Arguably, every new technology creates hidden ejfects in its environment, rearranging the social order it penetrates. Many ofthese effects are inextricably linked to ethical issues. Some are eternal issues such as censorship andfree speech, but others have new names and dimensions, and may even be new issues. Forty of these issues pertaining to the new communication technologies of the 1990s and next millennium are catalogued here. The author argues that each new communication technology either retrieves, amplifies, transforms, obsolesces, or mixes (...) ethical issues from the past or creates new issues for the future. However, as in the Ross Hume Hall (1974) effect, it is also likely there are issues yet unknown due to untested eflects of combining new technologies. (shrink)

The informal curriculum of environment educates the human being far more about ethics and values than does the formal education curriculum. The ratio between the informal (ethical education by media) and formal (education about media ethics) has become absurd. A number of absurd ratios reveal hidden values taught by mass communication.

Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Volume 26, Issue 2, Page 183-186, April-June.

The primary aspects of Clifford Christians's ethical theory may be identified or contextualized in several ways, three of which are employed in this article: 1) a content analysis of his self-reported book, article, and chapter titles; 2) a narrative summary of the themes of his self-selected representative ethical theory essays; and 3) the author's contextualization of Christians' ideas within both intellectual history and communication studies. Although Christians and his work are valued as apex contributions to and leadership within the field (...) of media ethics, three questions are posed to Dr. Christians to which he responded both at the August 2009 AEJMC conference panel in Boston about his intellectual legacy and again in this journal. (shrink)

Trust is difficult to define. Instead of doing so, I propose that the best way to understand the concept is through a genealogical account. I show how a root notion of trust arises out of some basic features of what it is for humans to live socially, in which we rely on others to act cooperatively. I explore how this concept acquires resonances of hope and threat, and how we analogically apply this in related but different contexts. The genealogical account (...) explains both why the notion has such value for us and why it is difficult to define. (shrink)

The essays in this volume honor the work of political scientist and Eric Voegelin scholar, Barry Cooper, by considering how political philosophy (a form of hunting) and empiricism get "woven" together (to borrow a metaphor from Plato). In other words, they consider how science needs to be conducted if it is to remain true to our commonsense experience of the world and to facilitate political judgment. Several of the essays cover Eric Voegelin, including his understanding of consciousness, a comparison (...) of him and Leo Strauss, and his self-understanding as a scholar. Other essays consider terrorism, technology, religion and the modern world, the divided line in Plato's Republic, and the political significance of hope. The volume also includes a number of essays that consider different aspects of Canadian politics, including its strong regionalism, political culture, public law, and the infamous "Calgary School" of political science. These essays are united by the concern that political science must "weave" together political philosophy and empiricism. This task was what Aristotle meant when he characterized political science as a matter of practical wisdom. It is an insight that was also central for Voegelin's restoration of political science in the twentieth century, and that these essays continue into the twenty-first century. Political analysis begins in whatever contemporary crisis the analyst has found himself. The analyst sifts through competing claims of political meaning asserted by the partisans in the crisis. From there he ascends to greater luminosity concerning the human condition by viewing those claims in light of the "major questions in the history of political thought." They inform one another, as the search for order is necessarily the search for order that is conducted by a particular individual's consciousness in the context of a particular community in space and time. This volume will be of special interest to scholars of political philosophy as well as citizens and statesmen interested in how an engagement in the history of political philosophy can facilitate political judgment in particular political circumstances. Publisher's note. (shrink)

A hierarchical ordering of approaches afflicts environmental thinking. An ethics of individualism unjustly overrides social/political philosophy in environmental debates. Dialectics helps correct this imbalance. In dialectical fashion, a synthesis emerges between conflicting approaches to dialectics and to nature from: Marxism (Levins and Lewontin), anarchism (Bookchin), and Native Americanism (Black Elk). Conflicting (according to Marxists) and cooperative (according to anarchists) forces both operate in nature. Ethics (anarchist), political theory (Marxist), and spirituality (Native American) constitute the interconnected interpretative domains of a dialectically (...) informed ecophilosophy. In a world painted too often in blacks and whites, ecological dialectics colors the picture a more realistic gray. (shrink)

