Behavioural welfare economics has lately been challenged on account of its use of the satisfaction of true preferences as a normative criterion. The critique contests what is taken to be an implicit assumption in the literature, namely that true preferences are context-independent. This assumption is considered not only unjustified in the behavioural welfare economics literature but unjustifiable – true preferences are argued to be, at least sometimes, context-dependent. This article explores the implications of this ‘critique of the inner rational agent’. (...) I argue that the critique does not support a wholesale shift away from the use of true preferences as an evaluative standard in normative economics; instead, the critique implies that behavioural welfare economists need to inquire into and establish the ‘source’ of particular context-dependent choices in individuals’ decision-making. The source determines the permissibility of correcting individuals’ context-dependent choices and can, in some situations, support decisive welfare judgements. (shrink)

Neoclassical economics assumes that individuals have stable and context-independent preferences, and uses preference satisfaction as a normative criterion. By calling this assumption into question, behavioural findings cause fundamental problems for normative economics. A common response to these problems is to treat deviations from conventional rational choice theory as mistakes, and to try to reconstruct the preferences that individuals would have acted on, had they reasoned correctly. We argue that this preference purification approach implicitly uses a dualistic model (...) of the human being, in which an inner rational agent is trapped in an outer psychological shell. This model is psychologically and philosophically problematic. (shrink)

Scholars disagree about the plausibility of preference purification. Some see it as a familiar phenomenon. Others denounce it as conceptually incoherent, postulating that it relies on the psychologically implausible assumption of an inner rational agent. I argue that different notions of rationality can be leveraged to advance the debate: procedural rationality and structural rationality. I explicate how structural rationality, in contrast to procedural rationality, allows us to offer an account of the guiding idea behind preference purification (...) that avoids inner rational agents. Afterward, I address two pressing challenges against preference purification that emerge under the structural rationality account. (shrink)

In this article I intend to focus on the interpretation of the so-called postmodern phenomenon of anthropological fragmentation/doubling. My starting-point is a comparison between the anthropological position of the American philosopher Richard Rorty on the one hand and that of the French-American anthropologist René Girard on the other. Both Rorty and Girard prefer literature to academic philosophy as a gateway to the understanding of anthropological issues. Moreover, both their anthropological analyses take full account of the work of Sigmund Freud. In (...) spite of these resemblances, their respective interpretations of the current image of man are complete opposites. I shall work out this opposition in three different steps. In the first section of this article, I shall go into Rorty's interpretation of the Freudian image of man. In the second section I shall present the Girardian image of man, which, to a certain extent, he has worked out in answer to the Freudian one. Eventually, in the third section, I shall confront both forms of current anthropology, situate Girard's early writings within the context of his entire oeuvre and put forward a few critical remarks with regard to his anthroplogical presuppositions. (shrink)

Hausman and McPherson provide an evidential defense of welfare economics, arguing that preferences are not constitutive of welfare but nevertheless provide the best evidence for what promotes welfare. Behavioral economics identifies several ways in which some people's preferences exhibit anomalies that are incoherent or inconsistent with rational choice theory. I argue that the existence of these behavioral anomalies calls into question the evidential defense of welfare economics. The evidential defense does not justify preference purification, or eliminating behavioral anomalies (...) before conducting welfare analysis. But without doing so, the evidential defense yields implausible welfare implications. I discuss how the evidential defense could be modified to accommodate behavioral anomalies. (shrink)

Behavioural economics has taught us that human agents don't always display consistent, context-independent and stable preferences in their choice behaviour. Can we nevertheless do welfare economics...

This note replies to a comment by Daniel Hausman on our paper ‘Preference purification and the inner rational agent: a critique of the conventional wisdom of behavioural welfare economics’. We clarify our characterisation of behavioural welfare economics and acknowledge that Hausman does fully endorse this approach. However, we argue that Hausman’s response to our critique, like behavioural welfare economics itself, implicitly uses a model of an inner rational agent.

