Michael A. Petersa and Fazal Rizvib aBeijing Normal University, Beijing, PR China; bMelbourne University, Melbourne, Australia Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘no...

This Element introduces the philosophy of Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904), a very well-known moral theorist, advocate of animal welfare and women's rights, and critic of Darwinism and atheism in the Victorian era. After locating Cobbe's achievements within nineteenth-century British culture, this Element examines her duty-based moral theory of the 1850s and then her 1860s accounts of duties to animals, women's rights, and the mind and unconscious thought. From the 1870s, in critical response to Darwin's evolutionary ethics, Cobbe put greater moral (...) weight on the emotions, especially sympathy. She now criticised atheism for undermining morality, emphasised women's duties to develop virtues of character, and recommended treating animals with sympathy and compassion. The Element links Cobbe's philosophical arguments to her campaigns for women's rights and against vivisection, brings in critical responses from her contemporaries, explains how she became omitted from the history of philosophy, and shows the lasting importance of her work. (shrink)

'Middle' Platonism has some claim to be the single most influential philosophical movement of the last two thousand years, as the common background to 'Neoplatonism' and the early development of Christian theology. This book breaks with the tradition of considering it primarily in terms of its sources, instead putting its contemporary philosophical engagements front and centre to reconstruct its philosophical motivations and activity across the full range of its interests. The volume explores the ideas at the heart of Platonist (...) philosophy in this period and includes a comprehensive selection of primary sources, a significant number of which appear in English translation for the first time, along with dedicated guides to the questions that have been, and might be, asked about the movement. The result is a tool intended to help bring the study of Middle Platonism into mainstream discussions of ancient philosophy. (shrink)

A key focus in many debates surrounding the harm in hate speech centres on the subordinating impact hate speech has on its victims. Under such a view, and provided there exists a requisite level of speaker authority a particular speech situation, hate speech can be conceived as something which directly impact’s the victim’s status, and can be contrasted to the view that such speech merely expresses hateful ideas. Missing from these conceptions, however, are the ways in which intersubjective, recognition-sensitive relations (...) influence the kind of harm likely to result from such an act. Understanding the central role of first-person experience is crucial, as, while a victim may have little influence in how their social status is impacted by such an act, the possibility for ‘speaking back’ requires that individuals are equipped with the conditions necessary to reject the authority claims of the speaker. On such a view, this paper aims to use this feature of intersubjectivity to explore the potential ways in which an act of hate speech can be ‘robbed’ of some of its harm by having its authority claims rejected by the victim. Utilizing this enhanced understanding, I reflect upon one particular real-world example of hate speech, in which the target rejects the status-undermining claims made upon her. In the last section, I propose a general institutional outlook aimed towards aiding would-be victims of hate speech to respond to such attempts at normative authority exertion. (shrink)

Just War theory specifies that recourse to war must be a last resort. This specification accords with a more general aim to limit the occurrence of war by articulating demanding conditions under which war can be morally legitimate. Although it has critics among contemporary Western philosophers, the condition of last resort is widely accepted as a basic element of Just War theory. It is not itself an issue of dispute between historical as opposed to contemporary Just War theorists, (...) or between traditional as opposed to revisionist Just War theorists. The defensibility of “last resort” as a necessary condition of legitimate recourse to war will depend on how the condition is best interpreted and on its moral rationale. (shrink)

