This article considers the ways in which a liberal society ought to view the potential to cognitively or physically enhance children. At present, the dominant approach in the literature is to leave this decision to parents. I suggest that the parental choice approach is often inadequate and fails to account properly for the interests of children and wider society in enhancement decisions. Instead I suggest that the state should play a greater role in determining when, and how, to enhance. To (...) make this case, I compare the case of enhancement with existing practices of education, an area in which the state already plays a significant role. Finally I suggest that some concerns with a statist approach are not as serious as has been argued. (shrink)

This paper explores the debate between perfectionists and anti-perfectionists in the context of children. It suggests that the most influential and compelling arguments in favour of anti-perfectionism are adult-centric. It does this by considering four leading reasons given in favour of anti-perfectionism and shows that none apply in the case of children. In so doing, the paper defends a perfectionist account of upbringing from the attacks made against perfectionism more generally. Furthermore, because the refutation of the various anti-perfectionist arguments are (...) made exclusively dealing with children, the paper suggests that the perfectionist view of upbringing is compatible with anti-perfectionist restrictions on dealing with adults. This dual view combining perfectionism for children and anti-perfectionism for adults is referred to as restricted perfectionism. (shrink)

This article considers the justification of laws to religious citizens. It does via a consideration of the debate surround the teaching of Intelligent Design. It argues that one widely held view of political morality, public reason liberalism, requires that schools should allow teaching ID. This is contrary to the views of many defenders of this theory. I show that this argument reveals a deep problem with public reason liberalism, and that it undermines the judgement of the court in the high (...) profile case of Kitzmiller vs Dover. (shrink)

This paper explores the debate between perfectionists and anti-perfectionists in the context of children. It suggests that the most influential and compelling arguments in favour of anti-perfectionism are adult-centric. It does this by considering four leading reasons given in favour of anti-perfectionism and shows that none apply in the case of children. In so doing, the paper defends a perfectionist account of upbringing from the attacks made against perfectionism more generally. Furthermore, because the refutation of the various anti-perfectionist arguments are (...) made exclusively dealing with children, the paper suggests that the perfectionist view of upbringing is compatible with anti-perfectionist restrictions on dealing with adults. This dual view combining perfectionism for children and anti-perfectionism for adults is referred to as restricted perfectionism. (shrink)

This article considers the morality of children's activism, in particular via participation in political protests. In Section 3 of the article I consider whether children can be competent to engage in activism. I argue that even if we believe children are not competent to vote it will still be true that many children are indeed competent to engage in activism. In Section 4 I consider the wellbeing effects of activism on children. I argue that political activity stands in tension with (...) achieving the intrinsic goods of childhood, meaning there is an important sense in which activism is bad for children. However, I show that these negative outcomes flow from being made aware of the injustices in society, and that for politicised children activism is often highly beneficial. (shrink)

Both patients and clinicians frequently report problems around communicating and assessing pain. Patients express dissatisfaction with their doctors and doctors often find exchanges with chronic pain patients difficult and frustrating. This chapter thus asks how we could improve pain communication and thereby enhance outcomes for chronic pain patients. We argue that improving matters will require a better appreciation of the complex meaning of pain terms and of the variability and flexibility in how individuals think about pain. We start by examining (...) the various accounts of the meaning of pain terms that have been suggested within philosophy and suggest that, while each of the accounts captures something important about our use of pain terms, none is completely satisfactory. We propose that pain terms should be viewed as communicating complex meanings, which may change across different communicative contexts, and this in turn suggests that we should view our ordinary thought about pain as similarly complex. We then sketch what a view taking seriously this variability in meaning and thought might look like, which we call the “polyeidic” view. According to this view, individuals tacitly occupy divergent stances across a range of different dimensions of pain, with one agent, for instance, thinking of pain in a much more “bodycentric” kind of way, while another thinks of pain in a much more "mindcentric” way. The polyeidic view attempts to expand the multidimensionality recognised in, e.g., biopsychosocial models in two directions: first, it holds that the standard triumvirate— dividing sensory/cognitive/affective factors— needs to be enriched in order to capture important distinctions within the social and psychological dimensions. Second, the polyeidic view attempts to explain (at least in part) why modulation of experience by these social and psychological factors is possible in the first place. It does so by arguing that because the folk concept of pain is complex, different weightings of the different parts of the concept can modulate pain experience in a variety of ways. Finally, we argue that adopting a polyeidic approach to the meaning of pain would have a range of measurable clinical outcomes. (shrink)