This essay examines the critique of behavioral economics that Infante, Lecouteaux and Sugden offer in:"Preference Purification and the Inner Rational Agent.” It identifies and questions three main criticisms that ILS make: a methodological criticism, alleging that there is no psychological basis for the attribution of purified preferences, an epistemological criticism, alleging that there is little evidence for claims about purified preferences, and a normative criticism, arguing that policies should aim to facilitate people’s choices rather than to satisfy purified (...) preferences. The essay also distinguishes the view of welfare economics defended in Preference, Value, Choice, and Welfare from the claims of behavioral economists ILS criticize. (shrink)

As behavioural economics reveals, human decision-making deviates from neoclassical assumptions about human behaviour and people (often) fail to make the ‘right’ welfare-enhancing choice. The purpose of Sunstein and Thaler’s concept of ‘nudge’ is to improve individual welfare. To provide normative justification, they argue that the only relevant normative criterion is whether the individual is ‘better off as judged by themselves’, so that the direction in which people are to be nudged is defined by their own preferences. In light of behavioural (...) findings, however, people’s choices do not provide a sound basis for eliciting preferences and thus for assessing welfare. In this paper, I aim to challenge Sunstein and Thaler’s normative view, arguing that it is unreasonable to rely on conventional welfare economics, particularly considering the given context. Sunstein and Thaler depend on an approach of ‘preference purification’ which assumes informed, latent, and true preferences: As a result they face crucial methodological, epistemological, and practical objections, and cannot show how their approach enhances individual welfare. By building on the concepts of R. Sugden and C. Schubert, I develop an alternative normative framework for behavioural public policy, based on a contractualist perspective in which people may consent to collective choice rules in order to align future behaviour with values, to achieve particular goals or to preserve personal integrity. Individual consent and citizens’ participation and deliberation are crucial to this approach. This contractualist approach may provide a normative justification for behavioural public policy, and help to reconcile behavioural and normative economics. (shrink)

This article considers how the figure of the ``user'' is deployed to imagine the assembling of location-based mobile phone technologies in the context of UK policy. Drawing on the sociology of expectations, we address the performativity of the ``user'' in the think tank Demos' publication Mobilisation. In the process, we analyze how discourses about users enact particular futures that feature arrangements of, for example, persons, mobile phone technologies, and political institutions. We present two narrative strategies operating in Mobilisation: first, the (...) purification of the social and technological in the portrayal of futures and their impediments; second, how existing, emergent, and future users serve as ``narrative joints'', reconnecting the social and technological in the enactment of preferred policy trajectories. In conclusion, we explore Mobilisation as a `catalogue of expectations' in which the representation of a multiplicity of users is itself performative, enacting a particular future policy terrain while bracketing off others. (shrink)

