This article is an attempt to develop a practical politico-jurisprudential account of the corporate person, which it does by building on contemporary ideas about collective and shared intentions. It argues for a model of shared intentions, which posits a set of interlocking preferences, and other supporting attitudes. It examines the work of Bratman, Gilbert, Hurley, and Sugden and addresses issues of choice, coercion and will.

This paper examines the concepts of desert and luck, familiar in political theory but neglected by sociologists. I argue that the idea of desert is composed of both personal performance and the degree of responsibility a person has over that performance. Distribution ought to be in accordance with the indebtedness created by the person's performance. This can be compromised by luck; that is, personal desert is undermined where lack of performance scuttles the applicability of the contributory model. This paper examines (...) recent work, focusing on establishing desert criteria for each person's ends and life‐plans, and a formula for distribution according to personal welfare. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

There is no doubt that the model presented here is incomplete. Many important categories, particularly negation and the adverbials, have been entirely ignored, and the treatment of Tense and the affixes is certainly inadequate. It also remains to be seen how the many constructions that have been ignored here are to be accommodated within the framework that has been outlined. However, the fact that a standard categorial lexicon, plus the four rule schemata, seems to come close to exhaustively specifying the (...) main clause constructions of English, and also seems to explain a number of major constraints on transformations, encourages us to compare the theory with certain alternatives, and to examine its broader implications. (shrink)

Recent legal rulings concerning the status of advance statements have raised interest in the topic but failed to provide any definitive general guidelines for their enforcement. I examine arguments used to justify the moral authority of such statements. The fundamental ethical issue I am concerned with is how accounts of personal identity underpin our account of moral authority through the connection between personal identity and autonomy. I focus on how recent Animalist accounts of personal identity initially appear to provide a (...) sound basis for extending the moral autonomy of an individual - and hence their autonomous wishes expressed through an advance directive - past the point of severe psychological decline. I argue that neither the traditional psychological account nor the more recent Animalist account of personal identity manage to provide a sufficient basis for extending our moral autonomy past the point of incapacity or incompetence. I briefly explore how analogies to similar areas in law designed to facilitate autonomous decision, such as wills and trusts, provide at best only very limited scope for an alternative justification for granting advance statements any legal or moral authority. I conclude that whilst advance statements play a useful role in formulating what treatment is in a patient’s best interests, such statements do not ultimately have sufficient moral force to take precedence over paternalistic best interest judgements concerning an individual’s care or treatment. (shrink)

_Plato's Thought_ offers an excellent introduction to Plato, guiding the reader through Plato's Theory of Forms, and examining his views on art, education and statecraft. This edition includes an introduction, bibliographic essay, and bibliography by Donald Zeyl.

Contemporary nonanthropocentic environmental ethics is profoundly shaped by the very anthropocentrism that it tries to transcend. New values only slowly struggle free of old contexts. Recognizing this struggle, however, opens a space for—indeed, necessitates—alternative models for contemporary environmental ethics. Rather than trying to unify or fine-tune our theories, we require more pluralistic andexploratory methods. We cannot reach theoretical finality; we can only co-evolve an ethic with transformed practices.

The beating of Rodney King and the resulting riots in South Central Los Angeles. The violent clash between Hasidim and African-Americans in Crown Heights. The boats of Haitian refugees being turned away from the Land of Opportunity. These are among the many racially-charged images that have burst across our television screens in the last year alone, images that show that for all our complacent beliefs in a melting-pot society, race is as much of a problem as ever in America. In (...) this vastly important, widely-acclaimed volume, Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Ghanaian philosopher who now teaches at Harvard, explores, in his words, "the possibilities and pitfalls of an African identity in the late twentieth century." In the process he sheds new light on what it means to be an African-American, on the many preconceptions that have muddled discussions of race, Africa, and Afrocentrism since the end of the nineteenth century, and, in the end, to move beyond the idea of race. (shrink)

We might begin by trying to unsettle the apparently natural inferences that are supposed to lead us so ineluctably to recognize something called “intrinsic value”.

