In this article I am particularly interested in the question of solidarity within the boundaries of one's own country. I discuss a qualified beneficence requirement, which claims that we ought to prevent something very bad from happening if it is in our power and if we can do it without sacrificing anything morally significant. I also discuss a fair-share principle, according to which, in Liam B. Murphy's version, "the sacrifice each agent is required to make is limited to the level (...) of sacrifice that would be optimal if the situation were one of full compliance". I argue that the qualified beneficence requirement is reasonable only in the proximity of the one who needs help. When there is no proximity we ought to be guided by a fair-share principle. I also argue that there is an intimate relation between the fair-share principle and the welfare-state ideology. (shrink)

A standard reaction to the problem of evil is to look for a greater good that can explain why God (with the traditional attributes) might have created this world instead of a seemingly better one which has no (or less) evil. This paper proposes an approach we call the Moral Progress Approach: Given the value of progress, a non-perfect world containing evil may be preferable to a perfect world without evil. This makes room for the possibility that this world, with (...) all its evil, may be preferable to a world with less evil. We argue that our proposal is different from apparently similar views such as soul-making theodicy. (shrink)

We often assume that hypothetical approval – either in the form of preferences or consent – under ideal conditions adds to the legitimacy of an arrangement or act. I want to show that this assumption, reasonable as it may seem, will also give rise to ethical problems. I focus on three problem areas: prudence, euthanasia and coercive psychiatric treatment. If we are to count as prudentially or morally␣relevant those preferences you would have if you were informed and rational, we will (...) run into difficulties in all these areas if your actual and rational preferences are at variance with each other. In the prudential sphere we may question the personal value of satisfying preferences that a person does not actually have. In this case our problem concerns the point of satisfying a rational preference in conflict with an actual one. In the cases of euthanasia and coercive care it concerns instead whether it would be morally right to do such a thing. I doubt there is a simple solution to our problem. In this paper at most I prepare the way for a solution or for wiser decisions in the hard cases, by pointing out what they will have to deal with. (shrink)

On a traditional interpretation of the substituted judgement standard a person who makes treatment decisions on behalf of a non-competent patient ought to decide as the patient would have decided had she been competent. I propose an alternative interpretation of SJS in which the surrogate is required to infer what the patient actually thought about these end-of-life decisions. In clarifying SJS it is also important to differentiate the patient's consent and preference. If SJS is part of an autonomy ideal of (...) the sort found in Kantian ethics, consent seems more important than preference. From a utilitarian perspective a preference-based reading of SJS seems natural. I argue that the justification of SJS within a utilitarian framework will boil down to the question whether a non-competent patient can be said to have any surviving preferences. If we give a virtue-ethical justification of SJS the relative importance of consent and preferences depends on which virtue one stresses-respect or care. I argue that SJS might be an independent normative method for extending the patient's autonomy, both from a Kantian and a virtue ethical perspective. (shrink)

This study described the relationships between academic class and student moral sensitivity and reasoning and between curriculum design components for ethics education and student moral sensitivity and reasoning. The data were collected from freshman (n = 506) and senior students (n = 440) in eight baccalaureate nursing programs in South Korea by survey; the survey consisted of the Korean Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and the Korean Defining Issues Test. The results showed that moral sensitivity scores in patient-oriented care and conflict were (...) higher in senior students than in freshman students. Furthermore, more hours of ethics content were associated with higher principled thinking scores of senior students. Nursing education in South Korea may have an impact on developing student moral sensitivity. Planned ethics content in nursing curricula is necessary to improve moral sensitivity and moral reasoning of students. (shrink)

This work presents the concepts of translation and conservative translation between logics. By using algebraic semantics we introduce several conservative translations involving the classical propositional calculus and the many-valued calculi of Post and Lukasiewicz.

A record of the words and teachings of Confucius, _The Analects_ is considered the most reliable expression of Confucian thought. However, the original meaning of Confucius's teachings have been filtered and interpreted by the commentaries of Confucianists of later ages, particularly the Neo-Confucianists of the Song dynasty, not altogether without distortion.In this monumental translation by Professor D. C. Lau, an attempt has been made to interpret the sayings as they stand. The corpus of the sayings is taken as an organic (...) whole and the final test of the interpretation rests on the internal consistency it exhibits. In other words, _The Analects_ is read in the light of _The Analects._This results in a truer understanding of Confucius' thought than the traditional interpretation and paves the way for a re-assessment of its importance in the history of Chinese thought and its relevance to the present day world.This volume also contains an introduction to the life and teachings of Confucius, and three appendices on the events in the life of Confucius, on his disciples, and on the composition of _The Analects._. (shrink)

RésuméLa croyance que l'on est (ou pas) dans un état de douleur est singulière en ceci qu'elle semble pouvoir être qualifiée d'infaillibilité ou d'incorrigibilité logique, de même que le cogito. Mais comment se peut-il que l'existence d'une croyance (vraie) et l'existence du fait qui est l'objet de cette croyance puisssent constituer la même existence? Je propose ici une réponse à cette question. Parfois, une croyance peut être un désir.

