It is typically said that there are two questions that political philosophy seeks to address: ‘who gets what?’ and ‘who decides on who gets what?’ South Africa, along with much of the rest of the world, has answered the second question badly and currently ranks as one of the world’s most unequal societies. Counter-intuitively, South Africa maintains a social-political order that (re)produces this inequality along with great enthusiasm for ubuntu, an African ethic that at a minimum requires that we treat each other humanely. However, due to the view that ubuntu has been co-opted in support of South Africa’s unjust system, ubuntu has largely been ignored by radical thinkers. The aim of this thesis is therefore to explore the possibility of an ubuntu-based political philosophy, with the core assumption that political philosophy is rooted in ethical theory. Three tasks are therefore undertaken in this thesis. Firstly, ubuntu is articulated as an ethic. Secondly, it is compared to similar Western ethical theories in order to determine if there are distinguishing characteristics that make ubuntu a more appropriate founding ethic for South African political philosophy. Finally, whether ubuntu can find real-world applicability will be assessed by looking at the way ubuntu has been used in the law

Numerous studies have attempted to measure scientists' influence by measuring the quantity of citations to their works. The problem with "citation counting," as it is called, is that it assumes that each listing of an author in a citation index is equal to another without bothering to explore the substantive uses of citations in the source article. The present study attempts to alleviate this problem by content analysis of citations in a limited sphere: reference to major philosophers of science by sociologists. In just over 100 sociology journals, citations to Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, Ernst Nagel, and Carl Hempel (overall, the most frequently cited philosophers of science) from 1971-1982 were randomly sampled. Each citation was classified according to the following criteria: 1) philosopher cited; 2) work cited, 3) exclusivity (whether cited with others); 4) multiplicity (number of citations by the philosopher in the same article); 5) type of article; and 6) purpose of citation. Purposes of citation included seven categories: 1) listing as relevant literature; 2) definition of a concept; 3) modification or extension of a philosopher's theory; 4) formulation of a research problem; 5) interpretation of results; 6) critical of philosopher's work; and 7) other. Analysis of these data revealed the following conclusions: 1) the major use of philosophy was the furnishing of concepts and their definitions; 2) philosophy of science played little or no role in directing research or interpreting results; 3) the use of citations differed greatly among the philosophers; 4) simple citation counting would have severely distorted the relative influences of each philosopher; and 5) the dialogue between sociology and the philosophy of science has, in the last decade, been dominated by Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions.

In this dissertation I provide an ethnographic account of the testimony of four expert witnesses who appeared before the Commission of Inquiry on the Blood System in Canada (the Krever Inquiry) as they described the production of scientific knowledge and the role that knowledge played in the struggle to protect the blood supply from being contaminated by AIDS during the early 1980's. In doing so, I bring together the experts' testimony with contemporary documents gathered by the Commission and interviews I conducted with participants in the proceedings. Using insights drawn from the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and history, I explore what the witnesses' accounts reveal about their understandings of their professional world and its relationships with other worlds, especially that of public health policy making. The Krever Inquiry offered a valuable opportunity for carrying out such an investigation. It provided a site where science was not only used, it was talked about. The Inquiry invited those involved in the blood system in the early 1980's to reflect upon and explain the beliefs and actions which surrounded one of the worst public health disasters in Canadian history and it asked the witnesses how similar catastrophes could be avoided in the future. As a result, many of the issues addressed at the hearings reflect matters of current concern in public health and medicine. The Inquiry addressed difficult issues surrounding the nature of scientific knowledge and its application in health decision-making and policy formulation. This study, therefore, may be of interest to those dealing with the problems surrounding uncertainty and the management of public health crises. It may also be of interest to those dealing with conflicts rising out of the intersection of different worlds of experience and practice, as well as to those involved in the current initiatives to both make medical and public health institutions more proactive, and inclusive, and public health decision-making more transparent. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

