The construct of “mindfulness” has increasingly become a focus of research related to meditation practices and techniques. There is a growing body of research indicating clinical efficacy from therapeutic use, while cognitive neuroscience has provided an insight into the brain regions and mechanisms involved. Significantly, these approaches converge to suggest that attention is an important mechanism with trainable sub-components. This article discusses the role of attention and argues that memory has been neglected as a potential key mechanism in mindfulness–meditation practices. (...) Specifically, it proposes that working memory offers a useful model for integrating and understanding the different mental devices that are used in meditation and suggests a model with the potential to provide a comprehensive account of how the apparent benefits of these practices arise. This call for a more comprehensive and integrated approach is necessary if the study and application of meditation are to become more than a parochial concern. (shrink)

Recognition has, over the past three decades, come to occupy a central place in moral and political philosophy, and critical theory; but to the extent that scholars have exhibited an interest in tr...

The individual self and its critics -- The individualist assumptions of bioethical frameworks -- The genetic self is the connected self -- The failures of individual ethics in the genetic era -- The communal turn -- Developing alternatives: benefit sharing -- Developing alternatives: trust -- The ethical toolbox part one: recognising goods and harms -- The ethical toolbox part two: applying appropriate practices -- Possible futures.

All athletes experience victory and defeat, but how many truly learn from the experience of sport? For ancient Greek philosophers, sport was an integral part of education. Today, athletics programs remain in schools, but we face a growing gap between the modern sports experience and enduring educational values. This book seeks to bridge that gap by advocating a philosophical approach to the sports experience. Combining issues and ideas from traditional philosophy with contemporary analyses of sport and applied "thinking activities," this (...) book invites athletes to learn about life from their experience of sport. The text works its way from internal reflection to social interaction by addressing four important topics: self-discovery, responsibility, respect, and citizenship. This sequence is important because authentic self-knowledge is an essential foundation for effectively dealing with the personal and social challenges faced by philosophical athletes. Reid discusses specific issues such as violence, racism, and performance-enhancing drugs in their relevant contexts, although philosophical athletes focus on the big picture, approaching each issue from a complete vision of themselves, their moral commitments, and their social roles. Athletes as diverse as the teenage college recruit and the aging weekend-warrior will gain insight into their sports experience and into their lives. This philosophical approach maximizes what we can learn from sport and gives us the best chance for leading better lives because of it. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, 'begging the question'. Begging the question is a logical fallacy in which the premise of an argument presupposes the truth of its conclusion; in other words, the argument takes for granted what it is supposed to prove. In works such as Prior Analytics and Topics, Aristotle was the first to introduce begging the question by stating what translates to “asking the initial thing” or “asking the original point”. Labeling (...) an argument as “begging the question” is often itself using the fallacy's name incorrectly, and yet we accept this incorrect usage. Politics is a common place for begging the question. Politicians in a debate often beg the question by giving answers that give the conclusion of the person they are citing as a truth or fact and never show any real proof of the matter. (shrink)

This volume encompasses deeply critical dialogues that question how the field of psychology exists within and is shaped by the current neoliberal political context. Spanning from psychoanalysis to post-colonial theory, these far-reaching discussions consider how a greater ethical responsiveness to human experience and sociopolitical arrangements may reopen the borders of psychological discourse. With the understanding that psychology grows in the soil of neoliberal terrain and is a chief fertilizer for neoliberal expansion, the interviews in this book explore alternative possibilities for (...) this field of study might function. By offering their own unique responses regarding the current condition of their respective disciplines, these scholars critically consider the current conceptual frameworks that set the theoretical boundaries of psychology, and contemplate the ethical responsibilities currently affecting the field. This book will prove essential for scholars and students across several disciplines including psychology, philosophy, ethics, and post-colonial and socio-cultural studies, as well as practicing mental health professionals with an interest in the importance of psychological and social theory. (shrink)

Twilight Zone and Philosophy attempts to bring the insights and paradoxes of Rod Serling's project to contemporary audiences through a variety of philosophical perspectives"--Publisher.

This study investigates the hypothesis that the advantage corporate social performance (CSP) yields in attracting human resources depends on the degree of job choice possessed by the job seeking population. Results indicate that organizational CSP is positively related to employer attractiveness for job seekers with high levels of job choice but not related for populations with low levels suggesting advantages to firms with high levels of CSP in the ability to attract the most qualified employees.

