Sustainable Learning: Inclusive Practices for 21st Century Classrooms provides readers with the knowledge and skills to be confident and effective inclusive teachers. The authors show that these skills are essential to quality teaching – teaching that is evidence-based, purposeful, relevant and responsive to students' needs. The book employs three overarching frameworks to examine inclusive practices in education: equity, values and sustainability. Chapter features include: • 'Think and do' exercises • Examples, case studies and vignettes • Tables, figures and diagrams to (...) help readers visualise core ideas, theories and themes. It encourages teachers to see all students as developing learners and to consider the complexities and diversity of learning in the 21st century. In doing so, it canvasses topics such as a sustainable approach to inclusion, learning processes, teaching processes, differentiation, assessment to support teaching and learning, and life-long learning. (shrink)

This research was designed to develop an inventory of vendor-related problems experienced by buyers for small retail apparel stores during the merchandise buying process, determine how frequently each difficulty occurs, and identify the experiences perceived to be unethical. Among the 22 vendor-related difficulties examined minimum order requirements, 6 month advance purchase, incomplete orders, late shipments, and shipping overcharges were identified most frequently. Analysis of results suggested that one factor, misleading vendor practices, and eight background variables (annual sales, price line, full- (...) and part-time employees, retail and buying experience, and shopping large or small markets) were associated with unethical experiences. Ethically troublesome experiences mentioned most frequently were padded orders, selling competitor same merchandise, withholding return authorization and credit, shipping overcharges, and dealing with vendor's factor. (shrink)

The tears of Odysseus -- History : music gives voice to the ineffable -- Tears, chills, and broken bones -- The music itself -- Explaining strong emotional responses to music I -- Explaining strong emotional responses to music II -- The sublime, revisited -- Conclusion : values.

Without doctors being able to explain medical decisions to patients, I argue their use of black box AIs would erode the effective and respectful care they provide patients. In addition, I argue that physicians should use AI black boxes only for patients in dire straits, or when physicians use AI as a “co-pilot” (analogous to a spellchecker) but can independently confirm its accuracy. I respond to A.J. London’s objection that physicians already prescribe some drugs without knowing why they work.

Set aside fanciful doomsday speculations about AI. Even lower-level AIs, while otherwise friendly and providing us a universal basic income, would be able to do all our jobs. Also, we would over-rely upon AI assistants even in our personal lives. Thus, John Danaher argues that a human crisis of moral passivity would result However, I argue firstly that if AIs are posited to lack the potential to become unfriendly, they may not be intelligent enough to replace us in all our (...) jobs. If instead they are intelligent enough to replace us, the risk they become unfriendly increases, given that they would not need us and humans would just compete for valuable resources. Their hostility will not promote our moral passivity. Secondly, the use of AI assistants in our personal lives will become a problem only if we rely on them for almost all our decision-making and motivation. But such a (maximally) pervasive level of dependence raises the question of whether humans would accept it, and consequently whether the crisis of passivity will arise. (shrink)

A person suffering a mental illness or disorder may differ dramatically from his or her previous well self. Family and close friends who knew the person before the onset of illness tend to regard the illness as obscuring their loved one's true self and see the goal of treatment as the restoration of that self. ‘He is not really like this,’ they will say with increasing desperation. Treatment teams and others, who have no acquaintance with the person when well, respond (...) to what they see in front of them and do sometimes make harmful judgments of character based on the person's presentation when ill. (shrink)

In Aristotle’s writings regarding the biology of embryology, especially in the Generation of Animals, he contends that the mother’s menstrual fluids provide the material for the generation of the offspring, and the father’s form determines its formation as a member of that species (e.g. human). The katamenia (menstrual fluids) of the mother are said to be potentially all the body parts of the offspring, though actually none of them. So, the fluids are potentially the offspring. But are they a first (...) potentiality or second potentiality (first actuality) of a human, in the terminology of De Anima II? In this paper I will argue that katamenia are a first potentiality of a human. My first argument is that katamenia do not have the potential for human activities such as thinking, but rather the potential of becoming something having the potential for those activities. I answer the objection that katamenia are not even a first potentiality, by appealing to an important text contending that for any x whose source of becoming is external, x is potentially y if nothing in x with respect to matter needs to be changed in order for an external principle to make x into y. (shrink)

