Crossing the Threshold of Hope. Pope John Paul II. Jonathan Cape, London 1994. ix, 244 pp. £9.99.

Abhidhamma Studies at the British Buddhist Association, London, and a Review of A Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma. The Abhidhammattha Sangaha. Pali Text, Translation & Explanatory Guide, Bhikkhu Bodhi, General Editor. Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy 1993, 432 pp. $20.00.

BackgroundHigh levels of moral distress in nursing professionals, of which oncology nurses are particularly prone, can negatively impact patient care, job satisfaction, and retention.Aim“Positive Attitudes Striving to Rejuvenate You: PASTRY” was developed at a tertiary cancer center to reduce the burden of moral distress among oncology nurses.Research DesignA Quality Improvement (QI) initiative was conducted using a pre- and post-intervention design, to launch PASTRY and measure its impact on moral distress of the nursing unit, using Hamric’s Moral Distress Scale–Revised (MDS-R.) This (...) program consisted of monthly 60-minute sessions allowing nurses to address morally distressing events and themes, such as clinicians giving “false hope” to patients or families. The PASTRY program sessions were led by certified clinicians utilizing strategies of discussion and mind-body practices.ParticipantsClinical nurses working on an adult leukemia/lymphoma unit.Ethical considerationsThis was a QI initiative, participation was voluntary, MDS-R responses were collected anonymously, and the institution’s Ethics Committee oversaw PASTRY’s implementation.FindingsWhile improvement in moral distress findings were not statistically significant, the qualitative and quantitative findings demonstrated consistent themes. The PASTRY program received strong support from nurses and institutional leaders, lowered the nursing unit’s moral distress, led to enhanced camaraderie, and improved nurses’ coping skills.DiscussionMeasurement of moral distress is innately challenging due to its complexity. This study reinforces oncology nurses have measurable moral distress. Interventions should be implemented for a safe and healing environment to explore morally distressing clinical experiences. Poor communication among multidisciplinary team members is associated with moral distress among nurses. Programs like PASTRY may empower nurses to build support networks for change within themselves and institutions.ConclusionThis QI initiative shows further research on moral distress reduction should be conducted to verify findings for statistical significance and so that institutional programs, like PASTRY, can be created. (shrink)

Regulatory authorities have advised smokers who would not or could not quit smoking to switch to lower tar cigarettes. Smoking such cigarettes was seen as a means of reducing the harm caused by smoking, but not as offering a ‘safe’ smoking option. Correspondingly manufacturers have been required to place tar and nicotine information on packet labels and/or advertisements. This paper explores the possibility that the conventional format for conveying tar and nicotine information could be responsible for the belief, held by (...) a significant proportion of smokers, that some brands of lower tar cigarettes are absolutely ‘safe’. To deal with this situation it is suggested that changes should be made to health warnings, and tar and nicotine communications. Proposed changes to the latter are evaluated in terms of their ethical and public health implications. The authors conclude that brand specific warnings and a classification of cigarettes as either ‘Very Dangerous’ or ‘Dangerous’, is best suited to reconciling consumer needs for information with the public health objectives of reducing the harm caused by smoking. (shrink)

This paper defends an account of the laws of nature in terms of irreducibly modal properties (aka powers) from the threat posed by functional laws, conservation laws and symmetries. It thus shows how powers theorists can avoid ad hoc explanations and resist an inflated ontology of powers and governing laws. The key is to understand laws not as flowing from the essences of powers, as per Bird (2007), but as features of a description of how powers are possibly distributed, as (...) per Demarest (2017), Kimpton-Nye (2017, 2021) and Williams (2019); call this the Powers-BSA. This underappreciated powers-based account of laws is continuous with actual scientific practice and thereby quite naturally accommodates functional laws, conservation laws and symmetries. This paper thus positions the Powers-BSA as the leading anti-Humean account of the relationship between laws and properties. (shrink)

