The “center” is a key concept in early Chinese philosophy. While readings of the Laozi 老子 and Zhuangzi 莊子 often rely on concepts of “nature” and the “natural”, this article proposes the “center” as an interpretive key that informs discussion of contemporary issues while remaining faithful to the core concerns of the texts. While both texts use the “center” to promote a philosophy of moderation, in the Laozi, “holding to the center” (shou zhong 守中) refers to a focus on one’s (...) inner center to counteract the dangers of the external, whereas the Zhuangzi speaks of a centeredness between inner cultivation and outward socialization. In the Laozi, we examine images of one-, two- and three-dimensional centers as well as the bodily practice of focusing on the inner stomach rather than the outward-looking eyes. Our discussion of the Zhuangzi focuses on occupying the “center” (zhongyang 中央) between extreme inward and outward modes of being. The result is a philosophy of moderation that fosters a sense of humility, balance, and impartiality, cautioning against a drive for overreaching solutions for all humanity, and tempering attempts to conform to extreme “naturalness” or reject all “artificiality”. (shrink)

This chapter describes an economic ethic implicit in the Daoist tradition that envisages economic health, not as synonymous with growth, but akin to stability. The Daoist notion of health aspires to achieving longevity of body, of political rule, and, in contemporary applications, of our natural environment. Longevity is possible through alignment with patterns of nature, and by shunning anthropocentric urges to dominate. In the context of contemporary economic discussion, the Daoist maxim of ‘noncoercive action’, or wuwei, is often likened to (...) the notion of laissez-faire in classical liberal economics. While both traditions advocate a lack of intervention, Smithian classical economics views self-interested desire as a positive force for increasing economic prosperity within society. By contrast, the Daoists of ancient China cautioned against excessive desire and self-interest. This chapter begins with a very brief history of Daoism and goes on to draw primarily from the core teachings of the Daoist tradition: the Zhuangzi and particularly the Daodejing. (shrink)

Drawing on the Confucian political philosophy of China, Roger Ames presents “family feeling” (xiao) as a candidate for a universal minimalist morality. Challenging certain conventional views in political philosophy that see family feeling as a threat to achieving an egalitarian level playing field, Ames underscores the ethical and political significance of family, advocating for the integration of familial sentiments into the political sphere. He addresses modern challenges, showing how diverse cultural expressions are allowed for within this philosophy’s pluralistic and locally (...) focused framework. This dynamic ethical perspective rooted in the shared sentiment of family feeling challenges us to critically reexamine Confucianism, China, and our entire geopolitical situation. (shrink)

In addition to the classical mode of classroom philosophy education that focuses on the history of philosophical thinking, methods of “doing” and “using” philosophy, including philosophical practice and philosophical drama can also form part of philosophy education. Such thinking and language exercises are introduced into activities of the academic philosophy cafe, Inner Mongolia University’s 1957 Coffee. Based on core activities of the philosophy cafe as well as the concept of “language game”, an additional language training project is being designed for (...) bilingual participants and language learners, especially for students in secondary education. A two-pronged approach of linguistic and philosophical foci encourages learners to sharpen their minds to the use of languages in the academic world. (shrink)

This paper discusses how a Platform for Philosophy Education can help to alleviate issues of alienation in the lives of university students. This is done through various personal cultivation and community building activities in the Academic Philosophy Café. The activities draw from philosophical traditions, including traditions with religious or “spiritual” elements. These encourage reflection on one’s place in the world. In addition, students and teachers cooperate to ensure the smooth running of the café and activities, which strengthens the community bond. (...) There is thus a “spiritual contract” formed between participants. In contrast to a written contract that binds parties by means of explicit rewards or sanctions, a “spiritual contract” is built on mutual understanding that higher-level needs will be met through the process of cooperation. Based upon this, a community is established that nourishes the lives of those on campus, benefits their wellbeing and strengthens their capacity to learn effectively. (shrink)

