Online research in philosophy

It is difficult to fully account for (1) cruelty in modern society and (2) female cruelty, referring only to a cruelty-satiation association. Instead it seems likely that cruelty acquires its reinforcing value via association with a range of reinforcers. In addition, when one's goal is violence prevention, it is important to identify causes that can be manipulated.

Reid said little in his published writings about his contemporary Joseph Priestley, but his unpublished work is largely devoted to the latter. Much of Priestley's philosophical thought- his materialism, his determinism, his Lockean scientific realism- was as antithetical to Reid's as was Hume's philosophy in a very different way. Neither Reid nor Priestley formulated a full response to the other. Priestley's response to Reid came very early in his career, and is marked by haste and immaturity. In his last decade (...) Reid worried much about Priestley's materialism, but that concern never reached publication. I document Reid's unpublished response to Priestley, and also view Reid's response from Priestley's perspective, as deduced from his published works. Both thinkers attempted to base their arguments on Newtonian method. Reid's position is the more puzzling of the two, since he nowhere makes clear how Newtonian method favours mind-body dualism over materialism, which is the central debate between them. (shrink)

In the past decade well-designed research studies have shown that the practice of collaborative philosophical inquiry in schools can have marked cognitive and social benefits. Student academic performance improves, and so too does the social dimension of schooling. These findings are timely, as many countries in Asia and the Pacific are now contemplating introducing Philosophy into their curricula. This paper gives a brief history of collaborative philosophical inquiry before surveying the evidence as to its effectiveness. The evidence is canvassed under (...) two categories: schooling and thinking skills; and schooling, socialisation and values. In both categories there is clear evidence that even short-term teaching of collaborative philosophical inquiry has marked positive effects on students. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research and a final claim that the presently-available research evidence is strong enough to warrant implementing collaborative philosophical inquiry as part of a long-term policy. (shrink)

Discussion of Darwinian evolutionary theory by philosophers has gone through a number of historical phases, from indifference (in the first hundred years), to criticism (in the 1960s and 70s), to enthusiasm and expansionism (since about 1980). This paper documents these phases and speculates about what, philosophically speaking, underlies them. It concludes with some comments on the present state of the evolutionary debate, where rapid and important changes within evolutionary theory may be passing by unnoticed by philosophers.

The essays in this volume address the importance of Kovesi's work on moral philosophy and concept formation.

Some say that presentism precludes time travel into the past since it implies that the past does not exist, but this is a bad argument. Presentism says that only currently existing entities exist, and that the only properties and relations those entities instantiate are those that they currently instantiate. This does in a sense imply that the past does not exist. But if that precluded time travel into the past, it would also preclude the one-second-per-second “time travel” into the future (...) that is ordinary persistence, for presentism accords the future the same ontological status as the past. Instead of quantifying over past and future objects and events, presentists speak a tensed language, regimented with primitive sentential tense operators. For a presentist, a persisting person is one who did exist, and who will exist. Regimented, these claims become: it was the case that she exists, and it will be the case that she exists. The presentist may then apply the same strategy to time travel proper. Suppose Katy travels back to the time of the dinosaurs. The presentist can say that it was the case two hundred million years ago that Katy exists. This claim, which consists of a present-tense statement “Katy exists” embedded within the past tense operator it was the case two hundred million years ago that, is exactly the sort of statement about time that a presentist is free to accept. This has all been made clear by Simon Keller and Michael Nelson ( ). In addition to rebutting the bad argument against the consistency of presentism and time travel, Keller and Nelson argue positively in favor of consistency by showing how to translate David Lewis’s ( ) account of time travel into the presentist’s tensed language. The appearance of con ict between presentism and time travel, they argue, is due only to the fact that most defenders of time travel (for example Lewis) have tended to phrase their defenses in nonpresentist terms. As much as I applaud their rebuttal of the bad argument, I wish to sound a note of caution.. (shrink)