Critical psychologists repeatedly lament the fact that we spend most of our time criticizing, unmasking and deconstructing prevailing psychological models, and rather less time rebuilding and reinventing them. Of course, important contributions have been made by theorists who present concrete alternatives to the theories and practices we challenge. Yet there have been relatively few attempts to articulate a guiding vision or visions of what we should be doing. This article discusses a symposium that was organized as an attempt to press (...) beyond the "debunking" phase. All of the papers embody attempts to move into the less-travelled territory of moral conversation. They are predicated upon certain fundamental assumptions about the moral and political situatedness of psychology. The five papers that follow are offered with the recognition that they are neither the first nor the last word on the normative dimensions of psychological discourse. In addition to the specific contribution made by each author, the collective aim of the panel is both to highlight the ongoing moral situations in which we are all caught, and, perhaps most importantly, to invite further conversation. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Focusing on the study of the ancient Orient in fin-de-siècle Germany, this essay argues that had a wider range of cultural consequences than the term usually evokes in studies of Western imperialism and its ideologies. The essay describes the development of a generational movement in German scholarship that was characterized by its vigorous championing of the Orient over and against the dominant tendency to isolate and exalt classical civilizations, and especially ancient Greece, and by its role in destabilizing Western presumptions. (...) It demonstrates that the furororientalis did contribute to the decentering of the Greeks and the ancient Hebrews, bequeathing to the twentieth century both a much deeper and more diverse picture of the ancient Near East and an obsession with origins that could be mobilized by racist propagandists. The essay offers three case studies of groups which exemplified this furor1940s, and poses the question: how long will the peaceful solutions they promoted last? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 11.3 (2001) 219-220 [Access article in PDF] Introduction In the last couple of decades,commodification has become almost a buzz-word in bioethics. As we become technically more adept at detaching elements of human bodies and making use of them for others, it seems as if more and more things-from motherhood to gametes to kidneys to our very DNA-can be borrowed, rented, bought, and sold. (...) Other technology allows us unprecedented influence over the characteristics of our offspring (unprecedented, that is, if we ignore the many cultures in which children were and are routinely discarded because they are the wrong sex, disabled, or the product of multiple births). It is common, for example, for writers to worry that the availability of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis will seduce parents into thinking of their children as commodities, to be ordered in much the same way as automobiles, with the inevitable concomitant that they will want to "return" children who do not measure up to their specifications.Unfortunately, a great deal of the talk about "commodification" has been clumsy and sloppy. The term has been used as a magic bullet, as if saying "But that's commodification!" is the same as having made an argument. In fact, commodification of human persons, human bodies, human labor, human relationships, is a complex matter. In many human dealings, commodified and noncommodified understandings of the same thing, or the same transaction, exist more or less comfortably together. Most Westerners condemn commercial sex, for example, while at the same time knowing that in most times and places in the world, marriage was and is thought of as primarily an economic relationship. The common use of "cheap" in post-World War II American slang to describe a teenage woman who is more sexually available than her peers perfectly captures the market rhetoric inherent in respectable American sexual mores.Given this complexity, it is not surprising that many writers in bioethics have gravitated to the work of Margaret Jane Radin. In her two books, Contested Commodities (Harvard University Press, 1996) and Reinterpreting Property (University of Chicago Press, 1993), and many articles, [End Page 219] Radin has taken on the problem of commodification without falling into either sentimentality or cynicism. She is a careful thinker and a careful (and demanding!) writer. We have long valued her work as we have sought to grapple with the many ways in which the problem of commodification arises in bioethics. In this issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, entitled "Who's Afraid of Commodification?," we have asked three colleagues to join us in reflecting on aspects of the problem of commodification in bioethics. We are especially delighted that Radin agreed to respond to our efforts in this direction.Lisa Sowle Cahill takes the discussion of commodification to a new level, as she focuses on global ethics, especially genetic research and the marketing and accessibility of pharmaceuticals. Dena S. Davis explores the debates over refusal of treatment and rational suicide and concludes that to put a value on particular pieces of one's lifespan does not necessarily lead to negative aspects of commodification. Ronald M. Green analyzes Radin's use of Kant. Suzanne Holland addresses commodification of body parts, from gametes to cadaveric tissue, and concludes with some specific recommendations. Thomas A. Shannon takes a fresh look at the problem of whether we should allow the sale of organs; he shares with Holland a special concern for the rhetoric of commodification. Finally, Margaret Jane Radin responds to the preceding essays, asking four "stubbornly difficult" questions, questions that show that the debate about commodification is only just begun. Dena S. Davis and Suzanne Holland... (shrink)

For the last 40 years or so the is/ought gap, the fact/value distinction and the naturalistic fallacy have figured prominently in ethical debates. This longevity, however, has had an adverse side effect. So familiar have they become that they—and their respective rationales—have tended to become blurred. It is the purpose of this paper to explain why they should be kept distinct.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Note of Interpretation: Theistic Finitism as an Aesthetics of Religious NaturalismAndrew Stone Porter (bio)In our cosmological construction we are, therefore, left with the final opposites, joy and sorrow, good and evil, disjunction and conjunction—that is to say, the many in one—flux and permanence, greatness and triviality, freedom and necessity, God and the World. In this list, the pairs of opposites are in experience with a certain ultimate (...) directness of intuition, except in the case of the last pair. God and the World introduce the note of interpretation.—Alfred North Whitehead1Theistic finitism, the position that God is not omnipotent, is the most tenable solution to the problem of evil—but it also necessitates a slide toward immanence. Among the ranks of the finitists we find philosophers such as William James,2 process thinkers such as Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne,3 theological personalists such as Edgar Brightman (and, Rufus Burrow argues, his pupil Martin Luther King, Jr.),4 feminist disability theologians like Julia Watts Belser,5 and popular religion writers such as Harold Kushner.6 Like many others, Kushner found in finitism not an answer to an abstract theological puzzle, but an existentially necessary salve for the despair that nearly overtook him when his three year-old son was diagnosed with a terminal degenerative disease. No loving, all-knowing, all-powerful creator would ever allow such [End Page 70] a thing to happen, Kushner reasoned. If God is not all-powerful, then God need not be the author of our pain, but a friend who hurts with us as we bear it. Rather than sadistic puppeteer, a finite God becomes “the fellow-sufferer who understands.”7 As Jürgen Moltmann put it, “the one who cannot suffer cannot love either. So [God] is also a loveless being.”8 Or, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflected as he awaited execution in a Nazi concentration camp, “Only the suffering God can help.”9However, when one strips away divine omnipotence, one must also bid adieu either to God’s omniscience or creator-hood: for an omniscient creator, crafting the world with full knowledge of how everything would unfold, would be ipso facto omnipotent. We are left, then, with the following alternatives: we could posit a God who pressed the “create world” button not knowing what would happen (which seems irresponsible, calling into question God’s goodness)—as Tim Bayne puts it, “If future contingents fall outside the scope of God’s knowledge, then creation was a massive gamble.”10 We may share Albert Einstein’s famous distaste for a God who plays dice with the universe. The other alternative is that God’s knowledge and power are partial, that the Divine is merely one being/force among many. But if God is “just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home,”11 then in what sense can we say that God is God at all?This paper offers a construal of theistic finitism as a form of religious naturalism with an aesthetics of empathetic solidarity. That is, when we relinquish belief in God’s omnipotence, instead imagining that God is struggling and suffering along with us, we relinquish as well belief in an overbearing “supernatural realm” or “order” governing/underlying all things. To see God in this way, as Whitehead says, is to “introduce the note of interpretation.” And that note, I suggest, is a musical note, specifically a blues note.12 To call the loving [End Page 71] friendship we experience “God” is an aesthetic choice, an informed way of interpreting life in order to move through it with companionship, tenderness and care. A naturalistic religiosity, in Carol Wayne White’s phrasing, “can be a mode of reflecting on, experiencing, and envisioning one’s relationality with all that is.”13 In this way theology becomes, as Belser puts it, “a grammar of the imagination.”14 As a blues aesthetics of empathetic solidarity, theistic finitism may be considered a form of religious naturalism particularly well-suited to our present moment, mired as it is in cascading crises and careening into catastrophe. I suggest that, as young spiritual seekers exit churches in search of more meaningful community... (shrink)

