Disgust is reasoned to operate in conjunction with the immune system to help protect the body from illness. However, less is known about the factors that impact the degree to which individuals invest in pathogen avoidance (disgust) versus pathogen management (prophylactic immunological activity). Here, we examine the role that one’s control over pathogen contact plays in resolving such investment trade-offs, predicting that (a) those from low control environments will invest less in pathogen-avoidance strategies and (b) investment in each of these (...) two strategies will occur in a compensatory fashion (i.e. they will be traded off with one other). Across four studies, we found support for these predictions, using a variety of manipulations and measures. By providing novel insights into how one’s control over pathogen exposure influences disgust sensitivity and immune system activity, the current research poses an important contribution to the literature on disgust, pathogen avoidance, and the immune system. (shrink)

This article is about nationalism from an unlikely perspective: Hannah Arendt. Though Arendt is famously no supporter of nationalism, I argue that her writing on narrative provides an illuminative way of examining the phenomenon. In the first section, I build upon Arendt’s narrative theory—and Leah Bradshaw’s analysis of it—to develop a distinction between narratively true stories and false ones, or reveries. I argue that while Arendt’s work on the matter often pertain to the tales of individuals, the thought (...) is transferable to the stories of nations. In the latter half of the paper, I turn these two questions on to instances of contemporary nationalism. Section two is on England, and section three is on Israel. I do not suggest that my conclusion about these case studies are definitive, but I do hope that their inclusion in this paper helps to demonstrate how Arendt’s philosophic analysis could be turned on the world. (shrink)

Fairness is central to the ethical and responsible development and use of AI systems, with a large number of frameworks and formal notions of algorithmic fairness being available. However, many of the fairness solutions proposed revolve around technical considerations and not the needs of and consequences for the most impacted communities. We therefore want to take the focus away from definitions and allow for the inclusion of societal and relational aspects to represent how the effects of AI systems impact and (...) are experienced by individuals and social groups. In this paper, we do this by means of proposing the ACROCPoLis framework to represent allocation processes with a modeling emphasis on fairness aspects. The framework provides a shared vocabulary in which the factors relevant to fairness assessments for different situations and procedures are made explicit, as well as their interrelations. This enables us to compare analogous situations, to highlight the differences in dissimilar situations, and to capture differing interpretations of the same situation by different stakeholders. (shrink)

The correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers begins in 1926, when the twenty-year-old Arendt studied philosophy with Jaspers in Heidelberg. It is interrupted by Arendt's emigration and Jasper's 'inner emigration' and resumes in the fall of 1945. From then until Jaspers's death in 1969, the initial teacher-student relationship develops into a close friendship. Three countries figure prominently in the correspondence: Germany, Israel, and the United States. Among the topics are Fascism, the atom bomb and the threat of global (...) destruction, German guilt for the Holocaust, Jewishness, the State of Israel, American politics and American universities, the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Arendt and Jaspers discuss people both famous and obscure. They gossip, joke complain, and argue. They commiserate with each other over the illnesses and infirmities of old age. And they converse about the world's great philosophers: Spinoza, Kant, Marx, Max Weber, Heidegger. Here is a fascinating dialogue between a woman and a man, a Jew and a German, a questioner and a visionary, both uncompromising in their examination of our troubled century. (shrink)

Gilbert et al. have raised important questions about the empirical grounding of neuroethical analyses of the apparent phenomenon of Deep Brain Stimulation ‘causing’ personality changes. In this paper, we consider how to make neuroethical claims appropriately calibrated to existing evidence, and the role that philosophical neuroethics has to play in this enterprise of ‘evidence-based neuroethics’. In the first half of the paper, we begin by highlighting the challenges we face in investigating changes to PIAAAS following DBS, explaining how different trial (...) designs may be of different degrees of utility, depending on how changes to PIAAAS following DBS are manifested. In particular, we suggest that the trial designs Gilbert et al. call for may not be able to tell us whether or not DBS directly causes changes to personality. However, we suggest that this is not the most significant question about this phenomenon; the most significant question is whether these changes should matter morally, however they are caused. We go on to suggest that neuroethical analyses of novel neuro-interventions should be carried out in accordance with the levels of evidence hierarchy outlined by the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, and explain different ways in which neuroethical analyses of changes to PIAAAS can be evidence-based on this framework. In the second half of the paper, we explain how philosophical neuroethics can play an important role in contributing to mechanism-based reasoning about potential effects on PIAAAS following DBS, a form of evidence that is also incorporated into the CEBM levels of evidence hierarchy. (shrink)