"Are you visiting women? Do not forget your whip!" -- Thus Spoke Zarathustra ". . . the democratic movement is . . . a form assumed by man in decay" -- Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche's views on women and politics have long been the most problematic aspects of his thought. Nietzsche, Feminism and Political Theory is the first book to focus on the interest Nietzsche's work now arouses among feminist theorists and political philosophers. It is unique in its examination (...) of the ways in which Nietzsche has become an essential point of reference for postmodern ethical and political thought. In twelve outstanding essays, the contributors pursue questions about Nietzsche's views on the body, power, knowledge, self and sexual difference. The collection illuminates aspects of Nietzsche's epistemology or critical method which have direct bearing on contemporary methodological debates, and makes direct comparisons between Nietzsche and classical political theorists such as Hobbes, Rousseau and Marx. The final essays discuss the effects of Nietzsche's philosophy as mediated by recent post-structuralist readings of his work. This innovative collection shows some of the overlapping and divergent ways in which Nietzsche has become an essential reference point in contemporary ethical and political theory. Contributors: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Howard Caygill, Daniel W. Conway, Rosalyn Diprose, Penelope Deutscher, Elizabeth Grosz, Frances Oppel, Paul Patton, Paul Redding, Ted Sadler, Marion Tapper, Cathryn Vasseleu. (shrink)

On December 22, 1988, Chico Mendes, the leader of the struggle to preserve the Amazonian rainforest, stepped out of the back door of his house and was assassinated. Chico was a seringueiro, a rubber tapper who collects latex from the trees of the forest. He had a vision of the people of the rainforest living in balance with the natural world, supporting their communities through harvesting the natural, renewable forest products in a sustainable manner. It was for this vision (...) that he was murdered by the powerful ranchers of the region, who wish to burn the forests and expand their vast estates. And it is also for this vision that he has become for many throughout the world a hero of the earth, a saint of ecology. (shrink)

György Lukács first published the original Hungarian language version of Soul and Form in 1910. It included eight of the ten essays later to be published in subsequent German, Italian, and English editions. This current centennial edition adds to the mix one additional Lukács essay, "On Poverty of Spirit", written at roughly the same time as the others and bearing a vital relationship to them. Finally, in this edition we have added to the Lukács material an important introductory essay by (...) Judith Butler, as well as a concluding essay, by Katie Terezakis, which draws out connections between the Lukácsian concept of form and its elaboration and critique in Lukács’s own work and in works of critical theory and philosophy up to the present. (shrink)