A diagnosis of schizophrenia is often taken to denote a state of global irrationality within the psychiatric paradigm, wherein psychotic phenomena are seen to equate with a lack of mental capacity. However, the little research that has been undertaken on mental capacity in psychiatric patients shows that people with schizophrenia are more likely to experience isolated, rather than constitutive, irrationality and are therefore not necessarily globally incapacitated. Rational suicide has not been accepted as a valid choice for people with schizophrenia (...) due in part to a belief that characteristic irrationality prevents autonomous decision-making. Since people with schizophrenia are often seen to lack insight into the nature of their disorder, both psychiatric and ethical perspectives generally presume that suicidal acts result directly from mental illness itself and not from second-order desires. In this article, I challenge notions of global irrationality conferred by a diagnosis of schizophrenia and argue that, where delusional beliefs are unifocal, schizophrenia does not necessarily lead to a state of mental incapacity. I then attempt to show that people with schizophrenia can sometimes be rational with regard to suicide, where this decision stems from a realistic appraisal of psychological suffering. (shrink)

Robert Adams defends a platonic account of goodness, understood as excellence, claiming that there exists a platonic good that all other good things must resemble, identifying the Good with God. Mark Murphy agrees, but argues that this platonic account is in need of Aristotelian supplementation, as resemblance must take into account a thing’s kind-membership. While this article will accept something like Murphy’s account of goodness, it will further develop its details and support. Without relying on theistic premises, I show that (...) the metaphysical status of an individual’s goodness consists in resemblance with the platonic good. As for the distinct question of what that goodness holds in virtue of, I conclude it holds in virtue of exactly: the thing’s own properties, those properties being such as to satisfy its kind-based standards, and those K-standards resembling the platonic good. I then develop an account of how K-standards resemble the platonic good: The K-standards resemble it firstly with respect to requiring activities, as the platonic good will be posited to be active, and must resemble it secondly also at the level of what teleology those activities are directed towards. I also motivate the need for a third respect of resemblance, to be developed in future work. The article ends with a discussion of the nature of the platonic good. (shrink)

What all contemporary so-called aristotelian realists have in common has been identified by David Armstrong as the principle of instantiation. This principle has been put forward in different versions, but all of them have the following simple consequence in common: uninstantiated universals do not exist. Such entities are for the lotus-eating Platonist to countenance, but not for any sort of moderate realist. I shall argue that this principle, in any guise, is not the best way to differentiate aristotelianism from Platonism. (...) In its place, I shall suggest that the best way to differentiate the two versions of realism from each other is by means of a far more powerful idea: naturalism. And the surprising conclusion given this means of differentiation will be that contrary to the usual proclamations, Platonism will be the more naturalistic theory, whereas aristotelianism will come to be seen for what it really is, namely, non-naturalistic. (shrink)

The last twenty years or so have seen a surge of interest in the philosophy of music. However there is comparatively little philosophical literature devoted specifically to songs, singing and vocal music in general. This new collection of essays on the philosophical aspects of song and singing includes articles on the relationship between words and music in songs, the ontology of songs and recordings, meaning in songs, the metaphysics of vocal music in opera and the movies, and the ethical challenges (...) raised in song performance. The essays discuss a large range of examples, including rock, lieder, jazz songs, blues, doo wop, and rap. New essays by leading philosophers of art, including Peter Kivy (on "realistic song" in film), Jerrold Levinson (on jazz singing), Lee B. Brown (on the "minstrel hypothesis" in popular music), and Ted Gracyk (on linguistic pragmatics and song meaning). Papers that offer ground-breaking theories of the appreciation of rock recordings, the ethical implications of popular songs, the ontology of ephemeral artworks, the ontological status of cover versions, and of how a genre of popular music can both express and be a function of its social context papers that challenge existing accounts of much-debated topics, including operatic metaphysics and of the ontology of recorded music. Interdisciplinary essays that cut across aesthetics, philosophy of music, cultural music studies and musicology. Essays that are clearly written and engaging. (shrink)

