This paper describes a phenomenological investigation of the experience of farm tourism in the South West Tapestry Region of Western Australia from the perspective of both hosts and guests. The purpose of the study was to gain an understanding of what motivates people to operate a farm tourism business, and what motivates people to seek farm tourism holidays. In this context, phenomenology was applied as action research into the human dynamics of tourism. The study employs a combined methodological research model (...) drawn from the work of distinguished phenomenologists to explicate the experience of hosts and guests. The phenomenological descriptions derived through the explication process encapsulate the invariant structures or essence of meaning for each group. The most significant of these structural meanings for guests was the desire to relax in the tranquillity of the rural landscape and so recover from the stresses of their busy city lifestyle. Hosts were highly motivated to meeting new people, especially those with whom they shared a common interest. The motivations for the two groups were found to be highly compatible which augurs well for the future of farm tourism in the region. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 2, Edition 1, April 2002. (shrink)

In this innovative book, Gloria Frost reconstructs and analyses Aquinas's theories on efficient causation and causal powers, focusing specifically on natural causal powers and efficient causation in nature. Frost presents each element of Aquinas's theories one by one, comparing them with other theories, as well as examining the philosophical and interpretive ambiguities in Aquinas's thought and proposing fresh solutions to conceptual difficulties. Her discussion includes explanations of Aquinas's technical scholastic terminology in jargon-free prose, as well as background on medieval (...) scientific views - including ordinary language explanations of the medieval physical theories which Aquinas assumed in formulating his views on causation and causal powers. The resulting volume is a rich exploration of a central philosophical topic in medieval philosophy and beyond, and will be valuable especially for scholars and advanced students working on Aquinas and on medieval natural philosophy. (shrink)

Presentism is the view that only present things exist. So understood, presentism is primarily an ontological doctrine; it’s a view about what exists, absolutely and unrestrictedly. The view is the subject of extensive discussion in the literature on time and change, with much of it focused on the problems that presentism allegedly faces. Thus, most of the literature that frames the development of presentism has grown up either in formulating objections to the view (e.g., Sider 2001: 11–52), or in response (...) to such objections (e.g., Bigelow 1996; Markosian 2004), with exceptions to this largely coming via the ways in which presentism is motivated. This entry mirrors the structure of that literature, for the most part. Here’s the plan for what follows. We begin with a more detailed sketch of presentism, unpacking its commitments and motivations. Then, we move to consider several concerns raised for presentists. We use these to illustrate the breadth and severity of the challenges that presentism faces, as well as the range of different versions of presentism developed to help meet these challenges. (shrink)

A compelling exploration of how reputation affects every aspect of contemporary life Reputation touches almost everything, guiding our behavior and choices in countless ways. But it is also shrouded in mystery. Why is it so powerful when the criteria by which people and things are defined as good or bad often appear to be arbitrary? Why do we care so much about how others see us that we may even do irrational and harmful things to try to influence their opinion? (...) In this engaging book, Gloria Origgi draws on philosophy, social psychology, sociology, economics, literature, and history to offer an illuminating account of an important yet oddly neglected subject. Origgi examines the influence of the Internet and social media, as well as the countless ranking systems that characterize modern society and contribute to the creation of formal and informal reputations in our social relations, in business, in politics, in academia, and even in wine. She highlights the importance of reputation to the effective functioning of the economy and e-commerce. Origgi also discusses the existential significance of our obsession with reputation, concluding that an awareness of the relationship between our reputation and our actions empowers us to better understand who we are and why we do what we do. Compellingly written and filled with surprising insights, Reputation pins down an elusive subject that affects everyone. (shrink)

Presentism and Eternalism are competing views about the ontological and temporal structure of the world, introduced and demarcated by their answers to questions about what exists and whether what exists changes. The goal of this chapter is to give the reader a clear understanding of Presentism and Eternalism, and a sense of some considerations used to critically assess the views by briefly rehearsing some of the main philosophical problems facing them.