This article is based on a case study of a long-term public controversy over the construction of a highway bypass. Two principal variants of the bypass were proposed. One of them began gradually to appear preferable, increasingly attractive for experts, but remaining only on paper. In the meantime, however, the other variant became more realistic, pushed through mainly by local politicians and actually constructed. This article shows how purification of science from politics played a key role in the development (...) and ending of the case. Initial expertization of the case switched to its sharp politicization, when people got frustrated from protraction and indecisive evidence of accumulated expertise. This turned to be fatal for those who consistently staked everything on “pure facts.” This article concludes by outlining some general consequences of such a development for both democratic decision making and the political relevance of expertise. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Comparative Analysis of Shinran's Shinjin and Calvin's FaithKenneth D. LeeAlthough in Shinran: An Introduction to His Thought, Ueda and Hirota prefer the translation of the term "Shinjin" as "entrusting" over the meaning"faith," the concept of Shinjin in Shinran still seems to echo some similar concepts that are reflected in the Christian notion of faith. In both traditions, the concept of Shinjin and faith is central in the salvific and (...) redemptive process of Amida and Jesus Christ, respectively. By advancing the teaching of the Absolute Reliance on Other-power (tariki) for salvation, Shinran brings to focus the importance of the practitioner's realization of Shinjin in order attain birth into the Pure Land. However, as we will discover from our comparative analysis, we will see that Shinran's Shinjin, though it may share some similar ideas with the Christian faith, particularly in the idea of the utter futility of beings to become saved by self-power (jiriki), is a concept that remains faithful to the Mahāyāna teaching of emptiness and the transcendence of duality. But interestingly, Shinran seems to de-emphasize the notion of emptiness in order to emphasize the necessity of dichotomous mental activity to bring the practitioner to realize his incapacity of attaining enlightenment by self-power and dependence on Other-power.Understanding the underlying process of Shinjin and faith involves understanding the tension between being and becoming vis-à-vis the state between the realization and the actualization of Shinjin or faith. For Shinran, the realization of Shinjin is just the beginning of one's birth into the Pure Land where one's evil karma becomes absorbed and purified in the ocean of Amida's purity. But the actualization of Shinjin, which begins upon the realization of Shinjin, involves a continual purification process of the practitioner's karmic evil until the practitioner reaches enlightenment. That is, through the realization of shinjin, the practitioner attains birth in the Pure Land, which begins the actualization process toward guaranteed enlightenment, but that realization of shinjin is not to be equated with enlightenment itself. Hence, throughout the whole process of realization and actualization, it seems important that the relationship between the practitioner and Amida Buddha be maintained by shinjin on the basis that the practitioner is totally dependent on the Other-power for the actualization of enlightenment since this is impossible through self-power by relying on Amida's compassion and fulfillment of the Vow. Hence, shinjin serves as the practitioner's vehicle for attaining "complete" enlightenment, since enlightenment [End Page 171] involves not an instantaneous but rather a continual process in which the process of purification of the practitioner's karmic residue is made complete as Amida's Vow becomes actualized.Similarly, faith also involves the simultaneous process of being and becoming. In Christian terms, this process can be explained in the notion of justification and sanctification. Justification is the act of divine forgiveness whereby, because of the sacrifice of Christ, an unworthy being no longer has his guilt reckoned against him. Accepting that pardon by faith, the sinner is renewed in his heart and reckoned as righteously justified. Whereas justification by faith is at once made complete at the very moment of the individual's realization, sanctification is a continual process in which the Holy Spirit imparts new life to the believer and he is released from the compulsive power of sin and guilt and is enabled to love God and to serve his neighbor. Furthermore, sanctification ("to make holy";cf. "to purify") is made complete at the Parousia, the second coming of Christ.The reason why this salvific process is at once complete and yet not complete is due to inherent sin or "evil karma" in humans. By the fact that one possesses a human body, not yet transformed in the Buddha body nor yet received an imperishable heavenly body, indicates that there remains an inherent "residue" of evil karma or original sin that needs to be accounted for. Consequently, this purification process is activated solely by the Other-power, which begins at the realization of shinjin or faith after the practitioner or believer surrenders his self-effort and relies upon the Other... (shrink)

Against the background of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, the question of an effective cultural policy that would support national identity, contribute to the purification of consciousness from propaganda myths and preserve the heritage of Ukrainian culture is becoming more acute. Since cultural policy is related to both aesthetic-artistic and cultural-anthropological dimensions of social life, in order to identify the effective influence of cultural policy on dominant social practices, it is necessary to find out the universal principles of its (...) functioning. The purpose of this article is to identify the relevant philosophical and methodological basis of cultural policy for modern Ukrainian realities. Based on the fundamental ideas of Richard Rorty’s pragmatic philosophy and his analysis of cultural policies, the generally accepted nature of the inferential approach to social reality on the part of individual social groups was ascertained. The variability of cultural policy depending on the type of social organization community/society is demonstrated. In small social groups of the authoritarian type, social epistemological authority is mediated by the individual preferences of the leader of this group, so the tools of cultural policy are weak (patriarchal family, religious or political sect). An authoritarian or totalitarian mass society shows a high propensity for linguistic practices of propaganda, which can be seen as an extreme distorted form of cultural politics. In democratic societies, cultural policy is able to harmonize social life, improving its practices and building a value-symbolic world that constitutes culture in a broad sense. The social institute of education has all the tools, including digital ones, to shape the necessary social practices and educate a critical thinker who is able to generate conceptual knowledge, i.e. see relationships and be aware. Openness in decision-making, interaction of expert groups, public discussions are necessary elements for an effective cultural policy, which should be different from “cultural management”. Creative cultural industries play an important role in modern popular culture societies, and these industries significantly strengthen the economic component of social life. Public projects and initiatives effectively help to preserve Ukrainian culture, influence the level of awareness of Ukrainians and the economic well-being of our country. (shrink)

