Policies promoted and adopted for allocating ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic have often prioritised healthcare workers or other essential workers. While the need for such policies has so far been largely averted, renewed stress on health systems from continuing surges, as well as the experience of allocating another scarce resource—vaccination—counsel revisiting the justifications for such prioritisation. Prioritising healthcare workers may have intuitive appeal, but the ethical justifications for doing so and the potential harms that could follow require careful analysis. Ethical (...) justifications commonly offered for healthcare worker prioritisation for ventilators rest on two social value criteria: instrumental value, also known as the ‘multiplier effect’, which may preserve the ability of healthcare workers to help others, and reciprocity, which rewards past usefulness or sacrifice. We argue that these justifications are insufficient to over-ride the common moral commitment to value each person’s life equally. Institutional policies prioritising healthcare workers over other patients also violate other ethical norms of the healthcare professions, including the commitment to put patients first. Furthermore, policy decisions to prioritise healthcare workers for ventilators could engender or deepen existing distrust of the clinicians, hospitals and health systems where those policies exist, even if they are never invoked. (shrink)

The relative importance of the Jones’ [Jones, T. M.: 1991, Academy of Management Review 16(2), 366–395] six components of moral intensity was measured using a conjoint experimental design. The most important components influencing ethical perceptions were: probability of effect, magnitude of consequences, and temporal immediacy. Contrary to previous research, overall social consensus was not an important factor. However, consumers exhibit distinctly different patterns in ethical evaluation, and for approximately 15% of respondents social consensus was the most important dimension.

Ned Block has recently pressed a new criticism of the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness. HOT proponents have responded in turn. The exchange affords a chance to find some clarity concerning the essential commitments of HOT, as well as a chance to find clarity on the issues that divide Block and HOT proponents. In this paper I discuss the recent exchange, and I draw some lessons. First, I side with HOT proponents in arguing that new criticism presents no new (...) problem for HOT. Second, I argue that the issues separating Block and HOT proponents suggest that two separate debates are being conflated, and I suggest that keeping them distinct will yield progress for consciousness studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche and the Philosophers ed. by Mark T. ConardMelanie ShepherdMark T. Conard, ed., Nietzsche and the Philosophers New York: Routledge, 2017. vi + 299 pp. isbn 978-0-367-88513-7. Paper, $42.36.While every good philosopher engages a philosophical tradition in some way, the history of philosophy is more central to Nietzsche's work than to most. Insofar as a wide range of philosophers are implicated in a metaphysics and framework of values (...) Nietzsche seeks to overturn, he is drawn into ongoing conversation with interlocutors spanning millennia. Moreover, as Mark Conard notes in the opening of this volume, Nietzsche engages the history of philosophy in order to critique the practice of philosophy itself. Nietzsche prepares a way for philosophers of the future, Conard suggests, by reinterpreting traditional philosophy and its exemplars (3). The motivation for this volume, which is devoted to Nietzsche's relationship to a number of individual philosophers, is thus apparent and uncomplicated, and the volume brings several seasoned scholars together to address the significance of Nietzsche's relationship to philosophers from a range of traditions and historical periods.Conard includes with the obviously essential figures (Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer) a group of less obvious ones (Aristotle, Anaximander, Bernard Williams), the blend of which makes for a dynamic volume. However, the selection of interlocutors is somewhat unguided. While this is largely a function of the enormous pool from which one might select in Nietzsche's case, a little more intentionality at this stage would have been desirable. For instance, were the volume restricted to philosophers with whom Nietzsche directly engaged, the lack of a feminine interlocutor for Nietzsche, though not inevitable, would be understandable. Yet the inclusion of Williams opens the field considerably, making the failure to find a feminine interlocutor more regrettable. These issues notwithstanding, Conard delivers a relevant and worthwhile volume.Paul Loeb's "Nietzsche's Place in the Aristotelian History of Philosophy" opens the volume with an appropriately comprehensive question about [End Page 117] Nietzsche's relationship to the discipline of philosophy. Although Nietzsche's philosophical importance is now secure, scholars have previously questioned whether he even is a philosopher. Loeb lays out fifteen different reasons for this resistance and links each, point by point, to Aristotle's conception of the philosopher, in order to demonstrate that the problem is rooted in the dominance of an Aristotelian definition of philosophy. However, as Loeb also demonstrates in fifteen points, Nietzsche offers a new conception of philosophy that directly challenges the Aristotelian model. In addition to demonstrating the Aristotelian roots of the philosophical dismissal of Nietzsche, Loeb criticizes the shortsightedness of contemporary interpretations of Nietzsche that translate his thought into an Aristotelian mold by focusing on texts like The Will to Power and GM while giving less attention to Z, EH, and A. Loeb is sometimes overly bold. Using five criteria for philosophical importance enumerated at the beginning of the essay, he offers what are arguably too-quick assessments of the historical importance of a number of philosophers. Nevertheless, the essay is interesting, thorough, and erudite.Daniel Conway's "Twilight of an Idol: Nietzsche's Affirmation of Socrates" explores Nietzsche's relationship to the "decadent" Socrates in his later works. Beginning with Nietzsche's interpretation of Socrates's claim in the Phaedo that he and Crito owe a cock to Asclepius, Conway draws attention to the way in which Nietzsche distinguishes Socrates's asceticism from that of the other "great sages" in TI. While many who emulate Socrates's ascetic self-mastery do so in order to continue life in a decadent state, Socrates achieved real self-mastery by wholeheartedly willing his own death, recognizing death as "the only doctor" for decadence. In this way, Socrates's final words deliver an ironic message across the millennia to heirs of his "improvement morality": improvement morality improves no one—no one, that is, except for the Nietzsche of EH, who receives Socrates's ironic message and sets about the task of the overcoming of morality. Thus, Conway says, Nietzsche affirms Socrates's role in setting a stage for Nietzsche himself to emerge as the first immoralist. Conway notes that we might flinch at this image... (shrink)