Michael Dummett begins The Logical Basis of Metaphysics by noting that most of the work done in analytic philosophy seems disconcertingly remote from any concern with the “deep questions of great import for an understanding of the world” that the non-professional expects it to answer. In part, he says, this is because modern analytic philosophy is founded upon a more penetrating analysis of the general structure of our thoughts than was available to past ages, namely, the apparatus of modern logic, (...) beginning with Frege’s Begriffsschrift in 1879. Analytic philosophers take for granted the principles of semantic analysis embodied in the notation of modern logic. Even if they do not make use of a technical vocabulary, having taken these principles for granted is itself often enough to render their approach opaque to the layperson. Appearances aside, he claims, analytic philosophy is still concerned with the “deep questions.” And, to his credit, Dummett keeps an eye focused on some of the central questions of philosophy, those concerning metaphysical realism, throughout the book. (shrink)

To commemorate 40 years since the founding of the Journal of Business Ethics, the editors in chief of the journal have invited the editors to provide commentaries on the future of business ethics. This essay comprises a selection of commentaries aimed at creating dialogue around the theme Technology, Megatrends and Work. Of all the profound changes in business, technology is perhaps the most ubiquitous. There is not a facet of our lives unaffected by internet technologies and artificial intelligence. The Journal (...) of Business Ethics established a dedicated section that focuses on Technology and Business Ethics, yet issues related to this phenomenon run right through all the sections. Kirsten Martin, editor of the Technology and Business Ethics section, joins our interim social media editor, Hannah Trittin-UIbrich, to advance a human-centric approach to the development and application of digital technologies that places Business Ethics at centre of the analysis. For Shuili Du, technology is the defining condition for a new era of Corporate Social Responsibility—CSR 3.0—which she defines as “a company’s socially responsible strategies and practices that deal with key ethical and socio-technical issues associated with AI and related technologies on the one hand and leverage the power of AI and related technologies to tackle social and environmental problems on the other hand.” It is not just technologies that are a determining feature of our lives but technology companies, an argument made by Glen Whelan as he examines Big Business and the need for a Big Business Ethics as we try to understand the impact of Big Tech on our post-work world. Indeed, as noted by Ernesto Noronha and Premilla D’Cruz, megatrends in addition to advancement in technologies, namely globalization, the greening of economies, and changes in demographics and migration, are shaping the future for workers in ways previously unimaginable. Contributing to this important debate, Praveen Parboteeah considers the influence of another longstanding but oft overlooked megatrend, the role of religion in the workplace. Given the enormity of the influence of technology and other megatrends in our world, it is not surprising that this essay introduces ground-breaking ideas that speak to the future of business ethics research. (shrink)

I defend the normativity of meaning against recent objections by arguing for a new interpretation of the ‘ought’ relevant to meaning. Both critics and defenders of the normativity thesis have understood statements about how an expression ought to be used as either prescriptive or semantic. I propose an alternative view of the ‘ought’ as conveying the primitively normative attitudes speakers must adopt towards their uses if they are to use the expression with understanding.

Although Hannah Arendt is considered one of the major contributors to social and political thought in the twentieth century, this is the first general anthology ...

Proceedings of a conference held May 25-26, 2012 at the University of Notre Dame.

Background: There is a lack of empirical data on lay attitudes toward different sorts of deception in medicine. However, lay attitudes toward deception should be taken into account when we consider whether deception is ever permissible in a medical context. The objective of this study was to examine lay attitudes of U.S. citizens toward different sorts of deception across different medical contexts. Methods: A one-time online survey was administered to U.S. users of the Amazon “Mechanical Turk” website. Participants were asked (...) to answer questions regarding a series of vignettes depicting different sorts of deception in medical care, as well as a question regarding their general attitudes toward truth-telling. Results: Of the 200 respondents, the majority found the use of placebos in different contexts to be acceptable following partial disclosure but found it to be unacceptable if it involved outright lying. Also, 55.5% of respondents supported the use of sham surgery in clinical research, although 55% claimed that it would be unacceptable to deceive patients in this research, even if this would improve the quality of the data from the study. Respondents supported fully informing patients about distressing medical information in different contexts, especially when the patient is suffering from a chronic condition. In addition, 42.5% of respondents believed that it is worse to deceive someone by providing the person with false information than it is to do so by giving the person true information that is likely to lead them to form a false belief, without telling them other important information that shows it to be false. However, 41.5% believed that the two methods of deception were morally equivalent. Conclusions: Respondents believed that some forms of deception were acceptable in some circumstances. While the majority of our respondents opposed outright lying in medical contexts, they were prepared to support partial disclosure and the use of placebos when it is in the patient's interests or when it is what the person would want. These results support the position that physicians should be allowed a greater degree of authority to make a professional judgment about whether deception might be morally warranted by the circumstances, provided that it doesn't involve outright lying. (shrink)