This book is published as part of a series catering mainly to the undergraduate and is written on a fairly general, vulgarizing level. However, Schlanger—author of a monograph on the Medieval Jewish Neoplatonist Ibn Gabirol —takes the occasion to provide some reflections on the essence of philosophy and on the interpretation of its history. Of the two sections of the book, the first analyzes what is essential, non-contingent, in any philosophical system, and the second describes the essential aspect of a (...) Plotinian-type philosophy. Philosophy, for Schlanger, is a never-ending effort of "réadéquation" between what is and what is thought concerning what is. This effort gives rise in history to philosophical "systems" representing various sets of formulations which seek to give an "ideal" interpretation of reality. These systems relate to specific socio-cultural contexts, and their "truth" is contingent to the degree that it is related to contingent contexts. However, the systems also embody various possible "ideal" attitudes to reality. Behind each philosophical system, stripped of its contingency and temporality, lies an ideal attitude, a "structure métaphysique." The history of philosophy can therefore be considered as constituting an "inventory" of "structures métaphysiques," and it is in the study of this inventory that Schlanger finds the philosophical importance of the study of the history of philosophy. By studying this inventory, the historian is able to provide philosophy with an array of possible "ideal" attitudes applicable in any socio-cultural context. The constituent elements of a "structure métaphysique" are listed as follows: ideal intuitions ; ideal methodological intuitions ; analogical intuitions ; preferred disciplines ; way of life. In the second section of the book, Schlanger provides an illustration of all this by describing the "structure métaphysique" essential to Plotinian-type philosophical systems. Of the Plotinian "ideal intuitions" he lists the unicity of being, emanation of being, derivation of being from non-being, the hierarchial order of being, the conception of two worlds, the "conversion" of soul, man as microcosm. These ideal intuitions are particular "ideal" reactions to specific existential situations; they are not interdependent, do not logically cohere with each other and can contradict each other. In discussing Plotinian-type "methodological intuitions," Schlanger notes the ontological status of knowledge in "Plotinisme" and the idea that there are different levels of knowledge corresponding to different levels of being. The Plotinian "analogical intuitions" include the images of the sphere and its circular motion, and of the sun and its rays. The "preferred discipline" in "Plotinisme" is psychology, a "practical science" designed to lead the soul to union with the One. This is indeed the Plotinian "way of life," a life directed towards the "salvation" of the soul through a process of purification and transcendence in which the soul reaches union with the One. Schlanger concludes in a "Postface" with some useful remarks on the nature and significance of the interpretation of philosophical texts. (shrink)

‘The issues surrounding Orestes’ purification are some of the most difficult in all of Aeschylus’ wrote A. L. Brown in 1982. Despite the appearance since then of an overall treatment of pollution and three editions of the play, there continue to be disagreements about the matter. In this paper I suggest that we may be better able to understand the treatment of purification if we focus on the importance of Orestes’ pollution to the particular version of the story (...) constructed in Eumenides. (shrink)

This article proposes an analysis of Plato’s Sophist that underlines the bond between the logical and the emotional components of the Socratic elenchus, with the aim of depicting the social valence of this philosophical practice. The use of emotions characterizing the ‘elenctic’ method described by Plato is crucial in influencing the audience and is introduced at the very moment in which the interlocutor attempts to protect his social image by concealing his shame at being refuted. The audience, thanks to Plato’s (...) literary strategy, realizes the failures of the interlocutor even as he refuses to accept them. As a result, his social image becomes tarnished. Purification through shame reveals how the medium is strictly related to the endorsement of specific ethical and political goals, making the Platonic dialogs the tools for the constitution of a new paideia. (shrink)