The ArgumentI argue here that in its historical development, sexology developed differently in France than elsewhere in Europe. Though I concur that the modern notion of “sexuality” arose some time in the last half of the nineteenth century, the older notion of ”sex” persisted in French science and medicine for a far longer time than elsewhere because of a fear that nonreproductive sexual behavior would deepen the country's population crisis. I argue that the scientific and medical concepts of the sexual (...) perversions, particularly homosexuality, were considered by French sexologists to be abnormal deviations from heterosexuality, whereas some English, German, and Austrian sexologists — including Freud — viewed the perversions more tolerantly as natural variations of the norm. I also address here the inadequacies of historical accounts of these developments that favor discursive ruptures in the Foucauldian manner, and stress the advantages of social history and causal historical explanation. (shrink)

Dispositional Essentialism is a unified anti-Humean account of the metaphysics of low-level physical properties and laws of nature. In this paper, I articulate the view that I label Canonical Dispositional Essentialism, which comprises a structuralist metaphysics of properties and an account of laws as relations in the property structure. I then present an alternative anti-Humean account of properties and laws. This account rejects CDE’s structuralist metaphysics of properties in favour of a view of properties as qualitative grounds of dispositions and (...) it rejects CDE’s view of laws as relations in favour of a view of laws as features of an efficient description of possible property distributions. I then defend this view over CDE on the grounds that it can overcome an explanatory shortcoming of CDE and that it achieves a level of continuity with science that CDE fails to achieve. The upshot of this paper is a significant narrowing of the range of possibilities in which the absolutely best unified account of laws and properties resides. (shrink)

In this chapter I defend a methodological view about how we should conduct substantive ethical inquiries in the fields of normative and practical ethics. I maintain that the direct plausibility and implausibility of general ethical principles – once fully clarified and understood – should be foundational in our substantive ethical reasoning. I argue that, in order to expose our ethical intuitions about particular cases to maximal critical scrutiny, we must determine whether they can be justified by directly plausible principles. To (...) expose apparently plausible principles to maximal critical scrutiny, we must determine whether their direct plausibility can survive careful clarification of what they are really saying. This means that intuitions about cases are useful only in (a) suggesting principles that must stand on their own two feet, and (b) illustrating or otherwise helping us clarify what a principle is really saying. We should not reject principles that seem most directly plausible after we have fully clarified their content simply because they conflict with our intuitions about cases, because to do so is to side with uncritical prejudices over the teachings of critical scrutiny. (shrink)

This paper shows how a niche account of the metaphysics of laws of nature and physical properties—the Powers-BSA—can underpin both a sense in which the laws are metaphysically necessary and a sense in which it is true that the laws could have been different. The ability to reconcile entrenched disagreement should count in favour of a philosophical theory, so this paper constitutes a novel argument for the Powers-BSA by showing how it can reconcile disagreement about the laws’ modal status. This (...) paper also constitutes a defence of modal necessitarianism, the interesting and controversial view according to which all worlds are nomologically identical, because it shows how the modal necessitarian can appease the orthodox contingentist about laws. (shrink)

Hardcore actualism (HA) grounds all modal truths in the concrete constituents of the actual world (see, e.g., Borghini and Williams (2008), Jacobs (2010), Vetter (2015)). I bolster HA, and elucidate the very nature of possibility (and necessity) according to HA, by considering if it can validate S5 modal logic. Interestingly, different considerations pull in different directions on this issue. To resolve the tension, we are forced to think hard about the nature of the hardcore actualist's modal reality and how radically (...) this departs from possible worlds orthodoxy. Once we achieve this departure, the prospects of a hardcore actualist validation of S5 look considerably brighter. This paper thus strengthens hardcore actualism by arguing that it can indeed validate S5–arguably the most popular logic of metaphysical modality–and, in the process, it elucidates the very nature of modality according to this revisionary, but very attractive, modal metaphysics. (shrink)