This book on the philosophy of science argues for an empiricism, opposed to the tradition of David Hume, in which singular rather than general causal claims are primary; causal laws express facts about singular causes whereas the general causal claims of science are ascriptions of capacities or causal powers, capacities to make things happen. Taking science as measurement, Cartwright argues that capacities are necessary for science and that these can be measured, provided suitable conditions are met. There are case studies (...) from both econometrics and quantum mechanics. (shrink)

This essay is the first act of a two-act play. My ultimate aim is to defend a simple proposition: time passes. To be more precise, I want to defend the claim that the passage of time is an intrinsic asymmetry in the structure of space-time itself, an asymmetry that has no spatial counterpart and is metaphysically independent of the material contents of space-time. It is independent, for example, of the entropy gradient of the universe. This view is part of common-sense, (...) but has been widely attacked by philosophers. The passage of time, we are told, is a myth, an illusion, even an incoherent notion. Because the notion that time passes is common sense, it perhaps requires little positive defence; if there are no weighty objections to the view, it ought to be accepted. So the first, and more important, act of the play is defusing the arguments which have been used to cast doubt on the passage of time. I have positive arguments to give, but not having space for them here, I will confine myself to an examination of the common philosophical arguments that have been used to cast doubt on the passage of time. (shrink)

Some machine learning models, in particular deep neural networks (DNNs), are not very well understood; nevertheless, they are frequently used in science. Does this lack of understanding pose a problem for using DNNs to understand empirical phenomena? Emily Sullivan has recently argued that understanding with DNNs is not limited by our lack of understanding of DNNs themselves. In the present paper, we will argue, _contra_ Sullivan, that our current lack of understanding of DNNs does limit our ability to understand with (...) DNNs. Sullivan’s claim hinges on which notion of understanding is at play. If we employ a weak notion of understanding, then her claim is tenable, but rather weak. If, however, we employ a strong notion of understanding, particularly explanatory understanding, then her claim is not tenable. (shrink)

We argue that corporate social performance (CSP) has become a legitimizing identity (brand) for researchers in the business and society field, but it has not developed into a viable theoretical or operational construct. Because measuring CSP is contingent on the operational setting (industry, issues, etc.), it is difficult to produce worthwhile comparisons across studies or generalizing beyond the boundaries of a specific study. The authors suggest that researchers remove the CSP label from their operational variables, and instead narrowly define their (...) studies in operational terms. They provide aworking example of the proposed research direction by examining the theory underlying the popular CSP–financial performance (FP) debate. In the authors’ conceptualization, stakeholder action provides the underlying logic connecting CSP-FP, and we recast the research question to investigate the conditions under which stakeholders will take action to influence the focal organization and when those actions will influence the CSP-FP link. (shrink)

Much recent work on the ethics of new biomedical technologies is committed to hidden, contestable views about the nature of biological reality. This selection of essays by Tim Lewens explores and scrutinises these biological foundations, and includes work on human enhancement, synthetic biology, and justice in healthcare decision-making.

The Divine Attributes explores the traditional theistic concept of God as the most perfect being possible, discussing the main divine attributes which flow from this understanding - personhood, transcendence, immanence, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, perfect goodness, unity, simplicity and necessity. It argues that the atemporalist's conception of God is to be preferred over the temporalist's on the grounds of perfect being theology, but that, if it were to be the case that the temporal God existed, rather than the atemporal God, He'd (...) still be 'perfect enough' to count as the God of Theism. (shrink)

The meaning and truth conditions for claims about physical modality and causation have been considered problematic since Hume’s empiricist critique. But the underlying semantic commitments that follow from Hume’s empiricism about ideas have long been abandoned by the philosophical community. Once the consequences of that abandonment are properly appreciated, the problems of physical modality and causal locutions fall away, and can be painlessly solved.