It is almost universally believed that in quantum theory the two following statements hold: all transformations are achieved by a unitary interaction followed by a von-Neumann measurement; all mixed states are marginals of pure entangled states. I name this doctrine the dogma of purification ontology. The source of the dogma is the original von Neumann axiomatisation of the theory, which largely relies on the Schrődinger equation as a postulate, which holds in a nonrelativistic context, and whose operator version holds (...) only in free quantum field theory, but no longer in the interacting theory. In the present paper I prove that both ontologies of unitarity and state-purity are unfalsifiable, even in principle, and therefore axiomatically spurious. I propose instead a minimal four-postulate axiomatisation: associate a Hilbert space \ to each system \; compose two systems by the tensor product rule \; associate a transformation from system \ to \ to a quantum operation, i.e. to a completely positive trace-non-increasing map between the trace-class operators of \ and \; evaluate all joint probabilities through that of a special type of quantum operation: the state preparation. I then conclude that quantum paradoxes—such as the Schroedinger-cat’s, and, most relevantly, the information paradox—are originated only by the dogma of purification ontology, and they are no longer paradoxes of the theory in the minimal formulation. For the same reason, most interpretations of the theory interpret the same dogma, not the strict theory stripped of the spurious postulates. (shrink)

In Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city, engineers work hard to control water flows and provide different sectors with clean and sufficient water. In 2011, only 10 percent of the totality of water used daily by Arequipa’s then close to 1 million people—in households, tourism, industry, and mining—was treated before it was returned to the river where it continues its flow downstream towards cultivated fields and, finally, into the Pacific Ocean. It takes specialized knowledge and manifold technologies to manage water and (...) sustain life in Arequipa, and engineers are central actors for making water flow. Examining the ecology of water management, this article asks to what extent we can talk of a way of knowing and enacting water that is particular to engineers. Through engineering practices, a technical domain emerges as separate from and superior to political and social domains. This production of categories can be understood as practices of purification. However, a purely technical grip on water is never possible. Unruly elements, like weather, contamination, urban dwellers, and competing interests, interfere and make processes of intervention unstable. Water is never completely cleaned, and, equally, the continuous processes of purification of categories and domains take place while other processes work to blur their boundaries. (shrink)

Chapters 10 and 11 are critical to the argument of Metaphysics Zeta: these chapters are concerned with the purification of form. Z.10 introduces the apparatus of part and whole and consists of an argument to the end that form and its parts have priority over the other internal structural components of c‐substances, i.e. matter and the compound of form and matter; while in Z.11 Aristotle argues that form and its parts cannot involve any admixture of matter. Wedin argues that (...) the causal role of form presupposes its purity: if form is to explain why a certain portion of matter constitutes a c‐substance of a given kind, then matter—whether this latter is understood as functional, or remnant matter—cannot already be contained in the form. This is the ‘purity thesis’, as Wedin calls it: matter cannot be included in the definitions of natural organisms, Wedin points out, because that would make the explanandum a part of the principle that explains it. Wedin also argues that form must be sufficiently complex to provide definitions of the natures of particular compounds, which are complex, even though form itself is a kind of universal. (shrink)

Through tracing the articulation, rise and eventual fall of Marxist theory in France, I seek in my dissertation to show the difficulties of wedding Marxist theory to ameliorative political practices.Specifically, I follow the development of French Marxism between 1920--1965 in order to demonstrate how the thought of Althusser is a reaction to and correction of both the crude materialist philosophy of the French Communist Party and of the more sophisticated humanist Marxism of such intellectuals as Cornu, Lefebvre, Garaudy, Sartre and (...) Merleau-Ponty. I do not affect this tracing to show that Marx's notions are untenable or artificial and that they will therefore always lead to problems in their application. Instead, I argue with Louis Althusser that Marx's philosophical insights into the relationship between humans and world remain of value and that they may serve as a guide for political practice. Both my analysis and my critique is intended as a response to those who, citing the apparent theoretical and practical inconsistencies and failures of Marxist practice, would criticize and altogether abandon this project. (shrink)