§0. Alonzo Church's contributions to philosophy and to that most philosophical part of logic, intensional logic, are impressive indeed. He wrote relatively few papers actually devoted to specifically philosophical issues, as distinguished from related technical work in logic. Many of his contributions appear in reviews for The Journal of Symbolic Logic, and it can hardly be maintained that one finds there a “philosophical system”. But there occur a clearly articulated and powerful methodology, terse arguments, often of “crushing cogency”, and philosophical (...) observations of the first importance.Many of the less formal philosophical contributions center around questions concerning meaning, but there are important clarifications and insights into matters of the epistemology and ontology of the sciences, especially the formal sciences.1.1. The logistic method. Church's writings on philosophical matters exhibit an unwavering commitment to what he called the “logistic method”. The term did not catch on and now one would just speak of “formalization”. The use of these ideas is now so common and familiar among logicians and logically-oriented philosophers that they are simply taken for granted. But they deserve to be celebrated and re-emphasized, for there are philosophers who seriously underestimate and even consciously reject these techniques. (shrink)

Although there are several provisions within the Nigerian legal framework that, however, address the issue of church attack, the state capacity to implement effective constitutional sanctioning on perpetrators of this heinous crime has always been found wanting or completely absent, leading to countless religious attacks on churches with seeming state consent. This study employs semi-structured interviews to draw data from affected families from Benue and Enugu States, Nigeria. The article explored their experiences. The study participants were recruited through snowball sampling (...) technique, and data were analysed thematically. The respondents stated that church killings or killing of Christians is rising because of the fact that perpetrators stand lower risk of detection and apprehension than other crimes. Also respondents interrogated that justification for the crime is land acquisition and religious intolerance. On the persistence of the challenge, all the 13 respondents stated that the crime seems to have state approval that has made it seemly impossible to tackle. The article calls for continuous inter-religious dialogue and intentional governmental responsibility in protecting lives of all persons living within the geographical enclave of Nigeria which is necessary for the common good. Closer understanding of other faiths and religions will help build bridges of peace and tolerance. The article also calls for the need to promote African traditional values, such as the value of sacredness of life, human respect and good neighbourliness.Contribution: This study initiated the discussions that will help the public understand the reason for continuous church attacks in Nigeria, what church crime connotes in the Nigerian context and its uniqueness from other crimes. These discussions sit quite well within the transdisciplinary religious perspective of this journal. (shrink)

Tom Birch has decisively transformed the so-called “considerability” question by arguing that all things must be “considerable” from the start in “the root sense” if we are to determine what further kinds of value they may have. Spelling out this kind of “root” or “deep” consideration proves to be difficult, however, especially in light of post-Kantian conceptions of mind. Such consideration may also ask of the world too ready a kind of self-revelation. This paper proposes another, complementary version of universal (...) consideration: as a kind of practical invitation, as a way of creating the space within which a response can emerge or an exchange coevolve. I conclude by locating this vision within a picture of ethics as a whole that brings what I call its “originary” stage, rather than its formal stage, into focus. (shrink)

My text is written to answer the questions asked at the APA Meeting's presentation of the book Moral Textures: Feminist Narratives in the Public Sphere by professors María Lugones and Eduardo Mendieta. The answer seeks to clarify that Lugones's infrapolitics position is not so distant from mine. I also address Mendieta's question directed more to the aesthetic domain. There, I seek to show how my position could be taken as a creative effort to extend some of Habermas's early work on (...) the public sphere, and to develop the thesis of the important relations between the aesthetic and the moral realms. (shrink)

This article contributes to a recent debate between Barnett and Block : 711–716, 2009), Bagus and Howden : 399–406, 2009), Barnett and Block, Cachanosky and Bagus and Howden regarding the conceptual distinction between demand deposits and time deposits. It is argued that from an economic perspective there is nothing inherently fraudulent or illegitimate about deposit accounts that are available ‘on demand’, but that this relies on certain contractual provisions. Particular attention is drawn to option clauses and withdrawal clauses, which “solve” (...) the problems raised by Barnett and Block, and Bagus and Howden. Previous authors have also neglected the asset side of banks balance sheets, and this is shown to further justify the legitimacy of fractional reserve banking. (shrink)