Aristotelian theory, as found in Michael Thompson and Philippa Foot, claims that to be good is to be good as a member of that kind. Moreover, Foot argues in effect that goodness admits of only the kind-based sort, obtaining solely in virtue of something’s satisfying kind-based standards. However, I contend that something can satisfy kind-relative standards but nonetheless be bad—I propose a hypothetical Ebola-like microbe that meets its kind-standards of being destructive for its own sake, but it would plausibly be (...) bad for doing so. In defending my counterexample, I respond to the Aristotelian contention that evaluations should only be made from “within” the standpoint of a particular lifeform conception, rather than an “external” one from which that kind itself can be judged to be bad. (shrink)

Could Christians and Muslims be referring to the same God? For an account of the reference of divine names, I follow Bogardus and Urban (2017) in advocating in favour of using Gareth Evans’s causal theory of reference, on which a name refers to the dominant source of information in the name’s “dossier”. However, I argue further that information about experiences, in which God is simply the object of acquaintance, can dominate the dossier. Thus, this demonstrative use of names offers a (...) promising alternative avenue by which users of the divine names can refer to the same referent despite having different conceptions of God. I also respond to Burling’s (2019) worship-worthiness view. (shrink)

The 16th and 17th centuries witnessed a philosophical shift that would help pave the way for modern science, a shift from metaphysical theories of material objects to other views embracing only the empirically-accessible parts of material things. One much-debated topic in the course of this shift was regarding prime matter. The late scholastic Jacobus Zabarella (1533-1589) arrived upon his views about prime matter via his version of the regressus method, a program for a sort of scientific reasoning. In his De (...) rebus naturalibus, Zabarella defends the position that prime matter is extended. However, it is less clear how he accounts for its extension. There is an important text where he apparently suggests that prime matter is extended in and of itself. However, there are two other texts apparently stating that matter is extended in virtue of a distinct accident in the category of quantity. I argue that a decisive reading based solely upon any particular texts is not available. Nevertheless, examining Zabarella’s writing on the topic as a whole, the trajectory of his overall argument is remarkably sympathetic to Averroes, who famously took the accidentally quantified position. Thus, from this systematic feature, the accidentally quantified reading is more reasonable. (shrink)

In this acclaimed exploration of the search for "authentic" individual identity, Marshall Berman explores the historical experiences and needs out of which this new radicalism arose. Focussing on eighteenth-century Paris, a time and place in which a distinctively modern form of society was just coming into its own, Berman shows how the ideal of authenticity—of a self that could organize the individual's energy and direct it toward his own happiness—articulated eighteenth-century man's deepest responses to this brave new world, (...) and his most ardent hope for a new life in it. Exploring in particular the ideas of Montesquieu and Rousseau, Berman shows how the ideal of authenticity was radically opposed to the bourgeois, capitalistic idea of "self-interest.". (shrink)

The goal of this study was to construct a valid new instrument to measure the effect of moral intensity on managers' propensity to manage earnings. More specifically, this study is a pilot study of the impact of moral intensity on financial accountants' propensity to manage earnings. The instrument, once validated, will be used in a full-study of managers in the hotel industry. Different ethical scenarios were presented to respondents in the survey; each ethical scenario was designed in both high or (...) low moral intensity form, to reflect the importance of the moral dilemma at hand. The results were analysed by factor analysis. The findings of this study have positively validated the instrument, with three of the five moral intensity components identified as having appropriate eigenvalues. This indicates that they have a significant influence in the study. The first factor captures the social consensus dimension and one scenario of the proximity dimension. The second factor indicates an interaction between the temporal immediacy and the magnitude of consequences dimension. The third dimension is probability of effect and one scenario of the proximity dimension. In addition, t-tests indicated that the manipulation of high and low conditions within each scenario were also successful. One limitation of the study might be the use of undergraduate accounting students as manager proxies, although prior evidence suggests use of accounting students as proxies is a valid approach in this type of study. This is a highly novel project as most prior studies have focussed on moral intensity and the general ethical decision-making process. (shrink)

