ABSTRACTThis article examines the way in which some biomedical ethicists have constructed sexually transmitted AIDS as a significant threat to women's health. We demonstrate that the familiar claim that‘women are the fastest growing group'— whether of HIV‐infected or of AIDS patients — is misleading because it obscures the distinction between proportional rate of growth and absolute increase. Feminist ethicists have suggested that misogyny of a male dominated health care system has led to underreporting of women AIDS cases in order to (...) support these feminists’claim of AIDS being a real threat to women's health. Given the apparent rarity of tertiary transmissions of AIDS, the assertion that most or even many women are at significant risk for AIDS seem wrong. Particularly disturbing in this campaign is the fact that the theme of‘risky sex’has been extended all the way to lesbians, even though their risk to acquire AIDS sexually is non‐existent to minuscule. We argue that actual harm is done to women by this exaggeration of their risk of contracting AIDS sexually. The scare has led to misappropriations of scarce health care funds. AIDS disproportionately affects women who inject drugs, and who suffer other diseases, poverty and malnutrition. It would have been better to concentrate health care efforts in this area instead of‘educating’women not at risk for AIDS how to prevent the acquisition of this disease. Unjustifiable AIDS anxiety has been created in women and has resulted in millions of unnecessary HIV‐tests, and many broken relationships. This anxiety has inevitably reduced the pleasure of having sex for many women. We reject the kind of‘victim ideology’that lies at the heart of this strategy which has, unfortunately, been supported by a number of influential feminist ethicists. (shrink)

This article examines the way in which some biomedical ethicists have constructed sexually transmitted AIDS as a significant threat to women's health. We demonstrate that the familiar claim that‘women are the fastest growing group'— whether of HIV-infected or of AIDS patients — is misleading because it obscures the distinction between proportional rate of growth and absolute increase. Feminist ethicists have suggested that misogyny of a male dominated health care system has led to underreporting of women AIDS cases in order to (...) support these feminists’claim of AIDS being a real threat to women's health. Given the apparent rarity of tertiary transmissions of AIDS, the assertion that most or even many women are at significant risk for AIDS seem wrong. Particularly disturbing in this campaign is the fact that the theme of‘risky sex’has been extended all the way to lesbians, even though their risk to acquire AIDS sexually is non-existent to minuscule. We argue that actual harm is done to women by this exaggeration of their risk of contracting AIDS sexually. The scare has led to misappropriations of scarce health care funds. AIDS disproportionately affects women who inject drugs, and who suffer other diseases, poverty and malnutrition. It would have been better to concentrate health care efforts in this area instead of‘educating’women not at risk for AIDS how to prevent the acquisition of this disease. Unjustifiable AIDS anxiety has been created in women and has resulted in millions of unnecessary HIV-tests, and many broken relationships. This anxiety has inevitably reduced the pleasure of having sex for many women. We reject the kind of‘victim ideology’that lies at the heart of this strategy which has, unfortunately, been supported by a number of influential feminist ethicists. (shrink)

This article examines the way in which some biomedical ethicists have constructed sexually transmitted AIDS as a significant threat to women's health. We demonstrate that the familiar claim that‘women are the fastest growing group'— whether of HIV‐infected or of AIDS patients — is misleading because it obscures the distinction between proportional rate of growth and absolute increase. Feminist ethicists have suggested that misogyny of a male dominated health care system has led to underreporting of women AIDS cases in order to (...) support these feminists’claim of AIDS being a real threat to women's health. Given the apparent rarity of tertiary transmissions of AIDS, the assertion that most or even many women are at significant risk for AIDS seem wrong. Particularly disturbing in this campaign is the fact that the theme of‘risky sex’has been extended all the way to lesbians, even though their risk to acquire AIDS sexually is non‐existent to minuscule. We argue that actual harm is done to women by this exaggeration of their risk of contracting AIDS sexually. The scare has led to misappropriations of scarce health care funds. AIDS disproportionately affects women who inject drugs, and who suffer other diseases, poverty and malnutrition. It would have been better to concentrate health care efforts in this area instead of‘educating’women not at risk for AIDS how to prevent the acquisition of this disease. Unjustifiable AIDS anxiety has been created in women and has resulted in millions of unnecessary HIV‐tests, and many broken relationships. This anxiety has inevitably reduced the pleasure of having sex for many women. We reject the kind of‘victim ideology’that lies at the heart of this strategy which has, unfortunately, been supported by a number of influential feminist ethicists. (shrink)