I argue that an unHumean ontology of irreducibly dispositional properties might be fruitfully combined with what has typically been thought of as a Humean account of laws, namely, the best-system account, made popular by David Lewis (e.g., 1983, 1986, 1994). In this paper I provide the details of what I argue is the most defensible account of Humean laws in an unHumean world. This package of views has the benefits of upholding scientific realism while doing without any suspect metaphysical entities (...) to account for natural law. I conclude by arguing that the Humean laws-unHumean ontology package is well placed to provide an account of objective, nontrivial chances, a famous stumbling block for the Humean laws-Humean ontology package developed by Lewis. (shrink)

Substantive counterlegal discourse poses a problem for those according to whom the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary. I discern two types of necessitarianism about laws: dispositional essentialism and modal necessitarianism. I argue that Toby Handfield’s response to the problem of counterlegals cannot help the modal necessitarian, according to whom all possible worlds are identical with respect to the laws. I thus propose a fictionalist treatment of counterlegals. Fictions are not limited by metaphysical possibility; hence, fictionalism affords the modal necessitarian (...) the means to account for the apparent substance of counterlegals even granting the metaphysical necessity of the laws. (shrink)

This paper responds to Friend’s (2023) critique of the Powers-BSA, a view according to which laws of nature are efficient descriptions of how modally laden properties (powers) are possibly distributed in spacetime. In the course of this response, the paper discusses the nature of scientific and metaphysical explanation, the aim of science and the structure of modal space.

A dynamic systems (DS) approach uncovers important connections between emotion and neurophysiology. It is critical, however, to include a developmental perspective. Strides in the understanding of emotional development, as well as the present use of DS in developmental science, add significantly to the study of emotion. Examples include stranger fear during infancy, intermodal perception of emotion, and development of individual emotional systems.

According to hardcore actualism (HA), all modal truths are grounded in the concrete constituents of the actual world. In this paper, I discuss some problems faced by HA when it comes to accounting for certain alleged possibilities of non‐existence. I focus particular attention on Leech (2017)'s dilemma for HA, according to which HA must either sacrifice extensional correctness or admit mere possibilia. I propose a solution to Leech's dilemma, which relies on a distinction between weak and strong possibility. It remains (...) the case, however, that HA cannot capture certain iterated de re possibilities of non‐existence and that it is committed to a stock of necessary existents. But I still think that the virtues of the view outweigh these costs. (shrink)

Some philosophers maintain that physical properties are irreducibly modal: that properties are powers. Powers are then employed to provide explanations of other phenomena of philosophical interest such as laws of nature and modality. There is, however, a dispute among powers theorists about how far the powers ontology extends: are all manner of properties at all levels of fundamentality powers or are powers only to be found among the fundamental properties? This paper argues that the answer to this question depends on (...) the details of the metaphysics of powers. More specifically, this paper argues that if one understands powers as qualitative grounds of dispositions, as opposed to properties whose essences are constituted by dispositions, then all properties, be they fundamental or macro, are powers, i.e., pandispositionalism is true. The Conclusion: If qualitative dispositional essentialism is true, then pandispositionalism is true, is significant because there is increasing concern that orthodox dispositional essentialism is explanatorily deficient and perhaps even incoherent, meaning that qualitative dispositional essentialism is gaining increasing support in the literature on powers. All things considered, then, it is beginning to look more likely that pandispositionalism is true simpliciter. (shrink)

As we understand them, dispositions are relatively uncontroversial 'predicatory' properties had by objects disposed in certain ways. By contrast, powers are hypothetical 'ontic' properties posited in order to explain dispositional behaviour. Chapter 1 outlines this distinction in more detail. Chapter 2 offers a summary of the issues surrounding analysis of dispositions and various strategies in contemporary literature to address them, including one of our own. Chapter 3 describes some of the important questions facing the metaphysics of powers including why they're (...) worth positing, and how they might metaphysically explain laws of nature and modality. (shrink)

I. Introduction. II. Ratiocination vs. Cognition. III. Emotions as Modes of Cognition. IV. Four Competing Proposals. V. The Impact of Emotion on Cognition. VI. The Kinematics of Ratiocination. VII. Competing Cognitive Theories. VIII. Why think Emotions are Beliefs? IX. The Intentionality of Emotions. X. The Kinematics of Emotions. XI. A Unified Account of the Emotions. XII. The Rationality of Emotions.