A hierarchical ordering of approaches afflicts environmental thinking. An ethics of individualism unjustly overrides social/political philosophy in environmental debates. Dialectics helps correct this imbalance. In dialectical fashion, a synthesis emerges between conflicting approaches to dialectics and to nature from: Marxism (Levins and Lewontin), anarchism (Bookchin), and Native Americanism (Black Elk). Conflicting (according to Marxists) and cooperative (according to anarchists) forces both operate in nature. Ethics (anarchist), political theory (Marxist), and spirituality (Native American) constitute the interconnected interpretative domains of a dialectically (...) informed ecophilosophy. In a world painted too often in blacks and whites, ecological dialectics colors the picture a more realistic gray. (shrink)

Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- The foundations of Hobbes's natural law philosophy -- Hobbesian moral and civil science : rereading the doctrine of severability -- Hobbes and the good of life -- The legal character of the laws of nature -- The essence of Leviathan : the person of the commonwealth and the common good -- Hobbes's natural law account of civil law -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index.

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes’s innovative anthropology and novel doctrines of natural right, natural law, and positive law have been taken to inaugurate a tradition that grows into modern United States abortion jurisprudence. In this essay I argue that a careful rereading of Hobbes reveals that the characterization of Hobbes as the philosophical and jurisprudential forefather of abortion rights is false. While Hobbes never directly addressed the question of abortion, I argue that we can reconstruct his position from his philosophical texts. First, (...) I reconstruct the Hobbesian philosophical case against abortion via a rereading of his notions of family, hominization, and natural law. Second, I apply these principles along with Hobbes’s theories of equity and sovereignty to formulate a Hobbesian jurisprudential case against the Roe-Casey order of permissive abortion law. (shrink)

There has been a considerable amount of literature in the last 70 years claiming that the American founders were steeped in modern thought. This study runs counter to that tradition, arguing that the founders of America were deeply indebted to the classical Christian natural-law tradition for their fundamental theological, moral, and political outlook. Evidence for this thesis is found in case studies of such leading American founders as Thomas Jefferson and James Wilson, the pamphlet debates, the founders' invocation of (...) providence during the revolution, and their understanding of popular sovereignty. The authors go on to reflect on how the founders' political thought contained within it the resources that undermined, in principle, the institution of slavery, and explores the relevance of the founders' political theology for contemporary politics. This timely, important book makes a significant contribution to the scholarly debate over whether the American founding is compatible with traditional Christianity. (shrink)

We present a theoretical and an empirical challenge to Cushman's claim that rationalization is adaptive because it allows humans to extract more accurate beliefs from our non-rational motivations for behavior. Rationalization sometimes generates more adaptive decisions by making our beliefs about the world less accurate. We suggest that the most important adaptive advantage of rationalization is instead that it increases our predictability as potential partners in cooperative social interactions.

The notion of disinterestedness is often conceived of as antiquated or ideological. In spite of this, Hilgers argues that one cannot reject it if one wishes to understand the nature of art. He claims that an artwork typically _asks_ a person to adopt a disinterested attitude towards what it shows, and that the effect of such an adoption is that it makes the person temporarily _lose the sense of herself_, while enabling her to _gain a sense of the other_. Due (...) to an artwork’s particular wealth, multiperspectivity, and dialecticity, the engagement with it cannot culminate in the construction of world-views, but must initiate a process of self-critical thinking, which is a precondition of real self-determination. Ultimately, then, the aesthetic experience of art consists of a dynamic process of _losing the sense of oneself_, while _gaining a sense of the other_, and of _achieving selfhood_. In his book, Hilgers spells out the nature of this process by means of rethinking Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s aesthetic theories in light of more recent developments in philosophy–specifically in hermeneutics, critical theory, and analytic philosophy–and within the arts themselves–specifically within film and performance art. (shrink)