Vagueness is an extremely widespread feature of language, famously associated with the sorites paradox. One instance of this paradox concludes that a single grain of sand is a heap of sand, by starting with a large heap of sand and invoking the plausible premise that if you take one grain of sand away from a heap of sand, then you still have a heap. The supervaluationist theory of vagueness states that a sentence is true if and only if it is (...) true on all ways of making it precise. This yields borderline case predications that are neither true nor false, but yet classical logic is preserved almost entirely. The sorites paradox is solved because the main premise comes out false – on each way of making 'heap' precise, there is some first grain that turns a heap into a non-heap – but there is no sharp boundary to 'heap' because it is a different grain on different ways of making 'heap' precise; so, there is no grain of which it is true to say it is that first grain. The theory has a range of merits in comparison with rival theories, such as the epistemic view or degree theories of vagueness. Objections have been made (and answers offered) in relation to its treatment of higher-order vagueness and what it says about truth and validity. Author Recommends Fine, Kit. 'Vagueness, Truth and Logic.' Synthese 30 (1975). 265–300. Reprinted in Keefe and Smith 1997. This is the classic text introducing supervaluationism as a treatment of vagueness. It provides both philosophical discussion and formal modelling, demonstrating the adherence to classical logic that the theory yields. Keefe, Rosanna and Peter Smith, eds. Vagueness: A Reader . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. This collection includes many classic papers on vagueness, including Fine's paper, cited above, a paper by Dummett that offers (but rejects) a precursor of the supervaluationist view, another less well-known early presentation of the view by Henyrk Mehlberg and discussion and defences of the main rival theories of vagueness. Keefe, Rosanna. Theories of Vagueness . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. This book defends a supervaluationist theory of vagueness. It discusses the phenomena of vagueness and what is required of a theory of vagueness, before considering and rejecting the major alternatives in turn. Williamson, Timothy. Vagueness . London: Routledge, 1994. This book defends the epistemic theory of vagueness, which maintains that vague predicates do have sharp boundaries, we just do not know where those boundaries lie. It also contains detailed discussions of opposing theories, including supervaluationism. Unger, Peter. 'The Problem of the Many.' Midwest Studies in Philosophy 5 (1980). Eds. P.A. French, T.E. Uehling Jr and H.K. Wettstein. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. This is the classic presentation of the Problem of the Many, to which a supervaluationist solution is relatively popular. This problem arises because frequently the boundaries of an object – say a cloud – are not sharply delineated. Each of the many ways of drawing the boundary seems to be an object of the type in question – say a cloud – hence the problem that there are many things when there should be just one. The supervaluationist, it seems, can say that there is just one cloud because that is true on each precisification. Williams, J. Robert G. 'An Argument for the Many.' Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 106 (2006). 409–17. Detailed discussion of Unger's Problem of the Many, especially in relation to the supervaluationist solution. Shapiro, Stewart. Vagueness in Context . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. In this book, Shapiro employs a supervaluationist framework, without endorsing some of the central claims of the standard supervaluationist theory of vagueness. Online Materials http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vagueness/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/problem-of-many/ http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~arche/projects/vagueness/bibliography.shtml Sample Syllabus Week I: Introduction to Vagueness Keefe, Theories of Vagueness (especially chapters 1 and 2) Williamson, Vagueness (especially chapters 1 and 2) Week II: Supervaluationist Theory: logic and semantics Keefe, 'Vagueness: Supervaluationism.' Philosophy Compass 3.2 (2008): 315–24, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2008.00124.x Fine, 'Vagueness, Truth and Logic' Keefe, Theories of Vagueness (especially chapter 7) Week III: Higher Order Vagueness and the D Operator Keefe, Theories of Vagueness (especially chapter 8) Fara, Delia Graff. 'Gap Principles, Penumbral Consequence and Infinitely Higher-Order Vagueness.' Liars and Heaps . Ed. J.C. Beall. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 195–221. Originally published under the name 'Delia Graff'. Week IV: Truth and Validity Keefe, Theories of Vagueness (especially chapter 8) Keefe, 'Supervaluationism and Validity.' Philosophical Topics 28 (2000). 93–105. Cobreros, 'Supervaluations and Logical Consequence: Retrieving the Local Perspective.' Studia Logica , Special Issue on Vagueness , 2009 Week V: Problem of the Many Unger, "The Problem of the Many" Williams, "An Argument for the Many" Week VI: Rival Theories Williamson, Vagueness (especially chapters 7 and 8) Keefe and Smith, Vagueness: A Reader (e.g. chapters 11, 14–6) Focus Questions 1 How important is it for a theory of vagueness to accommodate penumbral connections? Are there any putative penumbral connections that the supervaluationist cannot accommodate? 2 According to supervaluationism, what does it take for "Katie said that Hannah is tall" to be true? Does the view have implausible consequences for indirect speech reports when vague terms are used? 3 Is higher-order vagueness a problem for supervaluationism? 4 Is there more than one viable option for the account of validity in a supervaluationist framework? 5 Can a supervaluationist account of vagueness accommodate the full extent of context dependence exhibited in the use of vague predicates? (shrink)

This essay provides an overview of the field of environmental ethics. I sketch the major debates in the field from its inception in the 1970s to today, explaining both the central tenets of the schools of thought within the field and the arguments that have been given for and against them. I describe the main trends within the field as a whole and review some of the criticisms that have been offered of prevailing views.

In this paper we explore the connections between ethics and decision theory. In particular, we consider the question of whether decision theory carries with it a bias towards consequentialist ethical theories. We argue that there are plausible versions of the other ethical theories that can be accommodated by "standard" decision theory, but there are also variations of these ethical theories that are less easily accommodated. So while "standard" decision theory is not exclusively consequentialist, it is not necessarily ethically neutral. Moreover, (...) even if our decision-theoretic models get the right answers vis-à-vis morally correct action, the question remains as to whether the motivation for the non-consequentialist theories and the psychological processes of the agents who subscribe to those ethical theories are lost or poorly represented in the resulting models. (shrink)

From the historical roots of second-wave feminism to current debates about feminist theory and politics. This introduction to Anglo-American feminist thought provides a critical and panoramic survey of dominant trends in feminism since 1968. Feminism is too often considered a monolithic movement, consisting of an enormous range of women and ideologies, with both similar and different perspectives and approaches. The book is divided into two parts, the first of which takes a close look at the most influential strands of feminism: (...) liberal feminism, Marxist/socialist feminism, radical feminism, lesbian feminism, and black feminism. In later chapters, Whelehan ties these complexities of, and conflicts within, feminism. The role and relationship of men to feminism, and feminism's often thorny relationship to postmodernism, are also the subject of chapter length treatment. Concluding with a provocative discussion of the much-heralded advent of post-feminism and the rise of the new feminist superstars such as Camille Paglia, Naomi Wolf, Susan Faludi, and Katie Roiphe, Modern Feminist thought is an ideal text for students and a book no feminist teacher or activist should be without. (shrink)