This article examines the way in which some biomedical ethicists have constructed sexually transmitted AIDS as a significant threat to women's health. We demonstrate that the familiar claim that‘women are the fastest growing group'— whether of HIV‐infected or of AIDS patients — is misleading because it obscures the distinction between proportional rate of growth and absolute increase. Feminist ethicists have suggested that misogyny of a male dominated health care system has led to underreporting of women AIDS cases in order to (...) support these feminists’claim of AIDS being a real threat to women's health. Given the apparent rarity of tertiary transmissions of AIDS, the assertion that most or even many women are at significant risk for AIDS seem wrong. Particularly disturbing in this campaign is the fact that the theme of‘risky sex’has been extended all the way to lesbians, even though their risk to acquire AIDS sexually is non‐existent to minuscule. We argue that actual harm is done to women by this exaggeration of their risk of contracting AIDS sexually. The scare has led to misappropriations of scarce health care funds. AIDS disproportionately affects women who inject drugs, and who suffer other diseases, poverty and malnutrition. It would have been better to concentrate health care efforts in this area instead of‘educating’women not at risk for AIDS how to prevent the acquisition of this disease. Unjustifiable AIDS anxiety has been created in women and has resulted in millions of unnecessary HIV‐tests, and many broken relationships. This anxiety has inevitably reduced the pleasure of having sex for many women. We reject the kind of‘victim ideology’that lies at the heart of this strategy which has, unfortunately, been supported by a number of influential feminist ethicists. (shrink)

Social philosophy at the end of the twentieth century must be prefixed by what it follows. It has become commonplace to describe our moment as postmodern and post-structuralist, perhaps also post-Marxian. While true enough, our situation more specifically must be post-Lacan, post-Althusser, post-Foucault, and post-Critical Theory. A number of theorists highlight the context this dissertation places itself in, but Slavoj Žižek and Judith Butler should be emphasized in this regard. The positive project of this dissertation begins with radical doubts about (...) the operation of epistemic truth in subjectivity and in language. The dissertation is a series of case studies in the modes of failure of truth, and of the manner in which ideology functions within the void left by the necessary absence of truth. It has a political project of determining what forms counter-hegemony can take absent a traditional assumption of a solid ground for veracity. (shrink)

The hysteria and misconceptions about AIDS which are fostered and held by the popular press have been accepted uncritically by many bioethicists, who have not bothered to explore popular empirical claims in sufficient depth. As a result, and because ethicists attempt tosell moral problems in a manner not much different from the way the popular press attempt tosell newspapers, artificial dilemmas have been produced in professional journals. We concentrate on just one popular misconception about AIDS-that the hetersexual incidence of the (...) syndrome is widespread-and showhow bioethicists' unreflective acceptance of this myth has led them to make conceptual and practical errors. (shrink)

Ranging from miniaturized biological robots to organoids, multi-cellular engineered living systems (M-CELS) pose complex ethical and societal challenges. Some of these challenges, such as how to best distribute risks and benefits, are likely to arise in the development of any new technology. Other challenges arise specifically because of the particular characteristics of M-CELS. For example, as an engineered living system becomes increasingly complex, it may provoke societal debate about its moral considerability, perhaps necessitating protection from harm or recognition of positive (...) moral and legal rights, particularly if derived from cells of human origin. The use of emergence-based principles in M-CELS development may also create unique challenges, making the technology difficult to fully control or predict in the laboratory as well as in applied medical or environmental settings. In response to these challenges, we argue that the M-CELS community has an obligation to systematically address the ethical and societal aspects of research and to seek input from and accountability to a broad range of stakeholders and publics. As a newly developing field, M-CELS has a significant opportunity to integrate ethically responsible norms and standards into its research and development practices from the start. With the aim of seizing this opportunity, we identify two general kinds of salient ethical issues arising from M-CELS research, and then present a set of commitments to and strategies for addressing these issues. If adopted, these commitments and strategies would help define M-CELS as not only an innovative field, but also as a model for responsible research and engineering. (shrink)

Here the philosopher and physicist David Z Albert argues, among other things, that the difference between past and future can be understood as a mechanical phenomenon of nature and that quantum mechanics makes it impossible to present the entirety of what can be said about the world as a narrative of “befores” and “afters.”.

