Opponents of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) maintain that physician withdrawal-of-life-sustaining-treatment cannot be morally equated to voluntary active euthanasia. PAS opponents generally distinguish these two kinds of act by positing a possible moral distinction between killing and allowing-to-die, ceteris paribus. While that distinction continues to be widely accepted in the public discourse, it has been more controversial among philosophers. Some ethicist PAS advocates are so certain that the distinction is invalid that they describe PAS opponents who hold to the distinction as in (...) the grip of ‘moral fictions’. The author contends that such a diagnosis is too hasty. The possibility of a moral distinction between active euthanasia and allowing-to-die has not been closed off by the argumentative strategies employed by these PAS advocates, including the contrasting cases strategy and the assimilation of doing and allowing to a common sense notion of causation. The philosophical debate over the doing/allowing distinction remains inconclusive, but physicians and others who rely upon that distinction in thinking about the ethics of end-of-life care need not give up on it in response to these arguments. (shrink)
Hubert Dreyfus argues that the traditional and currently dominant conception of an action, as an event initiated or governed by a mental representation of a possible state of affairs that the agent is trying to realise, is inadequate. If Dreyfus is right, then we need a new conception of action. I argue, however, that the considerations that Dreyfus adduces show only that an action need not be initiated or governed by a conceptual representation, but since a representation need not be (...) conceptually structured, do not show that we need a conception of action that does not involve representation. (shrink)
I argue that free will and determinism are compatible, even when we take free will to require the ability to do otherwise and even when we interpret that ability modally, as the possibility of doing otherwise, and not just conditionally or dispositionally. My argument draws on a distinction between physical and agential possibility. Although in a deterministic world only one future sequence of events is physically possible for each state of the world, the more coarsely defined state of an (...) agent and his or her environment can be consistent with more than one such sequence, and thus different actions can be “agentially possible”. The agential perspective is supported by our best theories of human behaviour, and so we should take it at face value when we refer to what an agent can and cannot do. On the picture I defend, free will is not a physical phenomenon, but a higher-level one on a par with other higher-level phenomena such as agency and intentionality. (shrink)
‘‘Theoretical biology’’ is a surprisingly heter- ogeneous field, partly because it encompasses ‘‘doing the- ory’’ across disciplines as diverse as molecular biology, systematics, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Moreover, it is done in a stunning variety of different ways, using anything from formal analytical models to computer sim- ulations, from graphic representations to verbal arguments. In this essay I survey a number of aspects of what it means to do theoretical biology, and how they compare with the allegedly much more (...) restricted sense of theory in the physical sciences. I also tackle a recent trend toward the presentation of all-encompassing theories in the biological sciences, from general theories of ecology to a recent attempt to provide a conceptual framework for the entire set of biological disciplines. Finally, I discuss the roles played by philosophers of science in criticizing and shap- ing biological theorizing. (shrink)
The doing/allowing distinction plays an important role in our thinking about a number of legal issues, such as the need for criminal process protections, prohibitions on torture, the permissibility of the death penalty and so on. These are areas where, at least initially, there seem to be distinctions between harms that the state inflicts and harms that it merely allows. In this paper I will argue for the importance of the doing/allowing distinction as applied to state action. Sunstein, (...) Holmes, Vermeule and others have presented influential arguments for the claim that where the state is concerned the doing/allowing distinction has no moral significance, even if it does elsewhere. I show that these arguments can be resisted. In doing so, I defend some important distinctions and principles that help us understand the state’s role in protecting people from harm. (shrink)
An extensive body of research suggests that the distinction between doing and allowing plays a critical role in shaping moral appraisals. Here, we report evidence from a pair of experiments suggesting that the converse is also true: moral appraisals affect doing/allowing judgments. Specifically, morally bad behavior is more likely to be construed as actively ‘doing’ than as passively ‘allowing’. This finding adds to a growing list of folk concepts influenced by moral appraisal, including causation and intentional action. (...) We therefore suggest that the present finding favors the view that moral appraisal plays a pervasive role in shaping diverse cognitive representations across multiple domains. (shrink)
Reflection on the fine-grained information required for visual guidance of action has suggested that visual content is non-conceptual. I argue that in a common type of visually guided action, namely the use of manipulable artefacts, vision has conceptual content. Specifically, I show that these actions require visual attention and that concepts are involved in directing attention. In acting with artefacts, there is a way of doing it right as determined by the artefact’s conventional use. Attention must reflect our understanding (...) of the function and appropriate ways to use these artefacts, understanding that requires possession of the relevant concept. As a result, we attend to the artefact’s relevant functional properties. In these cases, attention is structured by concepts. This discussion has a bearing on the dual visual stream hypothesis. While it is often held that the two visual streams are functionally independent, the argument of this essay is that the constraints on attention suggest a functional interaction between them. (shrink)
Given its ubiquitous presence in everyday experience, it is surprising that the phenomenology of doing—the experience of being an agent—has received such scant attention in the consciousness literature. But things are starting to change, and a small but growing literature on the content and causes of the phenomenology of first-person agency is beginning to emerge.2 One of the most influential and stimulating figures in this literature is Daniel Wegner. In a series of papers and his book The Illusion of (...) Conscious Will (ICW) Wegner has developed.. (shrink)
G.E.M. Anscombe famously claimed that acting intentionally entails knowing "without observation" what one is doing. Among those that have taken her claim seriously, an influential response has been to suppose that in order to explain this fact, we should conclude that intentions are a species of belief. This paper argues that there are good reasons to reject this "cognitivist" view of intention in favor of the view that intentions are distinctively practical attitudes that are not beliefs and do not (...) constitutively involve the belief that one will do what one intends. A theory is then proposed on behalf of Distinctive Practical Attitude views of intention to explain Anscombe's non-observational knowledge phenomenon. It is argued that intentions do not embody non-observational knowledge, but they do provide the evidential basis for it: we know without observation what we are doing by inferring from our intentions. (shrink)
Although cognitive scientists have learned a lot about concepts, their findings have yet to be organized in a coherent theoretical framework. In addition, after twenty years of controversy, there is little sign that philosophers and psychologists are converging toward an agreement about the very nature of concepts. Doing without Concepts (Machery 2009) attempts to remedy this state of affairs. In this article, I review the main points and arguments developed at greater length in Doing without Concepts.
