Each of the essays included in this volume illuminates an aspect of law, reflecting an unorthodox perception of jurisprudence which combines interests in philosophy, legal theory, criminology, legal history, political and constitutional theory and the history of ideas. This work will broaden the jurisprudential scope of practitioners' professional concerns, but help academics enhance their knowledge of the wealth of information for their own studies.

By "theory" we mean a special project in literary criticism: the attempt to govern interpretations of particular texts by appealing to an account of interpretation in general. The term is sometimes applied to literary subjects with no direct bearing on the interpretation of individual works, such as narratology, stylistics, and prosody. Despite their generality, however, these subjects seem to us essentially empirical, and our argument against theory will not apply to them.Contemporary theory has taken two forms. Some theorists have sought (...) to ground the reading of literary texts in methods designed to guarantee the objectivity and validity of interpretations. Others, impressed by the inability of such procedures to produce agreement among interpreters, have translated that failure into an alternative mode of theory that denies the possibility of correct interpretation. Our aim here is not to choose between these two alternatives but rather to show that both rest on a single mistake, a mistake that is central to the notion of theory per se. The object of our critique is not a particular way of doing theory but the idea of doing theory at all.Theory attempts to solve—or to celebrate the impossibility of solving—a set of familiar problems: the function of authorial intention, the status of literary language, the role of interpretive assumptions, and so on. We will not attempt to solve these problems, nor will we be concerned with tracing their history or surveying the range of arguments they have stimulated. In our view, the mistake on which all critical theory rests has been to imagine that these problems are real. In fact, we will claim such problems only seem real--and theory itself only seems possible or relevant—when theorists fail to recognize the fundamental inseparability of the elements involved.The clearest example of the tendency to generate theoretical problems by splitting apart terms that are in fact inseparable is the persistent debate over the relation between authorial intention and the meaning texts. Some theorists have claimed that valid interpretations can only be obtained through an appeal to authorial intentions. This assumption is shared by theorists who, denying the possibility of recovering authorial intentions, also deny the possibility of valid interpretations. But once it is seen that the meaning of a text is simply identical to the author's intended meaning, the project of grounding meaning in intention becomes incoherent. Since the project itself is incoherent, it can neither succeed nor fail, hence both theoretical attitudes toward intention are irrelevant. The mistake made by theorists has been to imagine the possibility or desirability of moving from one term to a second term , when actually the two terms are the same. One can neither succeed nor fail in deriving one term from the other, since to have one is already to have them both.In the following two sections we will try to show in detail how theoretical accounts of intention always go wrong. In the fourth section we will undertake a similar analysis of an influential account of the role interpretive assumptions or beliefs play in the practice of literary criticism. The issues of belief and intention are, we think, central to the theoretical enterprise; our discussion of them is thus directed not only against specific theoretical arguments but against theory in general. Our examples are meant to represent the central mechanism of all theoretical arguments, and our treatment of them is meant to indicate that all such arguments will fail and fail in the same way. If we are right, then the whole enterprise of critical theory is misguided and should be abandoned. (shrink)

There is a paucity of experimental data addressing how peers influence adolescent risk-taking. Here, we examined peer effects on risky decision-making in adults and adolescents using a virtual social context that enabled experimental control over the peer “interactions”. 40 adolescents (age 11-18) and 28 adults (age 20-38) completed a risk-taking (Wheel of Fortune) task under 4 conditions: in private; while being observed by (fictitious) peers; and after receiving ‘risky’ or ‘safe’ advice from the peers. For high-risk gambles (but not medium-risk (...) or even gambles), adolescents made more risky decisions under peer observation than adults. Adolescents, but not adults, tended to resist ‘safe’ advice for high-risk gambles. Although both groups tended to follow ‘risky’ advice for high-risk gambles, adults did so more than adolescents. These findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between the effects of peer observation and peer advice on risky decision-making. (shrink)

