Under conditions of physiological stress, officers are sometimes required to make split-second life-or-death decisions, where deficits in performance can have tragic outcomes, including serious injury or death and strained police–community relations. The current study assessed the performance of 122 active-duty police officers during a realistic lethal force scenario to examine whether performance was affected by the officer’s level of operational skills training, years of police service, and stress reactivity. Results demonstrated that the scenario produced elevated heart rates, as well as (...) perceptual and cognitive distortions, such as tunnel vision, commensurate with those observed in naturalistic use of force encounters. The average performance rating from the scenario was 59%, with 27% of participants making at least one lethal force error. Elevated stress reactivity was a predictor of poorer performance and increased lethal force errors. Level of training and years of police service had differential and complex effects on both performance and lethal force errors. Our results illustrate the need to critically reflect on police training practices and continue to make evidence-based improvements to training. The findings also highlight that while training may significantly improve outcomes, flawless performance is likely not probable, given the limits of human performance under stress. Implications for the objective reasonableness standard, which is used to assess the appropriateness of force in courts of law, are discussed. (shrink)

The question of whether donors should be able to set conditions on who can receive their tissue has been discussed by bioethicists, but so far there has been little consideration of whether the answer to this question should be different depending on the type of tissue under discussion. In this article, we compare the donation of organs with the donation of reproductive material such as sperm, eggs, and embryos, exploring possible arguments for allowing donors to set conditions in one case (...) but not the other. After considering arguments from procreative liberty, special parental obligations, and donors meeting their genetic offspring, we find that there is no ethically defensible reason to have different policies between these two cases. As a consequence, we conclude that jurisdictions operating with this inconsistency should consider moving their policies into better alignment. We also make some recommendations for the standardisation of the terminology around conditional donation. (shrink)

This paper argues that the convention of allocating donated gametes on a ‘first come, first served’ basis should be replaced with an allocation system that takes into account more morally relevant criteria than waiting time. This conclusion was developed using an empirical bioethics methodology, which involved a study of the views of 18 staff members from seven U.K. fertility clinics, and 20 academics, policy-makers, representatives of patient groups, and other relevant professionals, on the allocation of donated sperm and eggs. Against (...) these views, we consider some nuanced ways of including criteria in a points allocation system. We argue that such a system is more ethically robust than ‘first come, first served’, but we acknowledge that our results suggest that a points system will meet with resistance from those working in the field. We conclude that criteria such as a patient's age, potentially damaging substance use, and parental status should be used to allocate points and determine which patients receive treatment and in what order. These and other factors should be applied according to how they bear on considerations like child welfare, patient welfare, and the effectiveness of the proposed treatment. (shrink)

As part of its response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in west Africa, the United Kingdom government established an Ebola treatment unit in Sierra Leone, staffed by military personnel. Little is known about the ethical challenges experienced by military medical staff on humanitarian deployment. We designed a qualitative study to explore this further with those who worked in the treatment unit. Semi-structured, face-to-face and telephone interviews were conducted with 20 UK military personnel deployed between October 2014 and April 2015 in (...) one of three roles in the Ebola treatment unit: clinician; nursing and nursing assistant; and other medical support work, including infection control and laboratory and mortuary services. Many participants reported feeling ethically motivated to volunteer for deployment, but for some personal interests were also a consideration. A small minority had negative feelings towards the deployment, others felt that this deployment like any other was part of military service. Almost all had initial concerns about personal safety but were reassured by their pre-deployment 'drills and skills', and personal protective equipment. Risk perceptions were related to perceptions about military service. Efforts to minimise infection risk were perceived to have made good patient care more difficult. Significantly, some thought the humanitarian nature of the mission justified tolerating greater risks to staff. Trust in the military institution and colleagues was expressed; many participants referred to the ethical obligation within the chain of command to protect those under their command. Participants expected resources to be overwhelmed and ‘empty beds’ presented a significant and pervasive ethical challenge. Most thought more patients could and should have been treated. Points of reference for participants’ ethical values were: previous deployment experience; previous UK/National Health Service experience; professional ethics; and, distinctly military values. We report the first systematic exploration of the ethical challenges face by a Western medical military in the international response to the first major Ebola outbreak. We offer unique insights into the military healthcare workers’ experiences of humanitarian deployment. Many participants expressed motivations that gave them common purpose with civilian volunteers. (shrink)