William James’s category of “first-hand religion” allows us to arrive at the religious from an internal and individual perspective, including in those activities and phenomena usually considered secular. B. B. King’s 1972 performance at Sing Sing Prison, documented by David Hoffman, brings both the prisoner audience and the performers to an “additional dimension” distinct from the hollowness of everyday (prison) life. In addition, the presence of this intense experience on the YouTube platform creates a fluid community of second-order observers, bound (...) not by any overarching belief but by observation of the experience itself. King’s performance is in the genre of blues music, which, in turn, has associations with African religious traditions. While the study of diverse religious traditions helps inform our understanding of the kinds of activities that might constitute the religious, this study takes individual experience as primary rather than as a manifestation of a particular tradition. (shrink)

This essay focuses on A Brief Response on the Controversies over Shangdi, Tianshen and Linghun by Niccolò Longobardo (1559–1654), a text that played a crucial role in the formation of European understanding of Chinese philosophy. Taken historically, the text is an important vehicle for the transmission of Chinese concepts into early modern European philosophy as well as a key intervention in the debate shaping the ideological premises of the Jesuit mission in China. It contains one of the first systematic accounts (...) of Chinese philosophy written by a European author. More importantly, it presents a narrative that links Mediterranean and Chinese intellectual history into a single historical current. In this way Longobardo plays a role analogous to the mapmaker who distorts three-dimensional spaces in order to project them together onto a two-dimensional plane. We present some of the peculiar shifts and emphases made by Longobardo in his reading of what seems to him a transhistorical current linking the Chinese and ancient Mediterranean philosophical milieus. In particular, we examine (1) the relationship between Longobardo’s attempt to situate Chinese thought in a global context and the choice to place special emphasis on the philosophy of Shao Yong 邵雍, treating him as a figure of primary importance among Song 宋 Neo-Confucian authors, and (2) the focus on the monist and cosmogonic aspects of Chinese thought, summarized by the “ten thousand things forming one body” (wanwuyiti 萬物一體) “axiom.”. (shrink)

Philosophy is presented in a wide range of forms, none of which can be convincingly claimed to be the “genuine” one. Historically speaking, there is not one “proper” way of doing philosophy, evidencing what may be called the social contingency of philosophy. This paper aims to provide a “critical” philosophy of today, in the Kantian sense of a philosophy that reflects on the conditions of its possibility, and thereby acknowledges the limitations they impose. Conceptually, our approach is grounded in Niklas (...) Luhmann’s social systems theory, in which “functional differentiation” and “second-order observation” are two crucial characteristics of modern society. The paper discusses how presentations of philosophy align themselves with the second-order observation mechanisms of the specific social systems in which they are “hosted.” This paper deals in particular with two such systems: academics and social media. These forms of presenting philosophy produce two different kinds of philosophy presenters: the expert and the influencer. (shrink)

The title of Gao Xinhua's 高新華 work contains two somewhat distinct elements: "Huang-Lao thought" (huanglao sixiang 黃老思想) and "Warring States to Early Han" (zhanguo zhi Han chu 戰國至漢初). They are distinct insofar as "Huang-Lao" takes on a different meaning when described based on the works of political philosophy--the task of roughly the first half of the book--and when traced through history in the thought of the political elite, as is the focus of the second half. Of course, they are not (...) entirely distinct and to some extent the historical Huang-Lao is a manifestation of the philosophical works. As Gao shows, however, the relationship between the two is far from simple. The book consists of an Introduction, four chapters--each containing three to five sections--and a short Conclusion. (shrink)

This chapter examines the possibility of using AI technologies to improve human moral reasoning and decision-making, especially in the context of purchasing and consumer decisions. We characterize such AI technologies as artificial ethics assistants (AEAs). We focus on just one part of the AI-aided moral improvement question: the case of the individual who wants to improve their morality, where what constitutes an improvement is evaluated by the individual’s own values. We distinguish three broad areas in which an individual might think (...) their own moral reasoning and decision-making could be improved: one’s actions, character, or other evaluable attributes fall short of one’s values and moral beliefs; one sometimes misjudges or is uncertain about what the right thing to do is in particular situations, given one’s values; one is uncertain about some fundamental moral questions or recognizes a possibility that some of one’s core moral beliefs and values are mistaken. We sketch why one might think that AI tools could be used to support moral improvement in those areas, and describe two types of assistance: preparatory assistance, including advice and training supplied in advance of moral deliberation; and on-the-spot assistance, including on-the-spot advice and facilitation of moral functioning over the course of moral deliberation. Then, we turn to some of the ethical issues that AEAs might raise, looking in particular at three under-appreciated problems posed by the use of AI for moral self-improvement: namely, reliance on sensitive moral data; the inescapability of outside influences on AEAs; and AEA usage prompting the user to adopt beliefs and make decisions without adequate reasons. (shrink)

