Tom Regan's four explanations of animal rights are examined and rejected as inadequate. A superior interest based account of animal rights is proposed. This derives an animal's right to freedom from harm from interests that are implicit in the conscious life of the animal. According to Tom Regan, there are four possible accounts for dealing with the issue of how animals should be treated: (1) the ?Kantian account?; (2) the ?cruelty account?; (3) the ?utilitarian account?; and (4) the ?animal rights (...) account? (Regan, 2001, pp. 41?55). In this paper I propose to briefly survey these four accounts and argue for a fifth view, the ?interests account?, which I believe is the most reasonable of the five accounts. (shrink)

It sounds contradictory that the yellow ball is green. Indeed, it is believed that yellow is not green. If so, then the yellow ball shouldn't be green, either. In this paper, however, I want to argue that «the yellow ball is green» is intelligible. To achieve this purpose, I distinguish between two kinds of concepts: «digital concepts», and «analog concepts». By using this pair of concepts, I propose to show that the yellow ball is in a very important sense green. (...) To sum up, there are at least two kinds of concepts: «digital concepts», and «analog concepts». «Color» is among the analog concepts. It is argued that the analog concepts do not conform to the principle of non-contradiction. However, to be handled well, they must be digitalized first. But note that these digitalized concepts are in reality analog. Therefore, in reality, it is not contradictory that the yellow ball is green. (shrink)

Philosophical debates about the metaphysics of time typically revolve around two contrasting views of time. On the A-theory, time is something that itself undergoes change, as captured by the idea of the passage of time; on the B-theory, all there is to time is events standing in before/after or simultaneity relations to each other, and these temporal relations are unchanging. Philosophers typically regard the A-theory as being supported by our experience of time, and they take it that the B-theory clashes (...) with how we experience time and therefore faces the burden of having to explain away that clash. In this paper, we investigate empirically whether these intuitions about the experience of time are shared by the general public. We asked directly for people’s subjective reports of their experience of time—in particular, whether they believe themselves to have a phenomenology as of time’s passing—and we probed their understanding of what time’s passage in fact is. We find that a majority of participants do share the aforementioned intuitions, but interestingly a minority do not. (shrink)

IntroductionInformation and communication technologies are becoming an integral part of medical practice, research and administration and their use will grow as telemedicine and electronic medical record use become part of routine practice. Security in maintaining patient data is important and there is a statuary obligation to do so, but few health professionals have been trained on how to achieve this. There is no information on the use of computers and email by doctors and nurses in South Africa in the workplace (...) and at home, and whether their current computer practices meets legal and ethical requirements. The aims of this study were to determine the use of computers by healthcare practitioners in the workplace and home; the use and approach to data storage, encryption and security of patient data and patient email; and the use of informed consent to transmit data by email.MethodsA self-administered questionnaire was administered to 400 health care providers from the state and private health care sectors. The questionnaire covered computer use in the workplace and at home, sharing of computers, data encryption and storage, email use, encryption of emails and storage, and the use of informed consent for email communication.Results193 doctors and 207 nurses in the private and public sectors completed the questionnaire. Forty (10%) of participants do not use a computer. A third of health professionals were the only users of computers at work or at home. One hundred and ninety-eight respondents (55%) did not know if the data on the computers were encrypted, 132 (36.7%) knew that the data were not encrypted and 30 (8.3%) individuals knew that the data on the computers they were using were encrypted. Few doctors, 58 (16%), received emails from patients, with doctors more likely to receive emails from patients than nurses (p = 0.0025). Thirty-one percent of individuals did not respond to the emails. Emails were saved by 40 (69%) recipients but only 5 (12.5%) doctors encrypted the messages, 19 (47.5%) individuals knowingly did not encrypt and 16 (40.0%) did not know if they encrypted the data. While 20% of health professionals have emailed patient data, but only 41.7% gained consent to do so.ConclusionsMost health professionals as sampled in South Africa are not compliant with the National Health Act or the Electronic Communications Transactions Act of South Africa or guidelines from regulatory bodies when managing patient data on computers. Many appear ignorant or lack the ability to comply with simple data security procedures. (shrink)

A critical analysis of the "rebellious ethics" that is the paradigm of current professional ethics and that emerged in reaction to the "pure technician" displayed in the life of Albert Speer, Hitler's architect, along with a plea to professionals to take the morality of their professional roles more seriously.