Once upon a time, the twentieth-century investigations of the behaviors of sub-atomic particles were thought to have established that there can be no such thing as an objective, observer-independent, scientifically realist, empirically adequate picture of the physical world.

Presentists, who believe that only present objects exist, face a problem concerning truths about the past. Presentists should (but cannot) locate truth-makers for truths about the past. What can presentists say in response? We identify two rival factions ‘upstanding’ and ‘nefarious’ presentists. Upstanding presentists aim to meet the challenge, positing presently existing truth-makers for truths about the past; nefarious presentists aim to shirk their responsibilities, using the language of truth-maker theory but without paying any ontological price. We argue that presentists (...) should be nefarious presentists. (shrink)

David Bohm was one of the foremost scientific thinkers and philosophers of our time. Although deeply influenced by Einstein, he was also, more unusually for a scientist, inspired by mysticism. Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s he made contact with both J. Krishnamurti and the Dalai Lama whose teachings helped shape his work. In both science and philosophy, Bohm's main concern was with understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular. In this classic work he (...) develops a theory of quantum physics which treats the totality of existence as an unbroken whole. Writing clearly and without technical jargon, he makes complex ideas accessible to anyone interested in the nature of reality. (shrink)

Better Never to Have Been argues for a number of related, highly provocative, views: (1) Coming into existence is always a serious harm. (2) It is always wrong to have children. (3) It is wrong not to abort fetuses at the earlier stages of gestation. (4) It would be better if, as a result of there being no new people, humanity became extinct. These views may sound unbelievable--but anyone who reads Benatar will be obliged to take them seriously.

It is argued that certain recent advances in the construction of a theory of the collapses of Quantum Mechanical wave functions suggest the possibility of new and improved foundations for statistical mechanics, foundations in which epistemic considerations play no role.

This book uncovers the lost history of Christianity's encounters with Pythagorean ideas before the Renaissance. David Albertson skillfully examines ancient and medieval theologians, particularly Thierry of Chartres and Nicholas of Cusa, who successfully reconceived the Trinity and the Incarnation within the framework of Greek number theory. David Albertson challenges modern assumptions about the complex relationship between religion and science.

This paper argues that higher-order doubt generates an epistemic dilemma. One has a higher-order doubt with regards to P insofar as one justifiably withholds belief as to what attitude towards P is justified. That is, one justifiably withholds belief as to whether one is justified in believing, disbelieving, or withholding belief in P. Using the resources provided by Richard Feldman’s recent discussion of how to respect one’s evidence, I argue that if one has a higher-order doubt with regards to P, (...) then one is not justified in having any attitude towards P. Otherwise put: No attitude towards the doubted proposition respects one’s higher-order doubt. I argue that the most promising response to this problem is to hold that when one has a higher-order doubt about P, the best one can do to respect such a doubt is to simply have no attitude towards P. Higher-order doubt is thus much more rationally corrosive than non-higher-order doubt, as it undermines the possibility of justifiably having any attitude towards the doubted proposition. (shrink)

David and Mary Norton present the definitive scholarly edition of Hume's Treatise, one of the greatest philosophical works ever written. This set comprises the two volumes of texts and editorial material, which are also available for purchase separately. David Hume is one of the greatest of philosophers. Today he probably ranks highest of all British philosophers in terms of influence and philosophical standing. His philosophical work ranges across morals, the mind, metaphysics, epistemology, religion, and aesthetics; he had broad (...) interests not only in philosophy as it is now conceived but in history, politics, economics, religion, and the arts. He was a master of English prose. The Clarendon Hume Edition will include all of his works except his History of England and minor historical writings. It is the only thorough critical edition, and will provide a far more extensive scholarly treatment than any previous editions. This edition offers authoritative annotation, bibliographical information, and indexes, and draws upon the major advances in textual scholarship that have been made since the publication of earlier editions - advances both in the understanding of editorial principle and practice and in knowledge of the history of Hume's own texts. (shrink)