The goal of this study was to construct a valid new instrument to measure the effect of moral intensity on managers' propensity to manage earnings. More specifically, this study is a pilot study of the impact of moral intensity on financial accountants' propensity to manage earnings. The instrument, once validated, will be used in a full-study of managers in the hotel industry. Different ethical scenarios were presented to respondents in the survey; each ethical scenario was designed in both high or (...) low moral intensity form, to reflect the importance of the moral dilemma at hand. The results were analysed by factor analysis. The findings of this study have positively validated the instrument, with three of the five moral intensity components identified as having appropriate eigenvalues. This indicates that they have a significant influence in the study. The first factor captures the social consensus dimension and one scenario of the proximity dimension. The second factor indicates an interaction between the temporal immediacy and the magnitude of consequences dimension. The third dimension is probability of effect and one scenario of the proximity dimension. In addition, t-tests indicated that the manipulation of high and low conditions within each scenario were also successful. One limitation of the study might be the use of undergraduate accounting students as manager proxies, although prior evidence suggests use of accounting students as proxies is a valid approach in this type of study. This is a highly novel project as most prior studies have focussed on moral intensity and the general ethical decision-making process. (shrink)

This study examines cheating behaviors among 422 business students at two public Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business-accredited business schools. Specifically, we examined the simultaneous influence of attitudinal characteristics and motivational factors on reported prior cheating behavior, the tendency to neutralize cheating behaviors, and likelihood of future cheating. In addition, we examined the impact of in-class deterrents on neutralization of cheating behaviors and the likelihood of future cheating. We also directly tested potential mediating effects of neutralization on cheating behavior. (...) Using structural equations modeling procedures, we conducted an assessment of the validity of a modified version of the K. J. Smith, Davy, Rosenberg, and Haight model of cheating behavior and its antecedents. The modified model included motivation as a potential predictor of cheating behavior. Results supported the differentiation of the theoretical constructs within the specified process model. Furthermore, tests of the aforementioned theoretical model indicated a significant positive relation between extrinsic motivation and prior cheating and a significant negative relation between both intrinsic motivation and academic performance, and prior cheating. Finally, prior cheating had a significant positive relation, whereas deterrents had a significant negative relation to likelihood of future cheating. (shrink)

Unlike nearly all studies of Berkeley, this book looks at the full range of his work and links it with his life--focusing in particular on his religious thought. While aiming to present a clear picture of his career, Berman breaks new ground on, among other topics, Berkeley's philosophical strategy, his account of immortality, his Jacobitism, his emotive theory of religious mysteries, and the motivation of his Siris (1744). Also distinctive is the attention paid to the Irish context of his (...) thought, his symbolic frontispieces and portraits, and recent discoveries concerning his life and writings. (shrink)

We have argued elsewhere that moral responsibility over time depends in part upon the having of psychological connections which facilitate forms of self-control. In this chapter we explore the importance of mental time travel - our ordinary ability to mentally travel to temporal locations outside the present, involving both memory of our personal past and the ability to imagine ourselves in the future - to our agential capacities for planning and control. We suggest that in many individuals with dissociative disorders, (...) forms of amnesia, or other frontal lobe damage, our capacity for mental time travel is impaired, resulting in commensurate losses to agency autonomy, and a forensic condition essential for holding persons responsible: in legal terms, the capacity for mens rea. (shrink)

Background In the course of the last four decades, the profession of physiotherapy has progressively expanded its scope of responsibility and its focus on professional autonomy and evidence-based clinical practice. To preserve professional autonomy, it is crucial for the physiotherapy profession to meet society's expectations and demands of professional competence as well as ethical competence. Since it is becoming increasingly popular to choose a carrier in private practice in Denmark this context constitutes the frame of this study. Physiotherapy in private (...) practice involves mainly a meeting between two partners: the physiotherapist and the patient. In the meeting, power asymmetry between the two partners is a condition that the physiotherapist has to handle. The aim of this study was to explore whether ethical issues rise during the first physiotherapy session discussed from the perspective of the physiotherapists in private practice. Methods A qualitative approach was chosen and semi-structured interviews with 21 physiotherapists were carried out twice and analysed by using a phenomenological framework. Results Four descriptive themes emerged: general reflections on ethics in physiotherapy; the importance of the first physiotherapy session; the influence of the clinical environment on the first session and; reflections and actions upon beneficence towards the patient within the first session. The results show that the first session and the clinical context in private practice are essential from an ethical perspective. Conclusions Ethical issues do occur within the first session, the consciousness about ethical issues differs in Danish physiotherapy private practice, and reflections and acts are to a lesser extent based on awareness of ethical theories, principles and ethical guidelines. Beneficence towards the patient is a fundamental aspect of the physiotherapists' understanding of the first session. However, if the physiotherapist lacks a deeper ethical awareness, the physiotherapist may reason and/or act ethically to a varying extent: only an ethically conscious physiotherapist will know when he or she reflects and acts ethically. Further exploration of ethical issues in private practice is recommendable, and as management policy is deeply embedded within the Danish public sector there are reasons to explore public contexts of physiotherapy as well. (shrink)