This chapter develops a social epistemological analysis of Web‐based search engines, addressing the following questions. First, what epistemic functions do search engines perform? Second, what dimensions of assessment are appropriate for the epistemic evaluation of search engines? Third, how well do current search engines perform on these? The chapter explains why they fulfil the role of a surrogate expert, and proposes three ways of assessing their utility as an epistemic tool—timeliness, authority prioritisation, and objectivity. “Personalisation” is a current trend in (...) Internet‐delivered services, and consists in tailoring online content to the interests of the individual user. It is argued here that personalisation threatens the objectivity of search results. Objectivity is a public good; so there is a prima facie case for government regulation of search engines. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Epistemic Commitments of Naturalism The Unity of Scientific Explanations The Explanatory Poverty of the Supernatural The Demands of Objectivity Projecting God Nature is Enough Notes.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aquinas and Black Natural LawThomas S. HibbsIn 1857, after the United States Supreme Court ruling in Dred Scott, Frederick Douglass chastised the court for arrogating to itself the role of God, that of being absolute judge. While the Supreme Court has its own authority, he argued, "the Supreme Court of the Almighty is greater. Taney can do many things but he cannot change the essential nature of things—making evil (...) good and good, evil."1 The passage is one of many in Vincent Lloyd's Black Natural Law that underscore the appeals of African American leaders, as part of their critique of slavery and segregation, to a higher or more fundamental law than that of human law. Lloyd describes the function of natural law reasoning, which he traces through the writings of Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Martin Luther King Jr., in this way: From the careful examination of a "particular view of human nature" and its implications, they "apply those implications to the specifics of an ethical or political debate."2 That sounds similar to the way some contemporary Catholic proponents of natural law depict their own deployment of it. Early in the book, Lloyd suggests that "European and Catholic natural law traditions can learn much from the black natural tradition."3Concerning what might be learned, he focuses on an expansive conception of reason in the African American tradition, a conception of reason that is integrated with the role of emotion or passion and that is not [End Page 943] individualistic, but communal. He also underscores the epistemic privilege of the oppressed, the way suffering injustice attunes us to justice. Beyond the themes mentioned explicitly by Lloyd, I would add the paradoxical claim that natural law teaching is not just about the accessibility of fundamental precepts of justice, but also about the human capacity for moral blindness and the way in which the violation of the natural law is in important ways its own punishment. Because of the regularity of such blindness, attention to the obstacles to the perception of the natural law must become "part of the very activity of natural law." The ways in which these matters are articulated by African American authors can be, as Lloyd suggests, highly instructive. I would add that Lloyd's treatment of natural law in the African American tradition can also be fruitful for recovering neglected features of Aquinas's account. In what follows, I want to take up each of these themes and set them in conversation with the texts of Aquinas. As Alasdair MacIntyre, among others, has urged, seeing one's own tradition from the perspective of another, can, at a minimum, help us see it more clearly.4 As MacIntyre also notes, any such attempt faces the difficulties of translating from one tradition or community of inquiry to another. I must, accordingly, stress the limitations to the current essay, which can be nothing more than a preliminary investigation. I will largely be taking Lloyd's interpretation of the authors he studies as my assumed starting point, although in some cases I will offer my own reading of texts and authors he considers.5 What I will provide will be no more than an initial conversation, a first reading of Lloyd's theses in relation to germane themes and arguments in Aquinas. A much longer exchange, based on an immersive study of selected African American texts and the chief commentaries on them would be needed to advance the [End Page 944] conversation further. Before doing so, however, I want to provide a further reason that Catholic natural law thinkers should be eager to engage the Black natural law tradition, a reason derived from Joseph Ratzinger's reflection on the strange situation of natural law in the modern world.Ratzinger on the Vanishing Evidence for Natural Law and the Engagement of Wisdom TraditionsAs the contemporary Catholic natural law theorist Russell Hittinger has shown,6 Ratzinger, as a ressourcement theologian, is a critic of "rationalism," with "little confidence" in the older, "moral-juridical manualist and casuistical approach to natural law, which was prominent in casuistical approaches."7 In fact, he thinks that... (shrink)

Since Hilary Putnam offered multiple realization as an empirical hypothesis in the 1960s, philosophical consensus has turned against the idea that mental processes are identifiable with brain processes, and multiple realization has become the keystone of the 'antireductive consensus' across philosophy of science. Thomas W. Polger and Lawrence A. Shapiro offer the first book-length investigation of multiple realization, which serves as a starting point to a series of philosophically sophisticated and empirically informed arguments that cast doubt on the generality (...) of multiple realization in the cognitive sciences. They argue that mind-brain identities have played an important role in the growth and achievements of the cognitive sciences, and suggest that there is little prospect for multiple realization in an empirically-based theory of mind. This leads Polger and Shapiro to offer an alternative framework for understanding explanations in the cognitive sciences, as well as in chemistry, biology, and other non-basic sciences. (shrink)

