A collection of philosophical and aesthetic essays, influenced by Bernard Stiegler, which focuses on the techno-cultural artefact in order to critique, engage, or respond to, an aspect of digital culture.

Many scholars and activists seek to eliminate “race”—the word and the concept—from our vocabulary. Their claim is clear: because science has shown that racial essentialism is false and because the idea of race has proved virulent, we should do away with the concept entirely. Michael O. Hardimon criticizes this line of thinking, arguing that we must recognize the real ways in which race exists in order to revise our understanding of its significance. Rethinking Race provides a novel answer to (...) the question “What is race?” Pernicious, traditional racialism maintains that people can be judged and ranked according to innate racial features. Hardimon points out that those who would eliminate race make the mistake of associating the word only with this view. He agrees that this concept should be jettisoned, but draws a distinction with three alternative ideas: first, a stripped-down version of the ordinary concept of race that recognizes minimal physical differences between races but does not consider them significant; second, a scientific understanding of populations with shared lines of descent; and third, an acknowledgment of “socialrace” as a separate construction. Hardimon provides a language for understanding the ways in which races do and do not exist. His account is realistic in recognizing the physical features of races, as well as the existence of races in our social world. But it is deflationary in rejecting the concept of hierarchical or defining racial characteristics. Ultimately, Rethinking Race offers a philosophical basis for repudiating racism without blinding ourselves to reality. (shrink)

The ordinary concept of race is important and poorly understood. The present article seeks to address this problem by providing a general answer to the question: What is the concept of race?

This paper reports on an investigation of issues surrounding the use of ethical codes/codes of conduct in Irish based companies. Using a comprehensive questionnaire survey, the paper examines the incidence, content and enforcement of codes of conduct among a sample of the top 1000 companies based in Ireland. The main findings indicate that the overall usage of codes of conduct amongst indigenous Irish companies has increased significantly from 1995 to 2000. However, in line with prior research, these codes focus primarily (...) on issues surrounding company and employee protection as opposed to society protection. Almost half of all codes are written by company personnel or provided by head office. Revisions of codes are common but formal ongoing methods of instructing new staff about codes are not prevalent. Less than one-third of companies with codes have formal channels for reporting violations but a high percentage have formal disciplinary procedures in place for breaches of codes. (shrink)

The individual officers of a social institution may not be racist and consequently not blameworthy for racism. On the other hand, the individual officers of such an institution may be racist and deserve blame for their racism. This chapter focuses on the special, idealized case of pure institutional racism in which all the individual office holders who participate in E-like institutions are free of racism. The attitude-independent model of institutional racism on which racist institutions can promote racial inequality in the (...) absence of personal racism on the part of office holders, does not absolve individuals of all responsibility. The chapter discusses the specific form of institutional racism with respect to which the no-individual-is-to-blame thesis is most plausible, namely attitude-independent racism, and has just touched upon a way in which the thesis needs to be revised. (shrink)

This paper explores possible connections between gender and the willingness to engage in unethical business behavior. Two approaches to gender and ethics are presented: the structural approach and the socialization approach. Data from a sample of 213 business school students reveal that men are more than two times as likely as women to engage in actions regarded as unethical but it is also important to note that relatively few would engage in any of these actions with the exception of buying (...) stock with inside information. Fifty percent of the males were willing to buy stock with insider information. Overall, the results support the gender socialization approach. (shrink)

I argue that culture is not essential to race by considering the strongest and most persuasive contemporary articulation of the view that culture is essential to race—that provided by Chike Jeffers I then argue for the possibility of conceiving of race without adverting to culture by presenting the minimalist conception of race I developed in Rethinking Race as an example of a conception of race that makes no reference to culture. I next show how the ancestry-related features of culture that (...) might be thought to be racial but fall outside of the minimalist race can be captured in a minimalist conception of ethnicity. I finally explain why we are better off conceiving of race in a way that does not advert to culture and conclude. (shrink)

The notion that if democracy is to flourish in East Asia it must be realized in ways that are compatible with East Asian’s Confucian norms or values is a staple conviction of Confucian scholarship. I suggest two reasons why it is unlikely and even undesirable for such a Confucianized democracy to emerge. First, 19th- and 20th-century modernization swept away or weakened the institutions which had transmitted Confucian practices in the past, undermining claims that there is an enduring Confucian communitarian or (...) cultural heritage today that democratic institutions have to adapt themselves to—or that a Confucian cultural spirit can be revived. Second, 20th-century East Asian statist regimes rationalized Confucianism for national ideologies meant to bind their citizens’ loyalties to developmentalist goals. Memories of this now delegitimized, statist Confucianism have contributed to the further marginalization of Confucian norms, and to their dissociation from democratic values, in today’s pluralistic democracies in East Asia. This essay argues that a Confucian conviction politics developed within the frame of East Asia’s actually existing liberal democracies provides a better course for advocates of Confucianism in democratic politics. (shrink)