While the HVTN 505 trial showed no overall efficacy of the tested vaccine to prevent HIV infection over placebo, markers measuring immune response to vaccination were strongly correlated with infection. This finding generated the hypothesis that some marker-defined vaccinated subgroups were partially protected whereas others had their risk increased. This hypothesis can be assessed using the principal stratification framework (Frangakis and Rubin, 2002) for studying treatment effect modification by an intermediate response variable, using methods in the sub-field of principal surrogate (...) (PS) analysis that studies multiple principal strata. Unfortunately, available methods for PS analysis require an augmented study design not available in HVTN 505, and make untestable structural risk assumptions, motivating a need for more robust PS methods. Fortunately, another sub-field of principal stratification, survivor average causal effect (SACE) analysis (Rubin, 2006) – which studies effects in a single principal stratum – provides many methods not requiring an augmented design and making fewer assumptions. We show how, for a binary intermediate response variable, methods developed for SACE analysis can be adapted to PS analysis, providing new and more robust PS methods. Application to HVTN 505 supports that the vaccine partially protected individuals with vaccine-induced T-cells expressing certain combinations of functions. (shrink)

This article aims to give a full definition of servant leadership and shepherd leadership by comparing and contrasting the two texts of Jeremiah 23 and John 10. The notion of 'shepherd' or 'shepherding' is analysed and brought into the current debate on servant leadership. The shepherd metaphor used in the two passages is contextualised to the South African pastoral leadership situation, especially with regard to pastoral integrity. The status of pastoral leadership in the South African church community (...) is highlighted as a challenge to be considered from the perspective of servant leadership proposed in Matthew 20:16. The presenter would like to conscientise the Christian community that integrity in the areas of caring, feeding and protecting the flock should be a driving force towards pastoral integrity. The exegetical findings of the shepherd model are applied to the pastoral leadership integrity. An appeal is made to the ecclesiastical community to return to the fundamentals of leadership by embracing servant leadership as an ensuing model for pastoral leadership integrity. The article contributes towards the knowledge of the definition, role and understanding of pastoral leadership defined through servant and shepherd leadership concepts. Its academic value lies in the fields of church leaderships, ethics and biblical teachings. (shrink)