Seeing, Doing, and Knowing is an original and comprehensive philosophical treatment of sense perception as it is currently investigated by cognitive neuroscientists. Its central theme is the task-oriented specialization of sensory systems across the biological domain; these systems coevolve with an organism's learning and action systems, providing the latter with classifications of external objects in terms of sensory categories purpose--built for their need. On the basis of this central idea, Matthen presents novel theories of perceptual similarity, content, and realism. (...) His work will be a stimulating resource for a wide range of scholars and students across philosophy and psychology. (shrink)
Over recent years, the psychology of concepts has been rejuvenated by new work on prototypes, inventive ideas on causal cognition, the development of neo-empiricist theories of concepts, and the inputs of the budding neuropsychology of concepts. But our empirical knowledge about concepts has yet to be organized in a coherent framework. -/- In Doing without Concepts, Edouard Machery argues that the dominant psychological theories of concepts fail to provide such a framework and that drastic conceptual changes are required to (...) make sense of the research on concepts in psychology and neuropsychology. Machery shows that the class of concepts divides into several distinct kinds that have little in common with one another and that for this very reason, it is a mistake to attempt to encompass all known phenomena within a single theory of concepts. In brief, concepts are not a natural kind. Machery concludes that the theoretical notion of concept should be eliminated from the theoretical apparatus of contemporary psychology and should be replaced with theoretical notions that are more appropriate for fulfilling psychologists' goals. The notion of concept has encouraged psychologists to believe that a single theory of concepts could be developed, leading to useless theoretical controversies between the dominant paradigms of concepts. Keeping this notion would slow down, and maybe prevent, the development of a more adequate classification and would overshadow the theoretical and empirical issues that are raised by this more adequate classification. Anyone interested in cognitive science's emerging view of the mind will find Machery's provocative ideas of interest. (shrink)
The “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches have been thought to exhaust the possibilities for doing cognitive neuroscience. We argue that neither approach is likely to succeed in providing a theory that enables us to understand how cognition is achieved in biological creatures like ourselves. We consider a promising third way of doing cognitive neuroscience, what might be called the “neural dynamic systems” approach, that construes cognitive neuroscience as an autonomous explanatory endeavor, aiming to characterize in its own terms the (...) states and processes responsible for brain-based cognition. We sketch the basic motivation for the approach, describe a particular version of the approach, so-called ‘Dynamic Causal Modeling’ (DCM), and consider a concrete example of DCM. This third way, we argue, has the potential to avoid the problems that afflict the other two approaches. (shrink)
The aim of this article is to argue, by example, for neuroethics as a new way of doing ethics. Rather than simply giving us a new subject matter—the ethical issues arising from neuroscience—to attend to, neuroethics offers us the opportunity to refine the tools we use. Ethicists often need to appeal to the intuitions provoked by consideration of cases to evaluate the permissibility of types of actions; data from the sciences of the mind give us reason to believe that (...) some of these intuitions are less reliable than others. I focus on the doctrine of double effect to illustrate my case, arguing that experimental results suggest that appeal to it might be question-begging. The doctrine of double effect is supposed to show that there is a moral difference between effects that are brought about intentionally and those that are merely foreseen; I argue that the data suggest that we regard some effects as merely foreseen only because we regard bringing them about as permissible. Appeal to the doctrine of double effect therefore cannot establish that there are such moral differences. (shrink)
The distinction between doing and allowing appears to have moral significance, but the very nature of the distinction is as yet unclear. Philippa Foot's ‘pre-existing threats’ account of the doing/allowing distinction is highly influential. According to the best version of Foot's account an agent brings about an outcome if and only if his behaviour is part of the sequence leading to that outcome. When understood in this way, Foot's account escapes objections by Warren Quinn and Jonathan Bennett. However, (...) more analysis is required to show what makes a relevant condition part of a sequence. Foot's account is promising, but incomplete. (shrink)
It is “easy” to explain doing, “hard” to explain feeling. Turing has set the agenda for the easy explanation (though it will be a long time coming). I will try to explain why and how explaining feeling will not only be hard, but impossible. Explaining meaning will prove almost as hard because meaning is a hybrid of know-how and what it feels like to know how.
What is perception doing in mathematical reasoning? To address this question, I discuss the role of perception in geometric reasoning. Perception of the shape properties of concrete diagrams provides, I argue, a surrogate consciousness of the shape properties of the abstract geometric objects depicted in the diagrams. Some of what perception is not doing in mathematical reasoning is also discussed. I take issue with both Parsons and Maddy. Parsons claims that we perceive a certain type of abstract object. (...) Maddy claims (at least at one time claimed) that perception provides the basis for intuition of mathematical sets. 1 Mathematical reasoning with diagrams 2 Do we perceive abstract objects? 3 Do we perceive mathematical sets? (shrink)
As the title “Doing without Concepts” suggests Edouard Machery argues that psychologists should stop using the notion of concept because: (1) the only interesting generalizations about concepts can be drawn at the level of types of concepts (prototypes, exemplars and theories) and not the level of concept in general; and (2) competences such as categorization or induction can rely on these different types of concepts (there is not a one to one correspondence between type of concept and competence). I (...) try to make the point that these two elements are not wholly compatible. If several types of concepts are used to perform a given competence (point (2)), then they have to be well regulated (e.g. which type is activated when, which type wins in case of conflict). These regulatory mechanisms can then be the basis for interesting generalizations (against point (1)). On the other hand, it is possible that point (1) applies to competences as well: that there are no interesting generalizations to be drawn about categorization in general. In which case different types of categorization are likely to be underlain by different types of concepts (against point (2)). Even though the arguments laid out in the book are forceful and well supported by empirical evidence, a more positive thesis might have been both more successful rhetorically and more interesting scientifically. (shrink)
In discussing methodological and ethical codes for working with children there is a danger that young people can become homogenised as a social category. In this paper we examine the way in which common methodological and ethical dilemmas, such as accessing potential interviewees or gaining consent, can become more complex and significant when the research involves work with a 'vulnerable' group of children or youth. Here, we draw on our own experience of working with self-identified lesbian and gay young people, (...) to demonstrate that research with sexual minorities is particularly sensitive because of the specific laws which frame (or until recently have framed) homosexuality and because of the way in which children are popularly constructed as asexual or innocent. In doing so we also highlight the importance of finding a safe space where interviews can be conducted in privacy and confidence. (shrink)
Do we have privileged access to what we’re intentionally doing? Well, that probably depends on what privileged access is. One way to think about privileged access is to try to identify a true formal principle. One thing you’ll need to do when identifying the formal principle is to specify the relevant range of propositions to which you have privileged access. These ranges are usually specified by subject matter: propositions about your own current, conscious propositional attitudes, propositions about your own (...) sensations, or perhaps, propositions about what you’re currently, intentionally doing. In addition to specifying a range, you need to decide which way the arrow goes. Many formal principles are modeled on one of the following ... (shrink)
In 'Doing and Allowing', Samuel Scheffler argues that if a person sees herself as subject to norms of individual moral responsibility, then the content of her first-order substantive norms of individual moral responsibility must attribute greater responsibility to what one does than to what one could, but fails, to prevent. This paper is about how a morally responsible agent could deny the doctrine of doing and allowing, why an environmentalist should, and what this means for environmental ethical theory.
Given its ubiquitous presence in everyday experience, it is surprising that the phenomenology of doing—the experience of being an agent—has received such scant attention in the consciousness literature. But things are starting to change, and a small but growing literature on the content and causes of the phenomenology of first-person agency is beginning to emerge.2 One of the most influential and stimulating figures in this literature is Daniel Wegner. In a series of papers and his book The Illusion of (...) Conscious Will (ICW) Wegner has developed.. (shrink)
In this paper I make a comparison between the imaginative activity of reading literature and the elucidatory activity of doing philosophy. My aim is to highlight significant features of a non-traditional view of philosophical method – inspired by Wittgenstein.