In their important book, Causation in the Law, H. L. A. Hart and Tony Honore argue that causation in the law is based on causation outside the law, that the causal principles the courts rely on to determine legal responsibility are based on distinctions exercised in ordinary causal judgments. A distinction that particularly concerns them is one that divides factors that are necessary or sine qua non for an effect into those that count as causes for purposes of legal responsibility (...) and those that do not. Hart and Honore claim that this distinction is often one of fact rather than of legal policy, and that the factual basis is to be found in the ordinary distinction we draw between causes and 'mere conditions'. If this claim is correct, we may hope to illuminate the legal distinction by articulating the principles behind the ordinary one. This is a challenging task since, as in the case of most cognitive skills, we are far better at making particular judgments than we are at stating the general principles that underlie them. Hart and Honore devote the first part of their book to this difficult task. We have, then, two large projects. One is to articulate our ordinary notion of causation, especially the distinction between cause and mere condition. This is the project of constructing an 'ordinary model'. The other is to argue for what we may call the 'shared concept claim', the claim that the concept of legal cause is based on the ordinary notion of causation, that 'causal judgments, though the law may have to systematize them, are not specifically legal. They appeal to a notion which is part of everyday life' (1985, p. lv; all references to follow are from this edition). This essay will focus on Hart and Honore's ordinary model, rather than on their shared concept claim. In my judgment, Hart and Honore's case for some version of the shared concept claim is strong, so they are right to maintain that a better understanding of our ordinary notion of.. (shrink)

Guided by the APA Ethics Code and social justice, this book helps psychologists solve ethical dilemmas while empowering those impacted by their work.

This article focuses on the ways that sexual risk behaviors are related to race, class, and gender among low-income, culturally diverse women in South Florida. Data concerning sexual risk and gender are presented in terms of race and class variations. Results indicate that, in general, these women have a high degree of knowledge about acquired immune deficiency syndrome, a quite contemporary awareness of women's gendered subordination, and a lack of trust in heterosexual relationships. Attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge, however, are not (...) translated into sexual behaviors with men partners that would reduce their vulnerability to infection with the human immunodeficiency virus. The data indicate that race is a major factor that places women into an underclass position. Consequently, without socioeconomic resources, gendered behaviors have a direct influence on sexual risk. Multivariate analyses indicate that those women who are sex workers are significantly more likely to negotiate safe sex with clients than with main partners. The research not only challenges mainstream thinking about race, class, and gender but also provides overdue information on the vulnerability of women to HIV infection. (shrink)

The article focuses on the temporal and epistemic economy connected to the transatlantic travels of the categorical triad of ‘race-class-gender’. It looks at conditions and forces that have fuelled the dynamics of the discourse on differences and inequality among women and analyses feminist discourse and its aporias as a particular environment for the travels of theories. Furthermore, it follows the changes the triad of ‘race-class-gender’ undergoes on its transatlantic route from the United States to a German-speaking context and it outlines (...) the theoretical challenges connected to an intersectional perspective that aims to overcome a theoretical stagnation that itself finds symptomatic expression in the ritual citing of ‘race-class-gender’. (shrink)

This paper deals with problems that vagueness raises for choices involving evaluative tradeoffs. I focus on a species of such choices, which I call ‘qualitative barrier cases.’ These are cases in which a qualitatively significant tradeoff in one evaluative dimension for a given improvement in another dimension could not make an option better all things considered, but a merely quantitative tradeoff for the given improvement might. Trouble arises, however, when one of the options constitutes a borderline case of an evaluative (...) kind. I argue that in such cases we can neither affirm nor deny that trading off losses in one evaluative dimension for gains in another yields a better outcome. Theoretically, this result provides a way to defuse an argument that has been presented by both Larry Temkin and Stuart Rachels that purports to show that the ‘better than’ relation is intransitive. Practically, it allows us to undermine the claim that rational agents are better off withholding their contribution to a public good in certain instances of the free-rider problem, and thus to take an important step towards solving these problems. (shrink)

Understanding disgustingness is philosophically important partly because claims about disgustingness play a prominent role in moral discourse and practice. It is also important because disgustingness has been used to illustrate the promise of "neo-sentimentalism." Recently developed by moral philosophers such as David Wiggins, John McDowell, Simon Blackburn, Justin D'Arms and Dan Jacobson, neo-sentimentalism holds that for a thing to be disgusting is for it to be "appropriate" to respond to it with disgust. In this paper, I argue that from what (...) we currently know about the disgust response, these accounts are mistaken. Instead, disgustingness is best understood as a descriptive property: fundamentally, things that are disgusting-for-S are things that possess triggers for S's disgust mechanism. Theoretically, my account puts pressure on neo-sentimentalists to show that the responses they appeal to can anchor normative properties. Practically, my account shows that we must abandon authoritative claims that certain things really are--or are not--disgusting. (shrink)

What role does audience uptake play in determining whether a speaker refuses or consents to sex? Proponents of constitution theories of uptake argue that which speech act someone performs is largely determined by their addressee’s uptake. However, this appears to entail a troubling result: a speaker might be made to perform a speech act of sexual consent against her will. In response, we develop a social constitution theory of uptake. We argue that addressee uptake can constitute a speaker’s utterance of (...) ‘no’ as a speech act of consent under some conditions, but that this does not prevent us from judging that an addressee committed rape. Second, we claim that addressee uptake is not the only form of uptake that matters—the uptake of other members of the discursive community matters too, and can override the addressee’s uptake, constituting the speaker’s utterance as the speech act it was intended to be. (shrink)