Descartes.--Hobbes.--Locke.--Pascal.--Spinoza.--Leibniz.

A unique selection of the most significant interviews given by Hannah Arendt, including the last she gave before her death in 1975. Some are published here in English for the first time. Arendt was one of the most important thinkers of her time, famous for her idea of "the banality of evil" which continues to provoke debate. This collection provides new and startling insight into Arendt's thoughts about Watergate and the nature of American politics, about totalitarianism and history, and (...) her own experiences as an emigre. Hannah Arendt: The Last Interview and Other Conversations is an extraordinary portrait of one of the twentieth century's boldest and most original thinkers. As well as Arendt's last interview with French journalist Roger Errera, the volume features an important interview from the early 60s with German journalist Gunter Gaus, in which the two discuss Arendt's childhood and her escape from Europe, and a conversation with acclaimed historian of the Nazi period, Joachim Fest, as well as other exchanges. These interviews show Arendt in vigorous intellectual form, taking up the issues of her day with energy and wit. She offers comments on the nature of American politics, on Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, on Israel; remembers her youth and her early experience of anti-Semitism, and then the swift rise of the Hitler; debates questions of state power and discusses her own processes of thinking and writing. Hers is an intelligence that never rests, that demands always of her interlocutors, and her readers, that they think critically. As she puts it in her last interview, just six months before her death at the age of 69, "there are no dangerous thoughts, for the simple reason that thinking itself is such a dangerous enterprise.". (shrink)

We expect that consensus meetings, where researchers come together to discuss their theoretical viewpoints, prioritize the factors they agree are important to study, standardize their measures, and determine a smallest effect size of interest, will prove to be a more efficient solution to the lack of coordination and integration of claims in science than integrative experiments.

The US food regime maintained some degree of stability in terms of prices and production levels for commodities in the world economy. This food regime, resting on supply management policy, began to falter in the early 1970s. In the late-1980s and 1990s, notable changes occurred in the world economy regarding agriculture as the food regime became more market-oriented. The end of the twentieth century saw the breakdown of many institutions, organizations, and international agreements that had tried to stabilize prices and (...) production from 1945 to 1975. This paper examines this period of change and explores the effects on five commodities: cocoa, coffee, corn, soybeans, and wheat. These commodities offer important points of comparison. First, while cocoa, coffee, and wheat were regulated by international organizations and agreements, corn and soybeans were not. Second, the US dominated the international corn and soybean markets, but the cocoa, coffee, and wheat markets were much more competitive. And third, corn, soybeans, and wheat were commodities largely produced in the core of the world economy, while cocoa and coffee were produced in the periphery. Thus, comparing the effect of the fall of the US food regime on these commodities reveals the importance of previous regulation, the level of market competition, and geographic origin in the world economy. (shrink)

Michael Dummett has claimed that analytic philosophy is distinguished from other schools in its belief that a comprehensive philosophical account of thought can only be attained by developing a philosophical account of language. Dummett himself argues persuasively for the priority-of-Ianguage thesis. This, in effect, metaphilosophical position is of special importance for his more straightforwardly philosophical views, for he holds that philosophical investigations of the concepts of objectivity and reality grow directly out of the philosophy of thought. But I argue that (...) some of what Dummett says about the priority of language over thought is problematic, that there may yet be a serious role for concepts within the theory of meaning, and that Dummett’s failure to acknowledge this role both hobbles his account of linguistic understanding and has deleterious consequences for his discussions of metaphysical realism-robbing him of the resources with which he might have avoided some of his anti-realist conclusions. (shrink)