This essay considers a number of proposals for liberal political democracy in East Asian societies, and some of the critical responses such proposals have attracted from political philosophers and from East Asian intellectuals and leaders. These proposals may well be ill-suited to the distinctive traditional values of societies claiming a Confucian inheritance. Offered here instead is a pragmatist- and Confucian-inspired vision of participatory democracy in civic life that is possibly better able to address the problem of conserving and continuing these (...) traditional values through times of economic and social change. (shrink)

The introduction of Western healthcare, via colonialism, into Africa facilitated a confrontation of indigenous and exogenous “medical” knowledge as well as the attendant praxis. Although colonialism has been expunged from the shores of Africa, the epistemic and ideological frictions it introduced into the sphere of healthcare linger and raise different dilemmas. Against this background, this paper explores pragmatic and ethical approaches that may help engage these tensions in the context of drug development based on validated traditional phytomedicines.

Many drugs used in paediatric medicine are off-label. There is a rising call for the use of adaptive clinical trial designs in responding to the need for safe and effective drugs given their potential to offer efficiency and cost-effective benefits compared with traditional clinical trials. ADs have a strong appeal in paediatric clinical trials given the small number of available participants, limited understanding of age-related variability and the desire to limit exposure to futile or unsafe interventions. Although the ethical value (...) of adaptive trials has increasingly come under scrutiny, there is a paucity of literature on the ethical dilemmas that may be associated with paediatric adaptive designs. This paper highlights some of these ethical concerns around safety, scientific/social value and caregiver/guardian comprehension of the trial design. Against this background, the paper develops a non-static conceptual lens for understanding PADs. It shows that ADs are epistemically open and reduce some of the knowledge-associated uncertainties inherent in clinical trials as well as fast-track the time to draw conclusions about the value of evaluated drugs/treatments. On this note, the authors argue that PADs are ethically justifiable given they have multiple layers of safety, exposing enrolled children to lesser potential risks, create social/scientific value generally and for paediatric populations in particular, specifically foster the flourishing of paediatric populations and can significantly improve paediatric trial efficiency when properly designed and implemented. However, because PADs are relatively new and their regulatory, ethical and logistical characteristics are yet to be clarified in some jurisdictions, the cooperation of various public and private stakeholders is required to ensure that the interests of children, their caregivers and parents/guardians are best served while exposing paediatric research subjects to the most minimal of risks when they are enrolled in paediatric trials that use ADs. Data sharing not applicable as no datasets generated and/or analysed for this study. Not applicable. (shrink)

This paper brings a fresh, epistemic perspective to bear on prominent Confucian philosophers’ arguments for a hybrid Deweyan-Confucian democracy, or for an illiberal democracy with “Confucian characteristics.” Reconstructing principles for epistemic elitism and paternalism from the pre-Qin 秦 Confucian thought that inspires these advocates for Confucian democracy, it finds two major problems with their proposals. For those who abandon or modify this epistemic elitism and paternalism in accordance with , the result is a philosophical syncretism that is either unconvincingly Confucian (...) or unconvincingly Deweyan. For those who retain it in accordance with , the result is a democratic proposal that will lack legitimacy in increasingly pluralistic East Asian societies. In the end, there is a need for thinking that appropriately synthesizes Eastern and Western philosophies in a politically changing East Asia, but it would benefit from being less “Confucian.”. (shrink)

This paper discusses the legitimacy of accountants’ recent involvement in social and ethical accounting, auditing and reporting (SEAAR). Support for accountants’ legitimacy is proposed by highlighting some of the technical skills they offer to the SEAAR process as conceived in AA1000. It is argued that the relevance of these skills is strengthened within a conception of SEAAR which principally perceives it as a risk/stakeholder management process focused primarily on the concerns of corporate management as opposed to those of the wider (...) society. However, the paper moves on to maintain that if we wish to promote a conception of SEAAR primarily focused on accountability to stakeholders (denoted as ‘true accountability’) as opposed to risk/stakeholder management, then, particularly in the domain of external social audit, the legitimacy of accountants’ participation may be disputed. The paper therefore concludes by cautioning against facilitating the unquestioned entry of accountants into the realm of SEAAR. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 7, July 2019, Page 53-55.

This book offers an examination of the political and ontological significance of the authorship of Søren Kierkegaard in relation to German Idealism and contemporary European philosophy.

