Nudges can pose serious threats to citizens’ privacy. The essay discusses several examples of nudges that must appear problematic to anyone valuing privacy. The paper also re-draws a well established connection between privacy and autonomy and argues that insofar as nudges incur too great a loss of privacy, they are incompatible with the libertarianism that libertarian paternalism is committed to by virtue of its very name.

In this note, we would like to respond to some remarks with which Cass Sunstein has, in turn, responded to our paper 'Nudges as a Threat to Privacy' in this journal. First, we address his contention that nudges are among the less problematic government practices as regards to privacy issues. Second, as he has clarified in his response that he doesn't think an all too well-informed government would be a good idea, we point out that this leaves a gaping hole (...) in his justification of libertarian paternalism. Third, we point out a new problem with gathering information about the preferences of citizens, namely that observation tends to distort behavior and hence leads to misguided inferences about goals and ends. (shrink)

Although corporate decision makers may justify charitable contributions on strategic grounds, extremely large corporate philanthropic contributions may beperceived by shareholders as unnecessary. If stockholders attempt to limit corporate philanthropy, then governance mechanisms should put a cap on giving amounts. Using a matched-paired sample to control for industry and company size, theauthors compared big givers and small givers. The authors find that blockholders and institutional owners limit corporate philanthropy. This suggests that high levels of corporate philanthropy may be perceived as excessive (...) by influentialstockholders, and some governance mechanisms act to curtail it. (shrink)

This paper makes a plea for more reflexive attempts to develop and anchor the emerging concept of responsible research and innovation. RRI has recently emerged as a buzzword in science policy, becoming a focus of concerted experimentation in many academic circles. Its performative capacity means that it is able to mobilise resources and spaces despite no common understanding of what it is or should be ‘made of’. In order to support reflection and practice amongst those who are interested in and (...) using the concept, this paper unpacks understandings of RRI across a multi-disciplinary body of peer-reviewed literature. Our analysis focuses on three key dimensions of RRI that remain particularly opaque. A total of 48 publications were selected through a systematic literature search and their content was qualitatively analysed. Across the literature, RRI is portrayed as a concept that embeds numerous features of existing approaches to govern and assess emerging technologies. Our analysis suggests that its greatest potential may be in its ability to unify and provide political momentum to a wide range of long-articulated ethical and policy issues. At the same time, RRI’s dynamism and resulting complexity may represent its greatest challenge. Further clarification on what RRI has to offer in practice—beyond what has been offered to date—is still needed, as well as more explicit engagement with research and institutional cultures of responsibility. Such work may help to realise the high political expectations that are attached to nascent RRI. (shrink)

The role of agape in Christian ethics has been a major concern for twentieth century ethicists. In America, the dominant ethical position has stressed other-regard--often pressed to the point of significant personal sacrifice--as the content of agape. Feminist ethicists are now criticizing an exclusive emphasis on other-regard. They are stressing the need for a healthy self-regard and hence they are exploring mutuality as the most appropriate image of Christian love.

This article explores risk in professional nursing practice. Professional risk refers to the threat of professional discipline if it is found that a registered nurse has violated professional nursing practice standards. We argue professional risk is socially constructed and understood differently by nurse regulatory bodies, unions, professional associations and frontline nurses. Regulatory bodies emphasize professional accountability of nurses; professional associations focus on system problems in health‐care; unions undertake protecting nurses' right to health and safety; and frontline nurses experience fear and (...) uncertainty in their attempt to interpret practice standards to avoid professional discipline. Perspectives of professional risk are investigated by analyzing three professional nursing bodies' views of professional codes governing the right of nurses to refuse unsafe work assignments. The workplace dynamics surrounding work refusal experienced by frontline nurses are illustrated primarily through the lens of the 2003 SARS influenza outbreak in Ontario, Canada. We conclude that frontline nurses in Ontario are required to manage risk by following professional protocols prioritizing patient care and professional accountability which disregard the systemic, unpredictable and hazardous circumstances in their everyday practice. Moreover, we argue professional protocols cannot anticipate every eventuality in clinical practice creating the fear of professional discipline for nurses. (shrink)

Szabó follows Heim in viewing familiarity, rather than uniqueness, as the essence of the definite article, but attempts to derive both familiarity and uniqueness implications pragmatically, assigning a single semantic interpretation to both the definite and indefinite articles. I argue that if there is no semantic distinction between the articles, then there is no way to derive these differences between them pragmatically.