Recent studies have suggested that while both adults and children hold past-future hedonic preferences – preferring painful experiences to be in the past and pleasurable experiences to lie in the future – these preferences are abandoned when the quantity of pain or pleasure under consideration is greater in the past than in the future. We examined whether such preferences might be affected by the utility people assign to experiential memories, since the recollection of events can itself be pleasurable or aversive, (...) and we examined the developmental trajectory of the value that people assign to experiential memories of past painful experiences. Using a task in which we manipulated hypothetical memory loss in a series of brief vignettes, we found that for some adults, but not for children, the disutility attached to the recollection of painful past events outweighed the disutility of living through future painful events. Between middle childhood and adulthood, experiential memory appears to assume a more important role in determining the value that people assign to past experiences and in mitigating bias toward the future. (shrink)

People hold intuitive theories of the physical world, such as theories of matter, energy, and motion, in the sense that they have a coherent conceptual structure supporting a network of beliefs about the domain. It is not yet clear whether people can also be said to hold a shared intuitive theory of time. Yet, philosophical debates about the metaphysical nature of time often revolve around the idea that people hold one or more “common sense” assumptions about time: that there is (...) an objective “now”; that the past, present, and future are fundamentally different in nature; and that time passes or flows. We empirically explored the question of whether people indeed share some or all of these assumptions by asking adults to what extent they agreed with a set of brief statements about time. Across two analyses, subsets of people's beliefs about time were found consistently to covary in ways that suggested stable underlying conceptual dimensions related to aspects of the “common sense” assumptions described by philosophers. However, distinct subsets of participants showed three mutually incompatible profiles of response, the most frequent of which did not closely match all of philosophers’ claims about common sense time. These exploratory studies provide a useful starting point in attempts to characterize intuitive theories of time. (shrink)

The fact that genes and environment contribute differentially to variation in human behaviors, traits and attitudes is central to the field of behavior genetics. Perceptions about these differential contributions may affect ideas about human agency. We surveyed two independent samples (N = 301 and N = 740) to assess beliefs about free will, determinism, political orientation, and the relative contribution of genes and environment to 21 human traits. We find that lay estimates of genetic influence on these traits cluster into (...) four distinct groups, which differentially predict beliefs about human agency, political orientation, and religiosity. Despite apparent ideological associations with these beliefs, the correspondence between mean lay estimates and published heritability estimates for the surveyed traits is large (r = .77). Belief in genetic determinism emerges as a modest predictor of accuracy in these lay estimates. Additionally, educated mothers with multiple children emerge as particularly accurate in their estimates of the genetic contribution to these traits. (shrink)

À la manière de Machiavel dans Le prince, le philosophe s'interroge sur l'utilité de la dictature en 2020. S'appuyant sur les exemples de C. de Gaulle, A. Lincoln, V. Poutine, Lee Kuan Yew ou N. Nazarbaïev, il montre que la concentration du pouvoir dans les mains d'un seul homme peut apparaître comme une solution pour sauver une société menacée d'implosion ou en établir une nouvelle.0.

Introduction.--Illustrations of manuscripts and printed books.--Pettas, W. Notes on English translations of Phaedrus.--Lee, P. On the wings of Thymós.--Blaisdell, G. A nobler seduction.--Appendix: The Parmenides fragments.

The article initially demonstrates how Lee Clark Mitchell's misreading of Jack London's "To Build a Fire" as determinist fiction leads him to read against the clear and emphatic intent of the story by forcing a deconstructive interpretation on its repetitive technique. The article then goes on to suggest that some form of this critical methodology is shared by many recent New Historicist and Cultural Studies critics and is related both to the frequent misreading of American naturalist fiction in general (...) and, indirectly, to the decline of undergraduate interest in English studies. (shrink)

This paper develops an argument against causal decision theory. I formulate a principle of preference, which I call the Guaranteed Principle. I argue that the preferences of rational agents satisfy the Guaranteed Principle, that the preferences of agents who embody causal decision theory do not, and hence that causal decision theory is false.

