The goal of achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) can generally be realized only in stages. Moreover, resource, capacity and political constraints mean governments often face difficult trade-offs on the path to UHC. In a 2014 report, Making fair choices on the path to UHC, the WHO Consultative Group on Equity and Universal Health Coverage articulated principles for making such trade-offs in an equitable manner. We present three case studies which illustrate how these principles can guide practical decision-making. These case studies (...) show how progressive realization of the right to health can be effectively guided by priority-setting principles, including generating the greatest total health gain, priority for the worse off, and financial risk protection. They also demonstrate the value of a fair and accountable process of priority setting. (shrink)

Progress towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC) requires making difficult trade-offs. In this journal, Dr. Margaret Chan, the WHO Director-General, has endorsed the principles for making such decisions put forward by the WHO Consultative Group on Equity and UHC. These principles include maximizing population health, priority for the worse off, and shielding people from health-related financial risks. But how should one apply these principles in particular cases and how should one adjudicate between them when their demands conflict? This paper by some (...) members of the Consultative Group and a diverse group of health policy professionals addresses these questions. It considers three stylized versions of actual policy dilemmas. Each of these cases pertains to one of the three principal dimensions of progress towards UHC: which services to cover first, which populations to prioritize for coverage, and how to move from out-of-pocket expenditures to pre-payment with pooling of funds. Our cases are simplified to highlight common trade-offs. While we make specific recommendations, our primary aim is to demonstrate both the form and substance of the reasoning involved in striking a fair balance between competing interests on the road to UHC. (shrink)

This essay is my review of Philip Booth’s Wellbeing and the Role of Government. The book is an anthology of original articles by eminent researchers in modern happiness economics, such as: Booth himself; Paul Omerod; David Sacks, Betsey Stephenson, and Justin Wolfers; Christopher Snowden; J. R. Shackleton; Christian Bjornskov; Peter Boettke and Christopher Coyne; and Pedro Schwartz. I conclude by offering several criticisms of the work.

The Snowden revelations in 2013 redrew the lines of debate surrounding surveillance, exposing the extent of state surveillance across multiple nations and triggering legislative reform in many. In the UK, this was in the form of the Investigatory Powers Act. As a contribution to understanding resistance to expanding state surveillance activities, this article reveals the intertwining of diverse interests and voices which speak in opposition to UK state surveillance. Through a computational topic modelling-based mixed methods analysis of the submissions (...) made to the draft Investigatory Powers Bill consultation, the article demonstrates the diversity and intersection of discourses within different actor groups, including civil society and the technology industry. We demonstrate that encryption is a key issue for these groups, and is additionally conflated with a human rights discourse. This serves to unite seemingly disparate interests by imbuing encryption with a responsibility for the protection of human rights, but also threatens to legitimate corporate interests and distract from their own data-driven activities of surveillance capitalism. (shrink)

This essay is my review of Philip Booth’s ...and the Pursuit of Happiness: Wellbeing and the Role of Government. The book is an anthology of original articles by eminent researchers in modern happiness economics, such as: Booth himself; Paul Omerod; David Sacks, Betsey Stephenson, and Justin Wolfers; Christopher Snowden; J. R. Shackleton; Christian Bjornskov; Peter Boettke and Christopher Coyne; and Pedro Schwartz. I conclude by offering several criticisms of the work.

Patients -- Clients -- Welfare assessment -- Clinical choices -- Achieving animal welfare goals -- Beyond the clinic.

Every Thing Must Go aruges that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it ...

Roughly half the essays in this collection engage directly with Augustine's theological animus and follow his thinking into self-division, perversity of will, grief, conversion, and the aspiration for transcendence.

The reference of the postmodern task of thinking is Auschwitz, the abyss and discontinuity separating us from the world of our ancestors. As inhabitants of Planet Auschwitz our point of reference lacks all transcendental warrants; it is not a non-referable reference which constitutes the abyss we must enter, endure, and in which our intellectual and cultural tradition must be transformed. The private/public transformations which constitute the texts of this book attempt to depart from the dystopic individuality and public life resulting (...) from business-as-usual after Auschwitz. The three parts of the book are progressive reworkings of traditional metaphysics as adapted and modified by a modernism that refuses to grapple with its complicity. It is precisely that complicity which postmodern thinking takes up in its attempt to signify otherwise than the easy modernist translations and images of tradition. Thus it is a series of uneasy images imaging otherwise but never apart from modernity that take us away from complicity toward a transformed tradition. The uneasy images of this book are photogrammic combinations of photographs and texts, mutual supplements, pulling tradition through the Event against the persistent and murderous forces of contemporary idolatry and repression. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to revisit the phlogiston theory to see what can be learned from it about the relationship between scientific realism, approximate truth and successful reference. It is argued that phlogiston theory did to some extent correctly describe the causal or nomological structure of the world, and that some of its central terms can be regarded as referring. However, it is concluded that the issue of whether or not theoretical terms successfully refer is not the key (...) to formulating the appropriate form of scientific realism in response to arguments from theory change, and that the case of phlogiston theory is shown to be readily accommodated by ontic structural realism. (shrink)