Attempts to defend the moral significance of the distinction between doing and allowing harm directly have left many unconvinced. I give an indirect defence of the moral significance of the distinction between doing and allowing, focusing on the agent's duty to reason in a way that is responsive to possible harmful effects of their behaviour. Due to our cognitive limitations, we cannot be expected to take all harmful consequences of our behaviour into account. We are required to be (...) responsive to harmful consequences that have some feature that makes it easy for us to become aware of them. I show that, under Jonathan Bennett's analysis of the doing/allowing distinction, harm that is incidentally done has such a feature, which is not shared by harm that is incidentally allowed. Any plausible analysis of the doing/allowing distinction will entail a similar asymmetry. It follows that, prima facie, an agent who incidentally does harm has violated a moral requirement (the deliberative requirement) which an agent who incidentally allows harm has not violated. 1. (shrink)
This paper discusses the importance of Richard M. Zaners work on clinical ethics for answering the question: what kind of doing is ethics consultation? The paper argues first, that four common approaches to clinical ethics – applied ethics, casuistry, principlism, and conflict resolution – cannot adequately address the nature of the activity that makes up clinical ethics; second, that understanding the practical character of clinical ethics is critically important for the field; and third, that the practice of clinical ethics (...) is bound up with the normative commitments of medicine as a therapeutic enterprise. (shrink)
The claim that "Everyone's doing it" is frequently offered as a reason for engaging in behavior that is widespread but less-than-ideal. This is particularly true in business, where competitors' conduct often forces hard choices on managers. When is the claim "Everyone's doing it" a morally valid reason for following others' lead? This discussion proposes and develops five prima facie conditions to identify when the existence of prevalent but otherwise undesirable behavior provides a moral justification for our engaging in (...) such behavior ourselves. The balance of the discussion focuses on testing these conditions by applying them to aseries of representative cases in business ethics. (shrink)
The problem of extreme demands is one of the most intractable in contemporary moral theory. On the one hand, it seems that a failure to prevent great suffering at little cost to ourselves is morally wrong; given the amount of suffering in the world and the comparatively trivial nature of the requisite sacrifices, this intuition demands that we give up quite a lot. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem to us that we act wrongly in living lives characterised by (...) only moderate sacrifice, in which our time and resources are disproportionately used to benefit ourselves and those close to us. These two intuitions are extremely difficult to reconcile within any moral theory that recognises a duty to promote the general good. In this paper, however, I will suggest one possible way of doing so. My suggestion requires taking a closer look at the way in which the demand to the promote the good is derived: specifically, at the way our option set is characterised and the information that we take into account in weighing these options. I will suggest that there are certain assumptions it is plausible to make regarding the relevance of information about our own and other agents’ actions, and that once these assumptions are made, we can see how permissions may be derived within the framework of good-promotion. (shrink)
Recent interest in the Zhuangzi by Western philosophers arises from the sense that Zhuangzi offers a form of philosophical theory, such as perspectivism. A key issue for this line of interpretation is how best to resolve alleged contradictions between the central philosophical claims of the "Qiwulun" with other claims made in the text. A more radical reading of this chapter will avoid these problems if it can find some way to understand this chapter as philosophically interesting because it scrupulously avoids (...) and rejects making any philosophical claims. This reading will be developed by focusing on Zhuangzi's assertion: "The person who understands does not use the inflexible 'that's it' (wei shi), but dwells in the ordinary (yu zhu yong)." I will argue that, understood in context, this assertion takes Zhuangzi out of the philosophical game. According to this interpretation, Zhuangzi's writings have a philosophical significance similar to that of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations as expressed in his dictum "The real discovery is the one that lets me stop doing philosophy when I want to.". (shrink)
In this paper I articulate a minimal conception of the idea of doing philosophy that informs a curriculum and pedagogy for producing students who are capable of engaging in philosophical activity and not just competent with a specific domain of knowledge. The paper then relates, by way of background, the departmental assessment practices that have played a vital role in the development of my department’s current curriculum and in particular in the design of a junior-year seminar in philosophical research (...) required of all majors. After a brief survey of the learning theory literature that has informed its design, I share the content of this junior-year seminar. In the paper’s conclusion I provide some initial data that indicates our approach to curriculum and pedagogy has had a positive impact on student achievement with respect to reaching the learning goals associated with “doing” as opposed to “merely studying” philosophy. (shrink)
Cornelius Castoriadis understood history as a self-creating order. In turn, he elaborated history in two directions: as the political project of autonomy, and as the ontological modality of the social-historical. On his account, history as self-creation was only possible through the interplay of social (or political) imaginaries and social doing. Although social imaginaries are readily situated within the non-subjective field, non-subjective modes of doing have been less explored. Yet non-subjective contexts are integral to both the “doing” and (...) “imaginary” dimensions of the human condition, and form the preconditions for concrete varieties of social and political action and politics (as la politique), more generally. The present paper begins to clear a path to reflect on social doing in its non-subjective aspects; as such, it is preparatory rather than programmatic. After briefly reviewing the field of “social imaginaries”, it reflects on Castoriadis’s elaboration of “praxis” and “teukhein”. It then considers Johann Arnason’s culturological reconfiguration of Castoriadis’s approach, and Jan Patočka’s asubjective phenomenology of the movement of human existence as different ways of engaging with the problematic of doing, instituting society and political imaginaries. Despite a gradual subordination of “doing” to “signification” in Castoriadis’s philosophical elaborations, “social doing” as a non-subjective modality does not disappear altogether from his thought – especially and explicitly in respect to the phenomenon of instituting society as a political project – and remains a point of recurring intrusion into his more explicit theoretical concerns. (shrink)
Whether to do business with rights violating regimes is one of many dilemmas faced by socially responsible corporations. In this article the difficult case of Myanmar is considered. Ruled for decades by a closed and sometimes brutal military elite, the country has long been subject to informal and formal sanctions. However, as sanctions have failed to trigger political reform, it is necessary to review the policy options. The focus here is on the contribution socially responsible corporations might make to change. (...) The article sketches contextual features of the case, examines the recent history and present pattern of business links with Myanmar, and assesses whether current approaches can stimulate reform. Concluding that they cannot, it considers fresh possibilities for corporate engagement. The argument is that socially responsible corporations, committed to improving individual life chances through engagement with developing societies, should undertake collaborative and principled direct investment in Myanmar. The underlying strategy and problems of codification and implementation are all analyzed. To close, the article contends that, by doing business with Myanmar’s rights violating regime, multinational corporations can extend the frontiers of global corporate social responsibility. (shrink)
The global crisis is heralding change within collective consciousness and humanity will be challenged to transform behaviors to co-create a sustainable future. Ervin Laszlo's Akashic Field could inspire such an archetypal shift, as exemplified in C.G. Jung's individuation process. Jung's encounters with the archetypes from the collective unconscious led him to connect deeply with Akashic experiences, which resulted in him expressing his human potential through renewed ways of doing and being. Humanity has an opportunity to develop and integrate transpersonal (...) consciousness through engaging archetypal and Akashic experiences, which could inspire collective action for the co-creation of an improved future. (shrink)
The main purpose of this paper is to prove that in everystit semantic structure that contains a busy choice sequence, neither does doing imply refraining from refraining from doing, nor does refraining from refraining from doing imply doing.
