I defend a weak version of the Pigou-Dalton principle for chances. The principle says that it is better to increase the survival chance of a person who is more likely to die rather than a person who is less likely to die, assuming that the two people do not differ in any other morally relevant respect. The principle justifies plausible moral judgements that standard ex post views, such as prioritarianism and rank-dependent egalitarianism, cannot accommodate. However, the principle can be justified (...) by the same reasoning that has recently been used to defend the core axiom of ex post prioritarianism and egalitarianism, namely, Pigou-Dalton for well-being. The arguably biggest challenge for proponents of Pigou-Dalton for chances is that it violates State Dominance for social prospects. However, I argue that we have independent reason for rejecting State Dominance for social prospects, since it prevents a social planner from properly respecting people's preferences. (shrink)

?Moral Black? and Whitemail? is a study of those modes of action which involve what I propose to call ?a raising of the moral stakes?. Illustration: A wants B to do X, and B wants to do Y; so A creates a situation in which doing Y would either be morally objectionable or more objectionable than it would have been but for A's intervention. Such modes of action include all the varieties of moral blackmail as well as such practices as (...) those of returning good for evil, putting people on trust, and some kinds of non?violent resistance. I try to expose the distinguishing marks of moral blackmail, why it is thought so objectionable, and how it is related to these other practices that also involve a raising of the moral stakes. The study as a whole is intended to underline the ambiguous nature of human action. (shrink)

Reasons and reasoning were central to the work of Paul Grice, one of the most influential and admired philosophers of the late twentieth century. In the John Locke Lectures that Grice delivered in Oxford at the end of the 1970s, he set out his fundamental thoughts about these topics; Aspects of Reason is the long-awaited publication of those lectures. They focus on an investigation of practical necessity, as Grice contends that practical necessities are established by derivation; they are necessary because (...) they are derivable. This work sets this claim in the context of an account of reasons and reasoning, allowing Grice to defend his treatment of necessity against obvious objections and revealing how the construction of explicit derivations can play a central role in explaining and justifying thought and action. Grice was still working on Aspects of Reason during the last years of his life, and although unpolished, the book provides an intimate glimpse into the workings of his mind and will refresh and illuminate many areas of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

This study challenges the conventional boundaries of philosophy by asserting that organizations can function as legitimate subjects within philosophical discourse. Western philosophy, epitomized by Descartes, has long assumed that individual human beings are the fundamental units of thought and moral agency. However, in a significant oversight, this belief overlooks the idea that organizations can think independently, leading to both virtuous and malevolent results. Epistemology lacks a clear prioritization of morally sound knowledge over potentially harmful knowledge. The advent of artificial intelligence (...) (AI) has also transformed the landscape of cognition from a primarily individual human endeavor into a joint undertaking where humans collaborate with AI entities in collective thinking and decision-making. Nevertheless, AI lacks the innate ability to discern between ethical and unethical actions. This symbiosis creates organizations as fundamental philosophical subjects, marking a significant shift in philosophical emphasis where the organization takes the center stage. Accordingly, within this emerging field, we advance four propositions as the core subjects of organization philosophy: organizations can think, organizations can create knowledge, AI can be part of an organization, and humans in the organization control moral discipline. These propositions guide the ethical coexistence of AI and human agents in organizations, emphasizing the importance of ethical deliberation in knowledge use. Moreover, the malicious use of profound knowledge hinders human progress, as illustrated in this study by an ethical examination of military institutions within organization philosophy. (shrink)

Long-term care is controversial because it involves foundational disputes. Some are moral-economic, bearing on whether the individual, the family, or the state is primarily responsible for long-term care, as well as on how one can establish a morally and financially sustainable long-term-care policy, given the moral hazard of people over-using entitlements once established, the political hazard of media democracies promising unfundable entitlements, the demographic hazard of relatively fewer workers to support those in need of long-term care, the moral hazard to (...) responsibility of shifting accountability to third parties, and the bureaucratic hazard of moving from individual and family choice to bureaucratic oversight. These disputes are compounded by controversies regarding the nature of the family (Is it to be regarded primarily as a socio-biological category, a fundamental ontological category of social reality, or a construct resulting from the consent of the participants?), as well as its legal and moral autonomy and authority over its members. As the disputes show, there is no common understanding of respect and human dignity that will easily lead out of these disputes. The reflections on long-term care in this issue underscore the plurality of moralities defining bioethics. (shrink)

Context: Although the theory of autopoietic systems was originally formulated to explain the phenomenon of life from an operational and temporal perspective, sociologist Niklas Luhmann incorporated it later within his theory of social systems. Due to this adoption, there have been several discussions regarding the applicability of this concept beyond its biological origins. Problem: This article addresses the conception of Luhman’s autopoietic social systems, and confronts this vision with criticism both of the original authors of the concept of autopoiesis and (...) of other social theorists in order to elucidate the main problems of this debate and its possible solutions. Method: The objectives of the article are reached by means of a theoretical reconstruction of the main issues of the debate on the concept of autopoiesis. The main method used for the research is the use of documentary sources to discuss the arguments. Results: We claim that it is justified to extend the concept of autopoiesis from its biological origin to other disciplines, and to develop its interdisciplinary character, following the spirit of systems theory and constructivism. Implications: Our results are useful for promoting the development of new interdisciplinary research in the field of systems theory and constructivism. Important changes to practice should be made, namely, the development of new research methods, new concepts and perspectives. Constructivist content: The concept of autopoiesis is one of the fundamental concepts of the constructivist epistemology. The discussion proposes a radical understanding of this concept in order to realize all its explanatory potential. (shrink)