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01620-5.

Zinacantec Family Homesign is a new sign language emerging spontaneously over the past three decades in a single family in a remote Mayan Indian village. Three deaf siblings, their Tzotzil-speaking age-mates, and now their children, who have had contact with no other deaf people, represent the first generation of Z signers. I postulate an augmented grammaticalization path, beginning with the adoption of a Tzotzil cospeech holophrastic gesture—meaning “come!”—into Z, and then its apparent stylization as an attention-getting sign, followed by grammatical (...) regimentation and pragmatic generalization as an utterance initial change of speaker or turn marker. (shrink)

This contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium on enmity argues that there is more to the problem of enmity than understanding, preventing, and resolving it: one must also recover from it and from its effects. Drawing on a psychoanalytic theory of shame that discriminates between narcissistic injuries that are enduring and those that can be overcome, this essay proposes a reading of Hester Prynne's transformation in The Scarlet Letter as a series of recognitions informed by her emotional relations to her (...) estranged husband, her lover, their daughter, and her fellow women. Nathaniel Hawthorne's heroine is condemned by her community for her adultery and suffers in silence for seven years before her shame erupts as anger at the men she had idealized and now recognizes as having betrayed her long before she deceived one of them. Only when she understands that the marriage arranged by her father to a man of his own age took advantage of her youth and legal powerlessness does she begin to redistribute blame for this sexual abuse. Refusing to serve the interests of her hated husband, she is able to forgive herself and eventually becomes a source of healing for other injured women. (shrink)

In the current culture of regulation in higher education and, in turn, the history discipline, it is timely to problematize discipline standards in relation to student agency and creativity. This article argues that through the inclusion of a critical orientation and engaged pedagogy, historians have the opportunity to bring a more agentic dimension to the disciplinary conversation. Discipline standards privilege that arrogant historical moment in the higher education sector when certain skills development and knowledge creation becomes a hegemonic discourse. As (...) a result, there is less emphasis on creativity, agency, and individual opportunities for the demonstration of the historical imagination at work. We need to ensure that the insights gained from teaching and learning practice and research are not lost in the rush to meet discipline standards through compliance. (shrink)

Is logic masculine? Is women's lack of interest in the "hard core" philosophical disciplines of formal logic and semantics symptomatic of an inadequacy linked to sex? Is the failure of women to excel in pure mathematics and mathematical science a function of their inability to think rationally? Andrea Nye undermines the assumptions that inform these questions, assumptions such as: logic is unitary, logic is independenet of concrete human relations, and logic transcends historical circumstances as well as gender. In a series (...) of studies of the logics of historical figures--Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Abelard, Ockham, and Frege--she traces the changing interrelationships between logical innovation and oppressive speech strategies, showing that logic is not transcendent truth but abstract forms of language spoken by men, whether Greek ruling citizens, or scientists. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

In a recent article, Edward Saraydar takes economists and economic historians to task for equating productivity and efficiency in comparative economic analysis. Although I found his thesis interesting, I was a bit surprised to see selected remarks from my article on firm size in nineteenth-century France used to frame his criticism of productivity comparisons as a means of making prescriptive statements. The passages selected may mislead the reader as to the nature of my arguments. Let me quote Saraydar on this: (...) … I argue that … the problem with equating productivity with efficiency is that from the neoclassical standpoint this strongly suggests a prescriptive view - a view that things should be or should have been different - and thereby frees the analyst from the need to justify the utility costs that might be or might have been required to make things different. Thus, in the French industrialization debate, for example, Nye points out that evidence that smaller family firms were less productive would support the conclusion “that nineteenth-century French firms were too small and that consequently French industry suffered from inefficiency”. Suppose the evidence to which Nye refers to existed. [My emphasis] Distributive considerations aside, in neoclassical economics a more Pareto-efficient state by its very nature is to be preferred to a less efficient one. Therefore, the implication is that family firms should have been larger and more productive. However, suppose also that the plethora of small family firms in nineteenth-century France, in fact, constituted a longstanding, widely accepted, socially imbedded institution. Clearly, the traditionalist thought-experiment and conclusion would ignore the potential costs in utility or satisfaction to owners of factors of production, a utility loss that may well have been required to make the “more efficient.” transformation to a relatively few large-scale industrial firms. That potential utility loss cannot be ignored and should be part of the analysis. (shrink)

