To make behavioral choices that are in line with our goals and our moral beliefs, we need to gather and consider information about our current situation. Most information present in our environment is not relevant to the choices we need or would want to make and thus could interfere with our ability to behave in ways that reflect our underlying values. Certain sources of information could even lead us to make choices we later regret, and thus it would be beneficial (...) to be able to ignore that information. Our ability to exert successful self-governance depends on our ability to attend to sources of information that we deem important to our decision-making processes. We generally assume that, at any moment, we have the ability to choose what we pay attention to. However, recent research indicates that what we pay attention to is influenced by our prior experiences, including reward history and past successes and failures, even when we are not aware of this history. Even momentary distractions can cause us to miss or discount information that should have a greater influence on our decisions given our values. Such biases in attention thus raise questions about the degree to which the choices that we make may be poorly informed and not truly reflect our ability to otherwise exert self-governance. (shrink)

Peter Winch's The Idea of a Social Science has been the subject of repeated misunderstanding. This discussion takes one recent example and shows how Winch's argument is gravely distorted. What is at issue is not, as is usually supposed, whether we can accept or endorse another society's explanations of its activities, but whether we have to look for an explanatory connection between concepts and action. Winch's argument is that before we can try to explain actions, we have to identify them (...) correctly. This can only be done by seeing how they, and the concepts they are associated with, fit within a way of life. Grasping its rule?following character is understanding action. Once the difficulties in making such identifications are appreciated, we will be less inclined to accept facile explanations why people in other societies do the things they do. (shrink)

Heyes's literature review of deception, imitation, and self-recognition is inadequate, misleading, and erroneous. The anaesthetic artifact hypothesis of self-recognition is unsupported by the data she herself examines. Her proposed experiment is tantalizing, indicating that theory of mind is simply a Turing test.

Focusing on a discussion by Ruddich and Stassen of the ?Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough?, this paper shows that some of the usual criticisms made by sociologists of Wittgenstein are misplaced. He does not reject causal explanations of beliefs and actions and replace them with some other form of explanation, but dismisses the idea that any explanation is called for here. His argument that the origin of the desire to explain beliefs is to be found in a misconceived parallel between (...) science and magic is explained and discussed. (shrink)

In this article, we defend the view that problematic epistemological extremism, which presents puzzles for many learners new to philosophy, is a result of earlier learning at the K–12 level. Confirming this hunch serves as a way of locating the problem and suggesting that recent learning interventions proposed by Christopher Edelman (2021) and Galen Barry (2022) are on the right track. Further, we offer that this extremism is plausibly described as what Miranda Fricker (2007) calls an epistemic injustice. This suggests (...) that disrupting the problem is a boon for learners, the discipline, and good citizenship. In our discussion we introduce work by Derek Muller suggesting that it is important to address the misconceptions involved in epistemological extremism (and its precursors) lest we simply reinforce these problematic misconceptions for the worse—inhibiting student learning, reproducing challenges to good citizenship, and leading to a discounting of many ways of knowing. (shrink)

Despite widespread agreement that it would be ethical to use somatic cell gene therapy to correct serious diseases, there is still uneasiness on the part of the public about this procedure. The basis for this concern lies less with the procedure's clinical risks than with fear that genetic engineering could lead to changes in human nature. Legitimate concerns about the potential for misuse of gene transfer technology justify drawing a moral line that includes corrective germline therapy but excludes enhancement interventions (...) in both somatic and germline contexts. Keywords: somatic cell, germ line, genetic diseases, genetic engineering, humanness, enhancement, eugenics CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

types of application of genetic engineering for the insertion of genes into humans. The scientific requirements and the ethical issues associated with each type are discussed. Somatic cell gene therapy is technically the simplest and ethically the least controversial. The first clinical trials will probably be undertaken within the next year. Germ line gene therapy will require major advances in our present knowledge and it raises ethical issues that are now being debated. In order to provide guidelines for determining when (...) germ line gene therapy would be ethical, the author presents three criteria which should be satisfied prior to the time that a clinical protocol is attempted in humans. Enhancement genetic engineering presents significant, and troubling, ethical concerns. Except where this type of therapy can be justified on the grounds of preventive medicine, enhancement engineering should not be performed. The fourth type, eugenic genetic engineering, is impossible at present and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future, despite the widespread media attention it has received. Keywords: genetic engineering, somatic cells, germ cells, enhancement, eugenics, humanhood CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Modern information technologies, beginning with the fax and audiocassettes but now exemplified in satellite television and the Internet, have opened the public discourse of Islam to new voices and, more subtlely, to new practices. While media-savvy militants draw the attention of outside observers, a quieter drama is unfolding. Pious middle classes are extending conventional patterns of seeking out religious guidance into new channels, particularly the Internet; the continuous search for role models and reference groups is meeting increasingly modern ways of (...) providing those - namely, media and increasingly media that target specific needs of growing middle classes. These range from religious instructional material for children to be used by parents to religious advice columnists, both conventional and contemporary to sermons to selections of news. Once 'private' discourses are on public display, and this public world of Islam is decidedly intimate. Where scholars of print note an officialization of discourse that moves into that medium, and programmatic 'islamizers' of knowledge, politics, etc. generally pursue entextualization strategies, electronic communication is moving Islam into the marketplace and aligning its practices, both metaphorically in the sense that the range of public choice and alternatives expands and literally in the rise of businesses to service these demands. (shrink)

