoricity is$0''$. We also prove that, with a bit of work, the latter result can be pushed beyond$\Delta ^1_1$, thus showing that punctually categorical structures can possess arbitrarily complex (...) automorphism orbits.As a consequence, it follows that binary relational structures and unary structures are not universal with respect to primitive recursive interpretations; equivalently, in these classes every rich enough interpretation technique must necessarily involve unbounded existential quantification or infinite disjunction. In contrast, it is well-known that both classes are universal for Turing computability. (shrink)

We examine the randomness and triviality of reals using notions arising from martingales and prefix-free machines.

We construct the set of the title, answering a question of Cholak, Jockusch, and Slaman [1], and discuss its connections with the study of the proof-theoretic strength and effective content of versions of Ramsey's Theorem. In particular, our result implies that every ω-model of RCA 0 + SRT 2 2 must contain a nonlow set.

This textbook places emphasis on showing how useful a tool modal logic can be for formal philosophy, metaphysics, temporal reasoning, epistemics, the analysis of action and processes and ethical reasoning. Moving beyond propositional logic and predicate logic, modal logic gives the power to articulates and explore with precision philosophical arguments concerning possibility and necessity that are essential concepts in thought. This textbook is intended as an introductory study of modal logics with philosophy. In part 1 the reader is introduced to (...) some standard systems of modal logic, emphasis being on world semantics for modal logics. Part 2 explores modal logic applications to profound philosophical issues. (shrink)

We prove that there exists a noncomputable c.e. real which is low for weak 2-randomness, a definition of randomness due to Kurtz, and that all reals which are low for weak 2-randomness are low for Martin-Löf randomness.

In their book, Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection, Depew and Weber argued for the need to address the relationship between self-organization and natural selection in evolutionary theory, and focused on seven “visions” for doing so. Recently, Batten et al. in a paper in this journal, entitled “Visions of evolution: self-organization proposes what natural selection disposes,” picked up the issue with the work of Depew and Weber as a starting point. While the efforts of both sets (...) of authors are to be commended, there are substantive errors in both the presentations of my work and of my work with colleagues that undermine theirs. My purpose here is to correct the errors in question, thereby removing the undermining effects and in so doing reassert the position my colleagues and I first advanced more than two decades ago, and that I still stand by and argue for today. The central points are as follows: Self-organization or spontaneous ordering is a process of selection; this selection process is governed by a “physical selection principle”; this principle is the law of maximum entropy production; and natural selection is a special case where the components are replicating. (shrink)

We characterize the class of c.e. degrees that bound a critical triple as those degrees that compute a function that has no ω-c.e. approximation.

Aristotle is the most influential philosopher of practice, and Knight's new book explores the continuing importance of Aristotelian philosophy. First, it examines the theoretical bases of what Aristotle said about ethical, political and productive activity. It then traces ideas of practice through such figures as St Paul, Luther, Hegel, Heidegger and recent Aristotelian philosophers, and evaluates Alasdair MacIntyre's contribution. Knight argues that, whereas Aristotle's own thought legitimated oppression, MacIntyre's revision of Aristotelianism separates ethical excellence from social elitism and (...) justifies resistance. With MacIntyre, Aristotelianism becomes revolutionary. MacIntyre's case for the Thomistic Aristotelian tradition originates in his attempt to elaborate a Marxist ethics informed by analytic philosophy. He analyses social practices in teleological terms, opposing them to capitalist institutions and arguing for the cooperative defence of our moral agency. In condensing these ideas, Knight advances a theoretical argument for the reformation of Aristotelianism and an ethical argument for social change. (shrink)

In Plato on the Unity of the Virtues, Rod Jenks argues that while Plato makes several attempts to show how virtue is one, he deliberately fails to secure this because he thinks the way in which the virtues are both one and many is finally ineffable.

A deed is a governmental conveyance, a power asserted by the written, for, as William Carlos Williams wrote to Robert Creeley: “the government can never be more than the government of the words.” The question of ownership, of the words with which we define ourselves and each other, and of whose and what claims are legitimate is much at issue in Rod Smith’s _Deed,_ a lyric, ambitious, rebellious work thoroughly grounded in the New American tradition of poets such as John (...) Ashbery, Allen Ginsberg, and Charles Olson. (shrink)

We introduce a new hierarchy of computably enumerable degrees. This hierarchy is based on computable ordinal notations measuring complexity of approximation of${\rm{\Delta }}_2^0$functions. The hierarchy unifies and classifies the combinatorics of a number of diverse constructions in computability theory. It does so along the lines of the high degrees (Martin) and the array noncomputable degrees (Downey, Jockusch, and Stob). The hierarchy also gives a number of natural definability results in the c.e. degrees, including a definable antichain.

A splitting A1A2 = A of an r.e. set A is called a Friedberg splitting if for any r.e. set W with W — A not r.e., W — Ai≠0 for I = 1,2. In an earlier paper, the authors investigated Friedberg splittings of maximal sets and showed that they formed an orbit with very interesting degree-theoretical properties. In the present paper we continue our investigations, this time analyzing Friedberg splittings and in particular their orbits and degrees for various classes (...) of r.e. sets. (shrink)

We give a proof of a theorem of Harrington that there is no orbit of the lattice of recursively enumerable sets containing elements of each nonzero recursively enumerable degree. We also establish some degree theoretical extensions.

The “hard problem” of the origin and nature of intelligence (cognition/“mind”) in the cosmos and its relation to symmetry and symmetry breaking goes back to the pre-Socratic Parmenides who claimed true reality (ontology) was a state of perfect symmetry and the world of change we know an illusion. Parmenides’s problem was that his ideal symmetry was broken ab initio by the cognitive act of him asserting it. This incommensurable separation of the time-asymmetric cognitive part of the world and physics came (...) into modern science with Cartesian dualism and the time-symmetric equations of Newton and then with the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. The aporia is also found in the belief that unifying the forces of nature under a single symmetry would provide a “theory of everything” (TOE). Cosmology shows, however, it is symmetry breaking rather than symmetry that has brought the universe into being. Irreducible to the time-reversal symmetry of classical and quantum mechanics, an expanded thermodynamics, specifically the addition of the fourth law of thermodynamics, provides a universal explanation. Coupled with a first law time-translation symmetry account of information (in the meaningful sense) the origin, nature and evolution of cognition is readily seen as a direct manifestation of universal law rather than somehow sitting impossibly outside it. (shrink)

This paper revisits some recent contributions on ‘Why Management Theory Needs Popper’ to the journal Philosophy of Management. It proposes that those discussions provided an appraisal of the relevance of Popper’s falsification schema to management theory, but that they did not thereby bring to the fore all of the issues pertinent to a balanced and well-rounded understanding of Popper’s philosophy of critical rationalism. It is argued that such an understanding requires a discussion of what Popper himself declared to be the (...) real lynchpin of his thought: fallibilism and a critical approach. It is noted that this represents a rejection of the historical problem situation of philosophy – that knowledge claims need to be positively justified as true. It is argued that this rejection implies an anti-authoritarian, non-justificational philosophy based on the use of critical reason. Its application to several different objects of criticism is demonstrated and its ethical dimensions are explored. The relevance of critical rationalism to management studies and practice is assessed and an inherent limitation on the prospects of its adoption in management practice is identified. (shrink)