Based on personal experience, interviews, and numerous anecdotal evidence documented in the press, this paper analyzes current practices and focuses on future challenges of business development in Ukraine. In particular, the most recent developments in evolution of business relations and ethics are studied. Business ethics practices are viewed within the current political, economic, and social context. A unique combination of three factors: old communist mentality, new "mafia-style" capitalism, and Ukrainian nationalism have created a situation where applying internationally accepted ethical concepts (...) may not lead to success. The new entrepreneurial spirit and privatization windfalls against the background of cronyism, bureaucracy, and organized crime have produced the new rules of doing business. Business ethics reflect a peculiar combination of the above factors and make them difficult for the outsider to comprehend. (shrink)
In this essay, I utilize the concept of the echo, as formulated in the historical and methodological work of Michel Foucault and Joan W. Scott, to help theorize the historical relationship between health feminism and AIDS activism. I trace the echoes between health feminism and AIDS activism in order to present a more complex history of both movements, and to try to think through the ways that the coming together of these two struggles in a particular place and time—New York (...) City in the 1980s—created particular practices that might be effective in other times and places. The practice that I focus on here is one that I call 'doing queer love'. As I hope to show, 'doing queer love' both describes a particular history of health activism and opens up the possibility of bringing into being a different future than the one a conventional history of AIDS seems to predict. It is an historical echo that I believe we must try to hear now, not just in order to challenge a particular history of AIDS activism in the United States, but also in order to provide a model that can be useful for addressing the continuing problem of AIDS across the globe. (shrink)
There is a growing interest in ethical competence-building within nursing and health care practising. This tendency is accompanied by a remarkable growth of ethical guidelines. Ethical demands have also been laid down in laws. Present-day practitioners and researchers in health care are thereby left in a virtual cross-fire of various legislations, codes, and recommendations, all intended to guide behaviour. The aim of this paper was to investigate the role of ethical guidelines in the process of ethical competence-building within health care (...) practice and medical research. A conceptual and critical philosophical analysis of some paragraphs of the Helsinki Declaration and of relevant literature was performed. Three major problems related to ethical guidelines were identified, namely, the interpretation problem (there is always a gap between the rule and the practice, which implies that ethical competence is needed for those who are to implement the guidelines); the multiplicity problem (the great number of codes, declarations, and laws might pull in different directions, which may confuse the health care providers who are to follow them); and the legalisation problem (ethics concerns may take on a legal form, where ethical reflection is replaced by a procedure of legal interpretations). Virtue ethics might be an alternative to a rule based approach. This position, however, can turn ethics into a tacit knowledge, leading to poorly reflected and inconsistent ethical decisions. Ethical competence must consist of both being (virtues) and doing (rules and principles), but also of knowing (critical reflection), and therefore a communicative based model is suggested. (shrink)
Dienes & Perner offer us a theory of explicit and implicit knowledge that promises to systematise a large and diverse body of research in cognitive psychology. Their advertised strategy is to unpack this distinction in terms of explicit and implicit representation. But when one digs deeper one finds the “Higher-Order Thought” theory of consciousness doing much of the work. This reduces both the plausibility and usefulness of their account. We think their strategy is broadly correct, but that consensus on (...) the explicit/implicit knowledge distinction is still a fair way off. (shrink)
Within the field of medical ethics there is a startling amount of diversity regarding which issues and relationships are deemed relevant for ethical inquiry and analysis, what strategies are appropriate for examining and resolving ethical conflict, what should be the goals for medical ethics, even who should participate in that project. What I will try to make clear in this paper is that how we go about this process of doing medical ethics, of examining, reflecting, decisionmaking, and behaving, makes (...) a practical difference, and not just a philosophical one, in terms of the understandings we will reach about ethical matters. Without attempting to resolve any of the conflicts within or between different conceptions of doing ethics, I will try to articulate the differences in orientation, and particularly the tone and educational emphasis, that attend four major contemporary approaches to ethical inquiry and analysis: deductivism, principlism, modern casuistry, and feminist/relationist ethics. Keywords: casuistry, deductivism, ethics, feminism, principlism, relationism CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)
Dienes and Perner offer us a theory of explicit and implicit knowledge that promises to systematise a large and diverse body of research in cognitive psychology. Their advertised strategy is to unpack this distinction in terms of explicit and implicit representation. But when one digs deeper one finds the HOT theory of consciousness doing much of the work. This reduces both the plausibility and usefulness of their account. We think their strategy is broadly correct, but that consensus on the (...) explicit/implicit knowledge distinction is still a fair way off. (shrink)
Doing Greek Philosophy conveys a vivid sense of dynamism and continuity of the Greek philosophical tradition and illustrates how interaction between Greek philosophers creates and sustains that tradition. It concentrates on a set of inter-related challenges and problems that emerged early in the tradition and moves on to the subsequent reactions to them.
This paper accepts as given that business students want to get ahead. It criticizes business schools for their failure to reduce the incongruence between doing what is right and doing what it takes to get ahead. Because of this failure business school graduates carry negative ideas, attitudes and behaviors vis-à-vis social responsibility from business schools into the business world. Recommendations are made for increasing the social responsibility of business schools.
The twin concepts of ethics and emotions are used in this paper to examine experiences of doing research on the topic of violence. Ethical questions are of significance when carrying out research which is potentially distressing to the research participant. Through field experiences in South Africa the author argues, however, that despite the growing concern among geographers over the ethical dimensions of their work, the implementation of ethically guided research practice is often less simple in reality. The concept of (...) emotions is used to explore the less well examined issue of the impact of distressing research on the researcher and research assistants. The paper concludes that it is often difficult to separate out ethics from emotions. (shrink)
Doing Science + Culture is a groundbreaking book on the cultural study of science, technology and medicine. Outstanding contributors including life and physical scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, literature/communication scholars and historians of science who focus on the analysis of science and scientific discourses within culture: what it means to "do" science. The essays are organized into three broad topics: transnational science and globalization (the movements of people, material resources and knowledges that underwrite scientific practices within and across borders of nation-states (...) and regions); emerging subjects and subjectivities (of research and researchers); and postdisciplinary pedagogies and curricula (the institutional settings of classroom, laboratory, department and academic division). Contributors: Itty Abraham, Anne Balsamo, Karen Barad, Michael M.J. Fischer, Joan H. Fujimura, Scott F. Gilbert, Emily Martin, Jackie Orr, Roddey Reid, Molly Rhodes and Sharon Traweek. (shrink)
DOING CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY Edited by PAMELA SHURMER-SMITH, University of Portsmouth Doing Cultural Geography is an introduction to cultural geography that integrates theoretical discussion with applied examples: the emphasis throughout is on doing geography. Recognising that many undergraduates have difficulty with both theory and methods courses, the text explains the theory informing cultural geography and encourages students to engage directly with theory in practice. It emphasises what can be done with humanist, Marxist, poststructuralist, feminist, and postcolonial theory, showing (...) that this is the most effective way to engage with the theoretical literature. Twenty short chapters are organized in sections on theory, topic selection, methodology, interpretation, and presentation. The text is punctuated throughout with questions, suggestions for activities, and short sample extracts from the academic literature, chosen to exemplify the subject of the chapter and to stimulate further reading. Chapters conclude with glossaries and suggestions for further reading. Doing Cultural Geography will be used in project work - from seminar-based activities to the planning stages of undergraduate research projects. It will be essential reading for students in modules in cultural geography, foundation courses in human geography, as well as theory and methods modules. Features and Benefits: most pedagogically informed teaching text on cultural geography available integrates theory with practice. (shrink)
This article examines whether ethical business practice enhances financial performance with respect to interorganizational favour exchange. We argue that the link between the ethicality and economic utility of interorganizational favour exchange is governed by: (1) organizational–individual interest alignment/conflict and (2) the fairness or justifiability of favour exchanges from the perspective of third parties. We classify interorganizational (IO) favour exchange into four types (Business–Personal, Personal–Business, Personal–Personal and Business–Business favour exchange). Our analysis shows that the first three types of favour exchange are (...) unethical as they involve conflicts between organizational and individual interests in one or both participating organizations that negatively affect organizational value creation. The last type of favour exchange involves organizational–individual interest alignment in both participating organizations and positively affects the capacity of those involved in the exchange to create value. Favour exchanges of this fourth variety are ethically justifiable unless they unfairly damage the legitimate interests of third parties. In the latter case, these favour exchanges create the risk of negative third party reactions, which in turn affect the sustainability of the benefits of the favour exchanges to the focal group (the dyad). Our research results advance understanding of the ethical and economic implications of IO favour exchange, counter the prejudice against this behaviour in organizations, provide ethical guidance for management and business practice, and have implications for the relationship between doing well and doing good. (shrink)
The aims of this paper are: (1) to criticize the traditional conception of understanding in sociology; (2) to show how doing interpreting is achieved within the activity the participant is currently involved in; (3) to show how an individual's special characteristics, e.g., a "strange foreigner," are constructed and used within the actual trajectory of interaction; and (4) to demonstrate how the participants in the so-called intercultural communication 'do cultural differences' within interaction.