We propose a kernel method for using combinations of features across example pairs in learning pairwise classifiers. Pairwise classifiers, which identify whether two examples belong to the same class or not, are important components in duplicate detection, entity matching, and other clustering applications. Existing methods for learning pairwise classifiers from labeled training data are based on string edit distance or common features between two examples. However, if two examples from the same class have few common features, these methods have difficulties (...) in finding these pairs and achieving high recall. One typical example is to check whether two abbreviated author names in different citations refer to the same person or not. Since similarities between examples from the same class become close to zero, classifiers fail to distinguish positive pairs from negative pairs. One approach to avoiding the problem of zero similarities is using conjunctions of different features across examples, but implementing this idea straightforwardly makes the computational cost prohibitive for practical problems. Using a kernel on pair instances, our method can use feature conjunctions across examples without actually doing feature mappings, which are computationally expensive. The kernel is a tensor product of two inner products on the original feature space. The corresponding feature mapping generates conjunctions of features only across the two different examples while that of the conventional polynomial kernel also generates conjunctions of features from the same example, which are irrelevant to pairwise classification and cause deterioration of accuracy. Our experiments on the author matching problem show that this method can give a precision 4 to 8 times higher than that of previous methods at medium recall levels. (shrink)

This is a study of a crucial and controversial topic in metaphysics and the philosophy of science: the status of the laws of nature. D. M. Armstrong works out clearly and in comprehensive detail a largely original view that laws are relations between properties or universals. The theory is continuous with the views on universals and more generally with the scientific realism that Professor Armstrong has advanced in earlier publications. He begins here by mounting an attack on the orthodox and (...) sceptical view deriving from Hume that laws assert no more than a regularity of coincidence between instances of properties. In doing so he presents what may become the definitive statement of the case against this position. Professor Armstrong then goes on to establish his own theory in a systematic manner defending it against the most likely objections, and extending both it and the related theory of universals to cover functional and statistical laws. This treatment of the subject is refreshingly concise and vivid: it will both stimulate vigorous professional debate and make an excellent student text. (shrink)

Engaging Polanyi’s embeddedness–disembeddedness framework, this study explored the work experiences of Bhil children employed in Indian Bt cottonseed GPNs. The innovative visual technique of drawings followed by interviews was used. Migrant children, working under debt bondage, underwent greater exploitation and perennial and severe depersonalized bullying, indicative of commodification of labour and disembeddedness. In contrast, children working in their home villages were not under debt bondage and underwent less exploitation and occasional and mild depersonalized bullying, indicative of how civil society organizations, (...) along with the state, attempt to re-embed economic activities in the social context. Polanyi’s double movement was evident. ‘Place’ emerged as the pivotal factor determining children’s experiences. A ‘protective alliance’ of community controls and social power, associated with in-group affiliations and cohesive ties, stemming from a common village and tribal identity, aided children working at home for Bhil farmers. ‘Asymmetric intergroup inequality’ due to pronounced social identity and class differences, coupled with locational constraints and developmental disadvantage, made migrant children vulnerable targets. Social embeddedness influences how child workers are treated because it forces employers to be ethical and not engage in bullying. However, by shifting production to children’s home villages, there is an attempt to obscure the difference between child labour and child work. Thus, the seeds of disembeddedness are sown through the very act of re-embeddeding, potentially hampering future interventions. (shrink)

The Arabic version of the Enneads is the earliest datable text in which appears the term "anniyya", that features in Avicenna’s metaphysics and lies in the background of the Latin definition of the Causa prima as esse tantum, typical of the Liber de Causis. This paper examines some examples of the use of "to be" in the Arabic translation of the Enneads. It also discusses the description of the First Cause as ‘pure Being’ or ‘first Being’ in the Arabic Plotinus, (...) and compares it with the Divine Names of the pseudo-Dionysius. icona . (shrink)

In this short text, a distinguished philosopher turns his attention to one of the oldest and most fundamental philosophical problems of all: How it is that we are able to sort and classify different things as being of the same natural class? Professor Armstrong carefully sets out six major theories—ancient, modern, and contemporary—and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each. Recognizing that there are no final victories or defeats in metaphysics, Armstrong nonetheless defends a traditional account of universals as the (...) most satisfactory theory we have.This study is written for advanced students, but as Armstrong goes considerably beyond his earlier work on this topic, it will interest professional scholars as well. Carefully plotted and clearly written, Universals is both a paradigm of exposition and a case study on the value of careful analysis of fundamental issues in philosophy. (shrink)

In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and (...) rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

This is a study of the nature of time. In it, redeploying an argument first presented by McTaggart, the author argues that although time itself is real, tense is not. He accounts for the appearance of the reality of tense - our sense of the passage of time, and the fact that our experience occurs in the present - by showing how time is indispensable as a condition of action. Time itself is further analysed, and Dr Mellor gives answers to (...) most of the metaphysical questions it provokes, concerning the relation of time to space, the dissection of time, and its relation to change and causation. (shrink)

Une étude sur la virtualité toujours présente du mal politique. Pour comprendre le présent de ce mal, il faut rouvrir le passé, remonter notamment au mal radical selon Kant, ou aux liens entre le tragique et la capacité d'institution politique chez Aristote. Se dégage alors une longue tradition : celle d'une humanité dénuée de toute prétention à l'innocence, rendue au mal de sa liberté.