The idea that gauge theory has `surplus' structure poses a puzzle: in one much discussed sense, this structure is redundant; but on the other hand, it is also widely held to play an essential role in the theory. In this paper, we employ category-theoretic tools to illuminate an aspect of this puzzle. We precisify what is meant by `surplus' structure by means of functorial comparisons with equivalence classes of gauge fields, and then show that such structure is essential for any (...) theory that represents a rich collection of physically relevant fields which are `local' in nature. (shrink)

Organ donation after the circulatory determination of death requires the permanent cessation of circulation while organ donation after the brain determination of death requires the irreversible cessation of brain functions. The unified brain-based determination of death connects the brain and circulatory death criteria for circulatory death determination in organ donation as follows: permanent cessation of systemic circulation causes permanent cessation of brain circulation which causes permanent cessation of brain perfusion which causes permanent cessation of brain function. The relevant circulation that (...) must cease in circulatory death determination is that to the brain. Eliminating brain circulation from the donor ECMO organ perfusion circuit in thoracoabdominal NRP protocols satisfies the unified brain-based determination of death but only if the complete cessation of brain circulation can be proved. Despite its medical and physiologic rationale, the unified brain-based determination of death remains inconsistent with the Uniform Determination of Death Act. (shrink)

In 1962, the philosopher Richard Taylor used six commonly accepted presuppositions to imply that human beings have no control over the future. David Foster Wallace not only took issue with Taylor's method, which, according to him, scrambled the relations of logic, language, and the physical world, but also noted a semantic trick at the heart of Taylor's argument. _Fate, Time, and Language_ presents Wallace's brilliant critique of Taylor's work. Written long before the publication of his fiction and essays, Wallace's thesis (...) reveals his great skepticism of abstract thinking made to function as a negation of something more genuine and real. He was especially suspicious of certain paradigms of thought-the cerebral aestheticism of modernism, the clever gimmickry of postmodernism-that abandoned "the very old traditional human verities that have to do with spirituality and emotion and community." As Wallace rises to meet the challenge to free will presented by Taylor, we witness the developing perspective of this major novelist, along with his struggle to establish solid logical ground for his convictions. This volume, edited by Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert, reproduces Taylor's original article and other works on fatalism cited by Wallace. James Ryerson's introduction connects Wallace's early philosophical work to the themes and explorations of his later fiction, and Jay Garfield supplies a critical biographical epilogue. (shrink)

We are immersed within an odorous sea of chemical currents that we parse into individual odors with complex structures. Odors have been posited as determined by the structural relation between the molecules that compose the chemical compounds and their interactions with the receptor site. But, naturally occurring smells are parsed from gaseous odor plumes. To give a comprehensive account of the nature of odors the chemosciences must account for these large distributed entities as well. We offer a focused review of (...) what is known about the perception of odor plumes for olfactory navigation and tracking, which we then connect to what is known about the role odorants play as properties of the plume in determining odor identity with respect to odor quality. We end by motivating our central claim that more research needs to be conducted on the role that odorants play within the odor plume in determining odor identity. (shrink)

As business and society is an inherently multi-disciplinary scholarly area, the book will draw from work in areas outside of business and management, such as psychology, sociology, philosophy, religious studies, economics and other related fields, as well as the natural sciences, education, and other professional areas of study.

How should we understand the surveillance state post Snowden? This paper is concerned with the relationship between increased surveillance capacity and state power. The paper begins by analysing two metaphors used in public post Snowden discourse to describe state surveillance practices: the haystack and the panopticon. It argues that these metaphors share a flawed common entailment regarding surveillance, knowledge and power which cannot accurately capture important aspects of state anxiety generated by mass surveillance in an age of big (...) data. The paper shows that the nature of big data itself complicates the power attributed to mass surveillance states by these metaphors and those who use them. Relying heavily on Ezrahi’s distinction between information and knowledge, the paper situates this argument concerning the state and anxiety borne of information overload in the context of literature that concerns the state and information management. Drawing primarily on James Scott’s work on legibility, it argues that the big data born of mass surveillance problematises the concept of information as empowering the state. Instead, understanding mass surveillance in an age of big data requires understanding the relationship between the surveillance state and information in terms of anxiety as well as power. (shrink)