Two centuries after they were published, Kant's ethical writings are as much admired and imitated as they have ever been, yet serious and long-standing accusations of internal incoherence remain unresolved. Onora O'Neill traces the alleged incoherences to attempt to assimilate Kant's ethical writings to modern conceptions of rationality, action and rights. When the temptation to assimilate is resisted, a strikingly different and more cohesive account of reason and morality emerges. Kant offers a `constructivist' vindication of reason and a moral (...) vision in which obligations are prior to rights and in which justice and virtue are linked. O'Neill begins by reconsidering Kant's conceptions of philosophical method, reason, freedom, automony and action. She then moves on to the more familiar terrain of interpretation of the Categorical Imperative, while in the last section she emphasises differences between Kant's ethics and recent 'Kantian' ethics, including the work of John Rawls and other contemporary liberal political philosophers. This reassessment will add significantly to the understanding of Kantian practical philosophy. (shrink)

We say we can no longer trust our public services, institutions or the people who run them. The professionals we have to rely on - politicians, doctors, scientists, businessmen and many others - are treated with suspicion. Their word is doubted, their motives questioned. Whether real or perceived, this crisis of trust has a debilitating impact on society and democracy. Can trust be restored by making people and institutions more accountable? Or do complex systems of accountability and control themselves damage (...) trust? Onora O'Neill challenges current approaches, investigates sources of deception in our society and re-examines questions of press freedom. 2002's Reith Lectures present a philosopher's view of trust and deception, and ask whether and how trust can be restored in a modern democracy. (shrink)

Why has autonomy been a leading idea in philosophical writing on bioethics, and why has trust been marginal? In this important book, Onora O'Neill suggests that the conceptions of individual autonomy so widely relied on in bioethics are philosophically and ethically inadequate, and that they undermine rather than support relations of trust. She shows how Kant's non-individualistic view of autonomy provides a stronger basis for an approach to medicine, science and biotechnology, and does not marginalize untrustworthiness, while also explaining (...) why trustworthy individuals and institutions are often undeservingly mistrusted. Her arguments are illustrated with issues raised by practices such as the use of genetic information by the police or insurers, research using human tissues, uses of new reproductive technologies, and media practices for reporting on medicine, science and technology. Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics will appeal to a wide range of readers in ethics, bioethics and related disciplines. (shrink)

Communication is complicated, and so is the ethics of communication. We communicate about innumerable topics, to varied audiences, using a gamut of technologies. The ethics of communication, therefore, has to address a wide range of technical, ethical and epistemic requirements. In this book, Onora O'Neill shows how digital technologies have made communication more demanding: they can support communication with huge numbers of distant and dispersed recipients; they can amplify or suppress selected content; and they can target or ignore selected (...) audiences. Often this is done anonymously, making it harder for readers and listeners, viewers and browsers, to assess which claims are true or false, reliable or misleading, flaky or fake. So how can we empower users to assess and evaluate digital communication, so that they can tell which standards it meets and which it flouts? That is the challenge which this book explores. (shrink)

[John Dupré] This paper attacks some prominent contemporary attempts to provide reductive accounts of ever wider areas of human behaviour. In particular, I shall address the claims of sociobiology to provide a universal account of human nature, and attempts to subsume ever wider domains of behaviour within the scope of economics. I shall also consider some recent suggestions as to how these approaches might be integrated. Having rejected the imperialistic ambitions of these approaches, I shall briefly advocate a more pluralistic (...) approach to the understanding of human behaviour, and one which leaves some space for the possibility of genuine human autonomy. /// [John O'Neill] One response to Dupré's criticism of rational choice theory's unifying aspirations is that it is aimed at over-ambitious versions of the theory. Immodesty about the scope of rational choice theory may look more plausible given suitable modesty in assumptions about the rational agent. The paper examines problems with one immodest version of the theory-public choice theory-and show how these shed light on problems in modest versions employing minimal assumptions about the preference structure of rational agents. However, while rational choice theory may fail in its unifying ambitions, I argue those aspirations are defensible. (shrink)