Hannah Ginsborg presents fourteen essays which establish Kant's Critique of Judgment as a central contribution to the understanding of human cognition. The papers bring out the significance of Kant's philosophical notion of judgment, and use it to address interpretive issues in Kant's aesthetics, theory of knowledge, and philosophy of biology.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"ALL EXISTING IS THE ACTION OF GOD": THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGY OF DAVID BRAINE DAVID BRADSHAW University ofTexas at Austin Austin, Texas Thou lovest all the things that are, and abhorrest nothing which thou hast made: for never wouldest thou have made any thing, if thou hadst hated il And how could any thing have endured, if it had not been thy will? or been preserved, if not called (...) by thee? But thou sparest all: for they are thine, 0 Lord, thou lover of souls. Wisdom 11:24-26 He is not far from every one of us; for in Him we live, and move, and have our being. Acts 17:27-28 I T HAS long been traditional to regard God as upholding all things in existence. This belief is known as the doctrine of continuous creation; it is a doctrine widely shared by Jews, Christians, and Moslems, and was first clearly articulated by St. Augustine.1 The phrase "continuous creation" can be misleading, for there is more to the doctrine than simply the extension of God's creative act through time. If that were all that is at stake, we would not need to revise our ordinary notion of the creator as craftsman or artist; we might think of God as like a painter who 1 Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram iv.12. The history of the development of this doctrine has yet to be written, but important sources include Timaeus 4lab; Philo of Alexandria, De Providentia i.7; Colossians 1:17, Hebrews 1:3; John of Damascus, De Fide Orthodoxa i.3; Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 104, a. 1. See also David Winston, Philo of Alexandria (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), 14-17; G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: S.P.C.K., 1964), 31-36; Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation,-and the Continuum (Ithaca: Cornell, 1983), 303-304. 379 380 DAVID BRADSHAW never stops adding new scenes, or a writer continually elaborating his story. That picture will not do. Ifthe painter were to cease painting, what he has made up to that point would remain in existence, whereas it is precisely the ability to stand on its own that the doctrine of continuous creation seeks to deny of what is made. Nor does anything in the relation of artisan to artifact properly convey the special intimacy and presence that the act of continuous creation is supposed to establish between God and creatures. A painting or a story does not "live and move and have its being" in the one who fashions it-nor would even a living and thinking creature, if the manner of its making were solely that of an artisan. These shortcomings raise the question of whether we should seek to replace the image of artisan and artifact with one that is more dynamic. We might think of God as like a singer and of what is made as His song, or of God as like a dancer and of what is made as His dance. By envisioning the act of creation as a "doing" rather than a "making," analogies of this type more adequately indicate the continuing ontological dependence ofcreation on Creator. They also draw our attention to a mode of presence radically different from that of one body to another, the presence of an agent "within" his own actions. They may thus bring us closer to what St. Paul presumably has in mind in the passage quoted from Acts. On the other hand, they have faults of their own, for they are hard to reconcile with creaturely freedom and the reality of secondary causation. How could any kind of "doing" act contrary to the will of its doer? Indeed, how could it act at all? Actions are not causal agents; a song does not act in its own right, but is at best an instrument of the one who sings it. So it would seem that, taken to their logical conclusion, analogies such as that of the singer and his song lead to the denial of both creatures' freedom and their causal efficacy. There have been thinkers in each of the religious traditions mentioned who have been willing to accept these... (shrink)

Auf den ersten Blick haben Hannah Arendt und Michel Foucault kaum etwas gemein. Tatsächlich beziehen sie sich jedoch auf die identischen Topoi der Philosophiegeschichte - wenn ihre Auslegungen der Quellen auch denkbar verschieden sind. Als Grund hierfür bestimmt Hannah Holme die komplementären Perspektiven der beiden, die sie als Aneignungen des heideggerschen Sorgebegriffs deutet: die ethische Sorge um sich Foucaults und die politische Sorge um die Welt Arendts. Am Ende steht ein Plädoyer für eine Verbindung des machtkritischen Ethos der (...) Sorge um sich mit der Macht des politischen Handelns, das der Sorge um die Welt unterstellt ist. (shrink)

This article offers an analysis of marketing as an ideological set of practices that makes cultural interventions designed to infuse social relations with biopolitical injunctions. We examine a contemporary site of heightened attention within marketing: the rise of online communities and the attendant profession of social media marketing managers. We argue that social media marketers disavow a core problem; namely, that the object at stake, the customer community, barely exists. The community therefore functions ideologically. We describe the ideological gymnastics necessary (...) for maintaining momentum behind a practice that barely exists and we ponder why such ideologies are necessary, and what they allow the marketer to do. Working with such concepts as ‘the wild’, ‘communicative capitalism’, and ‘biopolitical marketing’, we explore a genre of popular business literature that proselytizes for online customer communities and we reflect on the broader implications. (shrink)