The proposal of the ‘Anthropocene’ as a new geological epoch where humans represent the dominant natural force has renewed artistic interest in the ‘geopoetic’, which is mobilized by cultural producers to incite changes in personal and collective participation in planetary life and politics. This article draws attention to prior engagements with the geophysical and the political: the work of Simone Weil and of the editors of the Martinican cultural journal Tropiques, Suzanne and Aimé Césaire. Synthesizing the political and scientific (...) shifts in human-world relationships of their time, both projects are set against oppressive or narcissistic materialisms and experiment with the image of the ‘cosmic’ to cultivate a preoccupation not with a tangible materialism but with an intangible one that emphasizes process and connectivity across wide spatial and temporal scales. The writers’ movement between poetics and politics will be used to enquire what kind of socio-political work a contemporary geopoetic could potentially do. (shrink)

A major recurrent feature of the intellectual landscape in cognitive science is the appearance of a collection of essays by Noam Chomsky. These collections serve both to inform the wider cognitive science community about the latest developments in the approach to the study of language that Chomsky has advocated for almost fifty years now,1 and to provide trenchant criticisms of what he takes to be mistaken philosophical objections to this approach. This new collection contains seven essays, the earliest of which (...) were first published about ten years ago. So the linguistic work that is summarised is within the principles and parameters approach and some of the essays (particularly the first and last) provide an outline of the main ideas of the emerging minimalist programme.2 But this is not primarily a book about the details of recent linguistic theory. Rather, in these essays Chomsky offers a wealth of critical commentary on some of the most influential arguments in the philosophy of mind and language that have appeared over the past two decades or so. Indeed, Chomsky discusses a vast range of philosophical topics and reaches some radical conclusions – that many influential philosophical discussions on language and mind are utterly misconceived and that, for example, the traditional mind-body problem cannot even be coherently stated. (shrink)