There is a sense of doing justice prior to the juxtaposition of theory and practice, accounting for an ontological vulnerability prior to both social power andsocial vulnerability. Justice in the sense of “being true” involves fidelity to truth that we neither possess nor construct, preceding all efforts to enact justice. The charge to be just precedes any just act. There is a “patience of being,” or a receiving of being before acting, which we must then actively take up. All (...) this has implications for the practices of philosophy, including transcending the will to power by not clinging to one’s own place in History. The philosopher stands back and enters the void space of the human soul which is vulnerable, both terrorized and capable of terrorizing. This void is a “porosity of the soul” rather than pure nothingness. Though it is no particular project or activity, it allows all openness, receiving, and self-transcendence, and out of it comes the practical energy that feeds activity. The poverty of philosophy means relinquishing meaningless activity of construction in a purposeless universe by a willingness to be nothing, understanding the patience of being before servility and sovereignty, and the justice beyond them. (shrink)
Many environmental policies seem to rest on an implicit distinction between doing and allowing. For example, it is generally thought worse to drive a speciesto extinction than to fail to save a species that is declining through no fault of our own, and worse to pollute the air with chemicals that trigger asthma attacks thanto fail to remove naturally occurring allergens such as pollen and mold. The distinction between doing and allowing seems to underlie certain versions of the (...) precautionary principle, and insofar as the precautionary principle rests on this distinction, it diverges from direct consequentialist approaches to risk management.There are two ways in which such reliance on the doing/allowing distinction may be defended: by appeal to indirect consequentialist considerations, and by appeal to deontological considerations. Neither approach is unproblematic; however, retention of a distinction between doing and allowing in environmentalpolicy is consistent with the widespread intuition that there is something prima facie valuable about the world as we find it. (shrink)
In pursuit of resistance: pragmatic recommendations for doing science within one’s means Content Type Journal Article Category Original paper in Philosophy of Science Pages 353-371 DOI 10.1007/s13194-011-0030-x Authors Amy McLaughlin, Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, Florida Atlantic University, Jupiter, FL, USA Journal European Journal for Philosophy of Science Online ISSN 1879-4920 Print ISSN 1879-4912 Journal Volume Volume 1 Journal Issue Volume 1, Number 3.
As the initial book in the Feminist Constructions series, Feminists Doing Ethics broaches the ideas of critiquing social practice and developing an ethics of ...
Doing Educational Administration is the final part in a three volume series by Evers and Lakomski presenting their perspective on educational administration. The first volume, Knowing Educational Administration , established the importance of epistemological issues in the international field of educational administration and suggested a new, post-positivist approach to research. The theoretical approach presented in the first volume was further examined in Exploring Educational Administration, where the authors' theories were considered in an applied context. In this, the third and (...) final volume, the authors conclude their presentation of their post-positivist theory by demonstrating how their account of knowledge and cognition shapes the content and structure of administrative practice. Built around a set of basic issues in the practice of educational administration where the role of condition is of primary importance, Evers and Lakomski produce a comprehensive and persuasive applied theory of administrative practice. (shrink)
A story about absolute truth -- Something is wrong: emptiness and reality-- The myth of psychology -- The myth of Enlightenment -- Teachers: authority, fascism, and love -- The dark night of the soul -- Doing nothing -- Concentration, meditation, and space -- The nature of thought -- Language and reality -- Religion, symbols, and power -- The crisis of change-- Reaction, projection, and madness -- The collapse of self-- Love, emptiness, and energy -- Communication beyond language -- The (...) challenge of living-- Health, disease, and aging -- Death and immortality -- Inquiry -- Invitation to a dialogue. (shrink)
Doing Right: A Practical Guide to Ethics for Medical Trainees and Physicians is a concise and practical guide to ethical decision-making in medicine. The text is aimed at second- and third-year one-semester ethics courses offered in medical schools, health sciences departments, and nursing programs. By taking an applied approach rather than a theoretical approach, this text serves the needs of medical and nursing students, residents, and practicing physicians by sorting through questions of moral principles relevant to the diverse and (...) growing number of healthcare professionals. The many topics covered include truth telling, refusal of treatment, assisted suicide, managing error, and reproductive choice. (shrink)
Along with the notion of being a person (zero run 做人), the notion of doing business (zuo shi 做事) in ordinary Chinese is basically an over-all notion of the norms in the practical and associative activities, carrying typically obscure meanings on practice and association affairs in some external world. Ordinary Chinese not only distinguishes these two notions but also defines a dictionary order of them, with the affairs of the internal world prior to those of the external. The fact (...) that the notion of doing business refers to business (shi 事) rather than person (ren 人) makes this order clear at a deeper level. It shows that this notion regards the practical affairs of the external world less important to the person itself than those of the internal. Except for these qualities, the notion of doing business holds some normative meanings, although contains no definite rules. These meanings indirectly relate to the notion of person that people form in their private associations and emerge as some mixture with a tactical attitude out of the need of earning a life. The notion of person gives birth to some obscure requirements, for instance, the requirement of ‘doing business in accordance with your conscience’ and that of ‘doing business seriously’. The core world of family is marginalized in the public transition of associations. There are reasons to anticipate that in this process the notion of doing business will undergo more radical changes than that of being a person. (shrink)
Black Entertainment Television (BET) talk show host Tavis Smiley, in an impassioned call to arms, sets forth the tools we can use to stand up for what we believe in and help transform our communities, our lives, and our world. Tavis Smiley isn't alone in pointing out that our neighborhoods are unsafe, our communities are unraveling, and our most basic values--civility, a sense of justice, integrity, and responsibility--are under attack, from the Oval Office to the corner office. But we don't (...) have to put up with a world gone awry, claims Smiley. We don't need to play the blame game. We are neither helpless nor victims. In Doing What's Right , Smiley shows how each and every one of us can take up arms against complacency and fight for the causes in which we believe. We don't have to accept things as they are. By choosing the battles that matter most to us, and organizing a plan to bring about the changes we feel are necessary, we can make a difference--in fact we can transform the world around us. Smiley knows whereof he speaks--it was his lifelong determination to make a difference that helped shape Smiley's career, first as a member of former L.A. mayor Tom Bradley's staff, helping to fight for the rights of residents in South Central, and later in radio and television. He has long been known as a powerful advocate of social and political issues. Through his nightly television show and in his radio commentaries, he has helped to galvanize public opinion and initiate national grassroots campaigns on everything from corporate responsibility to voter turnout. For everyone who wants to be a voice for change, Doing What's Right is a must-read. Visit the author's website at www.tavistalks.com or www.blackvoices.com. In DOING WHAT'S RIGHT, Smiley shows how each and every one of us can take up arms against complacency and fight for the causes in which we believe. We don't have to accept things as they are. By choosing the battles that matter most to us, and organizing a plan to bring about the changes we feel are necessary, we can make a difference--in fact we can transform the world around us. Smiley knows whereof he speaks--it was his lifelong determination to make a difference that helped launch his career in radio and television. And through his advocacy of issues on his nightly television show and in his radio commentaries, Smiley persuaded Christie's auction house to change its policies on selling slave artifacts, and encouraged President Clinton to award the Congressional Gold Medal to Rosa Parks. For everyone who wants to be a voice for change, DOING WHAT'S RIGHT is a must-read. -->. (shrink)