Sperm, eggs and embryos are made up of more than genes, and there are indications that changes to non‐genetic structures in these elements of the germline can also be inherited. It is, therefore, a mistake to treat phrases like ‘germline inheritance’ and ‘genetic inheritance’ as simple synonyms, and bioethical discussion should expand its focus beyond alterations to the genome when considering the ethics of germline modification. Moreover, additional research on non‐genetic inheritance draws attention to a variety of means whereby differences (...) can be inherited in offspring generations that do not rely on differences in germline structures. Research on these diverse forms of inheritance challenges the notion that there is some special form of ethical concern that falls on germline interventions in general, and on interventions to the nuclear genome within the germline in particular. (shrink)

Truth and Paradox largely consists of three connected technical projects together with a more general account of the nature of truth. The first project is the most familiar: providing an account of how logically complex sentences get assigned truth values on the basis of the truth values assigned to the logically atomic sentences. The second is construction of valid, syntactically specifiable inference rules for a language that includes the familiar logical connectives and the truth predicate. The third is an account (...) of the normative rules governing the assertion of sentences. Let me sketch these in order. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Limits for Uncommunicative Partners How Much Does a Particle Need to Know? Evaluation of Results Simulators Does Nature Simulate?

ABSTRACT In “Temporal Passage and the ‘No Alternate Possibilities Argument’”, Jonathan Tallant takes up one objection based on the observation that if time passes at the rate of one second per second there is no other possible rate at which it could pass. The argument rests on the premise that if time passes at some rate then it could have passed at some other rate. Since no alternative rate seems to be coherent, one concludes that time cannot pass at all. (...) The obvious weak point of the NAP is the premise itself. (shrink)

Any empirical physical theory must have implications for observable events at the scale of everyday life, even though that scale plays no special role in the basic ontology of the theory itself. The fundamental physical scales are microscopic for the “local beables” of the theory and universal scale for the non-local beables. This situation creates strong demands for any precise quantum theory. This paper examines those constraints, and illustrates some ways in which they can be met.

The pressure of oversight and scrutiny in the business-to-business purchasing process has the potential to cause psychological distress in purchasing professionals, giving rise to apprehensions about being ethically inappropriate. Utilizing depth interviews with public sector purchasing professionals in a phenomenological approach, the authors develop the notion of ethical purchasing dissonance to explain the psychological distress. An inductively derived conceptual framework is presented for ethical purchasing dissonance that explores its potential antecedents and consequences; illustrative propositions are presented, and managerial implications are (...) discussed. (shrink)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that quantum mechanics is (somehow or other) screwy. That is, the ‘picture of the world’ presented by quantum mechanics i.

This paper presents hitherto unpublished writings of Kurt Gödel concerning logical, epistemological, theological, and physical antinomies, which he generally considered as “the most interesting facts in modern logic,” and which he used as a basis for his famous metamathematical results. After investigating different perspectives on the notion of the logical structure of the antinomies and presenting two “antinomies of the intensional,” a new kind of paradox closely related to Gödel’s ontological proof for the existence of God is introduced and completed (...) by a compilation of further theological antinomies. Finally, after a presentation of unpublished general philosophical remarks concerning the antinomies, Gödel’s type-theoretic variant of Leibniz’Monadology, discovered in his notes on the foundations of quantum mechanics, is examined. Most of the material presented here has been transcribed from the Gabelsberger shorthand system for the first time. (shrink)