Background As part of its response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in west Africa, the United Kingdom government established an Ebola treatment unit in Sierra Leone, staffed by military personnel. Little is known about the ethical challenges experienced by military medical staff on humanitarian deployment. We designed a qualitative study to explore this further with those who worked in the treatment unit. Method Semi-structured, face-to-face and telephone interviews were conducted with 20 UK military personnel deployed between October 2014 and April (...) 2015 in one of three roles in the Ebola treatment unit: clinician; nursing and nursing assistant; and other medical support work, including infection control and laboratory and mortuary services. Results Many participants reported feeling ethically motivated to volunteer for deployment, but for some personal interests were also a consideration. A small minority had negative feelings towards the deployment, others felt that this deployment like any other was part of military service. Almost all had initial concerns about personal safety but were reassured by their pre-deployment 'drills and skills', and personal protective equipment. Risk perceptions were related to perceptions about military service. Efforts to minimise infection risk were perceived to have made good patient care more difficult. Significantly, some thought the humanitarian nature of the mission justified tolerating greater risks to staff. Trust in the military institution and colleagues was expressed; many participants referred to the ethical obligation within the chain of command to protect those under their command. Participants expected resources to be overwhelmed and ‘empty beds’ presented a significant and pervasive ethical challenge. Most thought more patients could and should have been treated. Points of reference for participants’ ethical values were: previous deployment experience; previous UK/National Health Service experience; professional ethics; and, distinctly military values. Conclusion We report the first systematic exploration of the ethical challenges face by a Western medical military in the international response to the first major Ebola outbreak. We offer unique insights into the military healthcare workers’ experiences of humanitarian deployment. Many participants expressed motivations that gave them common purpose with civilian volunteers. (shrink)

This discussion of Infinitely Demanding explores the terms of the paradox with which Critchley is centrally concerned: how an ethico-politics can at once begin in disappointment and yet allow for engagement, the infinite renewal of commitment and optimism. Placing this in critical relation to the paradox Rorty meets with his account of the "private ironist and public liberal" in Contingency, Irony, Solidarity, I argue that Critchley's ethico-politics invokes the possibility of a non-ironical categorical imperative, at the meeting point of finitude (...) and the infinite and at the heart of what is also a political space of intersubjectivity. I examine the logic of humour and of commitment within the Kantian frame thus suggested, arguing for their relevance to certain aspects of anarcho-activism, but also for their limitations in desperate circumstances, posing the risk that Critchley's preferred politics falls back into liberal complacency. (shrink)

I develop a challenge for a widely suggested knowledge-first account of belief that turns, primarily, on unknowable propositions. I consider and reject several responses to my challenge and sketch a new knowledge-first account of belief that avoids it.