Towards Justice and Virtue challenges the rivalry between those who advocate only abstract, universal principles of justice and those who commend only the particularities of virtuous lives. Onora O'Neill traces this impasse to defects in underlying conceptions of reasoning about action. She proposes and vindicates a modest account of ethical reasoning and a reasoned way of answering the question 'who counts?', then uses these to construct linked accounts of principles by which we can move towards just institutions and virtuous (...) lives. (shrink)

Cameras, microphones, and other sensors continue to proliferate in the world around us. I offer a new metaphor for conceptualizing these technologies: they are _digital wormholes_, transmitting representations of human persons between disparate points in space–time. We frequently cannot tell when they are operational, what kinds of data they are collecting, where the data may reappear in the future, and how the data can be used against us. The wormhole metaphor makes the mysteriousness of digital sensors salient: digital sensors have (...) brought us to a strange place. If humans are to be capable of making sensible decisions while under observation by digital sensors, we must improve the epistemic position of potential sensor subjects. (shrink)

We live in a world confronted by mounting environmental problems; increasing global deforestation and desertification, loss of species diversity, pollution and global warming. In everyday life people mourn the loss of valued landscapes and urban spaces. Underlying these problems are conflicting priorities and values. Yet dominant approaches to policy-making seem ill-equipped to capture the various ways in which the environment matters to us. Environmental Values introduces readers to these issues by presenting, and then challenging, two dominant approaches to environmental decision-making, (...) one from environmental economics, the other from environmental philosophy. The authors present a sustained case for questioning the underlying ethical theories of both of these traditions. They defend a pluralistic alternative rooted in the rich everyday relations of humans to the environments they inhabit, providing a path for integrating human needs with environmental protection through an understanding of the narrative and history of particular places. The book examines the implications of this approach for policy issues such as biodiversity conservation and sustainability. Written in a clear and accessible style for an interdisciplinary audience, this volume will be ideal for student use in environmental courses in geography, economics, philosophy, politics and sociology. (shrink)

In this collection of essays Onora O'Neill explores and argues for an account of justice that is fundamentally cosmopolitan rather than civic, yet takes serious account of institutions and boundaries, and of human diversity and vulnerability. Starting from conceptions that are central to any account of justice - those of reason, action, judgement, coercion, obligations and rights - she discusses whether and how culturally or politically specific concepts and views, which limit the claims and scope of justice, can be (...) avoided. She then examines the demands and scope of just institutions, arguing that there are good reasons for taking the claims of distant strangers seriously, but that doing so points not to a world without boundaries but to one of porous boundaries and dispersed power. Bounds of Justice will be of interest to a wide range of readers in philosophy, politics and international relations. (shrink)

The fast pace of technological change necessitates new evaluative and deliberative tools. This article develops a general, functional approach to evaluating technological change, inspired by Nissenbaum’s theory of contextual integrity. Nissenbaum introduced the concept of contextual integrity to help analyze how technological changes can produce privacy problems. Reinterpreted, the concept of contextual integrity can aid our thinking about how technological changes affect the full range of human concerns and values—not only privacy. I propose a generalized concept of contextual integrity that (...) is applicable to a broader variety of circumstances, and I outline a new, general procedure for technological evaluation. Among the attractive features of the proposed approach to evaluating technological change are its context-sensitivity, adaptability, and principled presumptive conservatism, enabled by the mechanism the approach supplies for reevaluating existing practices, norms, and values. (shrink)

In this collection of essays Onora O'Neill explores and argues for an account of justice that is fundamentally cosmopolitan rather than civic, yet takes serious account of institutions and boundaries, and of human diversity and vulnerability. Starting from conceptions that are central to any account of justice - those of reason, action, judgement, coercion, obligations and rights - she discusses whether and how culturally or politically specific concepts and views, which limit the claims and scope of justice, can be (...) avoided. She then examines the demands and scope of just institutions, arguing that there are good reasons for taking the claims of distant strangers seriously, but that doing so points not to a world without boundaries but to one of porous boundaries and dispersed power. Bounds of Justice will be of interest to a wide range of readers in philosophy, politics and international relations. (shrink)