In Natural Minds Thomas Polger advocates, and defends, the philosophical theory that mind equals brain -- that sensations are brain processes -- and in doing so brings the mind-brain identity theory back into the philosophical debate about consciousness. The version of identity theory that Polger advocates holds that conscious processes, events, states, or properties are type- identical to biological processes, events, states, or properties -- a "tough-minded" account that maintains that minds are necessarily indentical to brains, a position held (...) by few current identity theorists. Polger's approach to what William James called the "great blooming buzzing confusion" of consciousness begins with the idea that we need to know more about brains in order to understand consciousness fully, but recognizes that biology alone cannot provide the entire explanation. Natural Minds takes on issues from philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and metaphysics, moving freely among them in its discussion.Polger begins by answering two major objections to identity theory -- Hilary Putnam's argument from multiple realizability and Saul Kripke's modal argument against mind-brain identity. He then offers a detailed account of functionalism and functional realization, which offer the most serious obstacle to consideration of identity theory. Polger argues that identity theory can itself satisfy the kind of explanatory demands that are often believed to favor functionalism. (shrink)

May lethal autonomous weapons systems—‘killer robots ’—be used in war? The majority of writers argue against their use, and those who have argued in favour have done so on a consequentialist basis. We defend the moral permissibility of killer robots, but on the basis of the non-aggregative structure of right assumed by Just War theory. This is necessary because the most important argument against killer robots, the responsibility trilemma proposed by Rob Sparrow, makes the same assumptions. We show that the (...) crucial moral question is not one of responsibility. Rather, it is whether the technology can satisfy the requirements of fairness in the re-distribution of risk. Not only is this possible in principle, but some killer robots will actually satisfy these requirements. An implication of our argument is that there is a public responsibility to regulate killer robots ’ design and manufacture. (shrink)

With each of our three criminal-law topics—defining offenses, apprehending suspects, and establishing punishments—we feel, I believe, strong moral resistance to the idea that our practices should be settled by a prospective-participant perspective. This becomes quite clear when we look at how the “reforms” suggested by institutional viewing might combine once we consider all three topics together: imagine a more extensive and swifter use of the death penalty in homicide cases coupled with somewhat lower standards of evidence; or think of backing (...) a strict-liability criminal statute with the death penalty. Of course, such “reforms” would increase the execution of innocents; but, their proponents will tell us, any penal system involves the punishment of some innocents, and, if it provides for the death penalty, the execution of some innocents. Moreover, why is it worse for innocents to be punished than for innocents to suffer an equivalent harm in some other way? Formulated from a prospective-participant perspective: Why not run a small risk of being innocently executed in exchange for reducing, much more significantly, the risk of dying prematurely in other ways? (shrink)

Contributors from several countries discuss the central moral issues arising in the emerging global order: the responsibilities of the strongest societies, moral priorities for the next decades, and the role of intellectuals in view of the huge gap between widely expressed moral ambitions and prevailing political and economic realities.

Consider what the brain-state theorist has to do to make good his claims. He has to specify a physical–chemical state such that any organism (not just a mammal) is in pain if and only if (a) it possesses a brain of suitable physical–chemical structure; and (b) its brain is in that physical–chemical state. This means that the physical–chemical state in question must be a possible state of a mammalian brain, a reptilian brain, a mollusc’s brain (octopuses are mollusca, and certainly (...) feel pain), etc. At the same time, it must not be a possible (physically possible) state of the brain of any physically possible creature that cannot feel pain. Even if such a state can be found, it must be nomologically certain that it will also be a state of the brain of any extraterrestrial life that may be found that will be capable of feeling pain before we can even entertain the supposition that it may be pain. It is not altogether impossible that such a state will be found... . But this is certainly an ambitious hypothesis. (Putnam 1967/1975, p. 436) The belief that mental states are multiply realized is now nearly universal among philosophers, as is the belief that this fact decisively refutes the identity theory. I argue that the empirical support for multiple realization does not justify the confidence that has been placed in it. In order for multiple realization of mental states to be an objection to the identity theory, the neurological differences among pains, for example, must be such as to guarantee that they are of distinct neurological kinds. But the phenomena traditionally cited do not provide evidence of that sort of variation. In particular, examples of neural plasticity do not provide such evidence. (shrink)