In poem 40, through a series of rhetorical questions, Catullus confronts Ravidus about what made him commit such a foolish action as to fall in love with Catullus’ own lover. The poem ends with the lines: eris, quandoquidem meos amores | cum longa uoluisti amare poena, ‘You will be, since you have chosen to love my lover at the risk of receiving a long punishment’. There is a long-standing tradition of scholarship which testifies to the frequency with which Catullus incorporates (...) wordplay in his poems, including bilingual puns. This essay proposes another such pun by arguing that Catullus is making a play on words through the homophony of the Latin verb eris and the Greek noun ἔρις. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 34.1 (2004) 3-17 [Access article in PDF] Universal Shylockery Money and Morality in The Merchant of Venice Simon Critchley Tom McCarthy What if Nietzsche were a Jew, and a mean-minded Venetian Jew at that? We'd like to begin with the thought experiment of imagining The Merchant of Venice as a genealogy of morality and imagining Shylock as Nietzsche. What is The Merchant of Venice about? What is (...) at stake in this oddly inside-out drama, where a piece of good old Elizabethan comic Jew-baiting rotates 180 degrees into a devastating study of Christian anti-Semitism only to flip back into what it seemed to deny? Our initial hypothesis is that it is nothing less than an inquiry into the origin of our moral concepts of justice, good and bad, and more particularly guilt, law, mercy, and love. It is here that a link with Nietzsche suggests itself, particularly with the Second Essay of On the Genealogy of Morals.* * *How do we breed an animal with the right to make promises? For Nietzsche, the human being is an originally forgetful creature, like a young child. To make this originally forgetful creature remember requires physical discipline; it behooves punishment. The teaching of morality is never gentle; it never droppeth from heaven like gentle rain. On the contrary, if something is to be retained in memory, it must be burned in. The origin of memory lies in pain and cruelty: "Man could never do without blood, torture and sacrifices when he felt the need to create a memory for himself" [GM 61]. Nietzsche's first, astonishing hypothesis in the Second Essay is that the origin of concepts like responsibility and conscience lies in cruelty—cruelty administered and maintained through a corporal and corporeal regime. Further, as religions are systems of cruelty, all forms of asceticism originate in the same painful place. "Consider the German punishments," Nietzsche proposes—and we all know that there's nothing quite like the German punishments: stoning, breaking on the wheel, piercing with stakes, tearing apart or trampling with horses, boiling in oil, flaying alive, cutting straps from the flesh, smearing the wrongdoer with honey and leaving him to the flies in the blazing sun. As Nietzsche quips, with magnificent understatement, "With the aid of such images and procedures one finally remembers five or six 'I will not's'" [GM 62]. It is on the basis of this burned-in memory of cruelty that good, decent, upright burghers such as ourselves acquired the habit of moral reasoning:Ah, reason, seriousness, mastery over affects, the whole sombre thing called reflection, all these prerogatives and showpieces of man: how dearly they have been bought! How much blood and cruelty lie at the bottom of all "good things." [GM 62] [End Page 3]"Dearly bought": let's hold onto that trope of purchasing. In another extraordinary passage of the Second Essay, Nietzsche explains the origin of thinking itself in terms of economic activity:Setting prices, determining values, contriving equivalences, exchanging—these preoccupied the earliest thinking of man to so great an extent that in a sense they are thinking [das Denken ist]. [GM 70] In the beginning was trade. Human activity begins with exchange, with the to and fro of buying and selling, which are forms of life older than all other social alliances and organization. It is from here, Nietzsche insists, that human beings arrive at the first moral canon of justice:"Everything has its price; all things can be paid for"—the oldest and most naïve moral canon of justice, the beginning of all "good-naturedness," all "fairness," all "good will," all "objectivity" on earth. [GM 70] Which brings us to the origin of das Bewusstsein der Schuld and schlechte Gewissen, the consciousness of guilt and bad conscience. Nietzsche's hypothesis here, and our theme is beginning to come into focus, is that the origin of guilty conscience lies in the relation between a creditor and debtor, Glaubiger und Schuldner. The spiritual concept of guilt, Schuld, originates in the very material concept of Schulden... (shrink)

Following recent arguments that cultural practices in wild animal populations have important conservation implications, we argue that recognizing captive animals as cultural has important welfare implications. Having a culture is of deep importance for cultural animals, wherever they live. Without understanding the cultural capacities of captive animals, we will be left with a deeply impoverished view of what they need to flourish. Best practices for welfare should therefore require concern for animals’ cultural needs, but the relationship between culture and welfare (...) is also extremely complex, requiring us to rethink standard assumptions about what constitutes and contributes to welfare. (shrink)

Empirical studies of the social lives of non-human primates, cetaceans, and other social animals have prompted scientists and philosophers to debate the question of whether morality and moral cognition exists in non-human animals. Some researchers have argued that morality does exist in several animal species, others that these species may possess various evolutionary building blocks or precursors to morality, but not quite the genuine article, while some have argued that nothing remotely resembling morality can be found in any non-human species. (...) However, these different positions on animal morality generally appear to be motivated more by different conceptions of how the term “morality” is to be defined than by empirical disagreements about animal social behaviour and psychology. After delving deeper into the goals and methodologies of various of the protagonists, I argue that, despite appearances, there are actually two importantly distinct debates over animal morality going on, corresponding to two quite different ways of thinking about what it is to define “morality”, “moral cognition”, and associated notions. Several apparent skirmishes in the literature are thus cases of researchers simply talking past each other. I then focus on what I take to be the core debate over animal morality, which is concerned with understanding the nature and phylogenetic distribution of morality conceived as a psychological natural kind. I argue that this debate is in fact largely terminological and non-substantive. Finally, I reflect on how this core debate might best be re-framed. (shrink)