Trust is valuable when placed in trustworthy agents and activities, but damaging or costly when placed in untrustworthy agents and activities. So it is puzzling that much contemporary work on trust – such as that based on polling evidence – studies generic attitudes of trust in types of agent, institution or activity in complete abstraction from any account of trustworthiness. Information about others’ generic attitudes of trust or mistrust that take no account of evidence whether those attitudes are well or (...) ill placed can offer little or no help for those who aim to place or refuse trust well. Information about attitudes is evidently useful to those who aim to influence those who hold them, which explains why polls about attitudes are popular with political parties, advertisers and other campaigning organisations. But where we aim not to influence others, but to place and refuse trust intelligently we must link trust to trustworthiness, and must focus on evidence of honesty, competence and r... (shrink)

Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond features a collection of original essays that represent the first extended treatment of political philosopher John Rawls' idea of a property-owning democracy. Offers new and essential insights into Rawls's idea of "property-owning democracy" Addresses the proposed political and economic institutions and policies which Rawls's theory would require Considers radical alternatives to existing forms of capitalism Provides a major contribution to debates among progressive policymakers and activists about the programmatic direction progressive politics should take in the (...) near future. (shrink)

A collection of original essays that represent the first extended treatment of political philosopher John Rawls' idea of a property-owning democracy.

'Two things', wrote Kant, 'fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe: the starry heavens above and the moral law within'. Many would argue that since Kant's day, the study of the starry heavens has advanced while ethics has stagnated, and in particular that Kant's ethics offers an empty formalism that tells us nothing about how we should live. In Acting on Principle Onora O'Neill shows that Kantian ethics has practical as well as philosophical importance. First (...) published in 1975, the book is regarded as a classic account and defence of the Kantian ethical position. It addresses Kant's account of reasoning about action, in particular his controversial claim that the Categorical Imperative guides action and is basic to ethics and justice. This second edition offers a substantial new introduction and updated bibliography, and will be valuable for a wide readership in Kant studies and those studying ethics. (shrink)

One of the paradoxes of recent political and economic theory is that, in spite of a period of extended economic difficulty, there has been a growing consensus concerning the virtues of the market economy. In particular, there has been a trend in socialist theory to argue that not only are socialism and the market not incompatible, but that some version of market socialism is the only feasible, practicable, and ethically and politically desirable form of socialism. Notable proponents of this view (...) with whom this paper will be particularly concerned are Selucky, Nove and Hodgson. I will not, in this paper, address the question of whether the market and socialism are necessarily incompatible. Neither will I examine the whole gamut of political and ethical issues surrounding the relation of the market to democracy, freedom, individual rights, and so on – not because they are unimportant, but because they require more extended attention than I could give here. My concern will rather be with some of the economic arguments to which defenders of market socialism have appealed. (shrink)

