Studying Scientific Virtues

Despite their historical connections, interdisciplinary research between philosophy and social science is relatively infrequent because of the divergent subject matter and disparate aims of these fields of inquiry. Although both may study “norms,” philosophy considers norms in a prescriptive sense, while social science investigates them in a descriptive sense. For such reasons, maintaining a neighborly wall between these disciplines serves both well. There are, however, several points of substantive contact where each may affect the other. After drawing some lessons about the possibilities and pitfalls of such work from previous exemplars, the chapter discusses Pennock and Miller’s interdisciplinary investigation of the scientific virtues. Quantitative and qualitative data from interviews with more than a thousand scientists about the character traits that are important for scientific research provided a rich source of information for the applicability of Pennock’s vocational virtue theory as it applies to science, showing the value of such collaboration.

Civil Disobedience in Times of Pandemic: Clarifying Rights and Duties

This paper seeks to investigate and assess a particular form of relationship between the State and its citizens in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, namely that of obedience to the law and its related right of protest through civil disobedience. We do so by conducting an analysis and normative evaluation of two cases of disobedience to the law: (1) healthcare professionals refusing to attend work as a protest against unsafe working conditions, and (2) citizens who use public demonstration and deliberately ignore measures of social distancing as a way of protesting against lockdown. While different in many aspects, both are substantially similar with respect to one element: their respective protesters both rely on unlawful actions in order to bring change to a policy they consider unjust. We question the extent to which healthcare professionals may participate in civil disobedience with respect to the duty of care intrinsic to the medical profession, and the extent to which opponents of lockdown and confinement measures may reasonably engage in protests without endangering the lives and basic rights of non-dissenting citizens. Drawing on a contractualist normative framework, our analysis leads us to conclude that while both cases qualify as civil disobedience in the descriptive sense, only the case of healthcare professionals qualifies as morally justified civil disobedience.

Frege on Singular Senses

In this article the author discusses what seems to be a puzzle for Frege’s notion of singular senses (i.e., the senses of singular terms), in particular senses of definite descriptions. These senses are supposed to be complete (or saturated), but they are composed of the incomplete (unsaturated) senses of conceptual terms (i.e., conceptual senses). The author asks how the definite article (or what it expresses) transforms an unsaturated sense into a saturated one and reviews some attempted explanations in the literature. He argues that none of them is compatible with Frege’s views in semantics. Next, he discusses an alternative that Frege himself endorses and argues that it is also incompatible with his semantics. The author concludes that Frege has no coherent view on the senses of definite descriptions. If we assume that every name expresses a descriptive sense, then we must conclude that Frege has no coherent explanation for singular senses in general.

The Idea of Israel as a Jewish State

Israel is often described as a Jewish state and as the locus of Jewish self-determination. How should these phrases be understood? How can they be squared with a commitment to equal citizenship for non-Jewish Israelis? This Article distinguishes between descriptive and normative answers to these questions. The descriptive answer interprets the phrases as referring to the fact that a majority of Israelis are Jewish. The normative answer reads into the phrases a special obligation to promote the common good of the Jewish people. The Article argues that the phrases are unobjectionable when taken in the descriptive sense, but problematic when understood in the normative sense. A state that is guided by the normative answer would offer inadequate protection to key interests of minorities. The critique of the normative answer also points to the more positive conclusion that Israel should foster an Israeli civic identity amongst all its citizens.

Periodizing Secularization

Moving beyond the (now somewhat tired) debates about secularization as paradigm, theory, or master narrative, this book focuses upon the empirical evidence for secularization, viewed in its descriptive sense as the waning social influence of religion, in Britain. Particular emphasis is attached to the two key performance indicators of religious allegiance and churchgoing, each subsuming several sub-indicators, between 1880 and 1945, including the first substantive account of secularization during the fin de siècle. A wide range of primary sources is deployed, many relatively or entirely unknown, and with due regard to their methodological and interpretative challenges. On the back of them, a cross-cutting statistical measure of ‘active church adherence’ is devised, which clearly shows how secularization has been a reality and a gradual, not revolutionary, process. The most likely causes of secularization were an incremental demise of a Sabbatarian culture and of religious socialization (in the church, at home, and in the school). The analysis is also extended backwards, to include a summary of developments during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; and laterally, to incorporate a preliminary evaluation of a six-dimensional model of ‘diffusive religion’, demonstrating that these alternative performance indicators have hitherto failed to prove that secularization has not occurred. The book is designed as a prequel to the author’s previous volumes on the chronology of British secularization – Britain’s Last Religious Revival? (2015) and Secularization in the Long 1960s (2017). Together, they offer a holistic picture of religious transformation in Britain during the key secularizing century of 1880–1980. [250 words]