Time is a fundamental dimension of consciousness. Many studies of the “sense of agency” have investigated whether we attribute actions to ourselves based on a conscious experience of intention occurring prior to action, or based on a reconstruction after the action itself has occurred. Here, we ask the same question about a lower level aspect of action experience, namely awareness of the detailed spatial form of a simple movement. Subjects reached for a target, which unpredictably jumped to the side on (...) some trials. Participants (1) expressed their expectancy of a target shift during the upcoming movement, (2) pointed at the target as quickly and accurately as possible before returning to the start posiment to the target shift if required and (3) reproduced the spatial path of the movement they had just made, as accurately as possible, to give an indication of their awareness of the pointing movement. We analysed the spatial disparity between the initial and the reproduced movements on those with a target shift. A negative disparity value, or undershoot, suggests that motor awareness merely reflects a sluggish record of coordinated motor performance, while a positive value, or overshoot, suggests that participants’ intention to point to the shifting target contributes more to their awareness of action than their actual pointing movement. Undershoot and overshoot thus measure the reconstructive (motoric) and the preconstuctive (intentional) aspects of action awareness, respectively. We found that trials on which subjects strongly expected a target shift showed greater overshoot and less undershoot than trials with lower expectancy. Conscious expectancy therefore strongly influences the experience of the detailed motor parameters of our actions. Further, a delay inserted either between the expectancy judgement and the pointing movement, or between the pointing movement and the reproduction of the movement, had no effect on visuomotor adjustment but strongly influenced action awareness. Delays during either interval boosted undershoots, suggesting increased reliance on a time-limited sensory memory for action. The experience of action is thus strongly influenced by prior thoughts and expectations, but only over a short time period. Thus, awareness of our actions is a dynamic and relatively flexible mixture of what we intend to do, and what our motor system actually does. (shrink)
According to a certain, familiar way of dividing up the business of philosophy, made popular by Quine, ontology is concerned with the question of what there is (a task that is often identified with that of drafting a “complete inventory” of the universe) whereas metaphysics is concerned with the question of what it is (i.e., with the task of specifying the “ultimate nature” of the items included in the inventory).1 For instance, a thesis to the effect that there are such (...) things as colors or virtues would strictly speaking belong to ontology, whereas it would pertain to metaphysics proper to establish whether such entities are Platonic forms, Aristotelian universals, tropes, moments, or what have you. Likewise, it would fall within the scope of ontology to determine whether, when we speak of Sherlock Holmes, of the natural numbers, or of Sebastian’s walks in Bologna, we are speaking of things that truly belong to the furniture of the universe, but it would be a further metaphysical task to say something precise in regard to the ultimate make-up of those things, if such there be—for instance, that Sherlock Holmes is a theoretical artifact, that numbers are abstract individuals, that walks are property exemplifications, and so on. Of course, this view is all but universal among philosophers. There are many other, different ways of understanding the terms ‘ontology’ and ‘metaphysics’, some of which can certainly claim a respectable pedigree. For example, it is also common to think of ontology as a proper part of metaphysics—that part that has to do with what there is2—and there are even philosophers who use those terms in a way that is the exact opposite of the one I have just offered.3 But never mind; I am not interested in defending the view or in criticizing it, as very little depends on it. I am citing it just to fix a certain distinction and to settle on a terminology. The question I wish to address concerns the relationship between the distinction—the relationship between ontology understood as the study of what there is and metaphysics understood as the study of what it is.. (shrink)
What exactly are the reasons we do things, and how are they related to the resulting actions? Bittner explores this question and proposes an answer: a reason is a response to that state of affairs. Elegantly written, this work is a substantial contribution to the fields of rationality, ethics, and action theory.
This paper addresses the criticism recently directed at Internet companies who have chosen to do business in China. Currently, in order to conduct business in China, companies must agree to the Chinese government’s rule of self-censoring any information the government deems inappropriate. We start by explaining how some of these companies have violated the human rights of Chinese citizens to freely trade information. We then analyze whether the justifications and excuses offered by these companies are sufficient to absolve them of (...) moral responsibility. We argue that both justifications and excuses offered are insufficient. Wilfully abiding by unjust laws, albeit necessary to do business in China, should not trump moral actions that protect rights. (shrink)
This paper is an exploration of how we do things with music—that is, the way that we use music as an esthetic technology to enact micro-practices of emotion regulation, communicative expression, identity construction, and interpersonal coordination that drive core aspects of our emotional and social existence. The main thesis is: from birth, music is directly perceived as an affordance-laden structure. Music, I argue, affords a sonic world, an exploratory space or nested acoustic environment that further affords possibilities for, among other (...) things, (1) emotion regulation and (2) social coordination. When we do things with music, we are engaged in the work of creating and cultivating the self, as well as creating and cultivating a shared world that we inhabit with others. I develop this thesis by first introducing the notion of a musical affordance . Next, I look at how emotional affordances in music are exploited to construct and regulate emotions. I summon empirical research on neonate music therapy to argue that this is something we emerge from the womb knowing how to do. I then look at social affordances in music, arguing that joint attention to social affordances in music alters how music is both perceived and appropriated by joint attenders within social listening contexts. In support, I describe the experience of listening to and engaging with music in a live concert setting. Thinking of music as an affordance-laden structure thus reaffirms the crucial role that music plays in constructing and regulating emotional and social experiences in everyday life. (shrink)
What is nature, and how are we to live with it rather than against it, as ecophilosophers enjoin? My own understanding of nature and of our proper relation to it is ultimately traceable to a metaphysics that could be broadly described as panpsychist, in that it attributes an internal principle, or subjectival dimension, to matter generally. I have explored such a metaphysic elsewhere, and do not propose..
: The question which this paper examines is that of the correct scope of the claim that extra-linguistic factors (such as gender and social status) can block the proper workings of natural language. The claim that this is possible has been put forward under the apt label of silencing in the context of Austinian speech act theory. The ‘silencing’ label is apt insofar as when one's ability to exploit the inherent dynamic of language is ‘blocked’ by one's gender or social (...) status then one might justly be said to be silenced. The notion that factors independent of any person's linguistic competence might block her ability to exploit the inherent dynamic of language is of considerable social as well as theoretical significance. I shall defend the claim that factors independent of a person's linguistic competence can indeed block her ability to do things with words but I will show that the cases that have been previously considered to be cases of illocutionary failure are instances of rhetic or locutionary act failure instead. I shall refine the silencing claim as previously advanced in the debate in at least one fundamental respect. I also show that considering the metaphysics of speech acts clarifies many of the issues previously appearing as thorny bones of contention between those who hold that the only notion of silencing that is coherent is that of physically preventing someone from speaking or writing and those who hold the opposite sort of claim sketched above. (shrink)
The theory presented here is a near neighbour of Humphrey's theory of sensations as actions. O'Regan & Noë have opened up remarkable new possibilities. But they have missed a trick by not making more of the distinction between sensation and perception; and some of their particular proposals for how we use our eyes to represent visual properties are not only implausible but would, if true, isolate vision from other sensory modalities and do little to explain the phenomenology of conscious experience (...) in general. (shrink)
The philosophical literature on the moral status of nonhuman animals, which is bounteous, diverse, and sophisticated, contains a glaring omission. There is little discussion of human responsibilities to companion animals, such as dogs and cats. The assumption seems to be that animals are an undifferentiated mass – that whatever responsibilities one has to any animal are had to all animals. It is significant that we do not think this way about humans. Most of us (all but extreme impartialists) acknowledge the (...) existence of special responsibilities to humans. We believe, for instance, that our children, friends, and compatriots have special claims on our attention, time, energy, and resources. This is not at all incompatible (although it is sometimes thought to be) with the view that we have obligations to strangers. My aim in this essay is to fill the lacuna in the literature. I argue that the act of taking an animal into one''s life or home, through purchase, gift, or adoption, generates responsibilities to it, the main one being to provide for its needs, which, in the case of dogs (for example), are many and varied. Since this thesis is shrouded in misconception, I devote part of the essay to clarifying it. I then diagnose its philosophical neglect, which stems from both practical concerns and theoretical commitments. I argue that the practical concerns are groundless and that the theoretical commitments do not have the implications they are thought to have. (shrink)
This article considers a central question in the philosophy of emotion: what is an (instance of) emotion? This is a highly controversial question, which has attracted numerous answers. I argue that a good answer to this question may prove very hard to find. The difficulty, I suggest, can be traced back to three features of emotional phenomena: their diversity, their complexity and their coherence. I end by suggesting that we should not be disturbed by this result, as we do not (...) need to know what an instance of emotion is in order to investigate the topic of emotion. (shrink)