Everyone knows the statement of Servius that Virgil was compelled by Augustus to alter the second half of the Fourth Georgic after the fall of Gallus, and that he substituted the story of Aristaeus for the laudes Galli. This statement, often doubted by older generations, has had such a remarkable success in recent years that anyone who ventures to impugn it must feel that he is pleading with a halter round his neck before a one-sided jury. It is notable, however, (...) that these jurors, though one-sided, are by no means united, save in their determination to uphold the credit of Servius. One group will assure us that the episode of Aristaeus shows obvious signs not only of haste but of immaturity, and they draw a pathetic picture of the grief-stricken Virgil, ordered to bring out a second edition minus the praises of his friend Gallus, and half-heartedly throwing together some bits of juvenile stuff which he happened to have handy. Others assure us that the tale of Aristaeus shows us a more mature Virgil, nearer to the Virgil of the Aeneid. But the Servians really cannot have it both ways. They must make up their minds in the one direction or in the other if they are to be taken seriously. They make it doubly difficult for us to take them seriously when they try to tell us what Servius meant—but of that more anon. The present paper is an attempt by a converted Servian to examine frankly the arguments which have been advanced in support of Servius. Most of these may be found in Skutsch, Aus Vergils Frühzeit, pp. 140–147. One is very reluctant to use disparaging words about an eminent scholar who has served the cause of learning in so many ways; but it can scarcely be denied that the work just mentioned, in spite of its ingenuity and enthusiasm, shows a lamentable lack of three great essentials—a judicial temper, accurate statement of facts, and cogent reasoning. There is also at times a regrettable vagueness of expression, suggesting that the author is concealing inward doubts or shrinking from thought. All these deficiencies are to some extent present in the section with which this paper is concerned. (shrink)

Drawing on the legacy of prominent pragmatic philosophers and political economists—C. S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, and John R. Commons—Charles W. Anderson creatively brings pragmatism and liberalism together, striving to temper the excesses of both and to fashion a broader vision of the proper domain of political reason.

The following is the transcript of a lecture taken in shorthand by Hans-Georg Backhaus. The transcript was originally published as an appendix in Hans-Georg Backhaus, Dialektik der Wertform. Untersuchungen zur marxschen Ökonomiekritik, a complete translation of which is forthcoming in the Historical Materialism book series.

This study evaluates the ontological and ethical premises and presuppositions of three abortion theorists: Germain Grisez, Eike-Henner W. Kluge, and Michael Tooley. ;Grisez's argument that human embryos and fetuses are moral persons because moral rights are derived from moral value, and the full moral value of human adults who are moral persons is implicit in the living genetic mechanism of all human beings, is criticized on the basis of the tension in Aristotle's doctrine between the notion of essence as an (...) internal causitive principle, and as a set of observable qualities considered to be definitive of the nature of a living thing. However, David Wiggins' use of the semantical theory of natural kind terms of Hilary Putnam is suggested as a possible resolution. ;Kluge's argument that rational beings are moral persons because rational awareness has an absolute and intrinsic value, and that mature fetuses are moral persons because their neurological systems have become sufficiently complex to provide the present capability for rational awareness is criticized because he fails to show that mature fetuses do have such a present capability, and because his discussion of the relationship of potential being to actual being of living things wrongly presupposes that human gestation is analogous to the making of an artifact. ;Tooley's contrary argument that the right to life is not derivable from moral value but must, itself, be something violable, and that there is a conceptual connection between its violation and one's desire to continue to live, excludes fetuses and neonates because they lack the mental capability to desire to continue to live. Tooley's analysis is criticized as incomplete, and his argument as presupposing the existence of an essentially mentalistic self. ;The final chapter is a synthesis which considers the ontology of the development of personality or self, including the theories of Descartes, Locke and Wiggins. The conclusion is reached that theories which claim that a moral person "comes to be" as a fundamentally different kind of being at some point after conception, due to either morphological changes or the development of personality or self, entail dual principles of identity and, hence, are in danger of unintelligibility. (shrink)

A distinguished political philosopher with years of experience teaching in undergraduate liberal arts programs, Anderson shows how the ideal of practical reason can reconcile academia’s research aims with public expectations for universities: the preparation of citizens, the training of professionals, the communication of a cultural inheritance. It is not good enough, he contends, to simply say that the university should stick to the great books of the classic tradition, or to denounce this tradition and declare that all important questions (...) are a matter of personal or cultural choice. By applying the methods of practical reason, instead, teachers and students will think critically about the essential purposes of any human activity and the underlying arguments of any text. (shrink)

A distinguished political philosopher with years of experience teaching in undergraduate liberal arts programs, Anderson shows how the ideal of practical reason can reconcile academia’s research aims with public expectations for universities: the preparation of citizens, the training of professionals, the communication of a cultural inheritance. It is not good enough, he contends, to simply say that the university should stick to the great books of the classic tradition, or to denounce this tradition and declare that all important questions (...) are a matter of personal or cultural choice. By applying the methods of practical reason, instead, teachers and students will think critically about the essential purposes of any human activity and the underlying arguments of any text. (shrink)