Recent advancements in therapeutic and diagnostic medicine, along with the creation of large biobanks and methods for monitoring health technologies, have improved the prospects for preventing, treating, and curing illness. These same advancements, however, give rise to a plethora of ethical questions concerning good decision-making and best action. These ethical questions engage policymakers, practitioners, scientists, and researchers from a variety of fields in different ways. Collaborations between professionals in the medical and health sciences and the social sciences and humanities often (...) take an asymmetrical form, as when social scientists use ethnographic approaches to study the moral issues and practices of physicians. The ethics laboratory described in this article is a cross-sectoral and inter-disciplinary forum for collaborative investigation on important moral topics. It offers an experimental way of unpacking implied assumptions, underlying values, and comparable notions from different professional healthcare fields. The aim of this article is to present the ethics laboratory’s methodology. The article offers a model and a hermeneutical framework that rests on a dialogical approach to ethical questions. The model and the framework derive from a Danish research project, _Personalized Medicine in the Welfare State_. This article uses personalized medicine as a point of reference, though it offers an argument for the applicability of the model more broadly. (shrink)

For Aristotle, the shape of a physical body is perceptible per se (DA II.6, 418a8-9). As I read his position, shape is thus a causal power, as a physical body can affect our sense organs simply in virtue of possessing it. But this invites a challenge. If shape is an intrinsically powerful property, and indeed an intrinsically perceptible one, then why are the objects of geometrical reasoning, as such, inert and imperceptible? I here address Aristotle’s answer to that problem, focusing (...) on the version of it that he presents in De caelo III.8. I argue that if we grant that Aristotle conceived of the shape of a sensible body as some kind of causal power, then the satisfactory resolution of that challenge pushes us to interpret him as having conceived of it as being, more specifically, an impure power—that is, as a property that is not only intrinsically powerful but also, in some way, intrinsically non-powerful as well. This is a notable result not only insofar as it illuminates Aristotle’s conception of shape but also insofar as it contributes to our knowledge of Aristotle’s theory of dunameis and his ontology more broadly. (shrink)

The topic of this article is the relationship of street art to both the street and the artworld. I take it as significant that philosophers have turned their attention to “street art” and not, say, “urban outdoor art” or “site-specific art in urban settings.” The “street” in street art seems to imply more than a location or geographic modifier. I consider the further significance of the “street” in street art, and the view, argued or assumed, of the street when philosophers (...) discuss street art. My second target in this article is what I have called the “discontinuity thesis.” This is the idea, defended or assumed in some of the most important philosophical writing about street art, that street art represents a radical break with the artworld and is “antithetical” to it. I argue that the discontinuity thesis is mistaken, and that to understand the larger institutional context of street art we must examine the sociology of artworlds. Street art has followed a familiar process and pioneering street artists are best seen as “mavericks” in Howard Becker’s sense. I argue that seeing street artists in this way can help better understand and appreciate their work. (shrink)

Variations in human skin pigmentation are obvious, but how have skin colour differences evolved? Although clearly a polymorphic trait, the number and identity of key variants has remained unclear. Investigation of pigmentation phenotypes in model organisms provides a route to identify these genes and showed MC1R to be one key locus. Now, cloning of a classic zebrafish mutant, golden, identifies slc24a5 as a gene involved in fish skin pigmentation.1 Strikingly this study identifies the human orthologue, SLC24A5, as likely to make (...) a major contribution to the pale skin colouration of Western Europeans. BioEssays 28: 578–582, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between everyday talk, the reproduction of political ideology and the interactional accomplishment of situated identities through analyzing how institutional members index neoliberal ideology in their everyday interactions. Analysis of audio- and video-recorded data from racially diverse business members of two Texas chambers of commerce illustrates how chamber members indirectly index neoliberal ideology through taking stances toward government policies. White, upper class participants display neoliberal stances through using complaints – constituted by questions, humor, idioms and inference-rich (...) terms – about the Affordable Care Act because it is a form of government interference that increases taxes and the federal deficit. Minority business members use discursive strategies such as double-voiced discourse and self-repairs to balance tensions between criticizing neoliberal ideology because it does not benefit minorities yet still orient to its taken-for-granted value in their business community. Overall, while participants’ interactions generally seem to operate within the structural constraints of neoliberal ideology, our analysis illustrates how participants take up neoliberal ideology in situated ways that, at times, provide avenues for negotiating the relevance of neoliberal ideology to everyday life. (shrink)