David B. Wong proposes that there can be a plurality of true moralities, moralities that exist across different traditions and cultures, all of which address facets of the same problem: how we are to live well together. Wong examines a wide array of positions and texts within the Western canon as well as in Chinese philosophy, and draws on philosophy, psychology, evolutionary theory, history, and literature, to make a case for the importance of pluralism in moral life, and to (...) establish the virtues of acceptance and accommodation. Wong's point is that there is no single value or principle or ordering of values and principles that offers a uniquely true path for human living, but variations according to different contexts that carry within them a common core of human values. We should thus be modest about our own morality, learn from other approaches, and accommodate different practices in our pluralistic society. (shrink)

We discuss two recent attempts two solve Schrodinger's cat paradox. One is the modal interpretation developed by Kochen, Healey, Dieks, and van Fraassen. It allows for an observable which pertains to a system to possess a value even when the system is not in an eigenstate of that observable. The other is a recent theory of the collapse of the wave function due to Ghirardi, Rimini, and Weber. It posits a dynamics which has the effect of collapsing the state of (...) macroscopic systems. We argue that the modal interpretation cannot account for non-accurate measurements and that both accounts have the consequence that in ordinary measurement situations the observables that ends up well defined are not quite the ones that we want to be well defined. (shrink)

What ontology does realism about the quantum state suggest? The main extant view in contemporary philosophy of physics is wave-function realism . We elaborate the sense in which wave-function realism does provide an ontological picture, and defend it from certain objections that have been raised against it. However, there are good reasons to be dissatisfied with wave-function realism, as we go on to elaborate. This motivates the development of an opposing picture: what we call spacetime state realism , a view (...) which takes the states associated to spacetime regions as fundamental. This approach enjoys a number of beneficial features, although, unlike wave-function realism, it involves non-separability at the level of fundamental ontology. We investigate the pros and cons of this non-separability, arguing that it is a quite acceptable feature, even one which proves fruitful in the context of relativistic covariance. A companion paper discusses the prospects for combining a spacetime-based ontology with separability, along lines suggested by Deutsch and Hayden. (shrink)

Contrary to what many philosophers believe, Calvinism neither makes the problem of evil worse nor is it obviously refuted by the presence of evil and suffering in our world. Or so most of the authors in this book claim. While Calvinism has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years amongst theologians and laypersons, many philosophers have yet to follow suit. The reason seems fairly clear: Calvinism, many think, cannot handle the problem of evil with the same kind of plausibility as other (...) more popular views of the nature of God and the nature of God's relationship with His creation. This book seeks to challenge that untested assumption. With clarity and rigor, this collection of essays seeks to fill a significant hole in the literature on the problem of evil. (shrink)

I distinguish between two conceptually different kinds of physical space: a space of ordinary material bodies, which is the space of points at which I could imaginably place the tip of my finger, or the center of a billiard-ball, and a space of elementary physical determinables, which is the smallest space of points such that stipulating what is happening at each one of those points, at every time, amounts to an exhaustive physical history of the universe. In all classical physical (...) theories, these two spaces happen to coincide – and what we mean by calling a theory “classical”, and all we mean by calling a theory “classical”, is precisely that these two spaces coincide. But once the distinction between these two spaces in on the table, it becomes clear that there is no logical or conceptual reason why they must coincide – and it turns out that a very simple way of pulling them apart from one another gives us quantum mechanics. (shrink)

[David Papineau] This paper disputes the common assumption that the normativity of conceptual judgement poses a problem for naturalism. My overall strategy is to argue that norms of judgement derive from moral or personal values, particularly when such values are attached to the end of truth. While there are philosophical problems associated with both moral and personal values, they are not special to the realm of judgement, nor peculiar to naturalist philosophies. This approach to the normativity of judgement is (...) made possible by naturalist views of truth, that is, views which do not presuppose normativity in explaining truth. /// [Julia Tanney] This paper attempts to describe why it is not possible to account for normative phenomena in non-normative terms. It argues that Papineau's attempt to locate norms of judgement 'outside' content, grounded in an individual's desires or reasons, mislocates the normativity that is thought to resist appropriation within a 'world that conceives nature as the realm of law'. It agrees, however, that a theory of content that locates norms 'inside' content will not be forthcoming-at least if this is to require fashioning the norms that in some sense govern judgment or thought into individually necessary conditions for contentful states. (shrink)