In early 1927, Pascual Jordan published his version of what came to be known as the Dirac-Jordan statistical transformation theory. Later that year and partly in response to Jordan, John von Neumann published the modern Hilbert space formalism of quantum mechanics. Central to both formalisms are expressions for conditional probabilities of finding some value for one quantity given the value of another. Beyond that Jordan and von Neumann had very different views about the appropriate formulation of problems in the new (...) theory. For Jordan, unable to let go of the analogy to classical mechanics, the solution of such problems required the identification of sets of canonically conjugate variables, i.e., p’s and q’s. Jordan ran into serious difficulties when he tried to extend his approach from quantities with fully continuous spectra to those with wholly or partly discrete spectra. For von Neumann, not constrained by the analogy to classical physics and aware of the daunting mathematical difficulties facing the approach of Jordan ), the solution of a problem in the new quantum mechanics required only the identification of a maximal set of commuting operators with simultaneous eigenstates. He had no need for p’s and q’s. Related to their disagreement about the appropriate general formalism for the new theory, Jordan and von Neumann stated the characteristic new rules for probabilities in quantum mechanics somewhat differently. Jordan was the first to state those rules in full generality, von Neumann rephrased them and then sought to derive them from more basic considerations. In this paper we reconstruct the central arguments of these 1927 papers by Jordan and von Neumann and of a paper on Jordan’s approach by Hilbert, von Neumann, and Nordheim. We highlight those elements in these papers that bring out the gradual loosening of the ties between the new quantum formalism and classical mechanics. (shrink)

This book is a brief introduction or invitation to the rapidly growing field of environmental philosophy or ethics. Each chapter presents the particular view of its author, yet, the chapters are complementary, exploring key topics from several perspectives. A postscript presents a bibliographical guide to each of the chapters as well as practical steps we may take in confronting current and future environmental issues. It is intended for undergraduate students and for the general reader.

Obligation describing language is hooked up with preference, a relation of what-is-better-than-what. But ordinary situations underdetermine such relations of what-is-better-than-what. Even so, there are plainly true sentences describing our obligations in those situations. This mismatch is trouble-making and getting out of the trouble requires either giving up the easy link between “ought” and preference or re-thinking the kind of things preferences can be.

Journal of Religious Ethics, Volume 49, Issue 2, Page 412-430, June 2021.

This research work examines Heidegger's (1889-1976) contention that phenomenology can inspire, illuminate, motivate, reinforce and guide (human) individual's actions. It achieves this by adapting Heidegger's phenomenological approach to analyze and interpret representative everyday factical experiences of nepotism, selfishness and mass mentality in the (Nigerian) society. Doing this helps to ascertain whether these experiences have any phenomenological link with inauthenticity. Also, it provides a close reading and interpretation of Heidegger's treatment of authentic existence, and explores the possibility of complimenting it with (...) the phenomenology of Commensality, as a mode of care and a way to authenticity. In this manner, it strategically explores possible ways of inspiring individual Daseins to authenticity, and with it engendering a positive transformation of the (Nigerian) society. Presenting and elaborating the phenomenology of Commensality, the work highlights the relationship and the differences between the phenomenology of Commensality and the ontical or sociological understanding of commensality as obtained in African traditional societies. Phenomenology of Commensality argues for the 'renaissance' of Commensality, concretely expressed as Onyenkeanyi, and not just for its 'revival'. The research work further develops the phenomenology of education for Commensality, discussing the possible content and focus of its curriculum, while differentiating it from ethics. The proper implementation of phenomenology of education for Commensality could inspire and illuminate individual Daseins to authenticity, and thereby becomes an improvement strategy for the positive transformation of the (Nigerian) society. As a phenomenology, it is appropriate that the people and places analyzed take on a definite character, which is why the Nigerian society is used. However, it is expected that the implications of the findings presented here will be general and accurate enough to allow application to any number of similar situations. (shrink)