This paper considers the question of whether chimpanzees possess at least a primitive sense of normativity: i.e., some ability to internalize and enforce social norms—rules governing appropriate and inappropriate behaviour—within their social groups, and to make evaluations of others’ behaviour in light of such norms. A number of scientists and philosophers have argued that such a sense of normativity does exist in chimpanzees and in several other non-human primate and mammalian species. However, the dominant view in the scientific and philosophical (...) literature is that psychological capacities for social norms evolved uniquely in the human lineage, after our last common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos. After reviewing some of the existing evidence for normative capacity in chimpanzees, I defend the thesis of chimpanzee normativity against three key theoretical objections that have been presented in the literature, each of which have played a part in motivating the dominant sceptical position. I argue that, while we still have much to learn about the nature and extent of the normative capacities of other animals, there is strong prima facie evidence for social norms and normative evaluation in chimpanzees and the main theoretical objections to chimpanzee normativity are not at all compelling. (shrink)

From the Foreward by Mortimer J. Adler Of all the question or issues concerning human freedom, none is more fundamental in itself and in its consequences than the problem of free choice; and none has been the subject of more persistent and, at the same time, apparently irresolvable controversyThis bookis the perfect antidote for the errors, the misunderstandings or worse, the ignorances that beset the modern discussion of free choice. Even the reader who comes to this book with little or (...) no knowledge of the philosophical literature on the subjects that it treats cannot fail to appreciate its remarkable clarity, its felicitous combination of detailed concreteness with abstract precision, its exploration of common experience and its elucidation of common sense, and, above all, the intelligibility, reasonableness, and fairness of its exposition of free choice. (shrink)

Innerhalb des Gesamtsystems der praktischen Philosophie John Stuart Mills erfüllt der Begriff der Lebenskunst, oder der „art of life“ und der dazugehörigen „theory of life“, eine zentrale systematische Funktion. Die Abschnitte über die Kunst oder das Handwerk des Lebens haben in der Rezeption der Mill’schen Philosophie besondere Bedeutung, weil in ihnen Ansatzpunkte zu finden sind, mit denen sich die mitunter sehr disparaten Positionen Mills innerhalb der praktischen Philosophie in ein kohärentes Gesamtsystem fassen lassen. So werden Grundunterscheidungen innerhalb dieses Theorieelements angeführt, (...) um die Spannung zwischen dem Nutzenprinzip, das die axiologische Grundlage der gesamten praktischen Philosophie Mills darstellt, mit spezifischeren Normen der Gleichheit, Gerechtigkeit und Freiheit aufzulösen. (shrink)