Common-sense folk psychology and mainstream philosophy of action agree about decisions: these are under an agent's direct control, and are thus intentional actions for which agents can be held responsible. I begin this paper by presenting a problem for this view. In short, since the content of the motivational attitudes that drive deliberation and decision remains open-ended until the moment of decision, it is unclear how agents can be thought to exercise control over what they decide at the moment of (...) deciding. I note that this problem might motivate a non-actional view of deciding?a view that decisions are not actions, but are instead passive events of intention acquisition. For without an understanding of how an agent might exercise control over what is decided at the moment of deciding, we lack a good reason for maintaining commitment to an actional view of deciding. However, I then offer the required account of how agents exercise control over decisions at the moment of deciding. Crucial to this account is an understanding of the relation of practical deliberation to deciding, an understanding of skilled deliberative activity, and the role of attention in the mental action of deciding. (shrink)

Consciousness-based approaches to non-human moral status maintain that consciousness is necessary for (some degree or level of) moral status. While these approaches are intuitive to many, in this paper I argue that the judgment that consciousness is necessary for moral status is not secure enough to guide policy regarding non-humans, that policies responsive to the moral status of non-humans should take seriously the possibility that psychological features independent of consciousness are sufficient for moral status. Further, I illustrate some practical consequences (...) of calling consciousness-based views into question. (shrink)

I seek an explanation for the etiology and the function of mind wandering episodes. My proposal – which I call the cognitive control proposal – is that mind wandering is a form of non-conscious guidance due to cognitive control. When the agent’s current goal is deemed insufficiently rewarding, the cognitive control system initiates a search for a new, more rewarding goal. This search is the process of unintentional mind wandering. After developing the proposal, and relating it to literature on mind (...) wandering and on cognitive control, I discuss explanations the proposal affords, testable predictions the proposal makes, and philosophical implications the proposal has. (shrink)

This article focuses on the interpretative complexities encountered in the work of Lidwien van de Ven. First, it aims to map out the always porous nature of the relationships between aesthetics, politics and religion that make up her palimpsest-like images. Second, it aims to tease out a three-part analytics of photography. Third, it attempts to flesh out a difficult notion of spectacle that is inherent to her wide-ranging practice, and which distinguishes her project from liberal photojournalism with its obeisance to (...) identity politics and its weak notion of ethics. Finally, it aims to isolate, within the dialectical machinery of spectacle that is so often put to work by western democracies, a pragmatic moment in our encounter with her photographs that has real political purchase. With a variable notion of close reading at the crux of the operation, the article probes the efficacy of this moment so akin to philosophical aesthetics. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Gray, Knickman, and Wegner present three experiments which they take to show that people perceive patients in a persistent vegetative state to have less mentality than the dead. Following on from Gomes and Parrott, we provide evidence to show that participants' responses in the initial experiments are an artifact of the questions posed. Results from two experiments show that, once the questions have been clarified, people do not ascribe more mental capacity to the dead than to (...) PVS patients. There is no reason to think that people perceive PVS patients as more dead than dead. (shrink)

The rise of experimental philosophy has placed metaphilosophical questions, particularly those concerning concepts, at the center of philosophical attention. X-phi offers empirically rigorous methods for identifying conceptual content, but what exactly it contributes towards evaluating conceptual content remains unclear. We show how x-phi complements Rudolf Carnap’s underappreciated methodology for concept determination, explication. This clarifies and extends x-phi’s positive philosophical import, and also exhibits explication’s broad appeal. But there is a potential problem: Carnap’s account of explication was limited to empirical and (...) logical concepts, but many concepts of interest to philosophers are essentially normative. With formal epistemology as a case study, we show how x-phi assisted explication can apply to normative domains. (shrink)