Synthetic biology is often described as a project that applies rational design methods to the organic world. Although humans have influenced organic lineages in many ways, it is nonetheless reasonable to place synthetic biology towards one end of a continuum between purely ‘blind’ processes of organic modification at one extreme, and wholly rational, design-led processes at the other. An example from evolutionary electronics illustrates some of the constraints imposed by the rational design methodology itself. These constraints reinforce the limitations of (...) the synthetic biology ideal, limitations that are often freely acknowledged by synthetic biology’s own practitioners. The synthetic biology methodology reflects a series of constraints imposed on finite human designers who wish, as far as is practicable, to communicate with each other and to intervene in nature in reasonably targeted and well-understood ways. This is better understood as indicative of an underlying awareness of human limitations, rather than as expressive of an objectionable impulse to mastery over nature. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Aidan Lyon and Mark Colyvan have proposed an explanation of the structure of the bee's honeycomb based on the mathematical Honeycomb Conjecture. This explanation has instantly become one of the standard examples in the philosophical debate on mathematical explanations of physical phenomena. In this critical note, I argue that the explanation is not scientifically adequate. The reason for this is that the explanation fails to do justice to the essentially three-dimensional structure of the bee's honeycomb.

We examine the occurrence of ethicsrelated terms in 10-K annual reports over 1994-2006 and offer empirical observations on the conceptual framework of Erhard et al. 2007). We use a pre-Sarbanes-Oxley sample subset to compare the occurrence of ethics-related terms in our 10-K data with samples from other studies that consider virtue-related phenomena. We find that firms using ethics-related terms are more likely to be "sin" stocks, are more likely to be the object of class action lawsuits, and are more likely (...) to score poorly on measures of corporate governance. The consistency of our results across these alternative measures of ethical behavior suggests that managers who portray their firm as "ethical" in 10-K reports are more likely to be systematically misleading the public. These results are consistent with the integrity-performance paradox. (shrink)

Over the past decade, corporate scandals have proliferated. These scandals, along with the emergence of the #MeToo movement and Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) mandates, have increased the scrutiny of corporations’ ethics culture. How have companies responded in terms of the language appearing in their public ethics documents? We compare the Code of Ethics in 2008 versus 2019 for a sample of S&P 500 firms. For the vast majority of firms, their Code of Ethics lengthened, with the average 2019 (...) code having 29% more words (about 1760 words) than the 2008 average. The language of the codes has also changed. Words such as _bribery, corruption, sustainability, speak up, bullying, slavery,_ and _human rights_ all saw significantly higher usage in the later period. We review possible reasons for the dramatic changes and suggest what questions remain about the motivations behind them. Whether the changes we observe are primarily intrinsically motivated or simply market responses to public pressures is yet to be determined. What is clear from our findings is that society seems to be entering a new age of increasingly moral—or, at least, moralized—corporate governance. (shrink)

Detlef Dürr was a remarkable figure in many different ways. I recall some adventures we had with him in Abu Dhabi.

Explores the role of eliminating fear in Epicurean ethics and physics, focusing on techniques to eliminate the fear of death and the fear of the gods. Includes a taxonomy of types of fear and types of therapy for fear.

The principal aim of this article is to examine the relations between positioning and belonging in terms of the potential for critique of existing social conditions. The underlying purpose is to inform social scientific engagement with social life in order to illuminate the potential for social transformation via reflexivity. These discussions will be informed by the division of reflexivity into two dimensions: endogenous and referential. It is argued that this enables the social scientist to highlight the pre-reflexive world and render (...) it problematic and demonstrates how the objectivity of the social world is both a presupposition and ongoing achievement of everyday interactions. To that extent, the possibility for social conditions to be otherwise is then open to scrutiny. (shrink)

In On Liberty, Mill says that ‘the same causes which make … [a person] a Churchman in London, would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin’. Despite Mill's not having drawn it out, there is an argument implicit in his comments that is germane to both externalist and internalist understandings of the epistemic justification of religious beliefs, even though some of these understandings would not wish to use the term ‘epistemic justification’ to refer to whatever it is (...) that they suggest must be added to true belief for it to count as knowledge. In this paper, we shall articulate this argument; examine how it challenges those religious believers who would wish to claim their religious beliefs as knowledge; and consider what they may do to meet this challenge. (shrink)