Additional Premise Research Articles

Can Nature Serve as a Moral Guide?

However declasse, I have never quite given up the hope that nature might put in a reappearance in ethics. Unfortunately, it is hard to think of a once-robust tradition - that of natural law or naturalism - that is much more down at the heel. Even pragmatism and stoicism, also long pronounced dead, have staged a recent comeback. Is there any hope that nature can once again serve as a moral guide? The principal modern obstacle has been, most broadly, the belief that given the human capacity to intervene in and often set aside what was once taken to be fixed and "natural," nature is much too malleable a concept in practice and too opaque in theory to tell us much of any value. The narrower obstacle, much like a hex, has been the intimidating force of the "naturalistic fallacy," the argument that it is impossible to deduce an "ought" from an "is." Thus the standard argument: the fact that murder leaves people dead does not justify concluding that murder ought not to be committed; only the insertion of a moral premise somewhere can produce that conclusion. Should we be intimidated by these obstacles, generally thought insurmountable? Not necessarily. The supposed naturalistic fallacy is, on closer inspection, an odd kind of fallacy. Since "is" is all the universe has to offer, to say that it cannot be the source of an "ought" is tantamount to saying a priori that an ought can have no source at all - and to say that is no less than to say there can be no oughts. That cannot be correct, if only because the pervasive feelings of moral obligation are themselves a social and psychological fact that people act upon (which is not to say they are necessarily the obligations one ought to have); and because, as H.L.A. Hart has noted in defending a minimal kind of natural law, some moral rules are necessary constitutive elements of any and all societies - is and ought become, in effect, conflated; and because people commit the fallacy all the time, not because they are too obtuse to recognize that they are doing so, but because it turns out in practice to be next to impossible to reason morally at all without committing it. If, for instance, we say that it is wrong to inflict needless pain on innocent children, that moral contention must assume that children do not want to be in pain, as part of their human nature. There is a slide from an is to an ought here, but it would seem bizarre not to make it - and even more bizarre to claim that the fact that children do not like needlessly inflicted pain does not, by itself and without an additional moral premise, show that the infliction of such pain is moral wrong. I would argue that even a superficial examination of human nature would show why that fact carries its own moral implication. I would also note that I have never heard anyone object to the contention that "ought implies can," where the "can" must be based on an estimate of a generic human capacity to meet a particular moral obligation. Here fact and value become one, and necessarily so. Quite apart from these philosophical puzzles, it is useful to note that there is now a major field of inquiry and action right under our noses where nature is frequently held up - with little objection - as the standard for proper behavior. That field is environmentalism. Its central conviction is that human beings have to respect and live with nature, that nature must be our guide in determining how best to avoid the ruination of our environmental habitat. It is not necessary, to make that conviction plausible, to hold the view that nature always "knows best" or that nature cannot safely be modified to meet human needs. Obviously that is not true. But it has come to seem wise and prudent to understand the way in which organic nature works, including, most centrally, its evolutionary and adaptive mechanisms. If that does not tell us precisely what we should do as we evaluate human needs and desires, it does helpfully point us in a certain direction and alerts us to dangers to be avoided. …

Descartes: An Analytical and Historical Introduction.

Preface to the Second Edition Preface to the First Edition Note on the References and Abbreviations 1. Meditation and the Method of Doubt 1. Descartes's Goal 2. Cartesian Doubt 3. Is the Cartesian Doubt Self-Refuting? 3.1 Deceptiveness of the Senses 3.2 Dream Argument 3.3 Deceiver Argument Notes 2. Meditation II: the Cogito and the Self51 1. Descartes's I am thinking, therefore exist. 2. Certainty of One's Own Thoughts 3. A Problem for the Cogito 4. Substance Theory 5. A Reconstruction of the Cogito based on the substance theory 6. Critical Discussion of the Reconstructed Cogito 6.1 Substance Theory and the Argument from Change 6.2 Corollary 6.3 Assumption That Thoughts Are Properties 6.4 Inference to I Exist 7. A defense of the unreconstructed cogito 8. Does the unreconstructed cogito require an additional premise? 9. Descartes's Conception of the Self 10. Cartesian Dualism Notes 3. Meditation III: Criterion of Truth and the Existence of God 1. Descartes's Criterion of Truth 2. Project of Meditation III 3. From the Idea of God to God 3.1 Nature of Ideas 3.2 Objective Reality and Formal Reality 3.3 Core Argument 3.4 Central Argument of Meditation III: the Subargument, the Core Argument, and the Sequel 4. Criticisms of Descartes's Central Argument in Meditation III 4.1 Subargument 4.1.1 precontainment principle 4.1.2 Degrees of reality 4.1.3 Justifying the causal maxim 4.2 Problem of the Cartesian Circle 4.2.1 restriction of the doubt to past clear and distinct perceptions defense 4.2.2 general rule defense 4.2.3 radical doubt of reason and the creation of the eternal truths 4.2.4 validation of reason 4.3 A Final Criticism of the Core Argument Notes 4. Meditation IV: Error, Freedom, and Evil 1. issues of the Fourth Meditation 2. Error and the will 3. Two possible objections 3.1 Assenting and deciding to believe 3.2 Irresistibility and freedom 4. coherence of Cartesian Freedom 5. Descartes's troubling letter to Mesland 6. Error and evil 6.1 problem of evil 6.2 Cartesian theodicy 6.3 Some critical Reflections Notes 5. Meditation V: Ontological Argument for the Existence of God 1. Descartes's Ontological Argument 2. Critique of the Ontological Argument 2.1 Gaunilo's Objection 2.2 Kant's Objection 2.3 Further Consideration of Kant's Objection 2.4 Caterus's Objection 3. Some Implications for Descartes's System Notes 6: Meditation VI: Dualism and the Material World 1. scope of Meditation VI 2. Descartes's Proof of The Real Distinction between Mind and Body 3. Descartes's Proof of the Material World 4. Descartes on the Nature of the Material World 4.1 Primary and Secondary Qualities 4.2 Matter, Space, and Solidity 4.3 Bodies as Substances versus Bodies as Modes of Substance 5. Dualism and the Problem of Interaction 6. An Assessment of Cartesian Dualism Notes Bibliography