A principal source of interest in behavioral economics has been its advertised contributions to policies aimed at ‘nudging’ people away from allegedly natural but self-defeating behavior toward patterns of response thought more likely to improve their welfare. This has occasioned controversies among economists and philosophers around the normative limits of paternalism, especially by technical policy advisors. One recent suggestion has been that ‘boosting,’ in which interventions aim to enhance people’s general cognitive skills and representational repertoires instead of manipulating their choice (...) environments behind their backs, avoids the main normative challenges. A limitation in most of this literature is that it has focused on relatively sweeping policy recommendations and consequently on strong polar alternatives of general paternalism and strict laissez faire. We review a real instance, drawn from a consulting project we conducted for an investment bank, of a proposed intervention that is more typical of the kind that economists are more often actually called upon to offer. In this example, the sophistication of current tools for preference attribution, combined with philosophical externalism about the semantics of preferences that makes it less plausible to attribute their literal self-conscious representation to people as propositional attitude content becomes more tightly refined, blocks applicability of the distinction between nudging and boosting. This seems to call for irreducible, context-specific ethical judgment in assessing the appropriateness of the forms of paternalism that economists must actually wrestle with in going about their everyday business. (shrink)

New and experienced psychotherapists alike can find themselves overwhelmed by an ethical quandary where there doesn't seem to be an easy solution. This book presents positive ethics as a means to overcome such ethical challenges. The positive approach focuses on not just avoiding negative consequences, but reaching the best possible outcomes for both the psychotherapist and the client. The authors outline a clear decision-making process that is based on three practical strategies: the ethics acculturation model to help therapists incorporate personal (...) ethics into their professional roles, the quality enhancement model for dealing with high-risk patients who are potentially harmful, and ethical choice-making strategies to make the most ethical decision in a situation where two ethical principles conflict. Throughout the decision-making process, psychotherapists are encouraged to follow four basic guidelines: Focus on overarching ethical principles Consider intuitive, emotional, and other nonrational factors Accept that some problems have elusive solutions Solicit input from colleagues and consultation groups Numerous vignettes illustrate how to apply positive ethics to many different ethical challenges that psychotherapists will likely encounter in practice. (shrink)

The idea that emotional experience is capable of lending immediate and defeasible justification to evaluative belief has been amassing significant support in recent years. The proposal that it is my anger, say, that justifies my belief that I’ve been wronged putatively provides us with an intuitive and naturalised explanation as to how we receive epistemic justification for a rich catalogue of our evaluative beliefs. However, despite the fact that this justificatory thesis of emotion is fundamentally an epistemological proposal, comparatively little (...) has been done to explicitly isolate what it is about emotions that bestows them with justificatory ability. The purpose of this paper is to provide a novel and thorough analysis into the prospects of phenomenology-based—or dogmatist—views of emotional justification. By surveying and rejecting various instantiations of the emotional dogmatist view, I endeavour to provide an inductive case for the conclusion that emotional phenomenology cannot be the seat of the emotions’ power to immediately justify evaluative belief. (shrink)

The integration of psychedelic substances into modern Western therapeutic practice has sparked a critical examination of many topics including: efficacy of psychedelics to treat mental health diagnoses without psychotherapeutic intervention, what models of therapy to use, and ethical implications related to altered states of consciousness. Of utmost concern are issues of power dynamics leading to incidents of sexual abuse. These issues underscore the importance of understanding therapeutic dynamics within the context of psychedelic-assisted therapy. This paper aims to explore these intersections, (...) addressing sexual abuse issues in Western psychedelic-assisted therapy while elucidating pathways towards ethical practice and regulatory frameworks. (shrink)

Few seem to have difficulty in distinguishing between religious and secular institutions, yet there is widespread disagreement regarding what "religion" actually means. Indeed, some go so far as to question whether there is anything at all distinctive about religions. Hence, formulating a definition of "religion" that can command wide assent has proven to be an extremely difficult task. In this article I consider the most prominent of the many rival definitions that have been proposed, the majority falling within three basic (...) types: intellectual, affective and functional definitions. I conclude that there are pragmatic reasons for favouring the formerly popular view that essentialist definitions of "religions" are inadequate, and that religions should be construed, instead, as possessing a number of "family resemblances". In so arguing, I provide a response to the view that there is nothing distinctive about religions, as well as to the recent claim that religions do not exist. (shrink)