This article considers the relevance of time theory for Beck's theory of reflexive modernization and vice versa. It focuses in particular on discontinuity in the context of continuity, on decontextualization, naturalization and responsibility as key concerns of both perspectives on the industrial way of life. It makes explicit the temporal underpinnings of that cultural form with respect to five Cs: the creation of time to human design (C1), the commodification of time (C2), the compression of time (C3), the control of (...) time (C4) and the colonization of time (C5). It concludes that explicit concern with temporal relations shows reflexive modernization in action and facilitates improved knowledge for deliberative change. (shrink)

This article argues that individuals paradigms have predominated social scientific explanations for gendered behavior in intimate relationships but that a microstructural paradigm adds necessary additional information. The results of a study designed to test the relative strengths of individualist and microstructural explanations for “mothering behavior” are presented. The microstructural hypothesis is that single fathers will adopt parental behavior that more closely resembles that of women who mother than that of married fathers. Parenting behaviors of single fathers, single mothers, married parents (...) with mothers at home, and married two-paycheck couples are compared. Overall, the hypothesis is supported. The article ends with a discussion of the implications of the microstructural perspective for social change in a feminist direction. (shrink)

Nous n'avons pas choisi d'etre aristoteliciens. Nous ne le sommes pas moins que les autres. Le livre Gamma de la Metaphysique accomplit la relegation de la sophistique qui n'a jamais ete achevee par Platon, en instaurant un regime de discours qui fera loi pour toute l'histoire de la metaphysique. Regime que nous appelons semantique, en reference au geste decisif d'Aristote qui fait equivaloir dire et signifier quelque chose. Il faut et il suffit qu'un sophiste lui dise Bonjour! pour qu'Aristote demontre, (...) que bon gre mal gre, il se place sous la juridiction de ce qu'on appelle depuis lors le principe de non-contradiction. La mise en demeure de parler fait office d'arme absolue, et la decision du sens est le foyer de la science de l'etre en tant qu'etre. Pas d'instauration du principe sans adversaire, donc sans stategie: cela suffit pour jeter le soupcon sur l'impression que donne Gamma d'une evidence definitive. (shrink)

The series, founded in 1970, publishes works which either combine studies in the history of philosophy with a systematic approach or bring together systematic studies with reconstructions from the history of philosophy. Monographs are published in English as well as in German. The founding editors are Erhard Scheibe (editor until 1991), Günther Patzig (until 1999) and Wolfgang Wieland (until 2003). From 1990 to 2007, the series had been co-edited by Jürgen Mittelstraß.

This article draws insights from a case study examining unanswered health questions of residents in two polluted towns in an industrial region in southern France. A participatory health study, as conducted by the author, is presented as a way to address undone science by providing the residents with relevant data supporting their illness claims. Local residents were included in the health survey process, from the formulation of the questions to the final data analysis. Through this strongly participatory science process, the (...) townspeople offered many creative ideas in the final report for how the data could be used to assist in improving their health and environment and policy work is already in evidence, resulting from the study. Drawing from the literature on participatory science and expertise as well as from the initial outcomes of the local health study, I propose that SPS produces a form of knowledge justice. Understanding knowledge and its making as part of a social justice agenda aligns well with environmental justice frames. Through SPS, local residents have a hermeneutical resource to make sense of their embodied lives and augment their claims with strong data supporting actions for improving their health and environment. (shrink)

In the special section ‘Body Hacking: Self-Made Cyborgs and Visions of Transhuman Corporeality’, attention is drawn to cyborgism, a set of cultural and very personal practices of experimentation with the human body that often take place outside the confines of institutionalised technoscience. Known, for example, as ‘body hackers’, ‘grinders’ or ‘self-made cyborgs’ and engaging in unusual forms of body modification, the practitioners are enthusiasts who do not necessarily have any ‘disability’ in the conventional sense of the term. They consider the (...) body a highly malleable material, a transformable, improvable, augmentable entity. The collection of papers in this special section encompasses first-hand accounts of cyborg practices as well as intellectual reflections on their implications. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the consumer side of consumption tax evasion (CTE), a subcategory of the shadow economy. The ethical dimensions of tax evasion have been effectively captured by the existent literature on tax morale, yet it fails to address the role consumers can play in CTE. Further, there is a shortage of tax morale studies that explore ethical decision making as a process composed of multiple steps and determinants. To bridge these gaps, we turned to the consumer ethics literature (...) and Jones’ issue-contingent model of ethical decision making. We developed the conceptual model of consumer ethical decision making for CTE by incorporating four key elements from the issue-contingent model, i.e. moral recognition, moral judgement, moral intention and moral intensity, while personal moral philosophies were introduced as an antecedent to the consumer ethical decision-making process. The study was conducted on a sample of consumers from Slovenia, where CTE is a widespread phenomenon. The findings confirm that consumers’ recognition of CTE as a moral issue is influenced by their moral philosophy and perceptions regarding the magnitude of CTE’s consequences, their visibility, probability, and temporal immediacy. These perceptions also play an important role in determining consumers’ moral judgements and intentions regarding CTE. Moreover, through the process of moral recognition and moral judgement, consumers form intentions to participate in, or avoid CTE. The study holds important implications for public policy makers who are trying to reduce the tax gap in times of economic instability and fiscal crisis. (shrink)