The fourteen award-winning essays in this volume discuss a range of novel ideas and controversial topics that could decisively influence the course of human life on Earth. Their authors address, in accessible language, issues as diverse as: enabling our social systems to learn; research in biological engineering and artificial intelligence; mending and enhancing minds; improving the way we do, and teach, science; living in the here and now; and the value of play. The essays are enhanced versions of the prize-winning (...) entries submitted to the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) essay competition in 2014. FQXi, catalyzes, supports, and disseminates research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology, particularly new frontiers and innovative ideas integral to a deep understanding of reality, but unlikely to be supported by conventional funding sources. (shrink)

Introduction : Fanon now -- Reading fanon anti-piously : on the need to appropriate -- The struggle within humanism : Fanon and Said -- The humanism effect : Fanon, Foucault, and ethics without subjects -- The futures of postcolonial criticism : Fanon and Kincaid -- "Enough of this scandal" : reading Gilroy through Fanon, or who comes after "race"? -- "Any decolonization is a success" : Fanon and the African spring -- Conclusion : singularity and solidarity : Fanonian futures.

Two types of interleukin 1 (IL‐1α and IL‐1β) have been defined by purifying the molecules from activated human peripheral blood cells, followed by cloning and expressing the molecules in Escherichia coli. Both types of IL‐1 stimulate proliferation and differentiation of T‐ and B‐lymphocytes and induce cartilage proteoglycan degradation but differ in other properties. For example, demineralization and appears to be a major mediator in the pathogenesis of joint erosion in rheumatoid arthritis. Synthetic adjuvants elicit the production of IL‐1 separate from (...) endogenous pyrogen, and this property is required for the new generation of vaccines based on antigens produced by recombinant DNA technology. (shrink)

It is often argued that associations are intelligent organisms with minds and intentional states of their own. It is also argued that groups are merely a plurality of individuals who are related or associated only in a specific and limited sense. This paper draws on both classical and contemporary scholarship to develop an ontological account of persons which has real-world legal and ethical implications.

In recent years there has been a significant growth in interest of the so-called 'law in context' extending legal studies beyond black letter law. This book looks at the relationship between statute law and legal practice. It examines how law is applied in reality and more precisely how law is perceived by the general public in contrast to the legal profession. The authors look at a number of themes that are central to examining ways in which myths about law are (...) formed, and how there is inevitably a constitutive power aspect to this myth making. At the same time they explore to what extent law itself creates and sustains myths. The book will be of general interest to a number of different disciplines such as legal theory, general law, criminology and sociology. (shrink)

While the academic separation of policing and regulation is still largely operative, points of convergence are more significant than ever in the digital age, starting with concomitant debates about algorithms as a new figure of power. From the policing of illegal activities to the regulation of legal ones, the algorithmization of such critical social ordering practices has been the subject of growing attention. These burgeoning discussions are focused on one common element: big data surveillance. In accordance with such similarities and (...) paralleled developments in policing and regulation, the article aims to further bridge the gap between literatures to respond to the calls for studying big data surveillance across institutional domains and social fields. To do so, it is focused on one case study that articulates algorithmic policing and regulation domains, in-between security and economic fields. This is the fight against illicit finance, i.e. ‘the global action against the financial flows that fuel crime and terrorism’. To what extent does big data surveillance make a difference in the main global policy of crime-fighting and financial regulation? Drawing on a fieldwork in a large North American bank, the present article takes stock of the algorithmic overlap between policing and regulation. It argues that the final result is policing and regulation of neither too much nor too little, which gives rise to automated and everyday mass surveillance while remaining as far removed from regulatory and crime-fighting ambitions as it is from dystopian visions of big data and algorithmic drama. (shrink)