Until recently philosophy of religion has been almost exclusively focused upon the analysis of western religious ideas. The central concern of the discipline has been the concept God , as that concept has been understood within Judaeo-Christianity. However, this narrow remit threatens to render philosophy of religion irrelevant today. To avoid this philosophy of religion should become a genuinely multicultural discipline. But how, if at all, can philosophy of religion rise to this challenge? The paper considers fictionalism about religious discourse (...) as a possible methodological standpoint from which to practice a tradition-neutral form of philosophy of religion. However, after examining some of the problems incurred by fictionalism, the paper concludes that fictionalism and religious diversity are uneasy bedfellows; which implies that fictionalism is unlikely to be the best theory to shape the practice of philosophy of religion in a multicultural context. (shrink)

Recent perspectives on community investments suggest that they are opportunities for firms to create value for shareholders and other stakeholders. However, many corporate managers are still influenced by a widely held belief that such investments erode profits and are therefore unjustifiable from an agency perspective. In this paper, we refine and test theory regarding countervailing forces that influence community-based firm performance. We hypothesize that high levels of available slack will be associated with higher community-based performance, but that this relationship will (...) be moderated by three important governance variables: board independence, investment fund ownership, and CEO ownership. We find support for our hypotheses in longitudinal study of a large sample of U.S. corporations. (shrink)

Virtually everyone takes the moral supervenience thesis to be a basic conceptual truth about morality. As a result, if a metaethical theory has difficulties respecting or adequately explaining the supervenience relationship it is deemed to be in big trouble. However, the moral supervenience thesis is a not a conceptual truth (though it may be true) and as such it is not a problem if a metaethical theory cannot respect or explain it.

O’Donohue has identified 37 criticisms of the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (Ethics Code), although many of his criticisms go far beyond what is found written in the APA Ethics Code, to include the process of adjudicating ethics complaints by the American Psychological Association Ethics Committee, and the process by which the Ethics Code was developed. The authors claim that a major shortcoming of O’Donohue’s article is that he adopted an unrealistically expansive role for (...) the Ethics Code that was not clearly linked to furthering the goals of the ethics code revision. (shrink)

Out of a concern for keeping suicidal patients alive, some psychotherapists may use hard persuasion or coercion to keep them in treatment. However, more recent evidence-supported interventions have made respect for patient autonomy a cornerstone, showing that the effective interventions that promote the wellbeing of suicidal patients also prioritize respect for patient autonomy. This article details how psychotherapists can incorporate respect for patient autonomy in the effective treatment of suicidal patients by listening to them, explaining treatments to them, involving them (...) in decisions, and inviting evaluations from them on the process and progress of their treatment. It also describes how processes that respect patient autonomy can supplement interventions that directly address some of the drivers of suicide. (shrink)

abstract Most critics of species egalitarianism point to its counter‐intuitive implications in particular cases. But this argumentative strategy is vulnerable to the response that our intuitions should give way in the face of arguments showing that species egalitarianism is required by our deepest, most fundamental moral principles. In this article, I develop an argument against deontological versions of species egalitarianism on its own terms. Appealing to the fundamental moral ideal of proportionality, I show that deontological species egalitarianism is morally objectionable (...) as a matter of principle: it is committed to treating two individuals who are extraordinarily similar in morally relevant respects drastically differently. I then illustrate how an inegalitarian account of moral standing might be incorporated into traditional moral theories in ways that make them far more promising as theories of our obligations to the non‐human world. (shrink)

More than a dozen prominent leaders in business and other fields leaders discuss successes and failures, and lessons learned, while grappling with real ethical ...

Zygon®, Volume 57, Issue 1, Page 114-140, March 2022.