This collection of essays brings together the central lines of thought in Onora O'Neill's work on Kant's philosophy, developed over many years. Challenging the claim that Kant's attempt to provide a critique of reason fails because it collapses into a dogmatic argument from authority, O'Neill shows why Kant held that we must construct, rather than assume, the authority of reason, and how this can be done by ensuring that anything we offer as reasons can be followed by others, (...) including others with whom we disagree. She argues that this constructivist view of reasoning is the clue to Kant's claims about knowledge, ethics and politics, as well as to his distinctive accounts of autonomy, the social contract, cosmopolitan justice and scriptural interpretation. Her essays are a distinctive and illuminating commentary on Kant's fundamental philosophical strategy and its implications, and will be a vital resource for scholars of Kant, ethics and philosophy of law. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Báñezian Grounding for Counterfactuals of Creaturely Freedom:A Response to James Dominic Rooney, O.P.Taylor Patrick O'NeillIntroductionIn a recently published article, James Rooney, O.P., critiques a fundamental aspect of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange's articulation of the relation between divine causality and creaturely freedom, which I also defended in my recent book.1 Specifically, Rooney argues that at least some of what Garrigou-Lagrange holds is rooted in a Molinist rather than Báñezian understanding of (...) human freedom and divine causality. The aim of this paper is to articulate the basic objections raised by Rooney and to show why the objections fail. We shall not provide an exegetical or textual analysis of Báñez himself, but rather will establish a speculative grounding and agreement between basic principles of Báñezianism and Garrigou-Lagrange's articulation, ultimately affirming the necessity of positing creaturely counterfactuals for Báñezianism.Rooney makes two distinct (but related) objections to Garrigou-Lagrange's treatment. First, he claims that Báñezianism as a system rejects the notion of "alternative possibilities" when considering the creaturely will and its relation to divine causality, especially in regard to physical premotion. I shall argue that this is incorrect, and indeed misses one of the constitutive elements of Báñezianism—in fact the very grounding for its claim that infallibly moved actions remain free. Second, Rooney claims that Garrigou-Lagrange posits [End Page 651] a circular argument regarding the reality of sin. Garrigou-Lagrange's argument would be circular if it corresponded to a single order of causality or if counterfactuals of creaturely freedom were incompatible with Báñezianism. But we shall argue that they are not. As such, the argument is not only not circular, but rather elucidates a constitutive element of the Báñezian system, thereby refuting the objection. In short, Garrigou-Lagrange's articulation of Báñezian premotion admits of counterfactuals without relying upon divine passivity, and it remains internally coherent.Rooney's Critique of the So-called "Garrigou Manoeuvre"Rooney begins the essay by outlining a few of the major differences between a Molinist and Báñezian view of human freedom. Rooney's argument is that there is a potential "grounding problem" for Báñezianism, or at least for Báñezianism as articulated by Garrigou-Lagrange. As Rooney notes, Báñezianism posits that God's efficacious grace is ontologically antecedent to our good actions (and his permission of sin is ontologically antecedent to our sin). But how does this position retain free choice, if divine causation or permission is infallibly determinative and antecedent to creaturely choice? Rooney says:The Banezians need to account for how it is possible that a creature can do otherwise in the special case when God moves the creature to act through grace. Specifically, what grounds the truth of the claim that, even when God determines human free choices from eternity such that a human being has only one course of action open to them, those human beings are morally responsible for their actions? If the Banezian view entails that human beings, acting under grace, strictly lack any ability to do otherwise, then the view is incoherent.2As such, we can see that "the ability to do otherwise" is an essential, grounding element for defending Báñezianism against radically compatibilist or double-predestinarian views of human freedom, which have been condemned by the Church at Trent and in subsequent condemnations of Jansenism.3 Of course, the phrase "ability to do otherwise" is metaphysically [End Page 652] ambiguous, which Rooney admits. Various articulations of a more metaphysically precise grounding for the preservation of free choice under the influence of efficacious grace (or while efficacious grace is withheld) have been put forth, and Rooney focuses on a particular "strategy" which he associates with Garrigou-Lagrange and myself.4 He terms this strategy the "Garrigou Manoeuvre."Rooney notes that "Garrigou-Lagrange claims that there is something in virtue of which God denies someone efficacious grace, and that this is in the control of the sinner."5 He quotes Garrigou-Lagrange as saying that a person "is deprived of efficacious grace because by sinning he resists sufficient grace.... [Therefore,] God... (shrink)

Who ought to do what, and for whom, if global justice is to progress? In this collection of essays on justice beyond borders, Onora O'Neill criticises theoretical approaches that concentrate on rights, yet ignore both the obligations that must be met to realise those rights, and the capacities needed by those who shoulder these obligations. She notes that states are profoundly anti-cosmopolitan institutions, and that even those committed to justice and universal rights often lack the competence and the will (...) to secure them, let alone to secure them beyond their borders. She argues for a wider conception of global justice, in which obligations may be held either by states or by competent non-state actors, and in which borders themselves must meet standards of justice. This rich and wide-ranging collection will appeal to a broad array of academic researchers and advanced students of political philosophy, political theory, international relations and philosophy of law. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 5, Page 535-546, June 2022.

Although Burke, Bentham, Hegel and Marx do not often agree, all criticized certain ethical theories, in particular theories of rights, for being too abstract. The complaint is still popular. It was common in Existentialist and in Wittgensteinian writing that stressed the importance of cases and examples rather than principles for the moral life; it has been prominent in recent Hegelian and Aristotelian flavoured writing, which stresses the importance of the virtues; it is reiterated in discussions that stress the distinctiveness and (...) particularity of moral vicissitudes and query the importance of ethical theory. Recent critics of abstraction are opposed not only to theories of rights, and the Kantian notions with which these are linked, but also to consequentialist ethical theories. The two ethical theories that are most influential in the English-speaking world now both stand accused of being too abstract. (shrink)

Examines the nature, meaning, and impact of Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism. Bibliogs.