Although its roots go back at least to Spinoza, religious naturalism is once again becoming a self–conscious option in religious thinking. This article seeks to (1) provide a generic notion of religious naturalism, (2) sketch my own “minimalist” variety of religious naturalism, and (3) view the science–religion dialogue from both of these perspectives. This last will include reflection on the nature of scientific practices, the contributions of religious traditions to moral reflection, and Ursula Goodenough's “religiopoiesis.”.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition ed. by Kristin Gjesdal and Dalia NassarAlison StoneKristin Gjesdal and Dalia Nassar, editors. Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 336. Hardback, $99.00."How plausible, [Dalia Nassar and I] kept asking, is it that women published philosophy in the early modern period and then simply ceased to think and publish (...) philosophy in the nineteenth century?" remarked Kristin Gjesdal recently (interview with Richard Marshall, 3:16am [blog], https://www.3-16am.co.uk/articles/gadamer-herder-and-the-womenphilosophers-of-the-long-nineteen-cent ury?c=end-times-series). Not plausible at all—yet this is what historians of women in philosophy often seem to have assumed, judging by the remarkably small amount of scholarship on nineteenth-century women philosophers compared with those of the early modern period or the twentieth century. Eileen O'Neill, for instance, claims that it was "not a particularly friendly century for women philosophers" (1). In fact, as Gjesdal and Nassar observe, women were "significant contributors" to the "thriving intellectual cultures in German-speaking countries" at this time (1). Gjesdal and Nassar contrast Germanic countries to France and Britain in this regard, yet I would add that nineteenth-century Britain too had a vibrant print and periodical culture that created openings for women philosophers such as Harriet Martineau, Anna Jameson, Frances Power Cobbe, and many others. The broader point remains: the nineteenth century has only seemed empty of women philosophers because we have not yet investigated the women thinkers of this period or challenged the canons and narratives from which they have been excluded.Recognizing German women philosophers is particularly important because the vast majority of scholarship on the nineteenth century focuses on the German tradition. Consequently, unless we recover the work of German-speaking women, we will never change the narrative about this period. This makes the present anthology invaluable for both teaching and research. Edited by Gjesdal and Nassar, it contains new translations, nearly all by Anna Ezekiel, of texts by historical German-speaking women philosophers.Regarding teaching, many courses on post-Kantian European philosophy include no women until Beauvoir or Arendt. Such courses typically cover Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, and Heidegger. The editors have clearly designed this volume to enable instructors easily to bring women into such courses, by providing extracts—of suitable lengths for teaching—from women affiliated respectively with German idealism and Romanticism (Germaine de Staël, Karoline von Günderrode, and Bettina von Arnim), Marxism (Clara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg), Nietzscheanism (Hedwig Dohm, Lou Salomé), and phenomenology (Edith Stein, Gerda Walther). Some of these women are already well-known as political activists, as with Luxemburg and Zetkin, or under the elastic heading of "writers," as with Staël and von Arnim. But this collection presents these women's writings in a new light, showcasing their philosophical side. After all, we have learned to read Marx and Nietzsche philosophically: why not extend the same courtesy to Staël or Luxemburg?For researchers, this collection will likewise be invaluable. Post-Kantian European philosophy has been slow to respond to the wider questioning and broadening of the traditional philosophical canon. It remains sadly common for narratives of nineteenth-century German philosophy to discuss men only—a position that this book makes untenable. [End Page 336] Hopefully it will galvanize philosophers to integrate these women into the historiography of the post-Kantian tradition at last.In the introduction, the editors helpfully contextualize the selected writings, arguing that these women's exclusion from academic institutions led them to philosophize in ways that spoke to general audiences, connected with lived experience, and addressed practical and political concerns. In short, these women did a type of philosophy that was not purified but socially engaged, and can be a model for us today. Thereafter the book consists of sections on nine women philosophers, ordered chronologically. Each section begins with an editorial introduction to the philosopher and her interests, ideas, writings, and interlocutors.The writings included from Staël—whose work spans the period from the French Revolution into Romanticism—are "On Women Writers" from... (shrink)

In most other nations, insurance for medical care is called sickness insurance, and it covers sick people. In the United States, we have “health insurance,” and its major carriers — commercial insurers, large employers, and increasingly government programs — strive to avoid sick people and cover only the healthy. This perverse logic at the heart of the American health insurance system is the key to reform debates.Focusing on sick people versus healthy people might seem a strange way to view the (...) coverage issue. Most discussions of insurance categorize people into other groupings: the insured versus the uninsured; Caucasian whites versus other racial and ethnic groups; men versus women; poor and low-income people versus everybody else; children, adults, and the elderly; or citizens versus immigrants and undocumented aliens. More recently, health researchers have begun talking about “vulnerable populations,” using most of the same demographic groupings and adding other illness-inducing factors such as social isolation, stress, and impoverished neighborhoods. But as I will show, insurance plans now use premiums, cost-sharing, and other design features in ways that indirectly divide each of these groups into the sick and the healthy, to the detriment of the sick. By shifting the costs of illness onto people who use medical care — that is, sick people — market-oriented reforms of the last few decades have eroded insurance in the name of strengthening it. (shrink)

I HAVE to correct a mistake in my article in the last number of the C.Q., on p. 195, n. 1. The sentence containing it runs; ‘Thus, for the consular provinces of 51–50, the Senate picked out the two senior ex-consuls who had not yet held consular governorships.’ But, to begin with, it is apparent from Caesar, B.C. I. 6, 5, that Cotta, who had been consul in 65, and was therefore senior to Cicero and Bibulus, had not held (...) a consular province by 49. And secondly, as to what was done in determining who should have the consular provinces of 51–50, there seems to be no evidence. Cicero's statement in Ad Fam. III. 2, i, that praeter opinionem it had become necessary for him to go out to a province, may mean that he had counted on being unaffected by the regulations of 52, and that either a subsequent decree of the Senate or some arrangement made by a few senatorial leaders had upset his expectations. But of course praeter opinionem may refer to his not having expected before 52 that he would have to undertake a governorship. Nor can we tell whether his words, Vides ex senatus consulto provinciam esse habendam, refer to a decree prescribing who should draw lots for the consular provinces of 51–50, or merely to a decree which had the effect of obliging Appius to hand over Cilicia to a successor. However, the point that after 52 the Senate or its leaders had some power to determine what ex-magistrates should draw lots for provinces, seems to be sufficiently proved by Ad Fam. VIII. 8, 8, where praetorian provinces are concerned, and Caesar, B.C. I. 85, 9. (shrink)