Background Researchers are required to determine whether a person has capacity to consent to a research study before they are able to participate. The Mental Capacity Act and accompanying Code of Practice for England and Wales provide some guidance on this process, but researchers have identified that it can be difficult to determine capacity to consent when a person has complex cognitive or communication needs. This study aimed to understand the experiences and opinions of researchers who recruit people with dementia (...) to research projects, to inform the future development of training resources. Methods A mixed method, cross-sectional, electronic survey was circulated via social media and research networks in England and Wales. The survey remained open for ten weeks and included open and closed questions exploring respondents’ confidence in determining capacity in the context of recruiting people with dementia to consent, their views on training and support they have experienced and their suggestions for future training and support needs. Results 60 respondents completed the survey from across England and Wales. Although 75% of respondents had experience of determining capacity to consent with people with dementia to research, only 13% rated themselves as feeling ‘very confident’ in this. Qualitative content analysis of open responses led to the generation of six themes, explaining researchers’ confidence, competence and future training needs in this area: (1) Researcher uncertainties, (2) Lack of time, (3) Balancing information complexity with accessibility, (4) Gatekeepers, (5) Existing enablers and (6) Envisioning future training. Conclusions Researchers would benefit from specific training in undertaking conversations around consent with people with dementia. People with dementia may have fluctuating capacity, and despite support from caregivers, researchers have little practical guidance on methods of determining a person’s ability to understand or appreciate the information they have provided during the consent process. Given the development of large complex trials within dementia research, there is an urgency to develop specific and practical guidance and training for researchers working with people with dementia and their families. (shrink)

Some of the things we do intentionally we do halfheartedly. I develop and defend an account of halfheartedness with respect to action on which one is halfhearted with respect to an action A if one’s overall motivation to A is weak. This requires getting clear on what it is to have some level of overall motivation with respect to an action, and on what it means to say one’s overall motivation is weak or strong. After developing this account, I defend (...) the claim that one key functional expression of halfhearted action is the possession of impaired control over the action in question. Finally, I elucidate a puzzle that sometimes arises with respect to halfhearted action. The puzzle arises when an agent’s commitment in acting conflicts with an agent’s acceptance of poor performance. (shrink)

Ann Margaret Sharp, American philosopher of education, believed that friends could, in fact, be quite critical of one another. Writing in her essay, “What is a Community of Inquiry,” she states,... but children know that the group has taken on a great significance for them: each one’s happiness means as much to each of them as their own. They truly care for each other as persons, and this care enables them to converse in ways they never have before. They can (...) engage in inquiry without fear of rebuff or humiliation. They can try out ideas that they never would have thought of expressing before just to see what happens.I am grateful to the friends of Sharp who spent time in pursuit of understanding her work and its... (shrink)

Eighteen essays re examine Ficino's life and work focusing on three essential aspects: his significance in his own times, his spreading influence throughout Europe and over subsequent centuries in many areas of thought and creativity, and his enduring relevance today. Translation of his major works from Latin enables a new generation to rediscover and share Ficino's vision of human potential.

God is with us, but we often don't see Him at work because we fail to understand who He is or how He works Longtime pastor and director of Open Doors, Kurt Bruner explores knowing God as He is rather than as we wish Him to be. Doing so requires confronting some unsettling questions. We celebrate a God who is nice--who rescues, rewards, and redeems. But what about when He deserts, disciplines, and damns? Is God schizophrenic, moving in and out (...) of opposing personalities? One minute, gentle shepherd; the next, angry judge? How does that reconcile with the image of God popular in evangelical churches--loving, forgiving, and shepherding us? When we worship only part of God we worship a false God. Below the surface--on the level of reality that goes deeper than sentimental feelings--we know that if God is only love, He isn't enough. He must also be absolutely just, dreadfully mighty, and perfectly holy. He needs to reward what is right. But He also must punish what is wrong. He needs to redeem the lost. But He must also thwart the wicked. Yet we seem to prefer the partial phony to the awful reality. Why Isn't God Nice? unfolds why a God of love sometimes seems so unloving. And how a person going through hard times can learn to embrace a God who allows such difficult circumstances. (shrink)

We argue that any strong version of a knowledge condition on intentional action, the practical knowledge principle, on which knowledge of what I am doing (under some description: call it A-ing) is necessary for that A-ing to qualify as an intentional action, is false. Our argument involves a new kind of case, one that centers the agent’s control appropriately and thus improves upon Davidson’s well-known carbon copier case. After discussing this case, offering an initial argument against the knowledge condition, and (...) discussing recent treatments that cover nearby ground, we consider several objections. One we consider at some length maintains that although contemplative knowledge may be disconnected from intentional action, specifically practical knowledge of the sort Anscombe elucidated escapes our argument. We demonstrate that this is not so. Our argument illuminates an important truth, often overlooked in discussions of the knowledge-intentional action relationship: intentional action and knowledge have different levels of permissiveness regarding failure in similar circumstances. (shrink)