Ingram Bywater first published his edition of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics in 1890. His reconstruction of the Greek text is based on a careful weighing of the Greek manuscript evidence, Latin translations, the witness of early commentators and his own thorough knowledge of Aristotle's language and style. Bywater's choice of readings introduced many important alterations to the text given in previous editions; his preference for manuscripts Kb and Lb and for the commentary of Aspasius, represented by Heylbut's edition, explains many (...) of these changes. Select readings of the most important witnesses are given in a critical apparatus. Bywater's edition has been widely used by scholars and students of the Greek text of Nicomachean Ethics and a number of important translations have been based on it. The edition's carefully compiled index of key Greek words, arranged according to usage, has proved an indispensable tool to generations of Greek students. (shrink)

One famous scene in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) is the dialogue between the young Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the expert trader Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey). Hanna is complaining that the stock market is unpredictable; it’s “fugazi … it’s fairy dust. It doesn’t exist. It’s never landed. It is not matter. It’s not on the element chart. It’s not real”. But the fact that something is unpredictable and non-physical does not imply that it does not exist. On the (...) other hand, its unpredictability, non-physicality, and the fact that the stock market trend is largely determined by investors’ beliefs, do make its nature difficult to grasp. -/- This special issue of Rivista di Estetica aims to explore the financial sector from an ontological point of view. While the ontology of money has been extensively studied, few scholars have focused on the stock market and, more generally, on those entities belonging to the investment landscape. Matters are made more complicated by the fact that the financial sector is characterized by an ever-increasing use of digital technology, including software elements that trade in the market themselves. We believe that a careful study of this phenomenon may help us better to understand the role of artificial agents in the social world. (shrink)

Stephen Ingram defends a robustly realistic metaethical theory, based on the concept of normative arbitrariness, of which he provides the first in-depth analysis. He argues that, in order to capture the normative non-arbitrariness of moral choice, we must commit to the existence of robustly stance-independent, categorical, irreducibly normative, non-natural moral facts. Specifically, he identifies five ways in which a metaethical theory might fail to capture the non-arbitrariness of moral choice. The first involves claims about the bruteness of moral attitudes (...) or facts. The second involves claims about the privileging of some attitudes over others. The third involves the claim that some metaethical theories leave a normative deficit. The fourth involves a claim about our ownership over moral reality. And the fifth involves the claim that certain metaethical theories introduce a destabilising contingency into the moral domain. Ingram argues that robust realism is the theory that is best placed to avoid all five of these arbitrariness charges. He then goes on to show that, by exploring the nature of interpersonal moral dialogue, robust realists can defend epistemological and meta-semantic theories that are friendly to their view. Specifically, he defends a dualistic form of moral intuitionism on which some moral beliefs are justified on the basis of a priori intuitions, whilst others are justified on the basis of a posteriori moral experiences, and provides a theory of 'moral mental files' to explain how moral terms and concepts are able to refer to robust moral facts. (shrink)

The Action Theory of Exchanges is based on three main assumptions: i) an exchange is motivated by people having convergent preferences, ii) people exchange actions, and iii) offers and acceptances are crucial parts of an exchange and they bring about rights and obligations. The main aim of this paper is to discuss three aspects of this theory to better understand its ontological implications and, possibly, improve it. I first examine the expression “transferring the ownership” by showing an ontological issue behind (...) it; after that, I propose an interpretation that might solve this issue. I then show that convergent preferences are not enough to motivate an exchange; accordingly, one has to introduce two more preferences possessed by the agents. I finally propose a characterization of buying and selling (and buyer and seller) which, in addition to being compatible with the Action Theory of Exchanges, has the advantage of accounting for both monetary and non-monetary exchanges. (shrink)

