The best interest test is the legal mechanism which governs decision making on behalf of adults who lack the capacity to make their own health care treatment decisions. The test has attracted considerable criticism from health professionals, academics, judges and lawyers for being ill-defined and non-specific. The question of what is meant by 'best interests' remains largely unanswered. As a consequence, the test gives medical and legal decision makers considerable discretion to apply their personal value judgements within supposedly value-free philosophical frameworks - unreasoned and opaque decision making processes are the inevitable result. Because of the dominance of supposedly value-free philosophical frameworks, the place of values in decision making is not always fully understood. Reasoning is not possible without values, which stem from our emotions and passions, our upbringing, our religion, our cultures, our processes of socialisation and from our life experiences. Values help us make sense of our daily lives. I argue that law - like any other social institution - is essentially a human, values based construct. I put forward a theory of values-based law which argues for the recognition that laws, rules and conventions are based on, and contain, individual values. Currently, medical and legal decision makers justify grave decisions on behalf of society's most vulnerable citizens without revealing, or even acknowledging the values which drive and inform their decisions. Any opportunities to scrutinise or debate the values driving decisions are lost. Ultimately, values-based law argues that values underlying best interest determinations must be exposed to facilitate honest, transparent and fulsome decision making on behalf of adults who lack capacity. By applying the theory of values-based law, supposedly value-free decision making processes are exposed as insufficient to facilitate fulsome, honest and transparent legal reasoning.

The best interest test is the legal mechanism which governs decision making on behalf of adults who lack the capacity to make their own health care treatment decisions. The test has attracted considerable criticism from health professionals, academics, judges and lawyers for being ill-defined and non-specific. The question of what is meant by 'best interests' remains largely unanswered. As a consequence, the test gives medical and legal decision makers considerable discretion to apply their personal value judgements within supposedly value-free philosophical frameworks - unreasoned and opaque decision making processes are the inevitable result. Because of the dominance of supposedly value-free philosophical frameworks, the place of values in decision making is not always fully understood. Reasoning is not possible without values, which stem from our emotions and passions, our upbringing, our religion, our cultures, our processes of socialisation and from our life experiences. Values help us make sense of our daily lives. I argue that law - like any other social institution - is essentially a human, values based construct. I put forward a theory of values-based law which argues for the recognition that laws, rules and conventions are based on, and contain, individual values. Currently, medical and legal decision makers justify grave decisions on behalf of society's most vulnerable citizens without revealing, or even acknowledging the values which drive and inform their decisions. Any opportunities to scrutinise or debate the values driving decisions are lost. Ultimately, values-based law argues that values underlying best interest determinations must be exposed to facilitate honest, transparent and fulsome decision making on behalf of adults who lack capacity. By applying the theory of values-based law, supposedly value-free decision making processes are exposed as insufficient to facilitate fulsome, honest and transparent legal reasoning.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-04T21:01:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 24 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / O cenário geral da filosofia da ciência no século XX foi principalmente desenhado pelos traços epistemológicos do Positivismo Lógico e seu verificacionismo, pelo falsificacionismo popperiano, pelos programas de pesquisa lakatianos, pelo anarquismo epistemológico de Paul Feyerabend e pela filosofia da ciência de Thomas Kuhn. A partir desse cenário geral, esta dissertação analisa os aspectos principais da filosofia da ciência de Thomas Kuhn, o espectro das críticas que recebeu, as respostas que ofereceu e as mudanças que se seguiram na epistemologia kuhniana. Kuhn envolveu-se em um frutífero debate com alguns dos mais proeminentes filósofos da ciência do século XX, sobre suas idéias de revolução científica, ciência normal e incomensurabilidade. Esse debate, discutido nesta dissertação, contribuiu para as mudanças que Kuhn fez em sua proposta original tal como exposta em seu mais famoso trabalho, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Essas modificações e sua abrangência são o tema principal do presente estudo / The general scenario of the philosophy of science in the 20th century was mainly determined by the epistemological traits of Logical Positivism and its verificationism, Popperian falsificationism, the Lakatian research programs, Paul Feyrebend’s epistemological anarchism, and Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of science. Starting from this general scenario, this dissertation analyzes the main aspects of Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of science, the spectrum of its critique by other thinkers, Kuhn’s response to that critique and the subsequent changes in Kuhn’s epistemology. Kuhn was involved in a fruitful debate on his ideas about scientific revolutions, normal science, paradigms, and incommensurability with some of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. This debate, which is discussed in the dissertation, prompted Kuhn to make changes in his original proposal as expounded in his most famous work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. These modifications and their scope are the main topic of the present

Thomas Kuhn's essay The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has had an overwhelming impact upon academics from various fields, creating a virtual paradigm industry. Authors have frequently had recourse to Kuhn's book, applying insights into the structure and development of the sciences to nonscientific fields. This essay presents a critical review of Kuhn citation in the music-theoretic literature, first reviewing similar citation analyses in the humanities and the social sciences for comparison. While much of the Kuhn citation is problematic, music scholars are found to sin less broadly than those in other fields. After reviewing some of the salient distinctions between scientific and nonscientific endeavors, some of Kuhn's insights into science are found to clarify an issue in the history of music theory, namely the nature of the succession from figured-bass theory to the formulations of J. P. Rameau.