Im Gegensatz zur verbreiteten Auffassung über die Voraussetzungen zur Ausbildung neuen Wissens entstehen wichtige Umstellungen im Denken häufig nicht durch harte Konfrontation zwischen Hypothesen bzw. Theorien. Vielmehr sind oft allmähliche Deutungsverschiebungen bei der Auffassung einer einzigen Hypothese bzw. Theorie zu beobachten. Derartige Prozesse erstrecken sich in der Regel über vergleichsweise lange Zeiträume und sind nicht wie die erstgenannten Vorgänge von eher kurzfristiger Natur. Verglichen mit dem Ausgangspunkt der jeweiligen Entwicklung tritt uns aber eine oft an ihrem Ende tiefgreifend veränderte Wissenssituation (...) entgegen. Infolge der Langsamkeit der geschilderten Entwicklungen und der damit zugleich gegebenen Gewöhnung ihrer Vertreter an die geänderte Situation sind derartige Veränderungen des Wissens selten in einem Ausmaß vom Bewußtsein der Neuheit begleitet, wie dies bei Vorgängen der zuerst geschilderten Art der Fall ist. Trotzdem können aber gerade diese Veränderungen nachhaltiger und von grundlegenderer Art sein als jene. In der Folge sollen die beiden angedeuteten Wege der Erkenntnis hinsichtlich ihres strukturellen Unterschieds klarer erfaßt werden. Unterschiedliche Annahmen über die zugrundeliegende Ontologie sind für diese beiden Arten der Wissensbildung von besonderem Interesse. Insbesondere wird sich auch zeigen, daß die bereits in der Fristfrage berührten pragmatischen Gesichtspunkte eine wichtige Rolle spielen. Die beiden in dieser Untersuchung herauspräparierten "Wege" sind Aspekte jeweils eines Erkenntnisprozesses. So sind sie nicht gegeneinander auszuspielen. Vielmehr weist jeder derartige Vorgang Charakteristika beider modellhaft erfaßten Typen auf. (shrink)

This article draws on a study investigating how 11–14 year olds growing up in England understand cyber-bullying as a moral concern. Three prominent moral theories: deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics, informed the development of a semi-structured interview schedule which enabled young people, in their own words, to describe their experiences of online and offline bullying. Sixty 11–14 year olds from six schools across England were involved with the research. Themes emerging from the interviews included anonymity; the absence of rules, monitoring (...) and guidance and, the challenges associated with determining the consequences of online actions. The findings demonstrate the advantages of adopting a character-based moral theory to compliment rules and/or consequence based moral theories as the basis for future research into cyber-bullying. The findings evoke some wider implications for future research into cyber-bullying that might equally be applied to investigations into other Internet related moral concerns. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate some important elements of the thought of George Bernard Shaw, more commonly known as one of the most famous playwrights of the twentieth century. Shaw’s philosophy dwells on the relationship between man and nature and especially the concept of freedom. Among all his works, it was decided here to analyse Saint Joan. In re-imagining the historical Joan as a heroine in a play of ideas, Shaw made use of the known facts about Joan of Arc (...) and Joan’s statements at her trial. Nonetheless, he made changes to emphasize her personal dignity and independence by contrast with the tyranny of institutions. Although he departed from the historical background, whitewashed her adversaries, and condensed episodes in Joan’s biography, he sought to be true to her confidence, courage, integrity, and common sense. His theatrical presentation is, in some respects, at odds with the Preface that accompanies the published play. (shrink)

Various causal factors have been offered to explain the motives behind the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacs on 9/11 and at various other times and places throughout the world. Quite often the reasons or purposes are said to include political, economic, religious and ethnic factors. Often historical factors, such as colonialism and neo-colonialism, as well as nationalism, poverty, class divisions and modernization, are included. But some scholars and political figures, quite inconsistently at times, assert that there is no discernable purpose or purposes (...) in these attacks. It is argued, for example, that the sheer magnitude of the death and carnage in the 9/11 attacks suggests no rational purpose in the minds of the perpetrators. The implication is that the Al-Qaeda attacks are allegedly purely irrational. In contrast, I argue that there are flaws and inconsistencies with this No Purpose Theory, and that oil, moreover, shouldn’t be omitted from any plausible broad explanation of the complex mix of causal factors. Needless to say, to suggest that Al-Qaeda had reasons is not to suggest that the reasons were necessarily good or morally justifiable. Then again, among these reasons it is necessary to sort out the goals from the violent tactics so as to discover why, in particular, many Arabs and Muslims sympathize with some of the goals.This whole issue is important because, among other things, if the No Purpose Theory is assumed to be accurate, it would, at least for the problem at hand, eliminate from serious consideration in one fell swoop literally all of the other possible factors. This would be so in spite of the initial reasonableness of the notion that many of these factors have at least some weight or other. But if, contrary to what the No Purpose Theory says, items such as oil are shown to be actually causally important, and are consequently on the table for more extended and open discussion, then there at least would be a better opportunity for more successfully tackling these problems and ameliorating the risk of future terrorist attacks. At least so I will argue. (shrink)

This paper begins with a description of common grading practices at universities in the U.S., and analyzes the unfairness, injustice, and harm they produce. It then proposes a solution to these problems in the form of an alternative grading system: institutions should adopt a grading system that assesses students’ performance relative to the performance of their peers. That is, institutions should abolish the practice of attempting to assign grades that correspond to an absolute standard of intrinsic merit. Instead, our evaluation (...) should simply communicate how the quality of a student’s work compares to the work submitted by other students in the class. (shrink)