A number of well-known Hegel-inspired theorists have recently defended a distinctive type of social freedom that, while bearing some resemblance to Isaiah Berlin’s famous description of positive freedom, takes its bearings from a theory of social recognition rather than a theory of moral self-determination. Berlin himself argued that recognition-based theories of freedom are really not about freedom at all but about solidarity, More strongly, he argued that recognition-based theories of freedom, like most accounts of solidarity, oppose what Kant originally understood (...) to be the essence of positive freedom, namely the setting of volitional ends in accordance with an individual’s exercise of his or her own reason, apart from social authority. In this chapter I argue that recognition might describe an essential social condition of positive freedom, or moral autonomy, as Kant and Berlin understand that term, but only with qualification: Only if recognition doesn’t imply a strong state of social solidarity, understood as a psychological state of identifying with, viz., feeling totally at home with and completely affirmed by, one’s society, and instead assumes only a weak form of democratic civic solidarity, can it function as a category of social freedom, and then only in the narrow sense of political freedom. To the degree that the different institutionalized forms of recognition in modern democracies compete with each other, social freedom will presuppose a second-order recognition of society’s affirmation of their freedom by those whose identities are invested in these forms, to wit: that such forms are or can be sufficiently harmonized with each other by means of judicious government policies and constitutional safeguards. Recognition that one is not overly dominated by a given social role or social expectation in living one’s life can enable one to become rationally reconciled to society and its primary recognition orders in a way that can be socially freedom-affirming. Detached in this way from any positive solidarity with society, recognition-based social freedom cum recognition of non-domination might also be conceived as a species of negative social freedom. I conclude that rational reconciliation remains at best an imperfectly achievable goal in modern societies marked by basic constitutional and institutional tensions. (shrink)

In this paper, I want to look at some questions that arise when we try to abandon the conceptual and political framework of the nation-state. Is it impossible to conceive the unity of the state apart from the unity of the nation? Are shared political values insufficient to account for the existence of bounded states and special duties to one's own country? In the first section I will discuss the view that the idea of the modern state is incoherent and (...) that it tacitly relies on the social idea of membership provided by the nation. The following section will give an alternative to the nationalist account of the exist ence of bounded communities and suggest why Habermasians and Rawlsians are right in thinking that the shared value of justice can be sufficient for political unity. Finally, I give a brief indication of the rel evance of this discussion to the idea of European Union. Key Words: boundaries. • collective intentionality • constitutional patriotism • European Union • liberal unity • post-national identity. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the discourse theoretic account of human rights defended by Jürgen Habermas contains a fruitful tension that is obscured by its dominant tendency to identify rights with legal claims. This weakness in Habermas’s account becomes manifest when we examine how sweatshops diminish the secure enjoyment of subsistence, which Habermas himself (in recognition of the UDHR) recognizes as a human right. Discourse theories of human rights are unique in tying the legitimacy of human rights to democratic (...) deliberation and consensus. So construed, their specific meaning and force is the outcome of historical political struggle. However, unlike other legal rights, they possess universal moral validity. In this paper I argue that this tension between the legal and moral aspects of human rights can be resolved if and only if human rights are conceived as moral aspirations and not simply as legal claims. In particular, I shall argue that there are two reasons why human rights must be understood as moral aspirations that function non-juridically: First, the basic human goods to which human rights provide secure access are determinable only in relation to basic human capabilities that are progressively revealed in the course of an indefinite (fully inclusive and universal) process of collective learning; second, the institutional impediments to enjoying human rights are cultural in nature and cannot be remedied by means of legal coercion. (shrink)

One famous scene in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) is the dialogue between the young Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the expert trader Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey). Hanna is complaining that the stock market is unpredictable; it’s “fugazi … it’s fairy dust. It doesn’t exist. It’s never landed. It is not matter. It’s not on the element chart. It’s not real”. But the fact that something is unpredictable and non-physical does not imply that it does not exist. On the (...) other hand, its unpredictability, non-physicality, and the fact that the stock market trend is largely determined by investors’ beliefs, do make its nature difficult to grasp. -/- This special issue of Rivista di Estetica aims to explore the financial sector from an ontological point of view. While the ontology of money has been extensively studied, few scholars have focused on the stock market and, more generally, on those entities belonging to the investment landscape. Matters are made more complicated by the fact that the financial sector is characterized by an ever-increasing use of digital technology, including software elements that trade in the market themselves. We believe that a careful study of this phenomenon may help us better to understand the role of artificial agents in the social world. (shrink)

We live in a reactionary culture where divisive issues arise, people on either side throw stones, and everyone ends up more entrenched in their opinions than in reaching common ground--or even exhibiting common courtesy! If there ever was a time for Christians to understand and communicate God's truth about controversial and polarizing issues, it is now. Believers must develop convictions based on research, reason, and biblical truth--and be able (and willing) to communicate these convictions with a love and respect that (...) reflects God's own heart. In Culture Shock, bestselling author, pastor, and radio personality Chip Ingram shows readers how they can bring light rather than heat to the most controversial and divisive issues of our day. Covering topics such as right and wrong, sex, homosexuality, abortion, politics, and the environment, Culture Shock is every engaged believer's must-have guidebook to replacing reactionary hate with revolutionary love. (shrink)

