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I extend theories of nonmonotonic reasoning to account for reasons allowing free choice. My approach works with a wide variety of approaches to nonmonotonic reasoning and explains the connection between reasons for kinds of action and reasons for actions or subkinds falling under them. I use an Anderson–Kanger reduction of reason statements, identifying key principles in the logic of reasons.

This paper develops a metaphysically flexible theory of quantification broad enough to incorporate many distinct theories of objects. Quite different, mutually incompatible conceptions of the nature of objects and of reference find representation within it. Some conceptions yield classical first-order logic; some yield weaker logics. Yet others yield notions of validity that are proper extensions of classical logic.

This chapter examines three of Alvin Plantinga’s arguments for the existence of God: the Putnamian argument (or the argument from global skepticism), the argument from reference, and the Kripke-Wittgenstein argument from plus and quus. They begin with skeptical arguments against the possibility of knowledge, reference, or content and convert them into arguments for God’s existence. The key idea behind these arguments is that content and the knowledge of it are infinitary and normative. These features of content make it impossible to account for a speaker’s content, since a finite being’s dispositions are finite. Content requires a non-naturalistic relation to an infinite set of finite minds or to an infinite mind. The only options for accounting for content are pragmatism and theism. If pragmatism fails, then theism is the only remaining option.

Richard Rorty listsMartin Heidegger among the three greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, along with Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Dewey. Even those who would propose a very different list would agree that Heidegger has been among the most influential philosophers of the past century. His thought underlies later developments in Continental philosophy, from existentialism to postmodernism, and has influenced analytic philosophers such as Wilfrid Sellars, Rorty, and Robert Brandom. It has had an even more sweeping impact on developments in other parts of the humanities, which have abandoned traditional humanistic pursuits in favor of “theory” and embraced a kind of anti-intellectualism dressed in a garb of elaborate verbiage ultimately inspired by and derived from Heidegger. Finally, it has shaped our political discourse and culture, altering our conceptions of ideologies throughout the political spectrum. I will focus here on some concepts central to Being and Time (1927), Heidegger’s greatest and most influential work. They constitute important Acad. Quest. DOI 10.1007/s12129-014-9417-4

Purpose. The purpose of this research was to investigate older adolescents' perceptions of Do-It-Yourself Genetic Assessment (DIYGA) services online and factors that influence their intentions to utilize DIYGA services. Design and Methods. A convenience sample of 111 undergraduate students completed an online survey based on the Theory of Planned Behavior. Results. Most respondents (80.4%) had not heard of DIYGA services. Predictors of intentions to use DIYGA services included attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived risk of developing a genetic disorder. Practice Implications. Nurses are in a unique position to provide much-needed education and guidance to adolescents about genetic testing, particularly given mass media sources were the primary sources of information among these adolescents.

Genetic testing can help individuals and families by giving them a sense of control over their futures; however, results of some types of testing cause individuals and their families great distress and anxiety. The purpose of this paper is to report findings from a systematic review of literature about perceived benefits and harms associated with genetic testing. A second purpose was to determine if perceived benefits and harms varied by age and gender. We reviewed a sample of 30 articles published between 1997 and 2009. Most of the articles were other literature reviews. We summarized the benefits and harms associated with each type of genetic testing and made recommendations for future study. As technologies increase, genetic testing will expand and psychiatric mental health nurses must be prepared to meet the challenges of psychosocial disorders that may develop in response to genetic testing.

Advances in genomic science create both opportunities and challenges for future generations. Both adolescents and adults may benefit or be harmed by decisions they make in response to this new science. Using a qualitative descriptive design, the authors interviewed 22 adolescents (11 who were aged 14-17 years and 11 who were 18-21 years) and 11 parents to determine levels of knowledge and approaches to decision making. It was found that younger adolescents and their parents have very limited knowledge about genetics and genetic testing. Older adolescents have more complete information and consider a broader range of points in making decisions about hypothetical situations involving genetic testing. Adolescents and parents need much more information to enhance their ability to make decisions about using genetic services. These findings have implications for developing interventions and public health policy highlighted by the need for improved education about the benefits and harms of genetic testing.

Themost important concept in current environmental thinking is sustainability. Environmental policies, economic policies, development, resource use—all of these things, according to the consensus, ought to be sustainable. But what is sustainability? What is its ethical foundation? There is little consensus about how these questions ought to be answered. Many environmentalists are troubled by the plethora of understandings of sustainability in the literature. Andrew Dobson, for example, counts more than three hundred definitions! Others see this as a virtue, equating sustainability with other contested concepts such as happiness, justice, and rights. Either way, exploring the ethical significance of sustainability is a vital task. Surprisingly, almost nothing has been done to justify sustainability as an ethical constraint. My aim is to investigate whether that can be done. I shall argue that the chief conceptions of sustainability in the environmental literature are not themselves sustainable. They often have innocuous interpretations that are plausible but do little to advance the environmentalists’ or any other particular agenda. Their more radical interpretations, however, lack ethical foundations; they face obvious counterexamples when applied to individual lives and communities. There is no reason to take any of them as criteria that any environmental, economic, developmental, or resource management policy must meet, or even as goals toward which any such policy ought to strive. Acad. Quest. (2010) 23:84–101 DOI 10.1007/s12129-009-9152-4