Philosophical arguments usually are and nearly always should be abductive. Across many areas, philosophers are starting to recognize that often the best we can do in theorizing some phenomena is put forward our best overall account of it, warts and all. This is especially true in esoteric areas like logic, aesthetics, mathematics, and morality where the data to be explained is often based in our stubborn intuitions. -/- While this methodological shift is welcome, it's not without problems. Abductive arguments involve (...) significant theoretical resources which themselves can be part of what's being disputed. This means that we will sometimes find otherwise good arguments which suggest their own grounds are problematic. In particular, sometimes revising our beliefs on the basis of such an argument can undermine the very justification we used in that argument. -/- This feature, which I'll call self-effacingness, occurs most dramatically in arguments against our standing views on the esoteric subject matters mentioned above: logic, mathematics, aesthetics, and morality. This is because these subject matters all play a role in how we reason abductively. This isn't an idle fact; we can resist some challenges to our standing beliefs about these subject matters exactly because the challenges are self-effacing. The self-effacing character of certain arguments is thus both a benefit and limitation of the abductive turn and deserves serious attention. I aim to give it the attention it deserves. (shrink)

This paper propounds a new reading of Berkeley's account of the activity of finite spirits. Against existing interpretations, the paper argues that Berkeley does not hold that we causally contribute to the movement of our bodies. In contrast, our volitions to move our bodies are but occasions for God to cause their movement. In answer to the question of wherein then consists our activity, the paper proposes that our activity consists in the dual powers to produce (1) our volitions ? (...) the acts of willing ? and (2) our ideas of imagination. (shrink)

Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) are at last coming to be recognised as serious global public health problems. Nevertheless, many women with personal histories of DVA decline to disclose them to healthcare practitioners. In the health sciences, recent empirical work has identified many factors that impede DVA disclosure, known as barriers to disclosure. Drawing on recent work in social epistemology on testimonial silencing, we might wonder why so many people withhold their testimony and whether there is some kind of epistemic (...) injustice afoot here. In this paper, I offer some philosophical reflections on DVA disclosure in clinical contexts and the associated barriers to disclosure. I argue that women with personal histories of DVA are vulnerable to a certain form of testimonial injustice in clinical contexts, namely, testimonial smothering, and that this may help to explain why they withhold that testimony. It is my contention that this can help explain the low rates of DVA disclosure by patients to healthcare practitioners. (shrink)

Outside of philosophy, ‘intuition’ means something like ‘knowing without knowing how you know’. Intuition in this broad sense is an important epistemological category. I distinguish intuition from perception and perception from perceptual experience, in order to discuss the distinctive psychological and epistemological status of evaluative property attributions. Although it is doubtful that we perceptually experience many evaluative properties and also somewhat unlikely that we perceive many evaluative properties, it is highly plausible that we intuit many instances of evaluative properties as (...) such. The resulting epistemological status of evaluative property attributions is very much like it would be if we literally perceived such properties. (shrink)

This book offers solutions to two persistent and I believe closely related problems in epistemology. The first problem is that of drawing a principled distinction between perception and inference: what is the difference between seeing that something is the case and merely believing it on the basis of what we do see? The second problem is that of specifying which beliefs are epistemologically basic (i.e., directly, or noninferentially, justified) and which are not. I argue that what makes a belief a (...) perceptual belief, or a basic belief, is not any introspectible feature of the belief but rather the nature of the cognitive system, or "module", that is causally responsible for the belief. Thus, even zombies, who in the philosophical literature lack conscious experiences altogether, can have basic, justified, perceptual beliefs. -/- The theories of perceptual and basic beliefs developed in the monograph are embedded in a larger reliabilist epistemology. I use this theory of basic beliefs to develop a detailed reliabilist theory: Inferentialist Reliabilism, which offers a reliabilist theory of inferential justification and which solves some longstanding problems for other reliabilist views by demanding inferential support for some—but not all—beliefs. The book is an instance of a thoroughgoingly naturalistic approach to epistemology. Many of my arguments have an empirical basis, and the view that I endorse reserves a central role for the cognitive sciences—in particular, cognitive neuroscience—in filling in the details of an applied epistemological theory. (shrink)

This paper develops a form of moral actualism that can explain the procreative asymmetry. Along the way, it defends and explains the attractive asymmetry: the claim that although an impermissible option can be self-conditionally permissible, a permissible option cannot be self-conditionally impermissible.