This collection offers cutting-edge chapters on themes related to the philosophical work of Owen Flanagan. Flanagan is an influential philosopher in the late 20th and early 21st Century, whose wide-ranging work spans philosophy of mind (especially consciousness, identity, and the self), ethics and moral psychology, comparative philosophy, and philosophical study of psychopathology (especially disorders of self, dreams, and addiction). Flanagan is the author of numerous scholarly and popular articles, and of 10 books. The chapters present proposals for productive interdisciplinary research (...) exploring the mind, ethics, personhood, consciousness, religious cognition, mental disorders, addiction, the narrative self, virtue, the social sciences, forgiveness, or comparative philosophy. (shrink)

According to the received view in philosophy of mind, mental states or properties are _realized_ by brain states or properties but are not identical to them. This view is often called _realization_ _physicalism_. Carl Gillett has recently defended a detailed formulation of the realization relation. However, Gillett’s formulation cannot be the relation that realization physicalists have in mind. I argue that Gillett’s “dimensioned” view of realization fails to apply to a textbook case of realization. I also argue Gillett counts as (...) realization some cases that should not count if realization physicalism is to be distinguished from its competitors in the usual ways. I conclude that the relation described by Gillett cannot be realization. (shrink)

This article develops a social epistemological analysis of Web-based search engines, addressing the following questions. First, what epistemic functions do search engines perform? Second, what dimensions of assessment are appropriate for the epistemic evaluation of search engines? Third, how well do current search engines perform on these? The article explains why they fulfil the role of a surrogate expert, and proposes three ways of assessing their utility as an epistemic tool—timeliness, authority prioritisation, and objectivity. “Personalisation” is a current trend in (...) Internet-delivered services, and consists in tailoring online content to the interests of the individual user. It is argued here that personalisation threatens the objectivity of search results. Objectivity is a public good; so there is a prima facie case for government regulation of search engines. (shrink)

Extant social contracts, deriving from communities of individuals, constitute a significant source of ethical norms in business. When found consistent with general ethical theories through the application of a filtering test, these real social contracts generate prima facie duties of compliance on the part of those who expressly or impliedly consent to the terms of the social contract, and also on the part of those who take advantage of the instrumental value of the social contracts. Businesspeople typically participate in multiple (...) communities and, as a consequence, encounter conflicting ethical norms. Priority rules can be devised to resolve such conflicts. The framework of extant social contracts merges normative and theoretical research in business ethics and specifies a domain for empirical studies. (shrink)

Fifty years ago J. J. C. Smart published his pioneering paper, “Sensations and Brain Processes.” It is appropriate to mark the golden anniversary of Smart’s publication by considering how well his article has stood up, and how well the identity theory itself has fared. In this paper I first revisit Smart’s text, reflecting on how it has weathered the years. Then I consider the status of the identity theory in current philosophical thinking, taking into account the objections and replies that (...) Smart discussed as well as some that he did not anticipate. Finally, I offer a brief manifesto for the identity theory, providing a small list of the claims that I believe contemporary identity theorist should accept. As it turns out, these are more or less the ones that Smart defended fifty years ago. (shrink)

During the past ten years Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) has become part of the repertoire of specialized decision-oriented theories in the business ethics literature. The intention here is to (1)␣provide a brief overview of the structure and strengths of ISCT; (2) identify recurring themes in the extensive commentary on the theory including brief mention of how ISCT has been applied outside the business ethics literature; (3) describe where research appears to be headed; and (4) specify challenges faced by those (...) who seek to reform ISCT. Key themes in the critiquing literature relate to (a) the identification process for hypernorms; (b) justification of the recognition of hypernorms; (c) proposals for considering meso or meta norms; (d)␣clarification of the relationship between stakeholder concepts and ISCT; (e) problems with potentially unoccupied moral free space; (f) sources of ethical obligation within the ISCT framework; and (g) the potential role for concepts of stakeholder dialogue and engagement. (shrink)

Moral universalism centrally involves the idea that the moral assessment of persons and their conduct, of social rules and states of affairs, must be based on fundamental principles that do not, explicitly or covertly, discriminate arbitrarily against particular persons or groups. This general idea is explicated in terms of three conditions. It is then applied to the discrepancy between our criteria of national and global economic justice. Most citizens of developed countries are unwilling to require of the global economic order (...) what they assuredly require of any national economic order, for example, that its rules be under democratic control, that it preclude life-threatening poverty as far as is reasonably possible. Without a plausible justification, such a double standard constitutes covert arbitrary discrimination against the global poor. Key Words: contextualism • corruption • discrimination • Rawls • resource exports • world poverty. (shrink)