Deduction from Uncertain Premises

We investigate how the perceived uncertainty of a conditional affects a person's choice of conclusion. We use a novel procedure to introduce uncertainty by manipulating the conditional probability of the consequent given the antecedent. In Experiment 1, we show first that subjects reduce their choice of valid conclusions when a conditional is followed by an additional premise that makes the major premise uncertain. In this we replicate Byrne (1989). These subjects choose, instead, a qualified conclusion expressing uncertainty. If subjects are given a third statement that qualifies the likelihood of the additional premise, then the uncertainty of the conclusions they choose is systematically related to the suggested uncertainty. Experiment 2 confirms these observations in problems that omit the additional premise and qualify the first premise directly. Experiment 3 shows that the qualifying statement also affects the perceived probability of the consequent given the antecedent of the conditional. Experiment 4 investigates the effect of suggested uncertainty on the fallacies and shows that increases in uncertainty reduce the number of certain conclusions that are chosen while affirming the consequent but have no effect on denying the antecedent. We discuss our results in terms of rule theories and mental models and conclude that the latter give the most natural account of our results.

Suppression of valid inferences: syntactic views, mental models, and relative salience

Byrne (1989) has demonstrated that although subjects can make deductively valid inferences of the modus ponens and modus tollens forms, these valid inferences can be suppressed by presenting an appropriate additional premise “If R then Q” with the original conditional “If P then Q”. This suppression effect challenges the assumption of all syntactic theories of conditional reasoning that formal rules of inference such as modus ponens is part of mental logic. This paper argues that both the syntactic and the mental model accounts of the suppression effect are inadequate because they fail to give a principled account of the critical interpretive component involved in reasoning. In contrast, the relative salience model proposed in this study emphasized the centrality of the interpretative processes with the critical component being the relative salience of premises as judged by subjects on the basis of their prior knowledge activated in particular problem situations. Using 120 undergraduates and 120 policemen as subjects, predictions from the model were tested and confirmed in a suppression paradigm and evidence of convergent validity for the construct of salience were obtained. The results cannot be reconciled with either the syntactic view or the mental model view that have dominated theories of conditional reasoning.

Davidson's Compatibilism

The problem of free will has been with us ever since men began to recognize the existence of laws of nature. Explanatory theories exercise a kind of imperialism over human thought, in the sense that we inevitably try to extend the embrace of a successful theory to cover as many phenomena as opportunity allows. Theoretical hypotheses come in various degrees of generality. Among them, one of the most general is the vague and relatively noncommittal hypothesis that every occurrence and state of affairs has some nomological explanation; or more succinctly, that every event has a cause. This claim is not, to be sure, logically equivalent to an even more general hypothesis, the Principle of Sufficient Reason, provided we formulate the latter as the claim that every event has a genetic explanation. For to derive the former from the latter we should need the additional premise that every genetic event-explanation is causal.' This last premise - or so I shall argue - is not trivial. In fact I think it is false. Nevertheless, the temptation to affirm the universality of nomological explanation in the domain of the genesis of events is natural and powerfully motivated by the success of the physical sciences. Even dualists who maintain that there are certain mental properties that are not identical with any physical properties are confronted with the evident fact that the characteristically mental properties were instantiated long after physical ones were, and the fact that their instantiation has some physical basis. On the other hand, the mental seems in some respects tremendously different from the physical, and a vicious regress or other difficulties attend every attempt I know of to explain away these differences as mere illusions. If the differences remain, then the question whether and how mental events are open to the genetic explanation cannot be directly inferred from what we know, or have reason to believe, about the physical.

Haemolysis in chronic renal failure.