BackgroundThe idea that individuals are responsible for their health has been the focus of debate in the theoretical literature and in its concrete application to healthcare policy in many countries. Controversies persist regarding the form, substance and fairness of allocating health responsibility to the individual, particularly in universal, need-based healthcare systems.ObjectiveTo examine how personal health responsibility has been framed and rationalised in Norwegian key policy documents on priority setting.MethodsDocuments issued or published by the Ministry of Health and Care Services between (...) 1987 and 2018 were thematically analysed. We developed a predefined conceptual framework that guided the analysis. The framework included: the subject and object of responsibility, the level of conceptual abstraction, temporality, normative justificatory arguments and objections to the application of personal health responsibility.ResultsAs an additional criterion, personal health responsibility has been interpreted as relevant if: the patient’s harmful behaviour is repeated after receiving treatment, and if the success of the treatment is conditional on the patient’s behavioural change. When discussed as a retrospective criterion, considerations of reciprocal fairness have been dominant. When discussed as a prospective criterion, the expected benefit of treatment justified its relevance.ConclusionPersonal health responsibility appears to challenge core values of equality, inclusion and solidarity in the Norwegian context and has been repeatedly rejected as a necessary criterion for priority setting. However, the responsibility criterion seems to have some relevance in particular priority setting decisions. (shrink)

The Oxford Classical Texts, or Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, are renowned for their reliability and presentation. The series consists of a text without commentary but with a brief apparatus criticus at the foot of each page.

We aim to introduce presentism and to consider the question that presentism is supposed to answer. That is, if “only present objects exist” (or some appropriate precisification of the slogan) is the answer to a philosophical question, then (i) what is the question? And (ii) is it the right question to ask? We suggest that the question presentists are answering is not a good one to ask. We aim to articulate a question that presentists, or the heirs of presentism, should (...) try to answer. In pursuing these aims, we provide the reader with a sense of how we have reached the current position in the literature, as well as how we might move it along. (shrink)

Lifestyle-induced diseases are becoming a burden on healthcare, actualizing the discussion on health responsibilities. Using data from the National Association for Heart and Lung Diseases ’s 2015 Health Survey, this study examined the public’s attitudes towards personal and social health responsibility in a Norwegian population. The questionnaires covered self-reported health and lifestyle, attitudes towards personal responsibility and the authorities’ responsibility for promoting health, resource-prioritisation and socio-demographic characteristics. Block-wise multiple linear regression assessed the association between attitudes towards health responsibilities and individual (...) lifestyle, political orientation and health condition. We found a moderate support for social responsibility across political views. Respondents reporting unhealthier eating habits, smokers and physically inactive were less supportive of health promotion policies. The idea that individuals are responsible for taking care of their health was widely accepted as an abstract ideal. Yet, only a third of the respondents agreed with introducing higher co-payments for treatment of ‘self-inflicted’ conditions and levels of support were patterned by health-related behaviour and left-right political orientation. Our study suggests that a significant support for social responsibility does not exclude a strong support for personal health responsibility. However, conditional access to healthcare based on personal lifestyle is still controversial. (shrink)

The Oxford Classical Texts, or Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, are renowned for their reliability and presentation. The series consists of a text without commentary but with a brief apparatus criticus at the foot of each page.

This book defines the relationship between the thought of Adam Smith and that of the ancients---Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and the Stoics. Vivenza offers a complete survey of all Smith's writings with the aim of illustrating how classical arguments shaped opinions and scholarship in the eighteenth century.