On the face of it, ethics and decision theory give quite different advice about what the best course of action is in a given situation. In this paper we examine this alleged conflict in the realm of environmental decision-making. We focus on a couple of places where ethics and decision theory might be thought to be offering conflicting advice: environmental triage and carbon trading. We argue that the conflict can be seen as conflicts about other things (like appropriate temporal scales (...) for value assignments, idealisations of the decision situation, whether the conservation budget really is fixed and the like). The good news is that there is no conflict between decision theory and environmental ethics. The bad news is that a great deal of environmental decision modelling may be rather simple minded, in that it does not fully incorporate some of these broader issues about temporal scales and the dynamics of many of the decision situations. (shrink)

Public relations practitioners are uniquely positioned to promote ethical communication and practice. As Kruckeberg (2000) explained, “public relations practitioners-if they prove worthy of the task—will be called upon to be corporate—that is organizational—interpreters and ethicists and social policy-makers, charged with guiding organizational behavior as well as influencing and reconciling public perceptions within a global context (p. 37).” Public relations practitioners, however, may never take an ethics course as a student, receive on-the-job ethical training, or use the many professional codes of (...) ethics available to them. This lack begs the question: How are they tackling the various ethical decisions they face? This study examines how public relations professionals engage in ethical decision making and make meaning of deontological ethical models. Such inquiry regarding ethical decision making may assist public relations practitioners and scholars to better understand themselves, serve society, and advance the communication profession. (shrink)

I focus my discussion on the well-known Ellsberg paradox. I find good normative reasons for incorporating non-precise belief, as represented by sets of probabilities, in an Ellsberg decision model. This amounts to forgoing the completeness axiom of expected utility theory. Provided that probability sets are interpreted as genuinely indeterminate belief (as opposed to “imprecise” belief), such a model can moreover make the “Ellsberg choices” rationally permissible. Without some further element to the story, however, the model does not explain how an (...) agent may come to have unique preferences for each of the Ellsberg options. Levi (1986, Hard choices: Decision making under unresolved conflict. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press) holds that the extra element amounts to innocuous secondary “risk” or security considerations that are used to break ties when more than one option is rationally permissible. While I think a lexical choice rule of this kind is very plausible, I argue that it involves a greater break with xpected utility theory than mere violation of the ordering axiom. (shrink)

Neosentimentalism provides environmental ethics with a theory of value that might be particularly useful for solving many of the problems that have plagued the field since its early days. In particular, a neosentimentalist understanding of value offers us hope for making sense of (1) what intrinsic value might be and how we could know whether parts of the natural world have it; (2) the extent to which value is an essentially anthropocentric concept; and (3) how our understanding of value could (...) be compatible with both a respectable naturalism and a robust normativity. (shrink)

Neosentimentalist accounts of value need an explanation of which of the sentiments they discuss are pro-attitudes, which attitudes are con-attitudes, and why. I argue that this project has long been neglected in the philosophical literature, even by those who make extensive use of the distinction between pro- and con-attitudes. Using the attitudes of awe and respect as exemplars, I argue that it is not at all clear what if anything makes these attitudes pro-attitudes. I conclude that neither our intuitive sense (...) of the distinction nor the vague accounts of it that exist in the philosophical literature are especially helpful in sorting out the hard cases. What is needed is a more explicit and thorough account of what the valence of our attitudes consists in. (shrink)

The Immanent Word establishes that the philosophical study of language inaugurated in the 1759 works of Hamann and Lessing marks a paradigm shift in modern philosophy; it analyzes the transformation of that shift in works of Herder, Kant, Fichte, Novalis and Schlegel. It contends that recent studies of early linguistic philosophy obscure the most relevant commission of its thinkers, arguing against the theological appropriation of Hamann by John Milbank; against the "expressive" appropriation of Hamann and Herder by Christina Lafont and (...) Charles Taylor; and against Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy’s uncritical championing of Schlegel’s ideological position. (shrink)