Scholars often take purification to be a concept that persists the same throughout Plato’s dialogues. Generally, they take it to mean the separation of the soul from the body, picking up on Socrates’s account at Phaedo 67c–d. I do not find that this account of purification endures throughout the dialogues. In this paper, I argue that in Symposium Diotima describes purification differently. I argue that her account of purification emphasizes preparedness for encountering the forms, not the (...) eradication of the corporeal. I present this account in three steps. First, I discuss Diotima’s lower and higher mysteries, focusing on the lower mysteries. Next, I examine Diotima’s use of the Eleusinian mysteries as an analogy for her own mysteries. Here, I overview the historical rites at Agrai and the Eleusinian Mysteria. I argue that, mirroring the Agrai rites, Diotima’s lower mysteries are purificatory, and therefore provide an account of purification. Finally, I explain the account of purification Diotima presents in the lower mysteries as the desire to possess the deathless deathlessly. Diotima’s account of purification is importantly distinct from the Phaedo account. In the former, the separation of the soul from the body is in no way important for purification. We must confront the discrepancies between these accounts and recognize that purification is not a doctrine that persists throughout the dialogues. (shrink)

In the ancient Greek world, the concept of 'miasma,' which becomes permanent and has the potential to grow over time due to evil acts such as murder committed in the city, is a concept frequently referred to in many classical tragedies. To the extent that miasma has a bad connotation due to its nature and is a situation that occurs due to evil actions, it can be considered together with the philosophical problem of evil. In this study, we aim to (...) examine the concept of miasma by focusing on the characters in La Jauría, one of the most prominent films of recent South American cinema, rather than a purely conceptual analysis of the concept. Filmed in the jungles of Colombia and directed by Colombian director Andrés Ramírez Pulido, the 2022 film La Jauría is a psychological drama that focuses on the lives of young people involved in crime. The tragic story of Eliu, the protagonist of the film, which takes place mainly in a prison specially designed to rehabilitate inmates, seems to us to be a very suitable focal point for examining the concepts of miasma, catharsis, and ecstasy, which are frequently referred to in ancient Greek tragedy. To do so, we will first address the various contexts in which miasma has been used historically, considering the flow of events in the movie La Jauría. Then, we will look at the relationship of the concept of miasma with the problem of evil. Finally, we will discuss the possibilities of the concept of purification, which is seen as a kind of antidote to miasma. (shrink)

Foucault’s 1970–71 lectures at the Collège de France, The Will to Know, highlight the significance of themes of purity and impurity in Western thought. Reflecting on these themes coincided with the emergence of Foucault’s theory of power. This article presents the first analysis of Foucault’s investigation of purity and impurity in The Will to Know lectures, identifying the distinctive theory Foucault offers of purity as a discursive apparatus addressing correspondence between the subject and the truth through the image of relative (...) integrity or mixture. It then traces Foucault’s subsequent reflections on these themes in his later writings on disciplinary power. The implications of Foucault’s position are considered; the article will close by putting Foucault’s ideas in dialogue with those of Kristeva, and in considering the role that purity and impurity may play in resistance. (shrink)

Çalışmanın konusunu Seyyid Burhaneddin’de ahlakî arınmanın incelenmesi teşkil etmektedir. İnceleme üç temel soru çerçevesinde yürütülür. İlk soru, kirlerin neler olduğu ve nelerin bu kirlerden arındırılması gerektiğine yöneliktir. Bu bağlamda Seyyid Burhaneddin’in beden, dünya, nefs, gönül, can, ruh vb. hususlarla alakalı görüşleri ele alınmaktadır. Diğer bir soru ise söz konusu arınmanın nasıl gerçekleştirileceğine ilişkindir ki Seyyid Burhaneddin’in mücahede, riyazat, söz, bilgi gibi kavramlara dair görüşleri doğrultusunda bir yanıt verilmeye çalışılır. Arınmanın ve buna binaen yetkinleşmenin sonucu kişinin ulaşacağı mertebe ne olacaktır? Son (...) olarak da bu soru çerçevesinde Seyyid Burhaneddin’in düşüncelerinin değerlendirilmesine çalışılmakta ve insanın beka ve ebediyete kavuşması ve namütenahi bir biçimde Allah’ta seyredişi ele alınmaktadır. (shrink)

The religious value which we are entitled to attach to instances of purification in the Homeric poems is extremely small. It is important at the outset of the inquiry to get away from pre-conceived ideas founded on later religious practice, in the light of which the Homeric examples are instinctively interpreted. Chapter and verse from fifth century and later parallels is not necessarily authority for reading a religious significance into the account of an apparently secular act in Homer.