You omega know something when you know it, and know that you know it, and know that you know that you know it, and so on. This paper first argues that omega knowledge matters, in the sense that it is required for rational assertion, action, inquiry, and belief. The paper argues that existing accounts of omega knowledge face major challenges. One account is skeptical, claiming that we have no omega knowledge of any ordinary claims about the world. Another account embraces (...) the KK thesis, and identifies knowledge with omega knowledge. This position faces counterexamples, and struggles to make sense of inexact knowledge. The paper then develops a new account of knowledge, by proposing the principle of Reflective Luminosity: if you know that you know something, then you omega know it. I argue that Reflective Luminosity allows for omega knowledge while avoiding the problems for KK. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kings and Gods as Ecological Agents:From Reciprocity to Unilateralism in the Management of Natural ResourcesSimon Simonse (bio)1. IntroductionThe questions this article addresses are as follows: do non-Western societies have a qualitatively better, more balanced relationship with nature than modern Western societies? Can the difference between the two be described in terms of an opposition between a reciprocal and an exploitative relationship? What difference does the Judeo-Christian tradition make in (...) shaping the modern relationship with nature?To answer these questions I will give brief descriptions of the way in which three cultural traditions have structured the relationship between man and nature: societies that are ruled by sacred kings, societies where power over nature is attributed to divinities, and the Old Testament tradition. As cases of sacred kinship, I present ethnographic material taken from my anthropological fieldwork among the Lulubo, Lokoya, and Lotuho peoples from the East Bank of the Nile in Southern Sudan. I will use the term "Eastern Nilotic" as shorthand for this complex of peoples. For the societies where divinities play the central role, I take the Western Nilotic Dinka, Nuer, and Atuot living in the flood plains of the Nile north of the kingship societies.In comparing these three traditions my point of departure is René Girard's analysis of culture as a mechanism to resolve conflict by directing the aggression of the members of society onto a victim and so achieving a new consensus. We shall see that in the kingship societies what we call natural phenomena play an integral part in culturally staging the scapegoat mechanism. They are the stage of human rivalries and their resolution. Among the polytheistic Western Nilotes they are the instrument through which the gods make their power felt and demand attention from humans. In the Old Testament, natural phenomena remain the domain of God's power. Humans should not try to interfere. Their mission is to combat human evil as defined in Mosaic law. [End Page 31]2. Kings as Ecological AgentsThe survival of the communities of the Lokoya and Lulubo on the East Bank of the Nile who traditionally live in well-fortified village-polities, counting in the precolonial period between 1500 and 2500 inhabitants, is dependent on forces that are unpredictable (Simonse 1992). As agriculturists they are dependent on regular rains. However, the rains in their area are erratic and localized. As a result there is always a risk that the harvest may fail. The soil is of varying quality, giving varying yields in different places. The birth rate is another major concern. It determines the security of the community in its relationship to neighboring, frequently hostile, communities. There is the concern for epidemics, crop-eating insects and birds, and root-eating worms. Violent winds may destroy the crop, and lions and leopards may kill humans and cattle. A concern of a different order is the extent of the effectiveness of weapons, spears, and bows and arrows, in assuring security.When adversity affects the community, the first question asked by those affected is that regarding its cause. Frequently the cause is a breach of the social rules: an act of violence and a failure to perform or properly perform a ritual of purification necessitated by the violence. It may also be unconscious resentment on the part of a person or group that feels excluded from benefits enjoyed by others. It may be the cry of a neglected relative. It may be incest. It may be an attack by outsiders.Among the Lulubo and Lokoya, responsibility for the various aspects of the natural environment that can be critical for community survival is allocated to the different clans. In the case of a crisis (drought, infertility) the clan associated with the problem is the target of investigations. The main investigation strategy is to check, one by one, the quarrels in which members of that clan have been involved. When a conflict has been identified, a solution is suggested by way of reconciliation or restitution. Of particular interest are attempts to provoke the responsible clan official. If a settlement of the dispute fails to bring the required result, there will be more rounds of investigation... (shrink)

Un commerce intime, tantot exalte, tantot inavouable, entre l'oeuvre de Proust et celles de Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Deleuze ou Barthes se joue au coeur des annees 1950-1970, au moment ou sont renouvelees les facons d'envisager la production theorique. Si le romancier les a particulierement captives, c'est que son oeuvre venait amplifier ou heurter non seulement leur pratique reflexive, mais le sens meme de leur existence et de leur engagement dans l'ecriture. Du roman au traite, de la vie de l'un a la (...) vie de l'autre, nait une etrange erotique des pensees, ou se creent des partages sereins, des negociations passionnees, des appariements effrayants. Trafics de Proust opere un enfoncement dans la duree longue de ces echanges, de ces prets sur gages et de ces resiliations. Son enjeu est de rendre compte des strategies qui menent un penseur lisant Proust a construire ou deconstruire ses cadres cognitifs, a s'articuler, dans la fluidite du jeu ou le coincement grincant, a une vie de la pensee ou (de)raison, emotion et fiction consonnent avec individuation. Sont ainsi restituees des pensees sensibles, comme autant de formes de soi traversees par le romanesque. (shrink)