This article provides an overview of recent, empirically supported categorization schemes that have been proposed to distinguish different kinds of norms. Amongst these are the moral–conventional distinction and divisions within moral norms such as those proposed by moral foundations theory. I identify several dimensions along which norms have been and could usefully be categorized. I discuss some of the most prominent norm categorization proposals and the aims of these existing categorization schemes. I propose that we take a pluralistic approach toward (...) categorizing norms: Depending on our goals, it may be useful to focus on different features of norms, and as a result, it will be useful to categorize norms in multiple ways. (shrink)

A normatively adequate public health ethics needs to be anchored in political philosophy rather than in ethics. Its central ethical concerns are likely to include trust and justice, rather than autonomy and informed consent.

How does character information inform judgments of blame? Some argue that character information is indirectly relevant to blame because it enriches judgments about the mental states of a wrongdoer. Others argue that character information is directly relevant to blame, even when character traits are causally irrelevant to the wrongdoing. We propose an empirical synthesis of these views: a Two Channel Model of blame. The model predicts that character information directly affects blame when this information is relevant to the wrongdoing that (...) elicits blame. Further, the effect of character information on blame depends on judgments about the true self that are independent of judgments of intentionality. Across three pre-registered studies (N = 662), we found support for all three predictions of the Two Channel Model. We propose that this reflects two distinct functions of blame: a social regulatory function that encourages norm compliance and a pedagogical function that encourages personal improvement. (shrink)

Onora O'Neill; I *—The Presidential Address: Constructivisms in Ethics, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 89, Issue 1, 1 June 1989, Pages 1–18, ht.

Knowledge aims to fit the world, and action to change it. In this collection of essays, Onora O'Neill explores the relationship between these concepts and shows that principles are not enough for ethical thought or action: we also need to understand how practical judgement identifies ways of enacting them and of changing the way things are. Both ethical and technical judgement are supported, she contends, by bringing to bear multiple considerations, ranging from ethical principles to real-world constraints, and while (...) we will never find practical algorithms - let alone ethical algorithms - that resolve moral and political issues, good practical judgement can bring abstract principles to bear in situations that call for action. Her essays thus challenge claims that all inquiry must use either the empirical methods of scientific inquiry or the interpretive methods of the humanities. They will appeal to a range of readers in moral and political philosophy. (shrink)

I object to eliminativism about innateness and André Ariew’s identification of innateness with canalization, and I propose a new treatment of innateness. I first argue that the concept of innateness is serving a valuable function in a diverse set of research contexts, and in these contexts, claims about innateness are best understood as claims about the insensitivity of the appearance of a trait to certain variations in the environment. I then argue that innateness claims, like claims about canalization, should be (...) explicitly relativized to the specific range of environmental variations of interest to the scientist. My account characterizes an important way in which scientists are employing the concept and offers a way for scientists to carry on using the concept in their research while minimizing confusion and miscommunication. There is a fruitful research program, I claim, in which scientists employ the concept of innateness to help distinguish environmental factors of interest that have a causal influence on the appearance of a trait from those that do not. (shrink)

This paper is a survey of standards being used in the domain of digital cultural heritage with focus on the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard created by the Library of Congress in the United States of America. The process of digitization of cultural heritage requires silo breaking in a number of areas—one area is that of academic disciplines to enable the performance of rich interdisciplinary work. This lays the foundation for the emancipation of the second form of silo which are (...) the silos of knowledge, both traditional and born digital, held in individual institutions, such as galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Disciplinary silo breaking is the key to unlocking these institutional knowledge silos. Interdisciplinary teams, such as developers and librarians, work together to make the data accessible as open data on the “semantic web”. Description logic is the area of mathematics which underpins many ontology building applications today. Creating these ontologies requires a human–machine symbiosis. Currently in the cultural heritage domain, the institutions’ role is that of provider of this open data to the national aggregator which in turn can make the data available to the trans-European aggregator known as Europeana. Current ingests to the aggregators are in the form of machine readable cataloguing metadata which is limited in the richness it provides to disparate object descriptions. METS can provide this richness. (shrink)