En décembre 1992, les trois quarts de la Bosnie, ainsi qu’un tiers de la Croatie avaient été et continuaient d’être purifiés ethniquement, c’est à dire que les communautés définies comme non serbes (à Vukovar il y avait plus d’une vingtaine de communautés différentes, appartenant à des sous-groupes religieux ou nationaux spécifiques) étaient en partie chassées, soit en partie massacrées, soit déportées dans des camps de détention dénoncés par la presse américaine en août 92 : ce systéme conce..

En décembre 1992, les trois quarts de la Bosnie, ainsi qu’un tiers de la Croatie avaient été et continuaient d’être purifiés ethniquement, c’est à dire que les communautés définies comme non serbes (à Vukovar il y avait plus d’une vingtaine de communautés différentes, appartenant à des sous-groupes religieux ou nationaux spécifiques) étaient en partie chassées, soit en partie massacrées, soit déportées dans des camps de détention dénoncés par la presse américaine en août 92 : ce systéme conce...

Khader offers a deliberative perfectionist approach to identifying and responding to adaptive preferences-- deprived people's preferences that perpetuate their deprivation.

Le présent article propose de réévaluer le rôle de l’analogie entre l’art politique et l’art pastoral dans la philosophie politique de Platon et d’offrir ainsi à l’histoire des arts de gouverner un autre aspect du pastorat que celui que Michel Foucault a cherché hors du monde Grec. On a négligé de lire dans cette perspective le passage des Lois, V, 734e-736b où Platon invoque le gardien du troupeau pour mettre en avant une dimension fondamentale de l’art politique, celle qui consiste (...) à purifier le corps social de ses éléments indésirables, mais aussi celle qui exige de subdiviser celui-ci pour mieux répartir en son sein les ressources et développer ses capacités d’action. On montrera comment Platon, en réactivant l’analogie homérique entre pratiques pastorales et les pratiques militaires, dessine un art de gouverner inspiré par l’art de trier et de répartir des pasteurs d’hommes, comme un art de production de communautés robustes dotées d’une capacité d’agir collective. (shrink)

Patient preference predictors (PPPs) promise to provide medical professionals with a new solution to the problem of making treatment decisions on behalf of incapacitated patients. I show that the use of PPPs faces a version of a normative problem familiar from legal scholarship: the problem of naked statistical evidence. I sketch two sorts of possible reply, vindicating and debunking, and suggest that our reply to the problem in the one domain ought to mirror our reply in the other. The (...) conclusion is thus conditional: if we think the problem of naked statistical evidence is a serious problem in the legal domain, then we should be concerned about the symmetrical problem for PPPs. (shrink)

An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being is that these theories cannot make sense of interpersonal comparisons of well-being. A tradition dating back to Harsanyi () attempts to respond to this objection by appeal to so-called extended preferences: very roughly, preferences over situations whose description includes agents’ preferences. This paper examines the prospects for defending the preference-satisfaction theory via this extended preferences program. We argue that making conceptual sense of extended preferences is less problematic than others have (...) supposed, but that even so extended preferences do not provide a promising way for the preference satisfaction theorist to make interpersonal well-being comparisons. Our main objection takes the form of a trilemma: depending on how the theory based on extended preferences is developed, either the result will be inconsistent with ordinary preference-satisfaction theory, or it will fail to recover sufficiently rich interpersonal well-being comparisons, or it will take on a number of other arguably odd and undesirable commitments. (shrink)