Antihaecceitists believe that all facts about specific individuals—such as the fact that Fred exists, or that Katie is tall—globally supervene on purely qualitative facts. Haecceitists deny that. The issue is not only of interest in itself, but receives additional importance from its intimate connection to the question of whether all fundamental facts are qualitative or whether they include facts about which specific individuals there are and how qualitative properties and relations are distributed over them. Those who think that all fundamental (...) facts are qualitative are arguably committed to antihaecceitism. The goal of this paper is to point out some problems for antihaecceitism (and therefore for the thesis that all fundamental facts are qualitative). The article focuses on two common assumptions about possible worlds: (i) Sets of possible worlds are the bearers of objective physical chance. (ii) Counterfactual conditionals can be defined by appeal to a relation of closeness between possible worlds. The essay tries to show that absurd consequences ensue if either of these assumptions is combined with antihaecceitism. Then it considers a natural response by the antihaecceitist, which is to deny that worlds play the role described in (i) and (ii). Instead, the reply continues, we can introduce a new set of entities that are defined in terms of worlds and that behave the way worlds do on the haecceitist position. That allows the antihaecceitist to formulate antihaecceitist friendly versions of (i) and (ii) by replacing the appeal to possible worlds with reference to the newly introduced entities. This maneuver invites an obvious reply, however. If the new entities are the things that play the role we typically associate with worlds, as partially described by (i) and (ii), then it is natural to conclude that they really are the entities we talk about when we speak of worlds, so that haecceitism is true after all. (shrink)

In this paper we apply a general account of practical reasoning to arguing about legal cases. In particular, we provide a reconstruction of the reasoning of the majority and dissenting opinions for a particular well-known case from property law. This is done through the use of Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) agents to replicate the contrasting views involved in the actual decision. This reconstruction suggests that the reasoning involved can be separated into three distinct levels: factual and normative levels and a level connecting (...) the two, with conclusions at one level forming premises at the next. We begin by summarising our general approach, which uses instantiations of an argumentation scheme to provide presumptive justifications for actions, and critical questions to identify arguments which attack these justifications. These arguments and attacks are organised into argumentation frameworks to identify the status of individual arguments. We then discuss the levels of reasoning that occur in this reconstruction and the properties and significance of each of these levels. We illustrate the different levels with short examples and also include a discussion of the role of precedents within these levels of reasoning. (shrink)

Examination of the concept of "form" within Lukacs' work and after Lukacs.

Governments and other groups interested in the views of citizens require the means to present justifications of proposed actions, and the means to solicit public opinion concerning these justifications. Although Internet technologies provide the means for such dialogues, system designers usually face a choice between allowing unstructured dialogues, through, for example, bulletin boards, or requiring citizens to acquire a knowledge of some argumentation schema or theory, as in, for example, ZENO. Both of these options present usability problems. In this paper, (...) we describe an implemented system called PARMENIDES which allows structured argument over a proposed course of action, without requiring knowledge of the underlying argumentation theory. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a particular role for abductive reasoning in law by applying it in the context of an argumentation scheme for practical reasoning. We present a particular scheme, based on an established scheme for practical reasoning, that can be used to reason abductively about how an agent might have acted to reach a particular scenario, and the motivations for doing so. Plausibility here depends on a satisfactory explanation of why this particular agent followed these motivations in the (...) particular situation. The scheme is given a formal grounding in terms of action-based alternating transition systems and we illustrate the approach with a running legal example. (shrink)

In this paper we describe an approach to practical reasoning, reasoning about what it is best for a particular agent to do in a given situation, based on presumptive justifications of action through the instantiation of an argument scheme, which is then subject to examination through a series of critical questions. We identify three particular aspects of practical reasoning which distinguish it from theoretical reasoning. We next provide an argument scheme and an associated set of critical questions which is able (...) to capture these features. In order that both the argument scheme and the critical questions can be given precise interpretations we use the semantic structure of an Action-Based Alternating Transition System as the basis for their definition. We then work through a detailed example to show how this approach to practical reasoning can be applied to a problem solving situation, and briefly describe some other previous applications of the general approach. In a second example we relate our account to the social laws paradigm for co-ordinating multi-agent systems. The contribution of the paper is to provide firm foundations for an approach to practical reasoning based on presumptive argument in terms of a well-known model for representing the effects of actions of a group of agents. (shrink)