This article identifies a fundamental distinction in scientific practice: the mismatch between what scientists do and what they state they did when they communicate their findings in their publications. The insight that such a mismatch exists is not new. It was already implied in Hans Reichenbach's distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification, and it is taken for granted across the board in philosophy of science and science studies. But while there is general agreement that the mismatch exists, the (...) epistemological implications of that mismatch are not at all clear. Philosophers, historians, and sociologists of different stripes have expressed widely different views about how one should understand and interpret the relation between what scientists do and what they state they did. This article surveys a number of approaches to the mismatch. Based on this survey, I offer an assessment of the epistemological significance of the mismatch and identify the major meta-epistemological challenges that it poses for the analysis of scientific practice. *Received May 2007; revised April 2008. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of History and Philosophy of Science, 1011 East Third Street, Goodbody Hall 130, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405; e-mail: jschicko@indiana.edu. (shrink)
This dissertation defends a cognitivist alternative to the Humean belief-desire theory of motivation against standard philosophical arguments. Moral judgments influence our action. For instance, someone might donate to charity because she believes she has a duty to give back to her community. According to the Humean orthodoxy, some additional state—some passion or desire—is needed to explain her action. She may want to donate the money, to give back to her community, or to fulfill her duty. Yet there must be something (...) she wants, the Humean insists, because only desires are capable of moving us. Even moral judgment is no more than desire’s slave. This dissertation explores the possibility that cognitive states are capable of playing a directly motivational role. I argue that the standard philosophical arguments against this possibility do not survive close scrutiny. Instead of proceeding from assumptions about rationality, morality, and agency that frequently drive motivational cognitivists, my arguments are distinctive in that they are built largely out of Humean materials; these arguments show how cognitivism is compatible with many of the considerations Humeans have used to make their account seem compelling. For instance, agents who are unmoved by their moral judgments are often taken as evidence for the Humean Theory. This is odd, since agents are not uniformly moved by their desires either. Moral beliefs and desires seem as though they may be closely analogous in this respect. I also try to show that desire-based motivation might serve as a useful model for cognitive motivation by arguing that cognitivists can explain motivated action in ways that parallel desire-based explanations. While these cognitivist explanations are committed to the existence of besires, I argue that this is no problem for the view. Humean a priori proclamations that besires would be incoherent or absurd notwithstanding, the arguments of this dissertation suggest that besires are not so bizarre. Indeed, I argue that their existence would follow from plausible empirical hypotheses. (shrink)
Do foreign direct investment (FDI) and international business ventures promote positive social and economic development in emerging nations? This question will always prove contentious. First, the impacts differ according to context. Second, the social consequences and spillover effects of knowledge diffusion and technology-sharing may be limited and hard to measure. Third, contributions to enhancing social responsibility and improving living standards in host countries are delayed in effect, causally complex, and also hard to measure. Outcomes often critically depend on collaboration of (...) governments, international institutions, the business world, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Research in this area is challenging and requires interdisciplinary collaboration between economists, financial experts, sociologists, ethicists, and other specialists. This paper explores: (1) the evidence to support the proposition that FDI and international business improve social conditions in less-developed countries, and: (2) how these improvements are linked to strategies of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethical business practice. The paper draws insights from development, FDI, poverty alleviation, and bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) literature. Applications are demonstrated using examples from poverty-stricken areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper attempts not only to argue theoretically but also to provide practical evidence. The approach is simultaneously descriptive, analytical, and prescriptive in order to address a wide audience. It also highlights issues and trends for further academic research and presents the viewpoint that some limitations lie in the nature of ethics frameworks widely referenced in business and that these often fail to consider the compatibility of ethical constructs with relevant incentives. In this vein, we explore the application of Homann’s framework for advantage and incentive-based ethics. (shrink)
Research scientists are trained to produce specialised bricks of knowledge, but not to look at the whole building. Increasing public concern about the social role of science is forcing science students to think about what they are actually learning to do. What sort of knowledge will they be producing, and how will it be used? Science education now requires serious consideration of these philosophical and ethical questions. But the many different forms of knowledge produced by modern science cannot be covered (...) by any single philosophical principle. Sociology and cognitive psychology are also needed to understand what the sciences have in common and the significance of what they generate. Again, traditional modes of ethical analysis cannot deal adequately with the values, norms and interests activated by present-day technoscience without reference to its sociological, political and economic dimensions. (shrink)
The goal of our target article is to establish that electrophysiological data constrain models of short-term memory retention operations to schemes in which activated long-term memory is its representational basis. The temporary stores correspond to neural circuits involved in the perception and subsequent processing of the relevant information, and do not involve specialized neural circuits dedicated to the temporary holding of information outside of those embedded in long-term memory. The commentaries ranged from general agreement with the view that short-term memory (...) stores correspond to activated long-term memory (e.g., Abry, Sato, Schwartz, Loevenbruck & Cathiard [Abry etal.], Cowan, Fuster, Grote, Hickok & Buchsbaum, Keenan, Hyönä & Kaakinen [Keenan et al.], Martin, Morra), to taking a definite exception to this view (e.g., Baddeley, Düzel, Logie & Della Sala, Kroger, Majerus, Van der Linden, Colette & Salmon [Majerus et al.], Vallar). (shrink)
This paper discusses three questions concerning the ethics of performance enhancement in sport. The first has to do with the improvement to policy and argues that there is a need for policy about doping to be re-constituted and to question the conceptual priority of ‘anti’ doping. It is argued that policy discussions about science in sport must recognise the broader context of sport technology and seek to develop a policy about ‘performance’, rather than ‘doping’. The second argues that a quantitative (...) enhancement to a sporting performance has no value and is, thus, unethical, unless the motivation behind using it implies something meaningful about being human. Thus, unless the use of the technology is constitutive of our humanness, then it is not a justifiable method of altering (rather than enhancing) performance. This rules out the legitimacy of using performance enhancement to gain an advantage over other competitors, who do not have access to similar means. Finally, the third argument claims that sport ethics has had only a limited discourse and has failed to recognise broader theoretical ideas in relation to performance modification, which might be found in the philosophy of technology and bioethics . Collectively, these positions articulate important concerns about the role of science in sport and the ethical discussions arising from them. (shrink)
When I engage in some routine activity, it will usually be the case that I mean or intend the present move to be followed by others. What does meaning the later moves consist in? How do I know, when I come to perform them, that they were what I meant? Problems familiar from Wittgenstein's and Kripke's discussions of linguistic meaning arise here. Normally, I will not think of the later moves. But, even if I do, there are reasons to deny (...) that thinking of them can constitute what it is to mean to perform them. I argue that the problem can be solved, in the case of routine action, by the notion that our behavioural routines are guided by what I callmodest agent memory. It will help explain both how wecan have future moves in mind and how we can be in a position to avow the fact. (shrink)
In this article I interpret the conversation that takes place between Socrates and Polemarchus in Book One of the Republic according to its dramatic logic by examining the rhetorical artfulness that informs Socrates’ argumentative tactics. After first examining Polemarchus’s character as obedient spiritedness, I then turn to the argument, showing that Socrates does not undermine Polemarchus’s original opinion but, rather, by making legitimate use of the analogy between justice and technē, moves him to attend to the useful knowledge implicit in (...) his understanding of friendship, a knowledge by virtue of which he will be a more responsive guardian of what he values. Finally, I contend that Socrates enacts the definition of justice in question and indirectly argues for his own just art of rhetoric, which he employs in conversation with Polemarchus in his aim to be responsible to political life and to do it some good. (shrink)