Over the last few decades feminists, science and technology studies scholars and others have grappled with how to take materiality into account in understanding social practices, subjectivity and events. One key area for these debates has been drug use and addiction. At the same time, neuroscientific accounts of drug use and addiction have also arisen. This development has attracted criticism as simplistically reinstating material determinism. In this article we draw on 80 interviews with health professionals directly involved in drug-related (...) public policy and service provision in three countries to identify the main ways the neuroscience of addiction (and thus the agency of the brain) is understood. We analyse these understandings using contemporary posthumanist theory to develop new options for conceptualizing matter in public responses to addiction. We close by calling for a new approach to addiction and the brain based on a process model of materiality and public debate. (shrink)

We report evidence further supporting homology between proteins in the F1FO‐ATP synthetase and the bacterial flagellar motor (BFM). BFM proteins FliH, FliI, and FliJ have been hypothesized to be homologous to FO‐b + F1‐δ, F1‐α/β, and F1‐γ, with similar structure and interactions. We conduct a further test by constructing a gene order dataset, examining the order offliH,fliI, andfliJgenes across the phylogenetic breadth of flagellar and nonflagellar type 3 secretion systems, and comparing this to published surveys of gene order in the (...) F1FO‐ATP synthetase, its N‐ATPase relatives, and the bacterial/archaeal V‐ and A‐type ATPases. Strikingly, thefliHIJgene order was deeply conserved, with the few exceptions appearing derived, and exactly matching the widely conserved F‐ATPase gene orderatpFHAG, coding for subunits b‐δ‐α‐γ. The V/A‐type ATPases have a similar conserved gene order. Our results confirm homology between these systems, and suggest a rare case of synteny conserved over billions of years, predating the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA). (shrink)

Despite its use to exemplify how the world is “flat,” India is in many ways “spiky.” Hyderabad is a prosperous hub of information–communication technology while its impoverished agricultural hinterland is best known for dysfunctional agriculture and farmer suicide. Based on the belief that a lack of knowledge and skill lay at the root of agrarian distress, the “e-Sagu” project aimed to leverage the city’s scientific expertise and ICT capability to aid cotton farmers. The project fit with a national surge of (...) “last mile” projects bringing ICT to the village, but it was unique in using ICT to connect farmers directly with agricultural scientists acting as advisors. Such projects fit the interests of many actors, which has led to an unrealistic national enthusiasm about their impacts. This article uses the first five years of the project as a lens to view the cultural nature of both indigenous agricultural knowledge and “scientific” agricultural advising. Unlike lay publics whose uptake of science is better known, with farmers the invention and adoption of agro-scientific knowledge is deeply embedded in daily productive activities and sociocultural interactions. E-Sagu eventually had to abandon its construction of agricultural science as objective and acultural, resorting to rural methods of persuasion. It also found that it could only survive by joining forces with companies promoting commodification of agricultural inputs, which was a cause of the agrarian distress it sought to alleviate. (shrink)

High prevalence of musicians’ physical and mental performance-related health issues (PRHI) has been demonstrated over the last 30 years. To address this, health promotion strategies have been implemented at some post-secondary music institutions around the world, yet the high prevalence of PRHI has persisted. In 2018, an international group of researchers formed the Musicians’ Health Literacy Consortium to determine how best to decrease PRHI, and to examine the relationship between PRHI and health literacy. An outcome of the Consortium was (...) the development of a new health literacy tool for musicians, the MHL-Q19, which drew from the theoretical framework of the European health literacy suite of tools, HLS-EU. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the validity and reliability of the MHL-Q19. Participants completed a battery of questionnaires, including the HLS-EU-Q16 for the assessment of general health literacy; the Musculoskeletal Pain Intensity and Interference Questionnaire for Musicians (MPIIQM); the RAND-12 quality of life questionnaire; and the General Self-Efficacy scale (GSE). We hypothesized that the MHL-Q19 would have a weak correlation with the HLS-EU-Q16; moderate correlation with the physical component scale and weak correlation with the mental component scale of the RAND-12; moderate correlation with the GSE; and finally, moderate correlation with pain interference and weak correlation with pain intensity of the MPIIQM. A total of 549 post-secondary music students from six English-speaking countries completed the battery of questionnaires, and 328 of these participants provided valid responses to the MHL-Q19 alone 2 weeks later. The tool showed acceptable internal consistency and test–retest reliability. Three of our hypotheses were supported, although the strength of the correlations varied from what we had predicted. The fourth hypothesis was not supported; our findings indicate that lower health literacy scores were weakly related to higher MPIIQM pain intensity and interference scores. The results of this study support the notion that musicians’ health literacy is a distinct construct that cannot be fully evaluated with existing health literacy tools. Given that this is a new instrument, the evidence presented is positive and promising. Further studies will be needed to refine the tool. (shrink)

The thought of G. W. F. Hegel has had a deep and lasting influence on a wide range of philosophical, political, religious, aesthetic, cultural and scientific movements. But, despite the far-reaching importance of Hegel's thought, there is often a great deal of confusion about what he actually said or believed. This is an invaluable introduction for philosophical beginners and a useful reference source for more advanced scholars and researchers.