It is a common assumption amongst theorists that the phenomenon of animal emotion supports the affect program theory of emotion. I argue that this assumption is mistaken by exploring two cases of animal emotion from studies in ethology: aggression in chimpanzees and fear in piping plovers. While the affect program theory fails to account for the cognitive complexity involved in each case, I do not argue for a cognitive theory of emotion. Instead, I suggest that paying attention to animal emotions (...) helps the emotion theorist avoid the dichotomy between the extreme versions of the affect program theory and cognitive theories. ‡My thanks to Bart Moffatt, Ben Schulz, Jessica Slind, Katie Plasiance, Ken Waters, Mark Borrello, Susan Hawthorne, and Toben Lafrancois for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455; e-mail: stie0076@umn.edu. (shrink)

Symbols enable people to organize and communicate about the world. However, the ways in which symbolic knowledge is learned and then represented in the mind are poorly understood. We present a formal analysis of symbolic learning—in particular, word learning—in terms of prediction and cue competition, and we consider two possible ways in which symbols might be learned: by learning to predict a label from the features of objects and events in the world, and by learning to predict features from a (...) label. This analysis predicts significant differences in symbolic learning depending on the sequencing of objects and labels. We report a computational simulation and two human experiments that confirm these differences, revealing the existence of Feature-Label-Ordering effects in learning. Discrimination learning is facilitated when objects predict labels, but not when labels predict objects. Our results and analysis suggest that the semantic categories people use to understand and communicate about the world can only be learned if labels are predicted from objects. We discuss the implications of this for our understanding of the nature of language and symbolic thought, and in particular, for theories of reference. (shrink)

Recent critics (Andrew Light, Bryan Norton, Anthony Weston, and Bruce Morito, among others) have argued that we should give up talk of intrinsic value in general and that of nature in particular. While earlier theorists might have overestimated the importance of intrinsic value, these recent critics underestimate its importance. Claims about a thing’s intrinsic value are claims about the distinctive way in which we have reason to care about that thing. If we understand intrinsic value in this manner, we can (...) capture the core claims that environmentalists want to make about nature while avoiding the worries raised by contemporary critics. Since the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value plays a critical role in our understanding of the different ways that we do and should care about things, moral psychology, ethical theory in general, and environmental ethics in particular shouldn’t give up on the concept of intrinsic value. (shrink)

Background: The four principles of Beauchamp and Childress - autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence and justice - havebeen extremely influential in the field of medical ethics, and are fundamental for understanding the currentapproach to ethical assessment in health care. This study tests whether these principles can be quantitativelymeasured on an individual level, and then subsequently if they are used in the decision making process whenindividuals are faced with ethical dilemmas. Methods: The Analytic Hierarchy Process was used as a tool for the measurement (...) of the principles. Four scenarios, whichinvolved conflicts between the medical ethical principles, were presented to participants and they madejudgments about the ethicality of the action in the scenario, and their intentions to act in the same manner if theywere in the situation. Results: Individual preferences for these medical ethical principles can be measured using the Analytic HierarchyProcess. This technique provides a useful tool in which to highlight individual medical ethical values. Onaverage individuals have a significant preference for non-maleficence over the other principles, however, andperhaps counter-intuitively, this preference does not seem to relate to applied ethical judgements in specificethical dilemmas. Conclusions: People state they value these medical ethical principles but they do not actually seem to use them directly in thedecision making process. The reasons for this are explained through the lack of a behavioural model to accountfor the relevant situational factors not captured by the principles. The limitations of the principles in predictingethical decision making are discussed. (shrink)

Group decisions raise a number of substantial philosophical and methodological issues. We focus on the goal of the group decision exercise itself. We ask: What should be counted as a good group decision-making result? The right decision might not be accessible to, or please, any of the group members. Conversely, a popular decision can fail to be the correct decision. In this paper we discuss what it means for a decision to be "right" and what components are required in a (...) decision process to produce happy decision-makers. Importantly, we discuss how "right" decisions can produce happy decision-makers, or rather, the conditions under which happy decision-makers and right decisions coincide. In a large range of contexts, we argue for the adoption of formal consensus models to assist in the group decision-making process. In particular, we advocate the formal consensus convergence model of Lehrer and Wagner (1981), because a strong case can be made as to why the underlying algorithm produces a result that should make each of the experts in a group happy. Arguably, this model facilitates true consensus, where the group choice is effectively each person's individual choice. We analyse Lehrer and Wagner's algorithm for reaching consensus on group probabilities/utilities in the context of complex decision-making for conservation biology. While many conservation decisions are driven by a search for objective utility/probability distributions (regarding extinction risks of species and the like), other components of conservation management primarily concern the interests of stakeholders. We conclude with cautionary notes on mandating consensus in decision scenarios for which no fact of the matter exists. For such decision settings alternative types of social choice methods are more appropriate. (shrink)

This "open letter" examines Agnes Heller's seemingly ambivilent position on feminism, as well as her pedegogy, her reading of Plato, her "ethics of personality," and her positions on critique and on "everyday life.".