Scientific culture in Europe and the refugee generation -- Germany and Weimar Berlin as the City of Science -- Origins of a social perspective: doing physical chemistry in Weimar Berlin -- Chemical dynamics and social dynamics in Berlin and Manchester -- Liberalism and the economic foundations of the "Republic of Science" -- Scientific freedom and the social functions of science -- Political foundations of the philosophies of science of Popper, Kuhn, and Polanyi -- Personal knowledge: argument, audiences, and sociological engagement (...) -- Epilogue: SSK, scientific constructivism, and the paradoxical legacy of Polanyi and the 1930s generation. (shrink)

In _Michael Polanyi and His Generation_, Mary Jo Nye investigates the role that Michael Polanyi and several of his contemporaries played in the emergence of the social turn in the philosophy of science. This turn involved seeing science as a socially based enterprise that does not rely on empiricism and reason alone but on social communities, behavioral norms, and personal commitments. Nye argues that the roots of the social turn are to be found in the scientific culture and political events (...) of Europe in the 1930s, when scientific intellectuals struggled to defend the universal status of scientific knowledge and to justify public support for science in an era of economic catastrophe, Stalinism and Fascism, and increased demands for applications of science to industry and social welfare. At the center of this struggle was Polanyi, who Nye contends was one of the first advocates of this new conception of science. Nye reconstructs Polanyi’s scientific and political milieus in Budapest, Berlin, and Manchester from the 1910s to the 1950s and explains how he and other natural scientists and social scientists of his generation—including J. D. Bernal, Ludwik Fleck, Karl Mannheim, and Robert K. Merton—and the next, such as Thomas Kuhn, forged a politically charged philosophy of science, one that newly emphasized the social construction of science. (shrink)

The author of Governance in a Globalizing World probes the limits of American power, offering a compelling argument for the world's lone superpower to forge cooperative relationships with nations around the world.

Why should we refrain from doing things that, taken collectively, are environmentally destructive, if our individual acts seem almost certain to make no difference? According to the expected consequences approach, we should refrain from doing these things because our individual acts have small risks of causing great harm, which outweigh the expected benefits of performing them. Several authors have argued convincingly that this provides a plausible account of our moral reasons to do things like vote for policies that will reduce (...) our countries’ greenhouse gas emissions, adopt plant-based diets, and otherwise reduce our individual emissions. But this approach has recently been challenged by authors like Bernward Gesang and Julia Nefsky. Gesang contends that it may be genuinely impossible for our individual emissions to make a morally relevant difference. Nefsky argues more generally that the expected consequences approach cannot adequately explain our reasons not to do things if there is no precise fact of the matter about whether their outcomes are harmful. -/- In the following chapter, author Howard Nye defends the expected consequences approach against these objections. Nye contends that Gesang has shown at most that our emissions could have metaphysically indeterministic effects that lack precise objective chances. He argues, moreover, that the expected consequences approach can draw upon existing extensions to cases of indeterminism and imprecise probabilities to deliver the result that we have the same moral reasons to reduce our emissions in Gesang’s scenario as in deterministic scenarios. Nye also shows how the expected consequences approach can draw upon these extensions to handle Nefsky’s concern about the absence of precise facts concerning whether the outcomes of certain acts are harmful. The author concludes that the expected consequences approach provides a fully adequate account of our moral reasons to take both political and personal action to reduce our ecological footprints. (shrink)