This paper considers John Doris, Stephen Stich, Alexandra Plakias, and colleagues’ recent attempts to utilize empirical studies of cross-cultural variation in moral judgment to support a version of the argument from disagreement against moral realism. Crucially, Doris et al. claim that the moral disagreements highlighted by these studies are not susceptible to the standard ‘diffusing’ explanations realists have developed in response to earlier versions of the argument. I argue that plausible hypotheses about the cognitive processes underlying ordinary moral judgment and (...) the acquisition of moral norms, when combined with a popular philosophical account of moral inquiry—the method of reflective equilibrium—undercut the anti-realist force of the moral disagreements that Doris et al. describe. I also show that Stich's recent attempt to provide further theoretical support for Doris et al.'s case is unsuccessful. (shrink)

Morgan’s Canon is a very widely endorsed methodological principle in animal psychology, believed to be vital for a rigorous, scientific approach to the study of animal cognition. In contrast I argue that Morgan’s Canon is unjustified, pernicious and unnecessary. I identify two main versions of the Canon and show that they both suffer from very serious problems. I then suggest an alternative methodological principle that captures all of the genuine methodological benefits that Morgan’s Canon can bring but suffers from none (...) of its problems. (shrink)

What can reason do for us and what can't it do? This is the question examined by Herbert A. Simon, who received the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences "for his pioneering work on decision-making processes in economic organizations." The ability to apply reason to the choice of actions is supposed to be one of the defining characteristics of our species. In the first two chapters, the author explores the nature and limits of human reason, comparing and evaluating the (...) major theoretical frameworks that have been erected to explain reasoning processes. He also discusses the interaction of thinking and emotion in the choice of our actions. In the third and final chapter, the author applies the theory of bounded rationality to social institutions and human behavior, and points out the problems created by limited attention span human inability to deal with more than one difficult problem at a time. He concludes that we must recognize the limitations on our capabilities for rational choice and pursue goals that, in their tentativeness and flexibility, are compatible with those limits. (shrink)

Ichikawa and Jarvis offer a new rationalist theory of mental content and defend a traditional epistemology of philosophy. They argue that philosophical inquiry is continuous with non-philosophical inquiry, and can be genuinely a priori, and that intuitions do not play an important role in mental content or the a priori.

The recent debate surrounding scientific realism has largely focused on the “no miracles” argument (NMA). Indeed, it seems that most contemporary realists and anti-realists have tied the case for realism to the adequacy of this argument. I argue that it is mistake for realists to let the debate be framed in this way. Realists would be well advised to abandon the NMA altogether and pursue an alternative strategy, which I call the “local strategy”.

Encyclopedia entry on the debate over simplicity/parsimony and Ockham's Razor in the philosophy of science.

This article argues that rape myths and domestic abuse myths constitute hermeneutical injustices. Drawing on empirical research, I show that the prevalence of these myths makes victims of rape and of domestic abuse less likely to apply those terms to their experiences. Using Sally Haslanger's distinction between manifest and operative concepts, I argue that in these cases, myths mean that victims hold a problematic operative concept, or working understanding, which prevents them from identifying their experience as one of rape or (...) of domestic abuse. Since victims in this situation lack the conceptual resources needed to render their experience sufficiently intelligible, they are suffering a form of hermeneutical injustice. Attending to this distinctive case sheds new light not only on the functioning of social myths of this kind but on the nature of hermeneutical injustice itself, since the case of the victim who accepts myths is importantly different from other cases of hermeneutical injustice discussed in the literature to date. In practical terms, this analysis supports calls for juries in rape trials to be warned about rape myths at the start of the trial, and may have implications for calls for statutory Sex and Relationships Education in schools. (shrink)

The badness of having conflicting emotions is a familiar theme in academic ethics, clinical psychology, and commercial self-help, where emotional harmony is often put forward as an ideal. Many philosophers give emotional harmony pride of place in their theories of practical reason.1 Here we offer a defense of a particular species of emotional conflict, namely, ambivalence. We articulate an conception of ambivalence, on which ambivalence is unresolved inconsistent desire (§1) and present a case of appropriate ambivalence (§2), before considering two (...) alternative defenses of emotional conflict (§3). We then argue that inconsistent desires can be fitting (§4) and that it can be reasonable not to resolve inconsistent desires (§5), before considering an objection (§6) and concluding the discussion (§7). (shrink)