In this paper we consider persuasion in the context of practical reasoning, and discuss the problems associated with construing reasoning about actions in a manner similar to reasoning about beliefs. We propose a perspective on practical reasoning as presumptive justification of a course of action, along with critical questions of this justification, building on the account of Walton. From this perspective, we articulate an interaction protocol, which we call PARMA, for dialogues over proposed actions based on this theory. We outline (...) an axiomatic semantics for the PARMA Protocol, and discuss two implementations which use this protocol to mediate a discussion between humans. We then show how our proposal can be made computational within the framework of agents based on the Belief-Desire-Intention model, and illustrate this proposal with an example debate within a multi agent system. (shrink)

Viruses are major drivers of global biogeochemistry and the etiological agents of many diseases. They are also the winners in the game of life: there are more viruses on the planet than cellular organisms and they encode most of the genetic diversity on the planet. In fact, it is reasonable to view life as a viral incubator. Nevertheless, most ecological and evolutionary theories were developed, and continue to be developed, without considering the virosphere. This means these theories need to be (...) to reinterpreted in light of viral knowledge or we need to develop new theory from the viral point-of-view. Here we briefly introduce our viral planet and then address a major outstanding question in biology: why is most of life viral? A key insight is that during an infection cycle the original virus is completely broken down and only the associated information is passed on to the next generation. This is different for cellular organisms, which must pass on some physical part of themselves from generation to generation. Based on this premise, it is proposed that the thermodynamic consequences of physical information (e.g., Landauer’s principle) are observed in natural viral populations. This link between physical and genetic information is then used to develop the Viral Information Hypothesis, which states that genetic information replicates itself to the detriment of system energy efficiency (i.e., is viral in nature). Finally, we show how viral information can be tested, and illustrate how this novel view can explain existing ecological and evolutionary theories from more fundamental principles. (shrink)

Advocates of dialogic communication have promoted two-way symmetrical communication as the most effective and ethical model for public relations. This article uses John Durham Peters's critique of dialogic communication to reconsider this infatuation with dialogue. In this article, we argue that dialogue's potential for selectivity and tyranny poses moral problems for public relations. Dialogue's emphasis on reciprocal communication also saddles public relations with ethically questionable quid pro quo relationships. We contend that dissemination can be more just than dialogue because it (...) demands more integrity of the source and recognizes the freedom and individuality of the source. The type of communication, such as dialogue or dissemination, is less important than the mutual discovery of truth. Reconciliation, a new model of public relations, is proposed as an alternative to pure dialogue. Reconciliation recognizes and values individuality and differences, and integrity is no longer sacrificed at the altar of agreement. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a particular role for abductive reasoning in law by applying it in the context of an argumentation scheme for practical reasoning. We present a particular scheme, based on an established scheme for practical reasoning, that can be used to reason abductively about how an agent might have acted to reach a particular scenario, and the motivations for doing so. Plausibility here depends on a satisfactory explanation of why this particular agent followed these motivations in the (...) particular situation. The scheme is given a formal grounding in terms of action-based alternating transition systems and we illustrate the approach with a running legal example. Keywords Argumentation schemes - Abductive reasoning - Practical reasoning. (shrink)

The volume relates the controversy concerning competing knowledge claims to truth.