Depuis le choeur ou chante notre irrefutabilite, jetons a la douloureuse figure des moribonds un apogee de zutisme mystique et d'irreverence raisonnee. MAXENCE.

This paper is concerned with the senses in which paintings do and do not depict various temporal phenomena, such as motion, stasis and duration. I begin by explaining the popular – though not uncontroversial – assumption that depiction, as a pictorial form of representation, is a matter of an experiential resemblance between the pictorial representation and that which it is a depiction of. Given this assumption, I illustrate a tension between two plausible claims: that paintings do not depict motion in (...) the sense that video recordings do, and that paintings do not merely depict objects but may depict those objects as engaged in various activities, such as moving. To resolve the tension, I demonstrate that we need to recognise an ambiguity in talk of the appearance of motion, and distinguish between the depiction of motion and the depiction of an object as an object that is moving. Armed with this distinction, I argue that there is an important sense in which paintings depict neither motion, duration, nor – perhaps more controversially – stasis. (shrink)

Certains en possèdent déjà : les animaux de compagnie, les espèces protégées et les animaux d'élevage. Mais les droits que nous leur avons consentis sont minimaux et incohérents. Nous traitons différemment les chiens, que nous considérons comme des membres de la famille, et les cochons, réduits au rang d'objets produits en masse et abattus dans d'indignes conditions. Pourtant cochons et chiens présentent une sensibilité et une intelligence similaires. Comment en sommes-nous venus à les classer dans des catégories si différentes? C'est (...) que nous sommes spécistes. Le terme, peu connu en France, fera bientôt partie de notre vocabulaire. A l'instar du racisme et du sexisme, dont il poursuit la logique. Le spécisme consiste à traiter différemment, et sans la moindre raison valable, deux espèces qui présentent les mêmes caractéristiques. Tout comme nous avons longtemps dénié aux femmes les mêmes droits que les hommes. L'affirmation de l'antispécisme sera celle de l'animalisme, un mouvement philosophique qui promeut la nécessité d'accorder des droits à tous les animaux, en raison de leur capacité à souffrir. Loin d'être anecdotique, l'animalisme incarne le mouvement idéologique le plus révolutionnaire ; pour la première fois depuis 2000 ans, il entend sortir nos systèmes de pensée occidentaux de leur logique anthropocentriste et reconnaître que nous, qui sommes des animaux, avons des obligations morales à l'égard de nos cousins. Surtout, l'animalisme s'inscrit dans une logique d'écologie politique, éloignée de celle incarnée dans les élections. Non plus une écologie superficielle, qui se soucie seulement de préserver les écosystèmes, les ressources et quelques espèces en péril, mais une écologie profonde, qui repense complètement la place de l'homme dans le monde. Pour que ce dernier ne vive plus en parasite, mais en symbiose avec toutes les formes de vivant. Cela oblige à une refonte de nos institutions et à briser la vision à court-terme du temps politique. Cela nous oblige aussi à une réforme intellectuelle qui remette en question la notion de " profit ". Le capitalisme, le socialisme, le communisme, le néo-libéralisme sont aujourd'hui discrédités, si ce n'est dépassés. (shrink)

Introspective evidence is still treated with great suspicion in cognitive science. This work is designed to encourage cognitive scientists to take more account of the subject's unique perspective.