This case deals with the corporate response to a crisis and the successful evacuation of approximately 900 hotel guests, staff, and family members of staff whowere stranded in the Fairmont New Orleans hotel by Hurricane Katrina. This rescue effort, spearheaded by managers at the sister Fairmont hotel in Dallas, Texas, was completed shortly after 12 a.m. on Friday, September 2, 2005, when the last bus with evacuees pulled into the Dallas Fairmont after making a round trip of more than (...) 1000 miles — and about 64 hours after planning began. This case is particularly significant for lessons that may be derived about crisis management and leadership, and it also raises several interesting ethical issues. The case, which relies on field research plus secondary sources, is appropriate for business ethics and business strategy courses. (shrink)

This article explores some of the issues raised by Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy (MSbP) and the relationship between medicine and law, specifically the discourses which feature in the courtroom portraying motherhood and expectations of parenting. These discourses are often hidden yet play a determining role in prosecutions for alleged maltreatment of children involving medically unexplained infant death syndrome. We offer a critique of MSbP and seek to unveil the assumptions about mothers, the parent predominantly affected by the ‘diagnosis’, and mothering (...) that underlie the association of women accused of deliberating harming their children. We suggest such insights are valuable because although the syndrome has never acquired a clear medical or legal definition, it has had repeated appearances in the literature and courtroom over the last 25 years and has more recently attracted attention from government, health care practitioners, academics and the media. We explore these issues through an examination of two recent Court of Appeal decisions in England: those of Sally Clark and Angela Cannings. (shrink)

From time to time, Peter H. Hare emphatically reminded me he was drawn to William James as a philosopher, not just a stylist. While Peter1 was throughout his life appreciative of James's efforts to articulate an ethics of belief (see, e.g., Hare 2003), he was skeptical of them in the context of religion. He felt compelled to hound the gods and their defenders (Hare and Madden 1969). Even so, the ethics of belief outlined and partly filled in by James provided (...) Peter with crucial insights for developing a distinctive form of responsibilism2 (Hare 2003, 240).3In addition to the ethics of belief, James's reconstruction of experience provided, Peter argued, an invaluable resource for mounting an effective defense of .. (shrink)

Right Thoughts at the Last Moment: Buddhism and Deathbed Practices in Early Medieval Japan, by Jacqueline Stone. Kuroda Institute studies in East Asian Buddhism 26. University of Hawai‘i Press: 2016. 624pp; illustrated, incl. 11 colour plates, 1 B&W illustration. Hb. $68.00. ISBN-13: 9780824856434.

Jordan Peterson gave a series of lectures on the Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories. His first lecture lasted two hours. In that time, Peterson managed to cover only a single line from the Bible. This lopsided gloss-to-text ratio, I argue, entails that the rational explanations actually do all the work while the Bible is dispensable.

The framework of the Israel-Palestinian Arab conflict has evolved over the last half century through an instrumentalization of violence by the parties concerned. Two alternating "structures of violence" have emerged to define this instrumentality: the one Israeli, the other Palestinian. I call these structures of violence "alternating" rather than merely "reciprocating" because the one not only feeds off the other and actually practices on the other that which is merely fancied and projected as the other's intention but also because (...) they have inverse periodicities: The "Great Revolt" of 1936-1939 introduced the principle of "armed struggle" into the practice and lore of a fractured and often factional antiBritish and anti-Zionist insurgency. It was effectively countered by British might coupled with an essentially defensive Jewish posture of consensus and "restraint". By contrast the current Palestinian "Uprising" has the Arab side preaching restraint if not always nonviolence, through a pluralistic consensus on the immediate national ends such practice aims to achieve. Against this is an avowed Israeli policy of "the iron fist" that for the first time since independence has broken the general Zionist consensus with regard not only to the utility and morality of violent means but also to national goals. (shrink)