The verb “to conjure” is a complex one, for it includes in its standard definition a great range of possible actions or operations, not all of them equivalent, or even compatible. In its most common usage, “to conjure” means to perform an act of magic or to invoke a supernatural force, by casting a spell, say, or performing a particular ritual or rite. But “to conjure” is also to influence, to beg, to command or constrain, to charm, to bewitch, to (...) move or convey, to imagine, to visualize, to call to mind, or to remember. —Rachael DeLue 2012, para 1.When we create with our Brown hands, feminine energy, and full spirits, we conjure. To exist, survive, and thrive in these bodies is a continuous act of conjuring. Our walks conjure. Our smiles conjure. Our tears conjure. Our laughs conjure. Our words conjure. Our artworks are conjurings. We, a Black/Filipina-American woman, a Dominican-American, and a Black-American woman, are guided by our solidarity with one another and all other Black and Brown female identifying persons whose raced and gendered subjectivities exist both inside and outside of colonization, white supremacy, and patriarchy. We bring to life our colored imaginations and curiosities, and share them with the world. We are united by our need for safety, autonomy as beings, dissolution of trauma, and desire to ask, “What would happen if I…?” Imaginative, curious Women of Color founded the underground railroad, guided captured Africans and Tainos to the mountains, ignited the Civil Rights Movement, organized laborers and immigrants, birthed the #BlackLivesMatter Movement, conceived the #MeToo Movement, and so much more. Like our kindred counterparts, we have an unrelenting urge to examine, question, wonder, desire, speak to, lead, be curious, and “conjure.” As practicing artists and art educators, our critical arts-based practices are grounded in intersectional feminisms like Womanism, Black Feminist Theory, and Chicana Feminist Theory, which allow us to do these very things. (shrink)

Unethical decision-making behavior within organizations has received increasing attention over the past ten years. As a result, a plethora of studies have examined the relationship between gender and business ethics. However, these studies report conflicting results as to whether or not men and women differ with regards to business ethics. In this article, we propose that gender identity theory [Spence: 1993, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64, 624–635], provides both the theory and empirical measures to explore the influence of (...) psychological gender traits and gender-role attitudes on ethical perceptions of workplace behaviors. Statistical analyses of the data reveal that based on sex alone, no differences occur between men and women in their ethical perceptions. Yet, when a multidimensional approach to gender is applied, results show that expressive traits and egalitarian gender-role attitudes contribute to both men’s and women’s propensity to perceive unethical workplace behaviors as unethical. The implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are presented. (shrink)

Unethical decision-making behavior within organizations has received increasing attention over the past ten years. As a result, a plethora of studies have examined the relationship between gender and business ethics. However, these studies report conflicting results as to whether or not men and women differ with regards to business ethics. In this article, we propose that gender identity theory [Spence: 1993, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology64, 624–635], provides both the theory and empirical measures to explore the influence of psychological (...) gender traits and gender-role attitudes on ethical perceptions of workplace behaviors. Statistical analyses of the data reveal that based on sex alone, no differences occur between men and women in their ethical perceptions. Yet, when a multidimensional approach to gender is applied, results show that expressive traits and egalitarian gender-role attitudes contribute to both men’s and women’s propensity to perceive unethical workplace behaviors as unethical. The implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are presented. (shrink)

AI systems play an increasingly important role in shaping and regulating the lives of millions of human beings across the world. Calls for greater _transparency_ from such systems have been widespread. However, there is considerable ambiguity concerning what “transparency” actually means, and therefore, what greater transparency might entail. While, according to some debates, transparency requires _seeing through_ the artefact or device, widespread calls for transparency imply _seeing into_ different aspects of AI systems. These two notions are in apparent tension with (...) each other, and they are present in two lively but largely disconnected debates. In this paper, we aim to further analyse what these calls for transparency entail, and in so doing, clarify the sorts of transparency that we should want from AI systems. We do so by offering a taxonomy that classifies different notions of transparency. After a careful exploration of the different varieties of transparency, we show how this taxonomy can help us to navigate various domains of human–technology interactions, and more usefully discuss the relationship between technological transparency and human agency. We conclude by arguing that all of these different notions of transparency should be taken into account when designing more ethically adequate AI systems. (shrink)