Orientador: Roberto Romano da Silva / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-18T10:43:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Barnabe_GabrielRibeiro_D.pdf: 2619171 bytes, checksum: 525721e9a7df43638536da831d0cb80b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo: A pesquisa liga-se ao estudo das relações internacionais da Santa Sé. Considerando que essas se operam como relações entre a Igreja e o Estado, analiso, no primeiro capítulo, as principais teorias que as explicam. Primeiramente caracterizo as quatro propriedades da Igreja (una, santa, católica e apostólica), das quais se destaca a catolicidade, isto é, a universalidade, que a move em missão internacional por todo o mundo. Em seguida, comento a teoria da plenitudo potestatis papae, as analogias de Tomás de Aquino sobre o assunto, a teoria do poder indireto, cujo maior sistematizador foi o Cardeal Roberto Bellarmino, e a teoria da societas perfecta. No segundo capítulo, destinado a discorrer sobre a política concordatária da Santa Sé, trato do Código de Direito Canônico de 1917, da natureza jurídica das concordatas, da Lei das Garantias, do Tratado de Latrão e da Quas Prima, de Pio XI. O último capítulo dedico ao estudo da teoria e da prática de relações internacionais do Papa Pio XII, que participou do período em que a Santa Sé estabeleceu o maior número de concordatas e cujo pontificado ocorreu em uma das épocas mais dramáticas da história das relações internacionais. Inicialmente, apresento uma visão ampla dos principais acontecimentos históricos da primeira metade do século XX e também um estudo sobre o número de mortos em guerras e revoluções. Em seguida, analiso a encíclica Summi Pontificatus, de Pio XII, que se constitui como a principal referência de seu pensamento sobre a ordem internacional de sua época e também sintetiza o Magistério da Igreja e de seus doutores sobre a sociedade humana e as relações internacionais. Apresento, ainda, as mensagens de Natal de Pio XII, algumas das concordatas firmadas ou conduzidas por ele e as linhas mestras de sua grande contribuição para a Bioética. Na última seção, faço algumas considerações sobre as múltiplas imagens do mito de Pio XII. Concluo que embora a Igreja, em suas relações com os Estados, opere uma acomodação tensa, ela ao mesmo tempo reivindica tudo o que considera como seu campo de missão ética / Abstract: The research relates to the study of the international relations of the Holy See. Considering that these operate as relations between Church and State, throughout the first chapter I analyze the main theories that explain them. Firstly, I characterize the four main features of the Church (one, holy, catholic and apostolic), from which highlights the catholicity, that is, the universality, which moves it in international mission around the world. Afterwards, I comment on the theory of plenitudo potestatis papae, the analogies of Thomas Aquinas on said subject, the theory of indirect power, whose greatest systematizer was Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, and the theory of societas perfecta. On the second chapter, intended to develop on the concordist policy of the Holy See, I discuss the Code of Canon Law of 1917, the legal nature of the concordats, the Law of Guarantees, the Lateran Treaty and Pius XI's Quas Prima. The last chapter is devoted to the study of the theory and practice of Pope Pius XII's international relations, given he participated in the period in which the Holy See established the largest number of concordats and whose pontificate coexisted during the most dramatic times in the history of international relations. Initially, I present a broad overview of the major historical events of the first half of the twentieth century and also a study on the number of deaths in wars and revolutions. After, I examine the encyclical Summi Pontificatus of Pius XII, which is considered the main reference of his thinking on the international order of his time and also summarizes the Church's Magisterium as well as its doctors on human society and international relations. I also introduce Pius XII's Christmas messages, some of the concordats signed or conducted by him and the guiding lines of his great contribution to bioethics. In the last section, I present a few considerations about the multiple images of the myth of Pius XII. I conclude that although the Church in her States relations operates a tense accommodation, at the same time she claims everything she regards as being in her field of ethical mission / Doutorado / Filosofia / Doutor em Filosofia