An essential addition to the Stone Reader series, Question Everything is a groundbreaking collection of philosophical essays from some of our foremost thinkers and storytellers. When The Stone Reader-a landmark collection of 133 essays from the New York Times' award-winning philosophy column-first published, in 2015, the world urgently needed insight and wisdom, and for many, the book served as a bulwark of reason against the rising tide of post-fact rhetoric. Now, as disinformation continues to run rampant and our (...) rights are increasingly called into question, editors Peter Catapano and Simon Critchley contend that philosophy in the public sphere is more crucial than ever. Like The Stone Reader and its sequel, Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments, Question Everything delivers the contrarian views, sound arguments, and creative approaches to traditional opinion-writing that loyal readers of the series have come to expect. Its essays, however, are not organized by traditional categories like ethics or epistemology, but thematically by question, thirteen of them in all-the first twelve like the hours of a clock, ticking us through the tumultuous time in which these pieces were written, from late 2015 to 2021, with the last speculating into an uncertain future. The volume begins with the most fundamental of questions: What does it mean to be human? There, contemporary thinkers from Martha Nussbaum to Bernard-Henri Lévy explore the essence of who we are as a species. The next question-Is democracy possible?-interrogates our social and political ideals. While Malka Older calls into question the viability of our institutions, philosophers Gary Gutting and Alex Rosenberg reassess the meaning of patriotism. And onward, with more timeless struggles: What is happiness? Does life have meaning? Finally, it asks, Is this the end of the world as we know it? Now what? While its foundation and core consists of the work of professional scholars and philosophers, Question Everything also features a number of prominent artists and thinkers who may never appear on a philosophy syllabus, including, among others, novelist Elena Ferrante, actor Cate Blanchett, filmmaker Errol Morris, musician Sonny Rollins, and artist Ai Weiwei, all of whom offer insights shaped by decades of devotion to and practice of their crafts. Designed both for immediate gratification and long-term use, Question Everything, with an introduction by Catapano, is not only an essential addition to a much-loved series, but an act of resistance, "a product," as Catapano writes, "of the spirit of agitation and inquiry that has been integral to the human enterprise from the beginning of recorded history.". (shrink)

With the rise of the “humanitarian drone” in recent years, drones have become one of the most controversial public interest technologies that have gained increasing media attention. It is worth noting that, although there is a perception in the aid sector that drones hold the promise to reinvent the health supply logistics, to date, routine drone delivery is still relatively new and largely unproven. This paper presents a recent field study conducted in 2019, where drones were deployed in Malawi to (...) help address the last mile challenge in medical supply delivery, and where a noticeable mentality of “killing two birds with one stone” around the attempt of using drones in resource-poor settings is observed. The objective of the paper is to shed light, through a real-world case study and from the ethical perspective, on the impacts of implementing such a systemic change in the existing health supply chain systems. As conclusion, a call for more reflexive approaches for the critical examination, as well as more structured guidance for the responsible evaluation, of medical cargo drones is raised. (shrink)

Exploring the unknown is a task that scientists and mystics alike have set themselves, although starting off in rather different directions. At first, these tasks were seen to be sufficiently different, so that they did not crowd each other. But by now scientific insight has grown to such an extent that there seems to be less and less room for mystic explorations. Simply said: there seems to be little left of an unknown to jump into, in order to find a (...) deeper grounding for our fleeting world of experience, through direct contact with reality, call it mystic, spiritual, or contemplative. Will the objective approach of science have the last word, and tell us how our experiences, from the every-day to the deeply spiritual, can seen as simple consequences of complex electrochemical phenomena in the brain? Or will further progress bring about a modification of both scientific and contemplative approaches, perhaps introducing a form of science of the subject, together with a heightened appreciation of the limits of the describable, even in a world of objects? In order to address those questions, what we need are stepping stones to connect the bodies of knowledge that have been acquired in different traditions. A systematic way to return to the phenomena themselves may provide such a stepping stone. Already familiar in science, philosophy, and personal paths of explorations, but under rather different names, such a phenomenology may help the different sides to reach each other. (shrink)

Media coverage of the recent explosion of violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is so thoroughly biased in favor of Israel, argues Edward Said, that Israel itself is made to appear as the victim, despite the fact that it is using missiles, tanks, and helicopter gunships against stone-throwing civilians rebelling, in their own towns, against their continued oppression. American Zionism is so successful, Said adds, that it has rendered impermissible any public discussion of Israeli policy, making this the (...) class='Hi'>last taboo in American discourse, which allows for the burning of the American flag, but not for criticism of Israel. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:The lullaby “The Meadow Song” in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy provides a narrative fulcrum and plays a vital role in reinforcing these novels’ thematic concern. However, extant criticism has not given due attention to its utopian function. Drawing upon Ernest Bloch’s philosophy of music and other critics’ theories on green utopia, this article intends to argue that the lullaby fulfills the utopian function of fueling Katniss’s and other rebels’ utopian imagination to fight for a better world of (...) justice, equality, and freedom. It also posits that the green utopian community inspired by the lullaby in the last book of the trilogy functions not as an escapist pursuit, but as a micropolitical alternative in an era of global capitalism. (shrink)

Drawn from the archives of major Zen centers in America and interviews with some of the most seminal figures of American Zen, including Philip Kapleau, Bernie Glassman, Robert Aitken, Gary Snyder, Alan Watts, and Walter Nowick, Murphy presents moments of insight and wisdom, quotable quotes, and the humor of Zen as it has flowered in America over the last hundred years.