This article enriches discussions about the metaphysics of normative facts with conceptual resources from social ontology that metaethics has neglected so far: the resources of Haslanger’s critical realism as social constructionism. By pointing out the viability of understanding reasons as socially constructed facts, the article shows how normative facts can be understood as features of mind-independent reality that are, however, not features of the universe independently of social practices. The move into social ontology allows us to understand normative facts as (...) mind-independent in a more substantial sense than deflationists do, by stressing individual mind-independence, while denying collective mind-independence – the subsistence independently of established human cultures. The new position can fruitfully mediate between realism, error theory and constructivism. Finally, the metaphysical nuances provided by social ontology pave the way for novel approaches to normative change and progress – thereby indicating pathways to normative theorising that many traditional metaethical positions lack. (shrink)

Extended cognition brings with it a particular phenomenology. It has been argued that when an artifact is integrated into an agent’s cognitive system, it becomes transparent in use to the cognizing subject. In this paper, I challenge some of the assumptions underlying how the transparency of artifacts is described in extended cognition theory. To this end, I offer two arguments. First, I make room for some forms of conscious thought and attention within extended cognitive routines, and I question the close (...) association drawn between attention and effort. Second, I vindicate the importance of paying careful attention to individual differences and the diverse ways in which bodies and technologies can be experienced. I end by offering some hints toward an alternative, and more accurate, account of the phenomenology of extended cognition. (shrink)

According to the Extended knowledge dilemma, first formulated by Clark (Synthese 192:3757–3775, 2015) and subsequently reformulated by Carter et al. (in: Carter, Clark, Kallestrup, Palermos, Pritchard (eds) Extended epistemology, Oxford Univer- sity Press, Oxford, pp 331–351, 2018a), an agent’s interaction with a device can either give rise to knowledge or extended cognition, but not both at the same time. The dilemma rests on two substantive commitments: first, that knowledge by a subject requires that the subject be aware to some extent (...) of some features of that knowledge’s sources and, second, that cognitive processes can only be extended if the subject is mostly unaware of the external object. The overwhelming response to the dilemma by proponents of extended knowledge has been to reconcile the demands of knowl- edge with the requirement that genuine extended cognition must lack any conscious encountering of the external artifact that features in the putative extended cognitive process. My approach, thus far unexplored, will be the opposite: I show how extended cognition can be made compatible with a wide range of agential attitudes, including an active form of epistemic hygiene. Consequently, I open the door for a new way of vindicating the possibility of extended knowledge, and call into question some assumptions that lie at the core of extended cognition theory. (shrink)

The author argues for passing on a particular brand of feminism to next generations. The cultural archive to be passed on should be transnational, intersectional, interdisciplinary, relational and reflexive. In particular, the author focuses on processes and practices of racialization as they impact on and are practised within the discipline. In the current backlash against feminism and women’s studies in different parts of Europe, frequently divisionary tactics are deployed, by which women are pitted against each other, based on assumed immutable (...) differences which are conceived of as either ‘raciological’, ethnicized or as cultural, in such a way that ‘race’ enters again through the back door. The author argues that we need a European brand of feminism that is not complicit with the legacies of modernity, which continue to construct ‘race’. That is, we should be deeply concerned with thinking through the parameters of a viable anti-racist European women’s studies. By analysing various case studies, taken from the everyday Dutch reality at the beginning of this new millennium, the author shows the necessity and inescapability of the feminism she advocates. (shrink)

In this chapter, I propose a new framework for extended epistemology, based on a second-wave approach to extended cognition. The framework is inclusive, in that it takes into account the complex interplay between the diverse embodiments of extended knowers and the salient properties of technological artifacts, as well as the environment in which they are embedded. Thus it both emphasizes and exploits the complementary roles played by these different elements. Finally, I motivate and explain this framework by applying it to (...) a case of interaction with contemporary technologies. (shrink)

Language is both a biological and a cultural phenomenon. Our aim here is to discuss, in an evolutionary perspective, the articulation of these two aspects of language. For this, we draw on the general conceptual framework developed by Ruth Millikan (1984) while at the same time dissociating ourselves from her view of language.

Ross Cameron proposes to reconcile presentism and truth-maker theory by invoking temporal distributional properties, instantiated by present entities, as the truth-makers for truths about the past. This chapter argues that Cameron's proposal fails because objects can change which temporal distributional properties they instantiate and this entails that the truth-values of truths about the past can change in an objectionable way.

Papers presented at a conference held in University College, Galway, in June 1993.