This paper extends the discussion of guanxi beyond instrumental evaluations and advances a normative assessment of guanxi. Our discussion departs from previous analyses by not merely asking, Does guanxi work? but rather Should corporations use guanxi? The analysis begins with a review of traditional guanxi definitions and the changing economic and legal environment in China, both necessary precursors to understanding the role of guanxi in Chinese business transactions. This review leads us to suggest that there are distinct types of, and (...) uses for guanxi. We identify the potentially problematic aspects of certain forms of guanxi from a normative perspective, noting among other things, the close association of particular types of guanxi with corruption and bribery. We conclude that there are many different forms of guanxi that may have distinct impacts on economic efficiency and the well-being of ordinary Chinese citizens. Consistent with Donaldson and Dunfee (1999), we advocate a particularistic analysis of the different forms of guanxi. (shrink)

In a democratic society, the social rules are imposed by all upon each. As “recipients” of the rules, we tend to think that they should be designed to engender the best attainable distribution of goods and ills or quality of life. We are inclined to assess social institutions by how they affect their participants. But there is another, oft-neglected perspective which the topic of health equity raises with special clarity: As imposers of the rules, we are inclined to think that (...) harms we inflict through the rules have greater moral weight than like harms we merely fail to prevent or to mitigate. What matters morally is not merely how we affect people, but how we treat them through the rules we impose. While current (consequentialist and Rawlsian) theorizing is dominated by the first perspective and thus supports purely recipient-oriented moral conceptions, an adequate approach to social justice requires a balancing of both. Such balancing results in a relational conception of justice, which distinguishes various ways in which an institutional scheme may causally affect the quality of life of its participants.This essay argues that the strength of our moral reason to prevent or mitigate particular medical conditions depends not only on what one might call distributional factors, such as how badly off the people affected by these conditions are in absolute and relative terms, how costly prevention or treatment would be, and how much patients would benefit from given treatment. Rather, it depends also on relational factors, that is, on how we are related to the medical conditions they suffer. It then discusses some implications of this view for understanding responsibilities for international health outcomes. (shrink)

Mental and physical causes do not competedthe presence of one does not exclude the efficacy of the other. This point is obvious from the perspective of an interventionist theory of causation, but only when this theory gets its proper due. Doubts about the interventionist justification for concluding that there is both physical and mental causation, we have argued, rest on misunderstandings of interventionism. When looking to interventions to reveal causal structures, care must be taken to consider the right variable sets. (...) Jaegwon Kim’s diagram is the wrong starting point for interventionist causal reasoning because it includes variables that are related by non-causal relations in addition to causal relations. When it comes to understanding exclusion, less is more. (shrink)

Forthcoming in Philosophy of Science. Despite some recent advances, multiple realization remains a largely misunderstood thesis. Consider the dispute between Lawrence Shapiro and Carl Gillett over the application of Shapiro’s recipe for deciding when we have genuine cases of multiple realization. I argue that Gillett follows many philosophers in mistakenly supposing that multiple realization is absolute and transitive. Both of these are problematic. They are tempting only when we extract the question of multiple realization from the explanatory context in which (...) it is invoked. Anchoring multiple realizability in its theoretical context provides grounds for arbitrating disagreements. Doing so, I argue, favors the view advanced by Shapiro. (shrink)

Firms possessing a unique competency to rescue the victims of a human catastrophe have a minimum moral obligation to devote substantial resources toward best efforts to aid the victims. The minimum amount that firms should devote to rescue is the largest sum of their most recent year’s investment in social initiatives, their five-year trend, their industry’s average, or the national average. Financial exigency may justify a lower level of investment. Alternative social investments may be continued if they have an equally (...) compelling rationale. These duties apply to the global pharmaceutical companies in the context of the AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa. (shrink)

We citizens of the affluent countries tend to discuss our obligations toward the distant needy mainly in terms of donations and transfers, assistance and redistribution: How much of our wealth, if any, should we give away to the hungry abroad? Using one prominent theorist to exemplify this way of conceiving the problem, I show how it is a serious error — and a very costly one for the global poor.