This dissertation is a collection of three papers – “Knowing Oneself for Others,” “Stereotype Threat and the Value of Self-Knowledge,” and “Self-Knowledge, Epistemic Work, and Injustice” – in which I address the connections between self-knowledge production and social inequality. I explain, using a variety of contemporary political and cultural examples, that marginalized individuals are more likely to be required to know certain things about themselves than socially privileged individuals, especially about those aspects of their lives and identities which are essential (...) to their being marginalized. I argue that this should make us rethink our basic understanding of epistemic injustice, which is typically thought of as involving the prevention of marginalized individuals from producing knowledge. More specifically, in “Knowing Oneself for Others,” I introduce the notion of “compulsory self-disclosure,” a social phenomenon in which an individual is forced to reveal things about themselves, often in ways that further contribute to their oppression. “Stereotype Threat and the Value of Self-Knowledge” addresses how self-ignorance can actually be desirable for individuals facing stereotype threat, and I argue that treating stereotype threat as an epistemic injustice issue can actually harm rather than help individuals in certain cases. Finally, in “Self-Knowledge, Epistemic Work, and Injustice,” I assess the reasoning behind the assumption that marginalized people are self-ignorant; I argue that we need to appreciate the central role that epistemic work plays in self-knowledge production to understand why the standard assumption about marginalized self-ignorance is misguided. Ultimately, I would have us think of self-knowledge production as not just epistemic work but as work that is often emotionally difficult and even metaphysically transformative – coming to have self-knowledge in certain ways can quite literally change who you are. In light of this, the overarching aim of this work is to argue for there being an inextricable link between an individual’s knowledge of themselves and their social status, as well as to discourage readers from thinking of the production of self-knowledge as inherently desirable or as a wholly epistemic issue. (shrink)

AimsThe aim of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the revised self-rated version of the Dysexecutive Questionnaire (DEX-R) within a non-clinical sample.MethodsThe study was hosted online, with 140 participants completing the DEX-R, GAD-2 and PHQ-2. Sixty participants also completed the FrSBe, with 99 additionally completing the DEX-R again 3 weeks later. Correlations with demographic factors and symptoms of anxiety and depression were conducted. Rasch and factor analysis were also used to explore underlying subconstructs.ResultsThe DEX-R correlated highly with (...) the FrSBe, indicating sound concurrent validity. Internal consistency, split-half reliability and test-retest reliability were excellent. Age and symptoms of depression and anxiety correlated with DEX-R scores, with older age associated with less dysexecutive problems. The Rasch analysis confirmed the multidimensionality of the rating scale, and a three-factor structure was found relating to activation-self-regulatory, cognitive and social-emotional processes. Frequencies of responses on DEX-R items varied, many were not fully endorsed indicating specific relevance of most but not all items to patients.ConclusionInterpretations of DEX-R ratings of dysexecutive problems should consider mood and individual variation. Systematic comparison of DEX-R responses between healthy and clinical groups could help identify a suitable cut off for dysexecutive symptoms. (shrink)

The purpose of cognitive diagnostic modeling is to classify students' latent attribute profiles using their responses to the diagnostic assessment. In recent years, each diagnostic classification model makes different assumptions about the relationship between a student's response pattern and attribute profile. The previous research studies showed that the inappropriate DCMs and inaccurate Q-matrix impact diagnostic classification accuracy. Artificial Neural Networks have been proposed as a promising approach to convert a pattern of item responses into a diagnostic classification in some research (...) studies. However, the ANNs methods produced very unstable and unappreciated estimation unless a great deal of care was taken. In this research, we combined ANNs with two typical DCMs, the deterministic-input, noisy, “and” gate model and the deterministic-inputs, noisy, “or” gate model, within a semi-supervised learning framework to achieve a robust and accurate classification. In both simulated study and real data study, the experimental results showed that the proposed method could achieve appreciated performance across different test conditions, especially when the diagnostic quality of assessment was not high and the Q-matrix contained misspecified elements. This research study is the first time of applying the thinking of semi-supervised learning into CDM. Also, we used the validating test to choose the appropriate parameters for the ANNs instead of using typical statistical criteria. (shrink)