The fragment is preserved in two sources, Clement of Alexandria's Miscellanies, Strom. 5.14.112, which gives the order of words printed above, and Eusebius' Praep. Evang. 13.680c, in which the second line is given as. The latter reading was preferred by Bergk, but there seems at first little reason to prefer one order over the other. I shall return to this issue shortly.

The fragment is preserved in two sources, Clement of Alexandria's Miscellanies, Strom. 5.14.112 , which gives the order of words printed above, and Eusebius' Praep. Evang. 13.680c, in which the second line is given as . The latter reading was preferred by Bergk, but there seems at first little reason to prefer one order over the other. I shall return to this issue shortly.

Nocebo effects occur when an individual experiences undesirable physiological reactions caused by doxastic states that are not a treatment’s core or characteristic features.1 As Scott Gelfand2 points out, there are numerous studies that have shown that the disclosure of a treatment’s side effects to a patient increases the risk of the side effects. From an ethical point of view, nocebo effects caused by the disclosures of side effects present a challenging problem. On the one hand, clinicians’ duty to inform patients (...) of the consequences (including possible side effects) of their treatments is critical in ensuring that patients’ autonomy is respected. Patients cannot act autonomously if relevant information is withheld from them (without their consent, perhaps). On the other hand, clinicians also ought to minimize harm to patients. (shrink)

Originally published in 1970 this title commemorates the men and ideas that started, inspired and established a pioneer institution in British psychiatry. Based on the impetus of Freudian and related innovations after the First World War, the Tavistock Clinic offered treatment, training and research facilities in the field of neurosis, child guidance and later on group relations. Dr Dicks, who had been associated for nearly forty years with the work and personalities that helped to develop the Tavistock venture, describes the (...) struggles and capacity for survival of the clinic. He shows how, belonging neither to the older classical psychiatry nor to orthodox psychoanalysis, and suspect to both, the Clinic nevertheless became increasingly used by the rest of the profession as a psychotherapeutic resource. Dr Dicks describes the influence of the Tavistock on the medical, psychological and social work scene both before and after the Second World War, and assesses its achievements as a centre of psycho- and socio-dynamic thinking. The Tavistock is shown as a pioneer _sui generis_, launching psychosomatic research and initiating the exciting ventures in social psychiatry associated with the Army in the Second World War. As the Tavistock was the outcome of work with shell-shock victims in the first war, so its offspring, the Institute of Human Relations, was the natural continuation of the military effort in man-management, morale and group dynamic studies. The book includes an account of the inter-relationship between the Clinic, now part of the National Health Service, and the Institute, a private corporation. Still going strong as part of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust today this is an opportunity to revisit its early history. (shrink)

Vol. 7, n. 2, December 2023 (special issue).

The following analysis has been undertaken mainly for the purpose of presenting a sample of a method which, as the writer holds, would, if widely and consistently applied, tend considerably to reduce the number and the significance of epistemological problems. The presuppositions characteristic of this method might be summarized in these five statements: 1)You cannot make discoveries by changing the meaning of terms.2)There is wisdom in common sense since it represents the accumulated experience of the race.3)It cannot be impossible to (...) work out common sense into a consistent terminology.4)It is when we lack the patience to do this that epistemological problems seem to arise.5)But when such a terminology is worked out, it will prove rather disappointing since it will just express, in a somewhat clarified form, what all the world has always been aware of. (shrink)

In his biography of Isaac Newton, which forms the most recent production in this flourishing genre, Niccolò Guicciardini states as his first point of departure that Newton's work arose not from ‘attempts to answer questions that came to him spontaneously, but [from addressing] those posed by his contemporaries’. Right he is to communicate to the larger audience for which he is writing this principal fruit of by now almost a century of professional history-of-science writing – a deep-seated awareness that every (...) scientific view or finding, even if looking timeless in retrospect, has emerged from some given historical context that shows us where the scientist in question started, and that helps explain how, and in what direction, they managed to venture beyond the original context. Indeed, the same truth applies to every genuine – that is, in some way innovative and also worthwhile – contribution to scholarship. And so it is, therefore, with the three books here under review, which I intend to examine with the following leading question in mind: what in each of them is new and what, in what turns out to be new indeed, has been worth learning? (shrink)

British accounts of medical ethics concentrate on confidentiality to the exclusion of wider questions of privacy. This paper argues for consideration of privacy within medical ethics, and illustrates through the television series `Hospital', what may go awry when this wider concept is forgotten.