This article introduces _the Ethics Laboratory_ as an inter-sectorial and cross-disciplinary dialogical forum which can be viewed as an educational tool for moral learning. _The Ethics Laboratory_ represents a platform for the informal, collaborative investigation, in strict confidentiality, of ethical questions that have social consequences and/or legal concerns and bridges boundaries between research communities, institutions and patients. Its methodological structure proposes an experimental, open-ended way of unpacking implied assumptions, underlying values, comparable notions and observations from different professional fields. In connection (...) with a large social science project on precision medicine, we conducted four Ethics Laboratories followed by eight interviews with a selected number of participants. Through these interviews we learnt how this exploratory dialogical forum heighten moral awareness on issues that are shared among stakeholders who work to implement precision medicine in Denmark. Though the framework was developed specifically to foster ethical reflection within precision medicine, its dialogical structure lends itself to other professional areas and can easily be adopted and carried out. (shrink)

Suicide prevention is a National Health Service priority in the United Kingdom. People with mental illness are seen to represent one of the most vulnerable groups for suicide and recent British Government policy has focused on prevention and management of perceived risk. This approach to suicide prevention is constructed under a biomedical model of psychiatry, which maintains that suicidal persons suffer from some form of disease or irrational drive towards self-destruction. Many react to the idea of self-inflicted death with instinctive (...) revulsion, which has prevented serious discussion of the concept of rational suicide, particularly in relation to those with schizophrenia. The idea that there may be circumstances in which suicide can be viewed as rational is discussed within the biomedical approach to ethics and wider literature primarily in relation to physical disease, terminal states and chronic pain. It is not deemed a viable choice for those who are considered ‘non-autonomous’ due to the controlling forces of mental illness. I propose that suicide is not a consequence of mental illness per se, and that it may be seen as a rational response to a realistic perspective on the course and consequences of living with schizophrenia. The denial of dialogue about the validity of suicidal ideation for people with schizophrenia has led to negative consequences for people with serious mental illness in terms of justice and recognition of person-hood. (shrink)

BM 76829, a fragment from the mid-section of a small tablet from Sippar in Late Babylonian script, preserves what remains of two new unparalleled pieces from the cuneiform astronomical repertoire relating to the zodiac. The text on the obverse assigns numerical values to sectors assigned to zodiacal signs, while the text on the reverse seems to relate zodiacal signs with specific days or intervals of days. The system used on the obverse also presents a new way of representing the concept (...) of numerical ‘zero’ in cuneiform, and for the first time in cuneiform, a system for dividing the horizon into six arcs in the east and six arcs in the west akin to that used in the Astronomical Book of Enoch. Both the obverse and the reverse may describe the periodical courses of the sun and moon, in a similar way to what is found in astronomical texts from Qumran, thus adding to our knowledge of the scientific relationship between the two cultures. (shrink)

The initial purpose of this study is to provide an empirical validation of Victor and Cullen’s ethical-climate model (1987, Frederick (ed.), Research in Corporate Social Performance and Policy, Vol. 9, pp. 51–71; 1988, Administrative Science Quarterly 33, 101–125; 1990, Frederick and Preston (eds.), Business Ethics: Research Issues and Empirical Studies (JAI Press Inc., Greenwich, Connecticut), pp. 77–97). Testing the model on a sample of Danish firms, this study demonstrates that the empirical model as suggested by Victor and Cullen is much (...) stronger than suggested by previous research. Based on a confirmatory factor model, the results of this study suggest a revised ethical structure. Especially a sixth dimension – own interest – is separated from the original instrumental dimension. Further, this study suggests that the ethical-climate model can be enhanced with the dimension of autonomy deriving from Koys and DeCotiis’ (1991, Human Relations 44(3), 265–285.) dimensional psychological climate instrument. (shrink)