In the last few decades, several philosophers have written on the topic of moral revolutions, distinguishing them from other kinds of society-level moral change. This article surveys recent accounts of moral revolutions in moral philosophy. Different authors use quite different criteria to pick out moral revolutions. Features treated as relevant include radicality, depth or fundamentality, pervasiveness, novelty and particular causes. We also characterize the factors that have been proposed to cause moral revolutions, including anomalies in existing moral codes, changing honour (...) codes, art, economic conditions and individuals or groups. Finally, we discuss what accounts of moral revolutions have in common, how they differ and how moral revolutions are distinguished from other kinds of moral change, such as drift and reform. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Wittgenstein was preoccupied with issues in the philosophy of perception. Despite this, little attention has been paid to this aspect of Wittgenstein's work. This volume redresses this lack, by bringing together an international group of leading philosophers to focus on the impact of Wittgenstein's work on the philosophy of perception. The ten specially commissioned chapters draw on the complete range of Wittgenstein's writings, from his earliest to latest extant works, and combine both exegetical approaches with engagements with (...) contemporary philosophy of mind. Topics covered include: perception and judgement in the _Tractatus _ aspect-perception the putative intentionality of perception representationalism. The book also includes an overview which summarises the evolution of Wittgenstein's views on perception throughout his life. With an outstanding array of contributors, _Wittgenstein and Perception_ is essential reading for students and scholars of Wittgenstein’s work, as well as those working in philosophy of mind and philosophy of perception. Contributors: Yasuhiro Arahata, Michael Campbell, William Child, Daniel Hutto, Michael O’Sullivan, Marie McGinn, Michel terHark, Charles Travis, and José Zalabardo. (shrink)

Funding broadly connotes the notion of an institution and/or institutions making money and other resources available to individual researchers and organizations to accomplish specific projects. Whi...

Global threats to academic freedom are multiplying not only in an era of authoritarian resurgence, but also – less overtly – in an era of increasingly managerial governance of higher‐education sectors in democratic nations, where protection of institutional revenue streams, and of institutional reputation, may take priority over protection of scholars' and students' academic freedoms. In such circumstances, justifications for rendering aid to at‐risk scholars and students have become obscured. This article argues that the Kantian concept of imperfect duty can (...) be adapted to theorizing collective, institutional obligations to aid those scholars and students, undertaken in light of academic freedom as a constitutive institutional value. (shrink)

The power of the scientific enterprise presents multiple avenues for harnessing and increasingly controlling biological phenomena and instituting interventions in different areas of biomedicine (Af...

This essay explores Emerson’s reflections on self-reliance with particular reference to Emerson’s understanding of the concept of self-reliance, his view of ‘conformity’ as the major obstacle to self-reliance, and the moral significance of his thought. The essay is based on the premise that Emerson’s philosophy of self-reliance, self-reference and self-responsibility has a relevance and an application to our contemporary lives which are often conducted through subtle shades of compliance and acquiescence to popular opinion and prevailing fashions of thought and behaviour.

Criticisms of the liberal-individualist idea of the “unencumbered self” are not just a staple of communitarian thought. Some modern Confucian thinkers are now seeking to develop an ethically particular understanding of social roles in the family that is sensitive to gender-justice issues, and that provides an alternative to liberal-individualist conceptions of the “unencumbered self” in relation to family roles. The character of Nora in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House seemingly exemplifies such conceptions of the unencumbered self in her rejection of (...) her housewife role for a more authentic selfhood. Drawing upon the capabilities approach to justice, and positive early Japanese bluestockings’ responses to Ibsen's play, I argue that Nora's character is better understood as exemplifying an ethically compelling disencumbered self in potentially cross-cultural circumstances: a self criticizing and rejecting social roles that are found to be unjust according to universal, as opposed to particularist, “Confucian” ethical standards. (shrink)

Lately it has become fashionable to speak of a ‘political meritocracy’ in Chinese political culture, which contrasts with the liberal ‘electoral democracy’ of the west. Here, however, I consider th...

The author posits that an exploration of Buberian texts suggests a Nietzschean influence, both in the aphoristic and poetic style of his literature and in his insistence on an embrace of the totality of what it is to be human.

Winner of the 2010 Concordia Philosophy Students' Association Undergraduate Essay Contest.

Around the beginning of the twentieth century, John Dewey began his struggle to pave a way out of the impasses generated by the contending schools of realism and idealism. In the early twenty-first century, claims have been made that his thought can also help philosophy move beyond the contemporary realism/anti-realism debate. Dewey scholar David Hildebrand asserts that John Dewey's philosophy provides "a defensible alternative to both realism and idealism" and to contemporary realism and anti-realism in the philosophy of history (Hildebrand (...) 2000, p. 2). This is part of Hildebrand's larger project to demonstrate that "classical pragmatism—and any careful derivation of it" should be able to move beyond the .. (shrink)