This book is about preferences, principally as they figure in economics. It also explores their uses in everyday language and action, how they are understood in psychology and how they figure in philosophical reflection on action and morality. The book clarifies and for the most part defends the way in which economists invoke preferences to explain, predict and assess behavior and outcomes. Hausman argues, however, that the predictions and explanations economists offer rely on theories of preference formation that are (...) in need of further development, and he criticizes attempts to define welfare in terms of preferences and to define preferences in terms of choices or self-interest. The analysis clarifies the relations between rational choice theory and philosophical accounts of human action. The book also assembles the materials out of which models of preference formation and modification can be constructed, and it comments on how reason and emotion shape preferences. (shrink)

Imperative sentences like Dance! do not seem to represent the world. Recent modal analyses challenge this idea, but its intuitive and historical appeal remain strong. This paper presents three new challenges for a non-representational analysis, showing that the obstacles facing it are even steeper than previously appreciated. I will argue that the only way for the non-representationalist to meet these three challenges is to adopt a dynamic semantics. Such a dynamic semantics is proposed here: imperatives introduce preferences between alternatives. This (...) characterization of meaning focuses on what function a sentence serves in discourse, rather than what that sentence refers to (e.g., a state of the world). By representing the meaning of imperatives, connectives and declaratives in a common dynamic format, the challenges posed for non-representationalism are met. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 30 Millions of children worldwide could benefit from adoption. One could argue that prospective parents have a pro tanto duty to adopt rather than create children. For the sake of argument, I assume there is such a duty and focus on a pressing objection to it. Prospective parents may prefer that their children are genetically related to them. I examine eight reasons prospective parents have for preferring genetic children: for parent-child physical resemblance, for family resemblance, for (...) psychological similarity, for the sake of love, to achieve a kind of immortality, for the genetic connection itself, to be a procreator, and to experience pregnancy. I argue that, with the possible exception of the pregnancy desire, these reasons fail to defeat a duty to adopt a child rather than create one, even assuming that we do have some leeway to favor our own interests. (shrink)

In this article, we contribute to the ongoing investigation of the social significance of biomedicine by examining a very specific site: the activity of bio-containing in Nebraska during the recent Ebola outbreak. We do this by taking up key insights of Mary Douglas and Victor Turner concerning the essential meaning-making tasks of culture. We demonstrate how biocontaining as an activity contributed to the ongoing meaning-making work in U.S. society during the Ebola crisis in 2014. The analysis is based in significant (...) part on fieldwork done at the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, study of NBU educational materials, and follow-up conversations with personnel staffing that unit.Biocontaining during the Ebola... (shrink)

Recombinant adeno‐associated viruses (rAAVs) are promising vectors for the delivery of various genetic constructs into eukaryotic cells. rAAVs have a number of properties that make it possible to successfully use them both in vitro and in vivo. Purification and concentration of rAAV vectors are critical for achieving high viral titer, stability, efficiency, and purity. This review systematically analyses all available purification approaches. The purification methods described in this work differ substantially from each other in mechanisms, efficiency, labor (...) time, and cost. Researchers have to choose a purification algorithm depending on the purpose of their work. We strive to simplify the choice of the necessary and sufficient technique based on the experimental needs and available resources of the laboratory. (shrink)

This paper builds upon, but substantially revises, John Harsanyi's concept of ‘extended preferences’. An individual ‘history’ is a possible life that some person (a subject) might lead. Harsanyi supposes that a given spectator, formulating her ethical preferences, can rank histories by empathetic projection: putting herself ‘in the shoes’ of various subjects. Harsanyi then suggests that interpersonal comparisons be derived from the utility function representing spectators’ (supposedly common) ranking of history lotteries. Unfortunately, Harsanyi's proposal has various flaws, including some that have (...) hitherto escaped scholarly attention. In particular, it ignores the limits of personal identity. If the subject has welfare-relevant attributes that the spectator cannot acquire without changing who she is, full empathetic identification of the latter with the former becomes impossible. This paper proposes instead to usesympathyas the attitude on a spectator's part that allows us to make sense of her extended preferences. Sympathy – an attitude of care and concern – is a psychological state quite different from empathy. We should also allow for hetereogeneity in spectators’ extended preferences. Interpersonal comparisons emerge from a plurality of sympathetic spectators, not (as per Harsanyi) from a common empathetic ranking. (shrink)