In response to the growing importance of environmental issues, more and more consumers are turning to anti-consumption by reducing, rejecting, or avoiding consumption. Covering the intersection of sustainable consumption and anti-consumption, previous studies relied on socio-cognitive models to explain this decision. In order to extend their findings, we consider the moral and emotional perspectives to examine reducing consumption for environmental reasons in a particular context, i.e. air travel. It is against this backdrop that we propose a conceptual model that includes (...) moral foundations as the main antecedent, followed by anticipated guilt and personal responsibility, while intention to reduce consumption (i.e. air travel) for environmental reasons, positive word of mouth about reducing air travel (WOM) and environmental activism represent the outcomes. The proposed model is tested on a sample of 511 respondents from a UK online consumer panel. Our results confirm the importance of moral foundations, anticipated guilt and personal responsibility and their interplay in the prediction of intention to reduce consumption for environmental reasons. Anticipated guilt influences WOM, while personal responsibility influences activism. In addition, intentions to reduce consumption for environmental reasons have a positive impact on WOM and environmental activism. There are several implications for public policy makers and NGOs that fight against climate change that derive from these findings, as well as research opportunities for academics interested in this topic. (shrink)

We show that Sacks' and Shoenfield's analogs of jump inversion fail for both tt- and wtt-reducibilities in a strong way. In particular we show that there is a ${\mathrm{\Delta }}_{2}^{0}$ set B > tt ∅′ such that there is no c.e. set A with A′ ≡ wtt B. We also show that there is a ${\mathrm{\Sigma }}_{2}^{0}$ set C > tt ∅′ such that there is no ${\mathrm{\Delta }}_{2}^{0}$ set D with D′ ≡ wtt C.

A lengthy debate in the philosophy of the cognitive sciences has turned on whether the phenomenon known as ‘systematicity’ of language and thought shows that connectionist explanatory aspirations are misguided. We investigate the issue of just which phenomenon ‘systematicity’ is supposed to be. The much-rehearsed examples always suggest that being systematic has something to do with ways in which some parts of expressions in natural languages (and, more conjecturally, some parts of thoughts) can be substituted for others without altering well-formedness. (...) We show that under one construal this yields a grossly weak claim that is not just compatible with a narrow version of associationist psychology but essentially coincides with a formalization of its descriptive power. Under another construal we get a claim (apparently unintended) that requires natural languages to fall within the context-free class, a claim that most linguists regard as too strong. Looking more closely at this proposed reconstruction of systematicity leads us to endorse, with further illustrations, the suggestion of Johnson (2004) that systematicity as a matter of substitutability of co-categorial constituents for one another does not appearto hold of natural languages at all. The appeal of the ill-delineated notion of systematicity may lie in the fact that within certain subclasses of lexical items mutual intersubstitutability does seem to hold, and theexplanation for that lies in a limitation on human memory: we simply cannot learn separate privileges of syntactic distribution for all of the huge number of words and phrases that we know. (shrink)

Nearly one billionpeople worldwide suffer from hunger. This book examines the question of what inhabitants of wealthy counties owe these people. The author focuses less on the question of how a better world can be created and more on the question of what well-off individuals are obligated to do in light of this obvious injustice and immense suffering. The book argues for a common responsibility to eliminate extreme poverty and speaks to individuals in their roles as citizens, consumers, and even (...) moral subjects. (shrink)

Were John Dewey to visit China today, he would not be the same John Dewey. He would be the Dewey whose own horizons were altered by his encounter with the China of 1919. He would also be the Dewey who came to know China by living there and by working with aspiring Chinese scholars and educators for twenty years. When Dewey went to China originally, he had no expectations. Neither he — nor the world — knew China. Today, it would (...) be different.Of course, China today is different as well. She has entered the global economy in a substantive, dominating — and sometimes domineering — way based on her natural and human resources. She flirted with a democratic governance that could not stand up to the weight of communist... (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

An exploration of the relationship between imagination and intuition and the workings of visual perception, in light of Polanyi’s epistemology, helps us to understand aesthetic seeing. The artist and contemplative learn to see anew and accordingly grasp extraordinary coherences of meaning.

Midwest Studies In Philosophy, Volume 44, Issue 1, Page 38-47, December 2019.