This thesis addresses key issues of scientific realism in the philosophy of biology and chemistry through investigation of an underexplored research domain: olfaction theory, or the science of smell. It also provides the first systematic overview of the development of olfactory practices and research into the molecular basis of odours across the 19th and 20th century. Historical and contemporary explanations and modelling techniques for understanding the material basis of odours are analysed with a specific focus on the entrenchment of technological process, research tradition and the definitions of materiality for understanding scientific advancement. The thesis seeks to make sense of the explanatory and problem solving strategies, different ways of reasoning and the construction of facts by drawing attention to the role and application of scientific representations in olfactory practices. Scientific representations such as models, classifications, maps, diagrams, lists etc. serve a variety of purposes that range from the stipulation of relevant properties and correlations of the research materials and the systematic formation of research questions, to the design of experiments that explore or test particular hypotheses. By examining a variety of modelling strategies in olfactory research, I elaborate on how I understand the relation between representations and the world and why this relation requires a pluralist perspective on scientific models, methods and practices. Through this work I will show how a plurality of representations does not pose a problem for realism about scientific entities and their theoretical contexts but, on the contrary, that this plurality serves as the most reliable grounding for a realistic interpretation of scientific representations of the world and the entities it contains. The thesis concludes that scientific judgement has to be understood through its disciplinary trajectory, and that scientific pluralism is a direct consequence of the historicity of scientific development.

This thesis examines the viability of the concept of political liberalism. Since its emergence, the idea of a purely political liberalism has been the subject of a voluminous amount of discourse and debate. The concept of political liberalism has been presented as both a solution to the problems of justice and political stability troubling liberal democracies and an exemplar of all that is wrong with contemporary political philosophy; it has, quite literally, altered the landscape and the vernacular of contemporary political theory. Herein it is argued that, despite the significant amount of literature that has been devoted to the analysis of the idea of a purely political liberalism, the idea itself has yet to be subjected to the type of critique that is required if one is to assess its viability effectively. Though there have been a number of contemporary political theorists who have developed conceptions of political liberalism which they believe differ in important ways from those of their doctrinal colleagues, detailed analyses of the concept of political liberalism have and remain focussed almost exclusively on a single formulation: namely, Rawlsian political liberalism. This singular focus has precluded the completion of a comprehensive assessment of the viability of the concept (as opposed to a single conception) of political liberalism as represented both by Rawlsian and non-Rawlsian models. This thesis confronts this problem by expanding the scope of investigation to include a fulsome examination of other prominent paradigmatic conceptions of political liberalism namely, those developed by Charles Larmore and Judith Shklar and in so doing provides a more inclusive and, subsequently, thorough critique than has previously been offered. Adopting such an approach reveals that, despite protestations to the contrary, the prominent paradigmatic conceptions of political liberalism are sufficiently similar in all important respects to enable their conflation for the purpose of analysis; and when subjected to a thorough analysis, the idea of a purely political liberalism proves itself to be untenable. / Political Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Politics)

In this thesis, a particular class of agent is singled out for examination. In order to provide a guiding metaphor, we speak of control room agents. Our focus is on rational decision- making by such agents, where the circumstances obtaining are such that rationality is bounded. Control room agents, whether human or non-human, need to reason and act in a changing environment with only limited information available to them. Determining the current state of the environment is a central concern for control room agents if they are to reason and act sensibly. A control room agent cannot plan its actions without having an internal representation (epistemic state) of its environment, and cannot make rational decisions unless this representation, to some level of accuracy, reflects the state of its environment. The focus of this thesis is on three aspects regarding the epistemic functioning of a control room agent: 1. How should the epistemic state of a control room agent be represented in order to facilitate logical analysis? 2. How should a control room agent change its epistemic state upon receiving new information? 3. How should a control room agent combine available information from different sources? In describing the class of control room agents as first-order intentional systems hav- ing both informational and motivational attitudes, an agent-oriented view is adopted. The central construct used in the information-theoretic approach, which is qualitative in nature, is the concept of a templated ordering. Representing the epistemic state of a control room agent by a (special form of) tem- plated ordering signals a departure from the many approaches in which only the beliefs of an agent are represented. Templated orderings allow for the representation of both knowledge and belief. A control room agent changes its epistemic state according to a proposed epistemic change algorithm, which allows the agent to select between two well-established forms of belief change operations, namely, belief revision and belief update. The combination of (possibly conflicting) information from different sources has re- ceived a lot of attention in recent years. Using templated orderings for the semantic representation of information, a new family of purely qualitative merging operations is developed. / School of Computing / Ph. D. (Computer Science)

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