A necessary companion to the acclaimed Stone Reader, Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments is a landmark collection for contemporary ethical thought. Since 2010, The Stone—the immensely popular, award-winning philosophy series in The New York Times—has revived and reinterpreted age-old inquires to speak to our modern condition. This new collection of essays from the series does for modern ethics what The Stone Reader did for modern philosophy. New York Times editor Peter Catapano and best-selling author and philosopher Simon (...) Critchley have curated an unparalleled collection that illuminates just how imperative ethical thinking is in our day-to-day life. Like its predecessor, Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments explores long-standing ethical and moral issues in light of our most urgent dilemmas. Divided into twelve sections, the book opens with a series of broad arguments on existence, human nature and morality. Indeed, “big” questions of the human condition are explored by some of our best-known and most accomplished living philosophers: What is the meaning of our existence? Should we really “do what we love”? How should we respond to evil? Is pure altruism possible? Along with these examinations of timeless moral conundrums, readers will find arguments in the more contentious areas of religion and government: Can we have a moral life without God? Does it really matter if God exists? Is patriotism moral? Accessible and provocative, these pieces expose the persistence of the most basic themes and questions of moral and ethical life. Many of the essays stress the crucial importance of directly engaging the most pressing moral dilemmas in modern life. Should we be the last generation, knowing all the harm we’ve done to our planet? Should we embrace our inner carnivores, or swear off all animal products? From gun control and drone warfare to the morals of marriage and reproduction, readers will view familiar debates in new, surprising lights. The editors have meticulously arranged this book to reflect a wide range of perspectives, voices and rhetorical strategies. By directly addressing some of the most complex and troubling issues we face today—racial discrimination, economic inequality, immigration, citizenship and more—the volume reveals the profound power of ethics in shaping our perceptions of nearly every aspect of our lives. A jargon-free, insightful compendium, Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments offers a panoramic view of morality and is a critical addition to The Stone Reader that will energize and enliven the world of ethical thought in both the classroom and everyday American life. Including… The Meaningfulness of Lives by Todd May * A Life Beyond “Do What You Love” by Gordon Marino * Evolution and our Inner Conflict by Edward O. Wilson * Morals Without God? by Frans de Waal * Does It Matter Whether God Exists? by Gary Gutting * The Moral Hazard of Drones by John Kaag and Sarah Kreps * Can Refugees Have Human Rights? by Omri Boehm * Dear White America by George Yancy * Girlfriend, Mother, Professor? by Carol Hay * The End of “Marriage” by Laurie Shrage * When Vegans Won’t Compromise by Bob Fischer and James McWilliams * Should This Be the Last Generation? by Peter Singer. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss some questions about compactness in MV-topological spaces. More precisely, we first present a Tychonoff theorem for such a class of fuzzy topological spaces and some consequence of this result, among which, for example, the existence of products in the category of Stone MV-spaces and, consequently, of coproducts in the one of limit cut complete MV-algebras. Then we show that our Tychonoff theorem is equivalent, in ZF, to the Axiom of Choice, classical Tychonoff theorem, and (...) Lowen’s analogous result for lattice-valued fuzzy topology. Last, we show an extension of the Stone–Čech compactification functor to the category of MV-topological spaces, and we discuss its relationship with previous works on compactification for fuzzy topological spaces. (shrink)

While artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly applied for decision-making processes, ethical decisions pose challenges for AI applications. Given that humans cannot always agree on the right thing to do, how would ethical decision-making by AI systems be perceived and how would responsibility be ascribed in human-AI collaboration? In this study, we investigate how the expert type (human vs. AI) and level of expert autonomy (adviser vs. decider) influence trust, perceived responsibility, and reliance. We find that participants consider humans to be (...) more morally trustworthy but less capable than their AI equivalent. This shows in participants’ reliance on AI: AI recommendations and decisions are accepted more often than the human expert’s. However, AI team experts are perceived to be less responsible than humans, while programmers and sellers of AI systems are deemed partially responsible instead. (shrink)

In dialogues ranging from the Symposium to the Timaeus, Plato appears to propose that the philosopher’s grasp of the forms may confer immortality upon him. Whatever can Plato mean in making such a claim? What does he take immortality to consist in, such that it could constitute a reward for philosophical enlightenment? And how is this proposal compatible with Plato’s insistence throughout his corpus that all soul, not just philosophical soul, is immortal? In this chapter, I pursue these questions by (...) applying the distinction between general and earned immortality to the Phaedo and the Symposium. I argue that, while Plato attributes general immortality to all soul in the Phaedo, in the Affinity Argument, he proposes that the philosopher’s soul can achieve earned immortality through contemplating forms. It is this form of immortality that Plato claims is unavailable to humankind in the flux passage of the Symposium. At the same time, in the ascent passage, he holds out the possibility – albeit with significant reservations – that the philosopher’s soul may transcend its humanity and achieve earned immortality through its communion with the form. (shrink)

Translator's Preface LA LOGIQUE DE HUSSERL, etude sur "Logique for- melle et logique transcendentale" the original of the present translation, was published ...