We introduce a simple generalization of G ardenfors and Makinson’s epistemic entrenchment called partial entrenchment. We show that preferential inference can be generated as the sceptical counterpart of an inference mechanism de ned directly on partial entrenchment.

hospital ethics committees (hecs) help clinicians deal with the ethical challenges which have been raised during clinical practice. a comprehensive literature review was conducted to provide a historical background of the development of hecs internationally and describe their functions and practical challenges of their day to day work. this is the first part of a comprehensive literature review...

biomedical ethics is a branch of professional or practical ethics that examine the moral aspects of profession of medicine. every professional ethics due its issues and problems determine an especial theory and principles. in this article after referring to the three branches of ethics and describing important schools of ethical theory we have explained the six main approaches to biomedical eth...

Based on an abstract framework for nonmonotonic reasoning, Bondarenko et at. have extended the logic programming semantics of admissible and preferred arguments to other nonmonotonic formalisms such as circumscription, autoepisternic logic and default logic. Although the new semantics have been tacitly assumed to mitigate the computational problems of nonmonotonic reasoning under the standard s...

We analyse the computational complexity of the recently proposed ideal semantics within abstract argumentation frameworks. It is shown that while typically less tractable than credulous admissibility semantics, the natural decision problems arising with this extension-based model can, perhaps surprisingly, be decided more efficiently than sceptical admissibility semantics. In particular the tas...

Contra an expanding number of deflationary commentators on Wittgenstein, I argue that philosophical questions about meaning are meaningful and that Wittgenstein gave us ample reason to believe so. Deflationists are right in claiming that Wittgenstein rejected the sceptical problem about meaning allegedly to be found in his later writings and also right in stressing Wittgenstein’s anti-reduction...

Abstract Recently, Yujin Nagasawa has argued that “systemic suffering” – suffering inherent in the evolutionary process poses a problem for existentially optimistic theists and atheists who think world is overall good therefore are happy thankful to be alive it. In short, he shows it difficult consistently believe when also recognising existence of systemic suffering. this article, I evaluate s...