Adolescents and Body Modification for Gender Identity Expression

As a matter of ethics and law, adults enjoy wide berth in securing hormonal and surgical interventions to align their bodies with their desired gender appearance. In contrast, the exercise of choice by minors is more constrained, because they can be less well situated to grasp the nature and consequences of interventions having life-long effects. Even so, some minors hope for body modifications prior to adulthood. Starting very young, some minors may assert atypical gender identity: those with female-typical bodies assert a male identity and those with male-typical bodies assert a female identity. This assertion of identity is atypical only in a descriptive sense, because it is uncharacteristic, not because it is normatively unacceptable. Not all minors persist in their atypical gender identities, but some do. For those who do, it is desirable to minimize unwanted secondary sex characteristics and to maximize desired secondary sex characteristics. I outline here a theory of respect for decisions by minors in regard to hormonal and surgical interventions that help align their bodies with their gender identity. Of particular ethical interest here are body modifications for fertility preservation since certain interventions in the body can leave people unable to have genetically related children. In general, I will show that the degree of respect owed to minors in regard to body modifications for gender identity expression should be scaled according to their decision-making capacities, in the context of robust practices of informed consent.

Developing an understanding of normativity

Much empirical research on human social cognition and its development pertains to questions of how individuals understand their conspecifics in a causal-descriptive sense, that is, how they explain and predict others’ observable (behavioral) and unobservable (mental) states (e.g., epistemic or volitional states). Human social cognition, however, also entails normativity—the sense of right and wrong—in thought and action. This chapter introduces the notion of normativity and reviews developmental research on the early ontogeny of understanding, learning, and applying different types of normative phenomena (focusing on practical norms, e.g., conventional and moral norms). We report evidence that even very young children engage in rational and selective third-party norm enforcement, which suggests that they understand some important features of normativity (e.g., normative force and generality). Thus, from early on, human social cognition is not only concerned with the prediction and explanation of others’ behavior, but also with the prescription and evaluation of others’ actions—a conceptual space of reasons grounded in a psychological space of shared and collective intentionality.

The Symbolic and the Functional

In this chapter, the author comments on Su Li's discussion of the constitution of ancient China. In his account of Chinese constitutional law, Su Li tackles constitutionalism from a historical point of view. While acknowledging Su Li's contributions to urging Chinese legal scholars to rethink the meaning of “constitution,” not as a modern, liberal, normative conception, but in its original, constitutive, descriptive sense, the author argues that Su Li's structural functionalism fails to pay sufficient attention to the problem of legitimation and the dimension of politico-cultural meaning. The author examines the popular ideas about constitutional law and constitutionalism in contemporary China before delving into Su Li's arguments in detail. In particular, he addresses the issue of constitutional continuity and discontinuity as well as legitimacy continuity. He also cites Su Li's claim that the emperor was an indispensable constitutional institution in ancient China.

Society and culture as container

Within the social sciences and humanities, especially in the field of cultural studies, research has increasingly been dealing with the dissolution of cultural and social boundaries. However, the question of how interactants perceive themselves and construct and describe their interaction space in a certain ‘culture’ or ‘society’ can only be answered empirically. In this regard, the methodological framework of cognitive metaphor theory has proven to be facilitative. From a cognitive semantics point of view, metaphors by no means refer to an external world in a descriptive sense, but are important mediators between cognition and language, as well as between the individual and society. On the basis of two research projects — one on the metaphorical construction of society in German and Brazilian written and spoken corpora, and another on filmed intercultural interactions in the context of an ongoing research — it will be revealed how participants in communication use culture-specific metaphorizations when localizing themselves and others. In addition, the role of animated ‘compound image schemas’, such as container, outside-inside and up-down, will be explored at the linguistic as well as the gestural level when functioning as ‘patterns of orientation’ and ‘meaning formulas’. While from a communicative-participative perspective such schemas serve to reduce complexity, they are also highly significant from the participants’ own extracommunicative-reflexive point of view where interpretations regarding divergent behavioral patterns are concerned.

Selected Methods For Increases Reliability The Of Electronic Systems Security

The article presents the issues related to the different methods to increase the reliability of electronic security systems (ESS) for example, a fire alarm system (SSP). Reliability of the SSP in the descriptive sense is a property preservation capacity to implement the preset function (e.g. protection: fire airport, the port, logistics base, etc.), at a certain time and under certain conditions, e.g. Environmental, despite the possible non-compliance by a specific subset of elements this system. Analyzing the available literature on the ESS-SSP is not available studies on methods to increase the reliability (several works similar topics but moving with respect to the burglary and robbery (Intrusion.) Based on the analysis of the set of all paths in the system suitability of the SSP for the scenario mentioned elements fire events (device) critical because of security.