This article discusses a serious problem in the way ethics is taught in journalism and mass communication programs. The study is based, in part, on a survey of 359 students who have had varied exposure to university journalism programs. The survey consisted of 87 questions that provided information on the demographics of the participants as well as an opportunity to respond to a series of 25 hypothetical ethical dilemmas. Results indicate that although respondents found most of the hypothetical situations to (...) be ethics violations, they often did not recognize the seriousness of the violations and did not know what to do when faced with those violations. (shrink)
The rise in ethical and social responsibility awareness in contemporary businesses has led to assumptions that the associated behaviours would enable competitive advantage to be attained as a firm distinguishes itself from its competitors through such practices. This paper reports on a study conducted on the prevalence of such practices among entrepreneurial ventures in an emerging economy (Malaysia), and the effect of such practices on both financial and non-financial performance. A sequential inter-method mixing design was employed in which during stage (...) 1, a series of semi-structured interviews with ten Malaysian SME founder-owners were conducted. Stage 2 involved a survey in which a total of 212 usable questionnaires were received. The results of the first phase of the research (qualitative) found evidence that entrepreneurial ventures in Malaysia do generally engage in both ethical and socially responsible practices. The subsequent model testing using SEM, however, revealed that while ethical practices were positively associated with venture performance, socially responsible practices were not. This may indicate that while entrepreneurial ventures in emerging economies like Malaysia become quickly aware of the more serious consequences of not adopting ethical practices, the concern for social issues may still be lacking, i.e., in terms of motivations, they may be closer to the profitable end of the philanthropy versus profitability spectrum. While the findings may be equivocal, we believe that the paper makes the following two significant contributions: (1) it provides an empirical test of the importance of ethical and socially responsible practices to entrepreneurial venture performance and (2) it furthers understanding of how and why this may be different in an emerging economy context. (shrink)
Written by a leading proponent of the philosophy and ethics of healthcare, this volume is filled with thought-provoking and frequently controversial ideas and arguments. Accessibly written, it provides readers with a timely contribution to the current literature on medical ethics, in which the concept of subjectivity is a key issue characterizing current medical humanities. Examining the critical assumption that scientifically-demonstrable facts will remove all uncertainty, the author argues that ethical dimensions of clinical practice do not always arise from undisputed facts, (...) but that they are sometimes to be found at the level of the determinations of the facts themselves. Firmly placing the patient back on centre stage, without underestimating the crucial role which science plays in modern medicine, this volume is an excellent account of ethics and science in healthcare and their proper place in assessing and meeting people’s health needs. (shrink)
What is the role of self-concept in motivating moral behavior? On one account, when people are primed to perceive themselves as “do-gooders”, conscious access to this positive self-concept will reinforce good behavior. On an alternative account, when people are reminded that they have done their “good deed for the day”, they will feel licensed to behave worse. In the current study, when participants were asked to recall their own good deeds (positive self-concept), their subsequent charitable donations were nearly twice that (...) of participants who recalled bad deeds, or recent conversation topics, consistent with an account of moral reinforcement. In addition, among participants reporting good deeds, those who did not note whether they were recognized or unrecognized by other people donated significantly more than participants who took note of others’ responses. In sum, when people are primed to see themselves as good people, who do good for goodness’ sake, not to obtain public credit, they may be motivated to do more good. (shrink)
To come to know what to do is to have a thought which itself consists of an awareness of its bringing about an action, or a rearrangement of one’s causal powers...The causal dimension of practical thinking is the coalescence of contemplation and the causation of that contemplation, and the contemplation of that causation.
This commentary on Kurt Vanhoutte and Nele Wynants’s of ‘Performing phenomenology: negotiating presence in intermedial theatre’ focuses on the implications of staging phenomenological research. In my opinion the authors missed an opportunity to stress more what W (Double U) , a performance of CREW has to offer postphenomenology and what it actually means to ‘perform’ phenomenology. I will not only argue that W (Double U) because of its performative nature offers a reflection on postphenomenology, but also that the performance must (...) be understood as a specific kind of research, conducted simultaneously from a theoretical and aesthetic orientation, leading to a complex interaction between perception and reflection, and offering a valuable, different perspective on postphenomenological research issues. W (Double U) in this respect functions as a ‘theoretical object’, producing a specific kind of embodied knowledge. Finally I will emphasize the possible radical potential in W (Double U) , because I do believe that the performance, although it might not lead explicitly to social change, does have an important social and political relevance that the authors do not really delve into. (shrink)
Where Weber et al. give us an account of what ESG does to your finances, Joakim Sandberg does the opposite. Sandberg is skeptical regarding the potential of responsible investment when it comes to actually having an impact. He discusses what interaction on the stock market can do for your ESG concerns. Sandberg argues that if we are out to make a change, as individual investors we cannot make much of a difference by refraining from investing in certain kinds of companies.
Climate change presents urgent ethical challenges. It causes us to revisit what it means to ‘do’ professionalism and invites us to enter what Fisher (2002, p. xiv) described as the ‘forgotten zone’ of human-nature relationships, posing the troubling question of whether we can continue to valorise a version of being human on the same terms as before. This article begins by considering the relevance of global warming to professional practice, foregrounding the commitment to do no harm. It poses as problematic (...) the manner in which climate change knowledges have been taken up by the ‘psy subject’. It concludes by considering how we might story different versions of being alive in, and to, the natural world. (shrink)
In this book Robert Piercey asks how it is possible to do philosophy by studying the thinkers of the past. He develops his answer through readings of Martin Heidegger, Richard Rorty, Paul Ricoeur, Alasdair MacIntyre, and other historically-minded philosophers. Piercey shows that what is distinctive about these figures is a concern with philosophical pictures - extremely general conceptions of what the world is like - rather than specific theories. He offers a comprehensive and illuminating exploration of the way in which (...) these thinkers use narrative to evaluate and criticise these pictures. The result is a powerful and original account of how philosophers use the past. (shrink)
Introduction : why do philosophy with young people? -- What is philosophy? -- What is good thinking? -- What do I know? -- What is real? -- What is art? -- What is the right thing to do? -- What is the meaning of life?
I started with no goal more ambitious than a critical discussion of Fiona Cowie’s new book about innateness; it seemed to me that her arguments, unless refuted in detail, were likely to affront some or other abstract entity whose cause I favor: The Good, The True, The Beautiful; whatever. But there were so many things that the book struck me as being wrong about that the proposed critique became, in effect, an explication of the kind of nativism I think a (...) rationalist in cognitive psychology should endorse. And the more of that I came to explicate, the more digressions and elaborations suggested themselves. And elaborations of the digressions. And digressions from the elaborations. (shrink)
Connectionism and classicism, it generally appears, have at least this much in common: both place some notion of internal representation at the heart of a scientific study of mind. In recent years, however, a much more radical view has gained increasing popularity. This view calls into question the commitment to internal representation itself. More strikingly still, this new wave of anti-representationalism is rooted not in armchair theorizing but in practical attempts to model and understand intelligent, adaptive behavior. In this paper (...) we first present, and then critically assess, a variety of recent anti-representationalist treatments. We suggest that so far, at least, the sceptical rhetoric outpaces both evidence and argument. Some probable causes of this premature scepticism are isolated. Nonetheless, the anti-representationalist challenge is shown to be both important and progressive insofar as it forces us to see beyond the bare representational/non-representational dichotomy and to recognize instead a rich continuum of degrees and types of representationality. (shrink)
Disorders of volition are often accompanied by, and may even be caused by, disruptions in the phenomenology of agency. Yet the phenomenology of agency is at present little explored. In this paper we attempt to describe the experience of normal agency, in order to uncover its representational content.