PURPOSE. Mapping of the human genome raises interest in and concern about the genetic testing of adolescents. Our purpose was to determine the attitudes and knowledge adolescents and their parents have about genetic testing. DESIGN AND METHOD. This paper is a report of a systematic review of the research literature (n = 56) about the attitudes and knowledge adolescents and their parents have about genetic testing. RESULTS. The majority of studies, which were descriptive in design, focused on a specific heritable disorder, were conducted in the United States, and over sampled well-educated White females. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS. Results suggest that adolescents and their families have relatively positive attitudes about genetic testing and may experience both harms and benefits from testing. Nurses may be in positions to assist adolescents and their families in making decisions about genetic testing, remaining sensitive to family dynamics and issues of privacy and autonomy. Search terms: Adolescent, family, genetic testing

Pragma-dialectics is dynamic, context-sensitive, and multi-agent; it promises theories of fallacy and argumentative structure. But pragma-dialectic theory and practice are not yet fully in harmony. Key definitions of the theory fall short of explicating the analyses that pragma-dialecticians actually do. Many discussions involve more than two participants with different and mutually incompatible standpoints. Success in such a discussion may be more than success against each opponent. Pragma-dialectics does well at analyzing arguments advanced by one party, directed at another party; it does much less well at analyzing arguments directed at several opponents at once or at convincing an audience. I suggest a strategy of construing fallacies as defeasible arguments relying on reasonable default principles but applying them in circumstances in which they are undercut or overridden.

John McDowell, Richard Rorty, and Robert Brandom invoke Sellars's arguments against the Myth of the Given as having shown that the Given is nothing more than a myth. But most of Sellars's arguments attack logical atomism, not the framework of givenness as such. Moreover, they do not succeed. At crucial points the arguments confuse the perspectives of a knower and those attributing knowledge to a knower. Only one argument—the “inconsistent triad” argument—addresses the Myth of the Given as such, and there are several ways of escaping its conclusion. Invocations of Sellars's refutation of the Myth of the Given are empty.

Over the centuries, philosophy has been seen in many ways: as a midwife to the birth of ideas, as queen of the sciences, as an owl flying at dusk, as a ladder to be kicked away upon reaching enlightenment, and as a large-scale map relating the small-scale maps of the sciences. The image suggested by philosophy's role in recent changes in the academy is Typhoid Mary-one who infects others while avoiding serious illness herself. Many ideas that underlie the politicization of the university had their origin in philosophy. Yet philosophy has largely managed to escape politicization.

Lennart Aqvist (1984) explains why most contemporary deontic logics use a primitive binary conditional obligation operator. He then points to an account of prima facie obligation as the primary outstanding problem facing these logics. Solving that problem, I hope to show, also solves the puzzles that motivated such theories in the first place. The crucial feature of obligation sentences to which the puzzles point is that such sentences, and evaluative sentences more generally, are defeasible. They may be warranted, given some information, only to be defeated by further information. A theory that recognizes this no longer needs to see conditional obligation as anything more than a simple combination of unary obligation and the conditional. My title may thus be overly provocative. I do not mean to deny that some obligations hold only if some condition is fulfilled. Nor do I mean to deny that sentences Kant would have called hypothetical imperatives, such as If you like Mexican food, you should try Jorge's, express such obligations. Finally, I do not mean to deny that there is anything wrong with the common strategy of using a primitive conditional obligation operator such as O(qlp) in a logical or philosophical theory of deontic concepts. It usefully avoids commitments about the relative roles of obligation and the conditional. What I do want to attack is the idea that a theory with a primitive conditional obligation operator-a binary theory, as I shall call it-can be afinal logical or philosophical theory about deontic concepts. At the very least, a theorist using a conditional obligation operator owes us an explanation of how the semantics of the operator depends on the semantics for obligation and the conditional simpliciter. Sentences expressing conditional obligations are intelligible to anyone understanding should (or ought to) and if. The combination of these words is no idiom. The meanings of such sentences, therefore, should be explicable in terms

The purpose of this research was to investigate older adolescents' perceptions of Do-It-Yourself Genetic Assessment (DIYGA) services online and factors that influence their intentions to utilize DIYGA services.A convenience sample of 111 undergraduate students completed an online survey based on the Theory of Planned Behavior.Most respondents (80.4%) had not heard of DIYGA services. Predictors of intentions to use DIYGA services included attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived risk of developing a genetic disorder.Nurses are in a unique position to provide much-needed education and guidance to adolescents about genetic testing, particularly given mass media sources were the primary sources of information among these adolescents.

It is often said that there is no common scale for measuring and comparing our basic values such as liberty, equality, justice, happiness, and security. Such values are said to be incommensurate or incommensurable.' How do we rank these values for making our choices? It appears that they do not fit into the standard way of ranking our preferences. Our purpose is to examine two nonstandard ways of ranking competing values or alternatives.

Reason develops principles to deal with experience; within the realm of experience, those principles are well justified. Reason finds itself driven, however, to ask questions extending beyond that realm. The very principles it has developed and upon which it properly continues to rely in dealing with experience there lead it “into darkness and contradictions” (A viii). Metaphysics, once Queen of the Sciences, now surveys the battlefield on which these principles clash and mourns. Kant’s aim in the Critique is to rescue metaphysics, “to secure for human reason complete satisfaction” (A 856, B 884) by defining its proper sphere of application.