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Doppelt defends the key elements of Kuhn's thesis that scientific revolutions occur when one paradigm is replaced by another and that crucial aspects of competing paradigms are incommensurable. He concedes the merits in the views of those positivist critics of Kuhn who contend that for paradigms to be comparable their proponents must be able to communicate with one another, to agree on a common core of meaning for basic concepts and to deal with shared data and problems. However, he maintains that in identifying the problems which are held to be of fundamental importance and in adopting the standards by which explanatory adequacy is to be evaluated, rival paradigms do not overlap sufficiently for them to have genuine commensurability. This leads Doppelt to accept Kuhn's version of epistemological relativism which maintains that the rationality of the acceptance of new paradigms by the scientific community, at least in the short-run, has an irreducible normative dimension that is strongly conditioned by subjective factors. Doppelt also accepts Kuhn's views with respect to the loss of data, and the question of cumulative progress. The absence of paradigm-neutral external standards allegedly allows each paradigm to assign priority to its own internal standards, thus providing persuasive grounds for the incommensurability of competing paradigms and for epistemological relativism. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that the validity of these arguments over the long term is a contingent issue which can only be resolved by a careful examination of the historical evidence. A chemical revolution took place in the latter part of the eighteenth century when the oxygen theory replaced that based on hypothetical phlogiston. This transition is frequently cited as a typical example of a paradigm - one that illustrates Kuhn's claims for a shift in standards and a loss of data as central features of scientific revolutions. The phlogiston theory held that phlogiston was a normal constituent of air. It explained smelting as the transfer of phlogiston from the air (or from phlogiston-rich charcoal) to the earthy components of the ore, and held that the similar properties of the metallic products could be attributed to their phlogiston content. Combustion, including the calcination of metals and the respiration of living organisms, was viewed as a process involving the release of phlogiston to the atmosphere. The development of improved techniques for collecting gases and for measuring their volume and weight lead to emphasis on precise quantitative methods for evaluating chemical data as distinct from those based on simple quantitative descriptive observations. These developments soon posed difficulties for the phlogiston theory (eg.,the anomalous weight loss during combustion). Eventually, clarification of the composition of water and the use of the 'nitrous air1 test for the ability of a gas to support combustion and respiration (its 'goodness') led to the discovery of oxygen as a component of air and the demonstration that combustion involved combination with an exact quantity of this gas. Within a relatively short period of time, the oxygen theory gained general acceptance and the phlogiston theory was abandoned by most chemists. A critical examination of the events which culminated in the chemical revolution fails to bear out the claim that it was accompanied by a significant loss of empirical data or that it did not represent genuine cumulative progress in scientific knowledge. Instead the history of this revolution indicates that paradigm-neutral external standards for evaluating explanatory adequacy (conservatism, modesty, simplicity, generality, internal and external coherence, refutability, precision, successful predictions) were available and played a crucial role in bringing about this transition. Accumulating evidential warrant played the decisive role in the triumph of the oxygen theory. / Arts, Faculty of / Philosophy, Department of / Graduate

Avec La Structure des Révolutions Scientifiques, parue en 1962, Thomas Kuhn a remis en cause la conception traditionnelle de l'histoire des sciences, ainsi que son approche (logique) et ses objectifs épistémologiques (normatifs). Nous examinerons dans ce mémoire les tenants et les aboutissants de cette remise en cause, réelle ou figurée, de l'approche logique et normative de la science telle que défendue par le courant épistémologique issu du néopositivisme (le «standard view»), par le falsificationnisme de Karl Popper et par la méthodologie des programmes de recherche de Imre Lakatos. Pour ce faire, nous analyserons les débats auxquels Kuhn a lui-même pris part au cours des dernières années et ce, par le biais de deux distinctions fondamentales, à la base de l'approche logiconormative: la distinction entre le contexte de découverte et le contexte de justification et la distinction entre fait et norme.