On most understandings of what an ecosystem is, it is a kind of thing that can be literally, not just metaphorically, healthy or unhealthy. Health is best understood as a kind of well-being; a thing’s health is a matter of retaining those structures and functions that are good for it. While it is true both that what’s good for an ecosystem depends on how we define the system and that how we define the system depends on our interests, these facts (...) do not force us to the conclusion that an ecosystem has no good of its own. Ecosystems and persons can have goods of their own in spite of the fact that the schemes we use to categorize them are matters that we decide upon. (shrink)

Summary 1. Ecologists and conservation biologists consider many issues when designing a field study, such as the expected value of the data, the interests of the study species, the welfare of individual organisms and the cost of the project. These different issues or values often conflict; however, neither animal ethics nor environmental ethics provides practical guidance on how to assess trade-offs between them. -/- 2. We developed a decision framework for considering trade-offs between values in ecological research, drawing on the (...) field of ecological ethics. We used a case study of the population genetics of three frog species, in which a researcher must choose between four methods of sampling DNA from the study animals. We measured species welfare as the reduction in population growth rate following sampling, and assessed individual welfare using two different definitions: (i) the level of suffering experienced by an animal, and (ii) the level of suffering combined with loss of future life. -/- 3. Tipping the tails of tadpoles ranked as the best sampling method for species welfare, while collecting whole tadpoles and buccal swabbing of adult frogs ranked best for the first and second definitions of individual welfare, respectively. Toe clipping of adult frogs ranked as the worst sampling method for species welfare and the first definition of individual welfare, and equal worst for the second definition of individual welfare. -/- 4. When considering species and individual welfare simultaneously, toe clipping was clearly inferior to the other sampling methods, but no single sampling method was clearly superior to the other three. Buccal swabbing, collecting tadpoles and tail tipping were all preferred options, depending on the definition of individual welfare and the level of precision with which we assessed species welfare. -/- 5.Synthesis and applications. The decision framework we present can be used by ecologists to assess ethical and other trade-offs when planning field studies. A formal decision analysis makes transparent how a researcher might negotiate competing ethical, financial and practical objectives. Defining the components of the decision in this way can help avoid errors associated with human judgement and linguistic uncertainty. (shrink)

Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Volume 27, Issue 1, Page 75-77, January-March.

This study evaluates the ethical criteria lobbyists consider in their professional activities using Ruth Edgett's model for ethically desirable public relations advocacy. Data were collected from self-administered surveys of 222 registered lobbyists in Oregon. A factor analysis reduced 18 ethical criteria to seven underlying factors describing lobbyists' ethical approaches to their work. Results indicate that lobbyists consider the following factors in their day-to-day professional activities: situation, strategy, argument, procedure, nature of lobbying, priority, and accuracy. This framework, derived from Edgett's 10 (...) criteria, illustrates the importance of context while incorporating ideas from recognized ethical theories. (shrink)

The article reconsiders the nature and location of science in the development of genetic classification. Drawing on field studies of medical genetics, we explore how patient categorization is accomplished in between the clinic and laboratory. We focus on dysmorphology, a specialism concerned with complex syndromes that impair physical development. We show that dys-morphology is about more than fitting patients into prefixed diagnostic categories and that diagnostic process is marked by moments of uncertainty, ambiguity, and deferral. We describe how different forms (...) of evidence are brought into play and how patterns of physical features are identified as genetic or not. We suggest that clinical categorical work helps articulate the genetic as an emergent domain of medical classification and that moments of ambiguity and deferral create an imperative space that helps legitimate the need for more technoscience, and consequently, more clinical judgment with which to fix the genetic future. (shrink)

The study of identity crosses all disciplinary borders to address such issues as the multiple interactions of race, class, and gender in feminist, lesbian, and gay studies, postcolonialism and globalization, and the interrelation of nationalism and ethnicity in ethnic and area studies. Identities will help disrupt the cliche-ridden discourse of identity by exploring the formation of identities and problem of subjectivity. Leading scholars in literary criticism, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy explore such topics as "Gypsies" in the Western imagination, the mobilization (...) of the West in Chinese television, the lesbian identity and the woman's gaze in fashion photography, and the regulation of black women's bodies in early 20th-century urban areas. This collection of twenty articles brings together the special issue of Critical Inquiry entitled "Identities" (Summer 1992), two other previously published essays, and five previously published critical responses and rejoinders, all of which is interrogated in two new essays by Michael Gorra and Judith Butler. Contributors include Elizabeth Abel, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Akeel Bilgrami, Daniel Boyarin, Jonathan Boyarin, Judith Butler, Hazel V. Carby, Xiaomei Chen, Diana Fuss, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Avery Gordon, Michael Gorra, Cheryl Herr, Saree S. Makdisi, Walter Benn Michaels, Christopher Newfield, Gananath Obeyesekere, Molly Anne Rothenberg, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Sara Suleri, Katie Trumpener, and Joseph Valente. (shrink)