Is a human more conscious than an octopus? In the science of consciousness, it’s oftentimes assumed that some creatures (or mental states) are more conscious than others. But in recent years, a number of philosophers have argued that the notion of degrees of consciousness is conceptually confused. This paper (1) argues that the most prominent objections to degrees of consciousness are unsustainable, (2) examines the semantics of ‘more conscious than’ expressions, (3) develops an analysis of what it is for a (...) degreed property to count as degrees of consciousness, and (4) applies the analysis to various theories of consciousness. I argue that whether consciousness comes in degrees ultimately depends on which theory of consciousness turns out to be correct. But I also argue that most theories of consciousness entail that consciousness comes in degrees. (shrink)

Tao has been built into the foundation of East Asian culture for millennia, and many books have been written to explain it. But Tao cannot fully be explained in words; it can only felt and experienced. Tao is something you live, day by day, moment by moment. Its the omnipresent oneness beyond ephemeral phenomena that expresses itself in everything.

François Lamy, a Benedictine monk and Cartesian philosopher whose extensive relations with Arnauld, Bossuet, Fénélon, and Malebranche put him into contact with the intellectual elite of late-seventeenth-century France, authored the very first detailed and explicit refutation of Spinoza’s Ethics in French, Le nouvel athéisme renversé. Regrettably overlooked in the secondary literature on Spinoza, Lamy is an interesting figure in his own right, and his anti-Spinozist work sheds important light on Cartesian assumptions that inform the earliest phase of Spinoza’s critical reception (...) in the seventeenth-century. I begin by presenting Lamy’s life and the contentious state of Spinoza’s French reception in the 1680 and 1690s. I then discuss a central argument in Lamy’s refutation, namely the Cartesian objection that Spinoza’s account of the conceptual independence of attributes is incompatible with the theory of substance monism. Contrasting Lamy’s objection with questions put to Spinoza by de Vries and Tschirnhaus, I maintain that by exhibiting the direction Spinoza’s views on substance and attribute took in maturing we may accurately assess the strength of Spinoza’s position vis-à-vis his Cartesian objector, and I argue that, in fact, Spinoza’s mature account of God as an expressive ens realissimum is not vulnerable to Lamy’s criticism. In conclusion, I turn to Lamy’s objection that Spinoza’s philosophy is question-begging in view of Spinoza’s account of God, and I exhibit what this point of criticism tells us about the intentions of the first French Cartesian rebuttal of the Ethics. (shrink)

Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure takes sociology in a new direction. It examines key aspects of social structure by using a fresh understanding of emotions categories. Through that synthesis emerge new perspectives on rationality, class structure, social action, conformity, basic rights, and social change. As well as giving an innovative view of social processes, J. M. Barbalet's study also reveals unappreciated aspects of emotions by considering fear, resentment, vengefulness, shame, and confidence in the context of social structure. While much (...) has been written on the social consequences of excessive or pathological emotions, this book demonstrates the centrality of emotions to routine operations of social interaction. Dr Barbalet also re-evaluates the nature of social theory, for once the importance of emotions to social processes becomes clear, the intellectual constitution of sociology, and therefore its history, must be rethought. (shrink)

A theory of customary international law -- Case studies -- A theory of international agreements -- Human rights -- International trade -- A theory of international rhetoric -- International law and moral obligation -- Liberal democracy and cosmopolitan duty.

Just War scholarship has adapted to contemporary crises and situations. But its adaptation has spurned debate and conversation--a method and means of pushing its thinking forward. Now the Just War tradition risks becoming marginalized. This concern may seem out of place as Just War literature is proliferating, yet this literature remains welded to traditional conceptualizations of Just War. Caron E. Gentry and Amy E. Eckert argue that the tradition needs to be updated to deal with substate actors within the (...) realm of legitimate authority, private military companies, and the questionable moral difference between the use of conventional and nuclear weapons. Additionally, as recent policy makers and scholars have tried to make the Just War criteria legalistic, they have weakened the tradition's ability to draw from and adjust to its contemporaneous setting. The essays in The Future of Just War seek to reorient the tradition around its core concerns of preventing the unjust use of force by states and limiting the harm inflicted on vulnerable populations such as civilian noncombatants. The pursuit of these challenges involves both a reclaiming of traditional Just War principles from those who would push it toward greater permissiveness with respect to war, as well as the application of Just War principles to emerging issues, such as the growing use of robotics in war or the privatization of force. These essays share a commitment to the idea that the tradition is more about a rigorous application of Just War principles than the satisfaction of a checklist of criteria to be met before waging "just" war in the service of national interest. (shrink)