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / e recent literature in philosophy of science has been reassessing the positivist legacy. One of the items on the agenda is the alleged opposition between the theses put forth by positivists such as Carnap and the so-called post-positivists , such as Kuhn. Although the laer came to be viewed as a critic of several important positivist theses, more recent authors such as Friedman, Reisch, Earman, Irzik and Grünberg, maintain that several of the most characteristic theses of the Kuhnian view of science were already present in Carnap s philosophy. Against this kind of reading, authors such as Oliveira and Psillos argue that within Carnap s philosophy there is no place for Kuhnian theses like incommensurability, holism or the theoryladenness of observations. e first article of this dissertation presents the reasons for each of those readings and assesses them having in view the perspectives from which they are offered. It argues that it is possible to show that some aspects of Kuhn s thesis have a counterpart in the works of Carnap, although those theses vary in importance for Carnap and Kuhn. e second article presents aspects that can be seen as antagonistic in the two views, namely, the conceptions that relate to that distinction made famous by Reichenbach between contexts of discovery and justification. / A literatura recente em filosofia da ciência vêm reavaliando o legado positivista. Um dos itens dessa reavaliação é a suposta oposição entre as teses defendidas por positivistas como Carnap e os chamados pós-positivistas , como Kuhn. Embora este último tenha sido percebido como um crítico de diversas teses positivistas importantes, autores mais recentes como Friedman, Reisch, Earman, Irzik e Grünberg, sustentam que várias das teses mais características da concepção kuhniana da ciência já estariam presentes na filosofia positivista. Contra esse tipo de leitura, autores como Oliveira e Psillos argumentam que não há na filosofia de Carnap e outros positivistas lugar para teses como a da incomensurabilidade, do holismo ou da impregnação teórica das observações, características das concepções kuhnianas. O primeiro artigo desta dissertação apresenta as razões para cada uma dessas leituras e avalia cada uma tendo em vista a perspectiva a partir da qual elas são oferecidas. Defende que é possível mostrar que algumas teses kuhnianas têm uma contraparte já nos trabalhos de Carnap, muito embora tais teses ocupem posições e importâncias diferenciadas em Carnap e Kuhn. O segundo artigo apresenta aspectos que podem ser vistos como antagônicos nas filosofias de ambos, a saber, as concepções que dizem respeito àquela distinção feita famosa por Reichenbach entre contextos de descoberta e justificação.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The publication of Thomas Kuhn s The structure of scientific revolutions is considered a watershed in the philosophy of science for having presented scientific knowledge as produced by a dynamic and historically situated process. Many of the concepts introduced by the author sparked controversy in the initial reception of this work. We highlight in this dissertation Kuhn s theses on scientific revolutions, incommensurability, and scientific choice between rival hypothesis, which were interpreted by authors such as Popper, Lakatos, Laudan and Putnam as introducing elements of irrationality and relativism into Kuhn s analysis of scientific practice. In the first paper of this dissertation, we investigate passages from Structure that led to those interpretations, and track down Kuhn s later reformulations of the three controversial theses, which attempted to avoid or respond the criticisms of irrationality and relativism. We highlight the linguistic emphasis given by Kuhn in his later works to the concepts of incommensurability and scientific revolution, and show that his thesis about scientific choices remained nearly unchanged. We claim that in Kuhn s later works his theses became more precisely formulated and narrower in scope, and that they manifest a realist inclination by the author. The second paper of this dissertation develops in more detail the issue of the rationality of scientific choice. It presents briefly three theories of scientific rationality due to Kuhn, Lakatos and Laudan, and then shows some of the problems that Lakatos and Laudan s theories face due to focusing their notion of rationality on univocal rules of choice. We then indicate that there are advantages in understanding as Kuhn did the notion of rationality in terms of values that influence objectively the choices to be made without determining them univocally. / A publicação de A estrutura das revoluções científicas, de Thomas Kuhn, é considerada um divisor de águas na filosofia da ciência por apresentar o conhecimento científico como sendo gerado por um processo dinâmico e historicamente situado. Muitos dos conceitos introduzidos pelo autor foram motivos de controvérsia na recepção inicial da obra. Destacamos na presente dissertação as teses de Kuhn sobre revoluções científicas, incomensurabilidade e escolhas científicas entre hipóteses rivais, que foram interpretadas por autores como Popper, Lakatos, Laudan e Putnam, como introduzindo elementos de irracionalidade e relativismo na análise kuhniana da atividade científica. No primeiro artigo desta dissertação, investigamos as passagens na Estrutura que levaram a essas interpretações, e rastreamos as reformulações kuhnianas posteriores para as três teses controversas com vistas a evitar ou responder as críticas de irracionalidade e relativismo. Destacamos a ênfase linguística dada por Kuhn aos conceitos de incomensurabilidade e revolução científica, e mostramos que a tese acerca das escolhas científicas permanece quase inalterada nos textos tardios. Defendemos que na obra tardia de Kuhn suas teses tornaram-se mais precisas e menos abrangentes e evidenciam uma inclinação realista do autor. O segundo artigo desta dissertação desenvolve de maneira mais detalhada a questão da racionalidade das escolhas científicas, apresentando as propostas de três teorias historicistas da racionalidade científica, devidas a Kuhn, Lakatos e Laudan. Apresentamos alguns dos problemas que as teorias de Lakatos e Laudan enfrentam ao concentrar a noção de racionalidade em regras unívocas de escolha e indicamos que há vantagens em se compreender a noção de racionalidade em termos de valores que influenciam objetivamente as escolhas sem determiná-las univocamente, como propôs Kuhn.