Psychopaths have long been of interest to moral philosophers, since a careful examination of their peculiar deficiencies may reveal what features are normally critical to the development of moral agency. What underlies the psychopath's amoralism? A common and plausible answer to this question is that the psychopath lacks empathy. Lack of empathy is also claimed to be a critical impairment in autism, yet it is not at all clear that autistic individuals share the psychopath's amoralism. How is empathy characterized in (...) the literature, and how crucial is empathy, so described, to moral understanding and agency? I argue that an examination of moral thinking in high-functioning autistic people supports a Kantian rather than a Humean account of moral agency. (shrink)

In a recent article, Marilyn Baffoe-Bonnie offers three arguments for conducting CRISPR/Cas9 biotechnology research to cure sickle-cell disease (SCD) based on addressing historical and current injustices in SCD research and care. I show that her second and third arguments suffer from roughly the same defect, which is that they really argue for something else rather than for conducting CRISPR/Cas9 research in particular. For instance, the second argument argues that conducting this gene therapy research would improve the relationship between SCD sufferers (...) (who are mostly of African descent) and health care providers. But really what is essential in improving this relationship is for those providers to genuinely care and be concerned, and this could be lacking even with the CRISPR research being done. Indeed, this relationship could be improved even without that research being done, as long as there is genuine concern. Thus, this argument actually argues for the need for genuine concern. As for the third argument, one (of two) problems arises because it claims that CRISPR research for SCD should be pursued because the benefits would be shared by even non-research-participants, as non-participants would be encouraged. However, this argues for any research for SCD, not for CRISPR research in particular. I conclude that a better justice-based argument will use only Baffoe-Bonnie’s first argument, which is based on historic neglect of an actual cure for SCD (going beyond merely management or transplant therapies). (shrink)

Within the Givenness Hierarchy framework of Gundel, Hedberg, and Zacharski (1993), lexical items included in referring forms are assumed to conventionally encode two kinds of information: conceptual information about the speaker’s intended referent and procedural information about the assumed cognitive status of that referent in the mind of the addressee, the latter encoded by various determiners and pronouns. This article focuses on effects of underspecification of cognitive status, establishing that, although salience and accessibility play an important role in reference processing, (...) the Givenness Hierarchy itself is not a hierarchy of degrees of salience/accessibility, contrary to what has often been assumed. We thus show that the framework is able to account for a number of experimental results in the literature without making additional assumptions about form-specific constraints associated with different referring forms. (shrink)

Is it ever possible for people to act freely and intentionally against their better judgement? Is it ever possible to act in opposition to one's strongest desire? If either of these questions are answered in the negative, the common-sense distinctions between recklessness, weakness of will and compulsion collapse. This would threaten our ordinary notion of self-control and undermine our practice of holding each other responsible for moral failure. So a clear and plausible account of how weakness of will and self-control (...) are possible is of great practical significance. Taking the problem of weakness of will as her starting point, Jeanette Kennett builds an admirably comprehensive and integrated account of moral agency which gives a central place to the capacity for self-control. Her account of the exercise and limits of self-control vindicates the common-sense distinction between weakness of will and compulsion and so underwrites our ordinary allocations of moral responsibility. She addresses with clarity and insight a range of important topics in moral psychology, such as the nature of valuing and desiring, conceptions of virtue, moral conflict, and the varieties of recklessness (here characterised as culpable bad judgement) — and does so in terms which make their relations to each other and to the challenges of real life obvious. Agency and Responsibility concludes by testing the accounts developed of self-control, moral failure, and moral responsibility against the hard cases provided by acts of extreme evil. (shrink)

A central feature of complexity is that it is based on non-linear, recursive relations. However, in most current accounts of complexity such relations, while non-linear, are based on the reductive relations of a Newtonian onto-epistemological framework. This means that the systems that are emergent from the workings of such relations are a narrowly reduced spectrum of complex systems. It is argued that John Dewey’s trans-actional relations, relations that are characterized by an irreducible internal distinction, can function as an exemplar of (...) the less reductive relations seen in living complex systems. Conceptualizing complex relations and complex systems in a less reductive way allows indeterminate concepts such as epistemological limits and the generative production of meaning, which are inextricably linked, to be considered. Methodologically, such lessened reduction highlights functional systems, revealing aspects of the biopsychosocial human ‘complex system of complex systems’ that are hidden from view in a Newtonian framework. (shrink)