The widespread adoption of standard time in Britain took more than fifty years and simple public access to a representation of it took longer still. Whilst the railways and telegraph networks were crucial in the development of standardized time and time-distribution networks, very different contexts existed, from the Victorian period onwards, where time was significant in both its definition and its distribution. The moral drive to regulate and standardize aspects of daily life, from factory work to the sale of liquor, (...) led to time being used as a tool for control. Yet, as a tool, it was problematic, both in its own regulation and in the regulation of its distribution. Companies such as the Standard Time Company, in creating businesses out of time distribution, found themselves at the heart of discussions of time and standards, acting, as they did, as a nexus between the nation's master timekeeper, the Royal Observatory, and London public houses, Lancashire cotton mills and myriad small businesses. We can see this network both literally, in electric wires, clocks, batteries and relays, and metaphorically, transmitting Victorian moral concerns of ‘power’ and ‘intelligence’ between imperial state and individual. Naturally enough, the network itself was as contested as the message it transmitted. (shrink)

For a number of years, those interested in recovering women's thought have known about Princess Elisabeth, a seventeenth-century correspondent and friend of Descartes whose questions provoked the philosopher to think more seriously about ethics and the passions. Up to now, only a few of her letters have found their way into print. This volume includes translations of all of Elisabeth's extant letters to Descartes, as well as of other materials relevant to understanding her philosophical perspective and her life. Nye has (...) supplemented the translations with a running commentary on the historical, biographical, and intellectual context of the letters. (shrink)

In this article I attempt to show conclusively that the apparent intrinsic difference between causing collateral damage and directly attacking innocents is an illusion. I show how eleven morally irrelevant alterations can transform an apparently permissible case of harming as a side-effect into an apparently impermissible case of harming as a means. The alterations are as obviously irrelevant as the victims’ skin colour, and consistently treating them as relevant would have unacceptable implications for choices between more and less harmful ways (...) of securing greater goods. This shows not only how the principles philosophers have proposed for distinguishing between these cases cannot withstand scrutiny, but how we can be sure that there are no relevant differences yet to be discovered. I conclude by considering reasons to think that there are deontological constraints against harming, but that they apply just as forcefully against collateral harms as they do against intended harms. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend three claims about what it will take for an AI system to be a basic moral patient to whom we can owe duties of non-maleficence not to harm her and duties of beneficence to benefit her: (1) Moral patients are mental patients; (2) Mental patients are true intentional systems; and (3) True intentional systems are systematically flexible. We suggest that we should be particularly alert to the possibility of such systematically flexible true intentional systems developing (...) in the areas of exploratory robots and artificial personal assistants. Finally, we argue that in light of our failure to respect the well-being of existing biological moral patients and worries about our limited resources, there are compelling moral reasons to treat artificial moral patiency as something to be avoided at least for now. (shrink)

Irigaray's reading of Plato's Symposium in Ethique de la difference sexuelle illustrates both the advantages and the limits of her textual practise. Irigaray's attentive listening to the text allows Diotima's voice to emerge from an overlay of Platonic scholarship. But both the ahistorical nature of that listening and Irigaray's assumption of feminine marginality also make her a party to Plato's sabotage of Diotima's philosophy. Understood in historical context, Diotima is not an anomaly in Platonic discourse, but the hidden host of (...) Plato's banquet, speaking for a pre-Socratic world view against which classical Greek thought is asserted. Understood in historical context, Plato is not the authoritative founder of Western thought against whom only marginal skirmishes can be mounted, but a rebellious student who manages to transform Diotima's complex teaching on personal identity, immortality, and love into the sterile simplicities of logical form. (shrink)

I present and defend (1) an account of ethical judgments as judgments about our reasons to feel specific motivationally laden attitudes, (2) an account of what an agent should do in terms of what would achieve ends that she has reason to be motivated to pursue, and (3) an account of an agent’s reasons for motivation (and thus action) in terms of the prescriptions of the most fundamental principles that guide her deliberations. Using these accounts, I explain the connection between (...) ethics and reasons for action, how ethical judgments are both descriptive and intrinsically motivating, and how ethical facts arise from facts about agents’ deliberations. (shrink)