Philosophers readily talk about merely verbal disputes, usually without much or any explicit reflection on what these are, and a good deal of methodological significance is attached to discovering whether a dispute is merely verbal or not. Currently, metaphilosophical advances are being made towards a clearer understanding of what exactly it takes for something to be a merely verbal dispute. This paper engages with this growing literature, pointing out some problems with existing approaches, and develops a new proposal which builds (...) on their strengths. (shrink)

We situate the well-trodden debate about defining health and disease within the project of a metaphysics of science and its aim to work with and contribute to science. We make use of Guay and Pradeu’s ‘metaphysical box’ to reframe this debate, showing what is at stake in recent attempts to move beyond it, revealing unforeseen points of agreement and disagreement among new and old positions, and producing new questions that may lead to progress. We then discuss the implications of the (...) two-way benefits between medicine and philosophy when the latter is driven and constrained by medical science. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that the consensus around normative standards for the ethics of research in clinical trials, strongly influenced by the Declaration of Helsinki, is perceived from various quarters as too conservative and potentially restrictive of research that is seen as urgent and necessary. We examine this problem from the perspective of various challengers who argue for alternative approaches to what ought or ought not to be permitted. Key themes within this analysis will examine these claims and argue (...) they have implications for the interests of the research subject, research governance and regulation. Using our work with TREAT-NMD, the neuromuscular clinical trials network, we posit that there is a place for advancing the discourse of moral rights and moral duties in the context of research, especially from the perspective of patients and their families, and for including the politics of patient activism and empowerment. At the same time we remain vigilant to the danger that the therapeutic misconception and other serious vulnerabilities for the patient population in clinical trials, are at risk of being overlooked. (shrink)

In some environmental circles, talk of relational values is very much in fashion. It is said that we must think in terms of such values if we are to understand how such things as canyons, mangroves, and coral reefs matter to people. But that is bad advice. Appeals to relational values are typically misleading in several respects. Granted, those who make such appeals often do so in order to make the important point that some values are neither intrinsic nor instrumental (...) in form, but that point can be made more clearly by referring to other concepts, such as that of constitutive value. To this objection, some may respond that appeals to relational value are nonetheless useful. However, as things stand, their usefulness remains unproven. (shrink)

Much of the history of Western ethical thought has revolved around debates about what constitutes a good life, and claims that a good life is achievable only by certain human beings. In Feminist Philosophies of Life, feminist, new materialist, posthumanist, and ecofeminist philosophers challenge this tendency, approaching the question of life from alternative perspectives. Signalling the importance of distinctively feminist reflections on matters of shared concern, Feminist Philosophies of Life not only exposes the propensity of discourses to normalize and exclude (...) differently abled, racialized, feminized, and gender nonconforming people, it also asks questions about how life is constituted and understood without limiting itself to the human. A collection of articles that focuses on life as an organizing principle for ontology, ethics, and politics, chapters of this study respond to feminist thinkers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Judith Butler, Adriana Cavarero, Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, and Søren Kierkegaard. Divided into three parts, the book debates the question of life in and against the emerging school of new feminist materialism, provides feminist phenomenological and existentialist accounts of life, and focuses on lives marked by a particular precarity such as disability or incarceration, as well as life in the face of a changing climate. Calling for a broader account of lived experience, Feminist Philosophies of Life contains persuasive, original, and diverse analyses that address some of the most crucial feminist issues. Contributors include Christine Daigle, Shannon Dea, Lindsay Eales, Elizabeth Grosz, Lisa Guenther, Lynne Huffer, Ada Jaarsma, Stephanie Jenkins, Ladelle McWhorter, Jane Barter Moulaison, Astrida Neimanis, Danielle Peers, Stephen Seely, Hasana Sharp, Chloë Taylor, Florentien Verhage, Rachel Loewen Walker, and Cynthia Willett. (shrink)

This paper discusses Kevin Kelly’s recent attempt to justify Ockham’s Razor in terms of truth-finding efficiency. It is argued that Kelly’s justification fails to warrant confidence in the empirical content of theories recommended by Ockham’s Razor. This is a significant problem if, as Kelly and many others believe, considerations of simplicity play a pervasive role in scientific reasoning, underlying even our best tested theories, for the proposal will fail to warrant the use of these theories in practical prediction.