This article develops an interpretation and defense of Husserl’s account of the omnitemporality of idealities. I first examine why Husserl rejects the atemporality and temporal individuation of idealities on phenomenological grounds, specifically that these attributions prove countersensical in how they relate idealities to consciousness. As an alternative to these conceptions, I develop a two-sided interpretation of omnitemporality expressed in modal terms of actuality and possibility, the actual referring to appearances in time and the possible, to reactivation at any time. In (...) defense of this interpretation of omnitemporality, I consider influential criticisms against Husserl’s account of idealities as they concern time, particularly whether the historical genesis of idealities compromises their omnitemporality by binding them to time. Ultimately, I argue that the transcendental historicity of idealities, despite being relevant to the question of validity and access, proves indifferent to their omnitemporality. (shrink)

In this paper we explain our pretense account of truth-talk and apply it in a diagnosis and treatment of the Liar Paradox. We begin by assuming that some form of deflationism is the correct approach to the topic of truth. We then briefly motivate the idea that all T-deflationists should endorse a fictionalist view of truth-talk, and, after distinguishing pretense-involving fictionalism (PIF) from error- theoretic fictionalism (ETF), explain the merits of the former over the latter. After presenting the basic framework (...) of our PIF account of truth-talk, we demonstrate a few advantages it offers over T-deflationist accounts that do not explicitly acknowledge pretense at work in the discourse. In turning to the Liar Paradox, we explain how the quasi-anaphoric functioning that our account attributes to truth-talk provides a diagnosis of the Liar Paradox (and other instances of semantic pathology) as having no content—in the sense of not specifying any of what we call M-conditions. At the same time, however, we vindicate the intuition that we can understand liar sentences, thereby avoiding one standard objection to “meaningless strategy” responses to the Liar Paradox. With this diagnosis in place, we then, by way of treatment, introduce a new predicate, ‘semantically defective’, and show how the explanation we give for its application allows for a consistent, yet revenge-immune, (dis)solution of the Liar Paradox, and semantic pathology generally. (shrink)

James Collins probes the meaning and methods of historical interpretation in philosophy by analyzing the creative reciprocity between the modern source thinkers—the great classical philosophers from Descartes and Locke to Mill and Nietzsche—and their midtwentieth century interpreters. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable (...) paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

The past few decades have seen an explosion of research on causal reasoning in philosophy, computer science, and statistics, as well as descriptive work in psychology. In Causation with a Human Face, James Woodward integrates these lines of research and argues for an understanding of how each can inform the other: normative ideas can suggest interesting experiments, while descriptive results can suggest important normative concepts. Woodward's overall framework builds on the interventionist treatment of causation that he developed in Making (...) Things Happen. Normative ideas discussed include proposals about the role of invariant or stable relationships in successful causal reasoning and the notion of proportionality. He argues that these normative ideas are reflected in the causal judgments that people actually make as a descriptive matter. Woodward also discusses the common philosophical practice-particularly salient in philosophical accounts of causation--of appealing to intuitions or judgments about cases in support of philosophical theses. He explores how, properly understood, such appeals are not different in principle from appeals to results from empirical research, and demonstrates how they may serve as a useful source of information about causal cognition. (shrink)

Volume 22, Issue 3-4, November - December 2023.

Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity James Tully. these ambassadors from Haida Gwaii conciliate the goods which appear irreconcilable to us? To discover the answer, and learn our way around on this strange common ground, we need to ...

Original copyright date: c1972. First Princeton paperback edition, 1975.

J. L. Schellenberg's Philosophy of Religion argues for a specific brand of sceptical religion that takes ‘Ultimism’ – the proposition that there is a metaphysically, axiologically, and soteriologically ultimate reality – to be the object to which the sceptical religionist should assent. In this article I shall argue that Ietsism – the proposition that there is merely something transcendental worth committing ourselves to religiously – is a preferable object of assent. This is for two primary reasons. First, Ietsism is far (...) more modest than Ultimism; Ietsism, in fact, is open to the truth of Ultimism, while the converse does not hold. Second, Ietsism can fulfil the same criteria that compel Schellenberg to argue for Ultimism. (shrink)

This publication is an abridged translation of two lectures given by James Scott, a Sterling Professor of Political Science and Anthropology at Yale University, within «The Tanner Lectures» project as the Director of the Agrarian Studies Program and a leading expert in the study of peasantry of the Southeast Asia and Africa. Seeking to answer the question why throughout the entire course of human history all states seemed to pursue in fact the only one goal – to ensure by (...) all possible means the sedentary life of their citizens – Scott suggests an «alternative» version of historical process. On the one hand, he rejects the dominant «civilizational narrative» about the backwardness, barbarity, savagery, and other derogatory features of non-state communities; on the other hand, he develops quite another model and interpretation of the first agrarian states emergence referring to exactly the same set of historical evidence. (shrink)

By critically reviewing the event of Dewey’s visit to China (1919-1921) through historical, philosophical and comparative perspectives, this book finds new value to revive the dialogue between Dewey and Eastern philosophies as a way to respond to contemporary educational challenges.