In a group of patients with a range of degree of advancement of renal failure, the red cell survival estimated as the half-life of radiochromium-labelled red blood cells (T1/2. 51Cr) was correlated with several indices of renal failure. The T1/2. 51Cr was not improved by a dialysis programme which was otherwise adequate. Furthermore, the correlation of a T1/2. 51Cr to the biochemical indices of renal failure was lost which might suggest that some other factor or factors than those measured was the ultimate correlate with red cell survival. This work adds to the circumstantial evidence in favour of a guanidine or a similarly behaving molecule being the haemolyzing agent. The additional premise is extended that a methionine-rich diet will inhibit the haemolytic factor.

Iummunologic rejection of chromosomally abnormal fetuses.

IMMUNOLOGIC REJECTION OF CHROMOSOMALLY ABNORMAL FETUSES THEODORE KUSHNICK, M.D.* Introduction Much study and investigational effort have been expended in explaining the normal lack of rejection of the conceptus despite the hemigenetic differences between the mother and fetus [1, 2]. The explanations for this phenomenon have been based on placental and antibody blocking mechanisms, as well as depressed maternal cell-mediated immunity during pregnancy [2]. However, it has long been established that fetal cells do enter the maternal circulation and stimulate maternal immune mechanisms. Indeed, excellent primary sources for antisera with which to type histocompatibility antigens (HL-A) are the sera from multiparous women [3]. As a corollary, Warburton and Naylor [4] have hypothesized that the increase in placental weights and birth weights with increasing parity is the result of sensitization of the mother to paternal antigens found in the fetuses. The presumption is that all of the above studies relate to lack of rejection of normal fetuses. There have been no investigations into the ease with which chromosomally abnormal fetuses are rejected, as is the situation in more than half of the spontaneous abortions that have been cytogenetically studied [5]. Premise It seems quite possible that maternal immune mechanisms can be activated and stimulated by the presence of a chromosomally abnormal fetus, leading to the rejection of such fetuses, which accounts for the majority of spontaneous abortions . Creasy and Crolla's data [6] indicate that twice as many trisomy 21 fetuses are spontaneously aborted as survive to term. As an additional premise, it is suggested that the increased maternal age effect noted for births of autosomal trisomies might be related to diminishing immunoreactive processes as part of the maternal aging process, thereby reducing the mother's capability for aborting such abnormal fetuses. Investigational Methods Initial studies would involve HL-A typing of chromosomally abnormal pa- *Division of Human Genetics, Department of Pediatrics, New Jersey Medical School, 100 Bergen Street, Newark, New Jersey 07103. 292 I Theodore Kushnick · Brief Proposal tients, mothers of such patients, mothers who are known to have had spontaneous abortion of a chromosomally abnormal fetus, and mothers who are repeated aborters, with all being compared to appropriate controls. Such HL-A typing might indicate increased frequency of specific HL-A-type mothers who carry their chromosomally abnormal fetuses to term. Inasmuch as increased immunoreactive HL-A specificities have been noted in many autoimmune and hypersensitivity diseases, this avenue of approach might prove fruitful in differentiating those mothers who will permit a chromosomally abnormal fetus to survive to birth from those mothers who will spontaneously abort such fetuses. In addition, these studies might reveal an increased frequency of specific HL-A types associated with specific chromosome aberrations. A further necessary methodological approach requires the use of mixed lymphocyte cultures to detect maternal thymic (T) lymphocyte stimulation, with quantitation by radioactive thymidine scintillation counts or by utilizing other quantitative measures of maternal thymic lymphocyte stimulation. By testing against chromosomally abnormal lymphocytes with HL-A matched lymphocytes derived from mothers who have live chromosomally matched abnormal children (e.g., G trisomy cells and mothers of G trisomies), those who have aborted spontaneously a known chromosomal aberration (with specific chromosomal aberration and HL-A match), those who have had repeated abortion without study of the abortuses, and appropriate control mothers, it would seem possible to divide these mothers, on the basis of differences in their reactivities , into groups who are more capable of rejecting abnormal fetuses and those who are less likely to reject such fetuses. Along similar lines, testing of maternal B-cell reactivity to chromosome abnormalities could be performed. Earlier efforts in investigating this aspect yielded initial promising results [7], which subsequent data did not confirm [8]. Speculation If the mechanism for rejection of chromosomal abnormality in the form of spontaneous abortion does prove to be of an immunologic nature, it makes possible the speculation that antigen purification and immunization could be utilized to cause the spontaneous abortion of greater numbers of chromosomally abnormal fetuses. Thus, the natural mechanisms which deal with the majority of these abnormalities might be enhanced in those mothers who are less capable in their immunologic reactive processes. REFERENCES 1.J. Dancis. Pediatrics, 38...

Is Hart's Natural Right a Human Right?

Previous articleNext article No AccessDiscussionIs Hart's Natural Right a Human Right?Robert L. SimonRobert L. Simon Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Ethics Volume 80, Number 3Apr., 1970 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/291774 Views: 18Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.