Aron Gurwitsch’s theory of the structure and dynamics of consciousness has much to offer contemporary theorizing about consciousness and its basis in the embodied brain. On Gurwitsch’s account, as we develop it, the field of consciousness has a variable sized focus or "theme" of attention surrounded by a structured periphery of inattentional contents. As the field evolves, its contents change their status, sometimes smoothly, sometimes abruptly. Inner thoughts, a sense of one’s body, and the physical environment are dominant field contents. (...) These ideas can be linked with (and help unify) contemporary theories about the neural correlates of consciousness, inattention, the small world structure of the brain, meta-stable dynamics, embodied cognition, and predictive coding in the brain. (shrink)

David Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, first published in 1779, is one of the most influential works in the philosophy of religion and the most artful instance of philosophical dialogue since the dialogues of Plato. It presents a fictional conversation between a sceptic, an orthodox Christian, and a Newtonian theist concerning evidence for the existence of an intelligent cause of nature based on observable features of the world. This new edition presents it together with several of Hume's other, shorter (...) writings about religion, and with brief selections from the work of Pierre Bayle, who influenced both Hume's views on religion and the dialectical style of the Dialogues. The volume is completed by an introduction which sets the Dialogues in its philosophical and historical contexts. (shrink)

Die theoretische Logik, auch mathematische oder symbolische Logik genannt, ist eine Ausdehnung der fonnalen Methode der Mathematik auf das Gebiet der Logik. Sie wendet fUr die Logik eine ahnliche Fonnel­ sprache an, wie sie zum Ausdruck mathematischer Beziehungen schon seit langem gebrauchlich ist. In der Mathematik wurde es heute als eine Utopie gelten, wollte man beim Aufbau einer mathematischen Disziplin sich nur der gewohnlichen Sprache bedienen. Die groBen Fortschritte, die in der Mathematik seit der Antike gemacht worden sind, sind zum (...) wesentlichen Teil mit dadurch bedingt, daB es gelang, einen brauchbaren und leistungsfahigen Fonnalismus zu finden. - Was durch die Formel­ sprache in der Mathematik erreicht wird, das solI auch in der theoretischen Logik durch diese erzielt werden, namlich eine exakte, wissenschaftliche Behandlung ihres Gegenstandes. Die logischen Sachverhalte, die zwischen Urteilen, Begriffen usw. bestehen, finden ihre Darstellung durch Formeln, deren Interpretation frei ist von den Unklarheiten, die beim sprachlichen Ausdruck leicht auftreten konnen. Der Dbergang zu logischen Folgerungen, wie er durch das SchlieBen geschieht, wird in seine letzten Elemente zerlegt und erscheint als fonnale Umgestaltung der Ausgangsfonneln nach gewissen Regeln, die den Rechenregeln in der Algebra analog sind; das logische Denken findet sein Abbild in einem LogikkalkUl. Dieser Kalkiil macht die erfolgreiche Inangriffnahme von Problemen moglich, bei denen das rein inhaltliche Denken prinzipiell versagt. Zu diesen gehort z. B. (shrink)

Terry Eagleton is the foremost Marxist cultural theorist of our time. In the first book-length study of this highly influential figure, David Alderson provides detailed discussions of Eagleton's Marxism and his engagements with postmodernism, as well as an evaluation of his interventions in Irish Studies. Each of the chapters in this important intervention in current theoretical debates offers accessible contextualization of the key issues and provides detailed analyses of Eagleton's literary criticism. Alderson shows that the complex relations between nature, (...) culture and ideology, body, subjectivity and authority are at the heart of Eagleton's ethical and political concerns. He goes on to demonstrate that these relations inform the theorist's critical examinations of such literary works as Wuthering Heights and The Merchant of Venice, and his treatment of W.B. Yeats and Oscar Wilde. (shrink)