The Shape of Agency offers interlinked explanations of the basic building blocks of agency, as well as its exemplary instances. The first part offers accounts of a collection of related phenomena that have long troubled philosophers of action: control over behaviour, non-deviant causation, and intentional action. These accounts build on earlier work in the causalist tradition, and undermine the claims made by many that causalism cannot offer a satisfying account of non-deviant causation, and therefore fails as an account of intentional (...) action. The second part turns to modes of agentive excellence—ways that agents display quality of form—providing a novel account of skill, including an account of the ways that agents display more or less skill. Shepherd discusses the role of knowledge in skill, and concludes that while knowledge is often important, it is inessential. This leads to a discussion of the way that knowledge of action and knowledge of how to act informs action execution. Knowledgeable action includes a unique epistemic underpinning: in knowledgeable action, the agent has authoritative knowledge of what she is doing and how she is doing it when and because she is poised to control her action by way of practical reasoning. (shrink)

This article proposes a methodological schema for engaging in a productive discussion of ethical issues regarding human brain organoids, which are three-dimensional cortical neural tissues created using human pluripotent stem cells. Although moral consideration of HBOs significantly involves the possibility that they have consciousness, there is no widely accepted procedure to determine whether HBOs are conscious. Given that this is the case, it has been argued that we should adopt a precautionary principle about consciousness according to which, if we are (...) not certain whether HBOs have consciousness—and where treating HBOs as not having consciousness may cause harm to them—we should proceed as if they do have consciousness. This article emphasizes a methodological advantage of adopting the precautionary principle: it enables us to sidestep the question of whether HBOs have consciousness and, instead, directly address the question of what kinds of conscious experiences HBOs can have, where the what-kind-question is more tractable than the whether-question. By addressing the what-kind-question, we will be able to examine how much moral consideration HBOs deserve. With this in mind, this article confronts the what-kind-question with the assistance of experimental studies of consciousness and suggests an ethical framework which supports restricting the creation and use of HBOs in bioscience. (shrink)

My topic is the intelligent guidance of action. In this paper I offer an empirically grounded case for four ideas: that [a] cognitive processes of practical reasoning play a key role in the intelligent guidance of action, [b] these processes could not do so without significant enabling work done by both perception and the motor system, [c] the work done by perceptual and motor systems can be characterized as the generation of information specialized for action guidance, which in turn suggests (...) that [d] the cognitive processes of practical reasoning that play a key role in the guidance of intelligent action are not the abstract, syllogistic ones philosophers often treat as the paradigm of practical reasoning. Rather, these cognitive processes are constrained by, and work well with, the specialized concepts outputted by perception and the feedback outputted by sensorimotor processes. (shrink)

I argue that the neural realizers of experiences of trying are not distinct from the neural realizers of actual trying . I then ask how experiences of trying might relate to the perceptual experiences one has while acting. First, I assess recent zombie action arguments regarding conscious visual experience, and I argue that contrary to what some have claimed, conscious visual experience plays a causal role for action control in some circumstances. Second, I propose a multimodal account of the experience (...) of acting. According to this account, the experience of acting is a temporally extended, co-conscious collection of agentive and perceptual experiences, functionally integrated and structured both by multimodal perceptual processing as well as by what an agent is, at the time, trying to do. (shrink)

Necessarily, if S lacks the ability to exercise control, S is not an agent. If S is not an agent, S cannot act intentionally, responsibly, or rationally, nor can S possess or exercise free will. In spite of the obvious importance of control, however, no general account of control exists. In this paper I reflect on the nature of control itself. I develop accounts of control ’s exercise and control ’s possession that illuminate what it is for degrees of control (...) —that is, the degree of control an agent possesses or exercises in a given circumstance—to vary. Finally, I demonstrate the usefulness of the account on offer by showing how it generates a solution to a long-standing problem for causalist theories of action, namely, the problem of deviant causation. (shrink)