This paper considers the responsibilities of the FDA with regard to disseminating information about the benefits and harms of e-cigarettes. Tobacco harm reduction advocates claim that the FDA has been overcautious and has violated ethical obligations by failing to clearly communicate to the public that e-cigarettes are far less harmful than cigarettes. We argue, by contrast, that the FDA’s obligations in this arena are more complex than they may appear at first blush. Though the FDA is accountable for informing the (...) public about the health risks and benefits of products it regulates, it also has other roles that inform when and how it should disseminate information. In addition to being a knowledge purveyor, it is also a knowledge producer, an advisor to the public, and a practical agent shaping the material conditions in which people make health-related choices. In our view, those other roles call for caution in the way the FDA interprets and communicates the available evidence. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung: Die Passage über das Mittelmeer ist in den letzten Jahren zu einer der tödlichsten Migrationsrouten der Welt geworden. Während die Mitgliedsstaaten der Europäischen Union gegen die sogenannte „Flüchtlingskrise“ eine militärische und diskursive Fluchtabwehrpolitik betreiben und die Seenotrettung geflüchteter Menschen aussetzen und kriminalisieren, begreifen normative politische Theorien der Migration Fluchtbewegungen als ein politisches oder moralisches Problem sowie als Krise für etablierte Demokratien. Gegen den Topos der „Flüchtlingskrise“ und die implizite Normalisierung von Grenzen in einem Großteil gegenwärtiger politiktheoretischer Debatten zu Migration (...) und Flucht entwickelt der vorliegende Beitrag eine politische Theorie der Grenze aus der Perspektive postkolonialer und Schwarzer kritischer Theorie. Dazu werden zunächst Kolonialität und Rasse als bislang vernachlässigte analytische Kategorien in die politische Theorie eingeführt, um die koloniale Gegenwart von Grenzregimen und die Rassifizierung von Grenzen zu rekonstruieren. Im Rückgriff auf die Figur des Schwarzen Mittelmeers, die aus der radikalen Schwarzen Tradition stammt und im Kontext gegenwärtiger Migrationsrouten von Afrika nach Europa aktualisiert wird, wird sodann ein alternatives Register für eine politische Theorie der Grenze entwickelt: Erstens wird das europäische Grenzregime als eine rassistische Politik der Vergrenzung verstanden; zweitens werden die postkolonialen Ambivalenzen und rassifizierten Dimensionen einer Politik der Solidarität mit geflüchteten Menschen problematisiert; drittens werden Fluchtbewegungen als widerständige politische Imaginationen und Praktiken nachgezeichnet, die die Widersprüche hegemonialer Konzeptionen von Demokratie und Zugehörigkeit aufzeigen. Abschließend wird die Epistemologie des Schwarzen Mittelmeers für eine Kritik des dominanten Krisennarrativs der Demokratie und für eine selbstreflexive Auseinandersetzung mit den kognitiven Grenzen der politischen Theorie selbst produktiv gemacht. (shrink)

The recent, influential Social Intuitionist Model of moral judgment (Haidt, Psychological Review 108, 814–834, 2001) proposes a primary role for fast, automatic and affectively charged moral intuitions in the formation of moral judgments. Haidt’s research challenges our normative conception of ourselves as agents capable of grasping and responding to reasons. We argue that there can be no ‘real’ moral judgments in the absence of a capacity for reflective shaping and endorsement of moral judgments. However, we suggest that the empirical literature (...) indicates a complex interplay between automatic and deliberative mental processes in moral judgment formation, with the latter constraining the expression and influence of moral intuitions. We therefore conclude that the psychological literature supports a normative conception of agency. (shrink)

We focus here on some familiar kinds of cases of conflict between friendship and morality, and, on the basis of our account of the nature of friendship, argue for the following two claims: first, that in some cases where we are led morally astray by virtue of a relationship that makes its own demands on us, the relationship in question is properly called a friendship; second, that relationships of this kind are valuable in their own right.

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 4, Page 520-530, July 2022.