Is there a world beyond the senses? Can we perceive future events before they occur? Is it possible to communicate with others without need of our complex sensory-perceptual apparatus that has evolved over hundreds of millions of years? Can our minds/souls/personalities leave our bodies and operate with all the knowledge and information-processing ability that is normally dependent upon the physical brain? Do our personalities survive physical death?

One of the most important topics that Thomas Aquinas discusses in his extensive corpus is the love of friendship, which is a unique form of love aimed at persons. Yet Aquinas's teachings on this are perplexing, for he claims that this love always produces union between lover and beloved, and that it is always a mutual love. This implies that one's love depends on reciprocation from the beloved, which seems implausible given the possibility of phenomena such as unrequited love. A (...) common interpretation of Aquinas's account of the love of friendship maintains that it is enough that one desires union and mutuality for such love to obtain even if such desires remain unrealized, but in this paper I reject this reading and argue that achieving union and mutuality is essential to this form of love. This novel interpretation ultimately reveals that the love of friendship is an intrinsically interpersonal act. (shrink)

If${\cal M},{\cal N}$are countable, arithmetically saturated models of Peano Arithmetic and${\rm{Aut}}\left( {\cal M} \right) \cong {\rm{Aut}}\left( {\cal N} \right)$, then the Turing-jumps of${\rm{Th}}\left( {\cal M} \right)$and${\rm{Th}}\left( {\cal N} \right)$are recursively equivalent.

Beginning right at the start of the recently published volume II of Donner le temps, at its ‘bord’ or ‘boarding’ upon or out of a calmy oceanic surface, this essay examines the functions and movements of distinct surfaces in between Heidegger and Derrida. Confronting thus the tradition of the ‘Grund’, ‘Abgrund’, ‘Urgrund’, ‘Ungrund’, with the khôra-like surface of archi-writing and dissemination, the essay proposes an investigation of the philosophical and writerly space of Derrida/Heidegger not through their marks and letters, but (...) instead through the different surfaces of inscription and – simultaneous – effacement as the ‘proper places’ of thought and experience, of Destruktion and deconstruction. (shrink)

Conscious recollection, of the kind characterised by sensory mental imagery, is often thought to involve ‘episodically’ recalling experienced events in one’s personal past. One might wonder whether this overlooks distinctive ways in which we sometimes recall ordinary, persisting objects. Of course, one can recall an object by remembering an event in which one encountered it. But are there acts of recall which are distinctively objectual in that they are not about objects in this mediated way (i.e., by way of being (...) about events in which they featured)? This question has broad implications, not least for understanding the nature and role of imagery in remembering, the requirements of memory-based singular thought about objects, and the sense in which remembering involves ‘mental time travel’ through which one ‘relives’ past events. In this paper, I argue that we sometimes do recall objects from our past without remembering events in which they featured. The positive view of such cases I go on to propose draws on a wide body of empirical work in its support and accommodates a more nuanced picture of the role of imagery in remembering. Succinctly, remembering might essentially involve a kind of ‘re-experiencing’, but it need not involve ‘reliving’. (shrink)

Linguistic anthropologists have studied emotion in societies around the world for several decades. This article defines the discipline, introduces its general relevance to emotion theory, then presents five of the most important contributions linguistic anthropology has made to the study of emotion.

Focusing on David B. Riazanov career and his pioneering efforts in producing a complete edition of the works of Marx and Engels, the article explains why Riazanov’s variety of Marxism was unacceptable to the Soviet regime, and why from 1924 Lenin was credited with being an outstanding Marxist theoretician, whereas previously he had been regarded only as a skilled political activist. The concept of Leninism as a new stage of Marxism was put forward by Bukharin and elaborated on by Stalin (...) and Zinoviev. Georg Lukács attempted to show that Lenin’s thought had the internal coherence that Bukharin postulated. In support of Lenin’s theoretical credentials, his ‘Philosophical Notebooks’ began to be published from 1925. However, neither Riazanov nor his associate Abram M. Deborin subscribed to the official doctrine that Leninism was a new and higher stage of Marxism. For this stance they fell victim to Stalin’s repression. (shrink)