Many think that a specific aspect of phenomenal consciousness – valenced or affective experience – is essential to consciousness’s moral significance (valence sentientism). They hold that valenced experience is necessary for well-being, or moral status, or psychological intrinsic value (or all three). Some think that phenomenal consciousness generally is necessary for non-derivative moral significance (broad sentientism). Few think that consciousness is unnecessary for moral significance (non-necessitarianism). In this paper I consider the prospects for these views. I first consider the prospects (...) for valence sentientism in light of Vulcans, beings who are conscious but without affect or valence of any sort. I think Vulcans pressure us to accept broad sentientism. But I argue that a consideration of explanations for broad sentientism opens up possible explanations for non-necessitarianism about the moral significance of consciousness. That is, once one leans away from valence sentientism because of Vulcans, one should feel pressure to accept a view on which consciousness is not necessary for well-being, moral status, or psychological intrinsic value. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with an enquiry into male sex offenders' understanding of masculinity to establish whether there exists a link between their view of masculinity and their sexual offending behaviour. The enquiry concerned twenty-five sexual offenders serving prison sentences. A short discussion follows and it is suggested that a sexuality and spirituality support group could be piloted within the prison context in order to give sex offenders a new perspective on how to be male in an evolving and flexible (...) way by meaningful relationship. (shrink)

One necessary condition on any adequate account of perception is clarity regarding whether unconscious perception exists. The issue is complicated, and the debate is growing in both philosophy and science. In this paper we consider the case for unconscious perception, offering three primary achievements. First, we offer a discussion of the underspecified notion of central coordinating agency, a notion that is critical for arguments that purportedly perceptual states are not attributable to the individual, and thus not genuinely perceptual. We develop (...) an explication of what it is for a representational state to be available to central coordinating agency for guidance of behavior. Second, drawing on this explication, we place a more careful understanding of the attributability of a state to the individual in the context of a range of empirical work on vision-for-action, saccades, and skilled typing. The results place pressure on the skeptic about unconscious perception. Third, reflecting upon broader philosophical themes running through debates about unconscious perception, we highlight how our discussion places pressure on the view that perception is a manifest kind, rather than a natural kind. In doing so, we resist the tempting complaint that the debate about unconscious perception is merely verbal. (shrink)

The Russian philosopher and cultural theorist Mikhail Bakhtin has traditionally been seen as the leading figure in the group of intellectuals known as the Bakhtin Circle. The writings of other members of the Circle are considered much less important than his work, while Bakhtin's achievement has been exaggerated in proportion to the downgrading of the thinkers with whom he associated in the 1920s. This volume, which includes new translations and studies of the work of the most important members of the (...) Circle, sets out to correct the distortions in the established representations of its activity. The original contributions to literary and linguistic theory made by Valentin Voloshinov and Pavel Medvedev (but frequently credited to Bakhtin) are assessed, and the distinctiveness of their approaches is highlighted. (shrink)

The extensive involvement of nonconscious processes in human behaviour has led some to suggest that consciousness is much less important for the control of action than we might think. In this article I push against this trend, developing an understanding of conscious control that is sensitive to our best models of overt action control. Further, I assess the cogency of various zombie challenges—challenges that seek to demote the importance of conscious control for human agency. I argue that though nonconscious contributions (...) to action control are evidently robust, these challenges are overblown. (shrink)

It seems obvious that phenomenally conscious experience is something of great value, and that this value maps onto a range of important ethical issues. For example, claims about the value of life for those in a permanent vegetative state, debates about treatment and study of disorders of consciousness, controversies about end-of-life care for those with advanced dementia, and arguments about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, and non-human animals arguably turn on the moral significance of various facts about consciousness. However, (...) though work has been done on the moral significance of elements of consciousness, such as pain and pleasure, little explicit attention has been devoted to the ethical significance of consciousness. In this book Joshua Shepherd presents a systematic account of the value present within conscious experience. This account emphasizes not only the nature of consciousness, but the importance of items within experience such as affect, valence, and the complex overall shape of particular valuable experiences. Shepherd also relates this account to difficult cases involving non-humans and those with disorders of consciousness, arguing that the value of consciousness influences and partially explains the degree of moral status a being possesses, without fully determining it. The upshot is a deeper understanding of both the moral importance of phenomenal consciousness and its relations to moral status. This book will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, bioethics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind and cognitive science. (shrink)