Animal welfare has a long history of disregard. While in recent decades the study of animal welfare has become a scientific discipline of its own, the difficulty of measuring animal welfare can still be vastly underestimated. There are three primary theories, or perspectives, on animal welfare - biological functioning, natural living and affective state. These come with their own diverse methods of measurement, each providing a limited perspective on an aspect of welfare. This paper describes a perspectival pluralist account of (...) animal welfare, in which all three theoretical perspectives and their multiple measures are necessary to understand this complex phenomenon and provide a full picture of animal welfare. This in turn will offer us a better understanding of perspectivism and pluralism itself. (shrink)

Tim Stuart-Buttle offers a fresh view of British moral philosophy in the 17th and early 18th centuries. In this period of remarkable innovation, philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke, and Hume combined critique of the role of Christianity in moral thought with reconsideration of the legacy of the classical tradition of academic scepticism.

Douglas proposes a new ideal in which values serve an essential function throughout scientific inquiry, but where the role values play is constrained at key points, protecting the integrity and objectivity of science.

Much of the discussion of Naive Realism about veridical experience has focused on a consequence of adopting it—namely, disjunctivism about perceptual experience. However, the motivations for being a Naive Realist in the first place have received relatively little attention in the literature. In this paper, I will elaborate and defend the claim that Naive Realism provides the best account of the phenomenal character of veridical experience.

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called the historian's fallacy (HF). In HF, the writing of a historical event has been skewed by way of biased hindsight on the author's part. The historian has written the details of the event down in such a way that the facts of the event, only seen after the event has occurred, cause the initial event to become distorted. HF should not be confused with a method historians use (...) in the present day when documenting the past. This is called presentism, a mode of historical analysis in which present‐day ideas are projected into the past. Another issue to address is that HF should not be confused with historical fallacy. One commits the historical fallacy when one reads into a process the results that occur because of that process. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy: red herring (RH). An RH is a distraction device and refers to an informal logical fallacy that detracts from the actual issue, allowing one to be sidetracked from what is actually happening and to draw a false conclusion. RHs can also be used as a literary device to steer readers off course such as in mystery novels like Perry Mason stories and, of course, Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan (...) Doyle's Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles presents a classic example of an RH. If a topic is proposed, and we can speak or write about it without departing from the initial trail, then we have successfully avoided an RH fallacy. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: My Last Race Rolling Up to the Starting Line Racing Toward the Truth Climbing Up Mountains Keeping the Rubber Side Down My Best Race Notes.

This chapter contains sections titled: Uncovering the Whole Self for Integrity in Action Rationally and Naturally Moving beyond Selfishness Conclusion.

It is widely accepted that the seventeenth-century natural lawyers constructed the minimal requirement for social coordination between self-seeking individuals animated by the desire for self-preservation. On most interpretations, Grotius and his successors focused on the “perfect” duties and had little to say about the “imperfect” duties of love and civility. This essay provides an alternative reading of post-Grotian natural law by reconstructing Pufendorf’s and Locke’s understanding of how the duties of civility and love might be realised in civil society. The (...) essay argues that, for Pufendorf and Locke, the desire for esteem offers an explanation of how people recognize the content of the reciprocal duties of social morality and motivate themselves to act accordingly. The reconstruction of their views on the beneficial effects of esteem-seeking points towards a new interpretation of how, and why, philosophical interest in an economy of esteem and the social nature of the self emerged, prior to their treatment by eighteenth-century authors such as Hume and Smith. (shrink)

This study examines the similarities and differences in pre- and post-Sarbanes-Oxley corporate ethics codes and codes of conduct using the framework of structuration theory. Following the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) legislation in 2002 in the United States, publicly traded companies there undertook development and revision of their codes of ethics in response to new regulatory requirements as well as incentives under the U.S. Corporate Sentencing Guidelines, which were also revised as part of the SOX mandates. Questions that remain are (...) whether these new or revised codes are effective means of communicating changed ethical foci and attitudes in organizations. Centering resonance analysis (CRA) is used to identify differences and similarities across time and industries by analyzing word networks of 46 pre- and post-SOX corporate codes of ethics. Analyses focus on content and structure of generated word networks as well as resulting factors that emerged from the texts. Results are interpreted from the structuration perspective that content and structure of codes are constrained and enabled by system structures while they function to produce and reproduce those structures. Results indicate that corporate codes of ethics are formal discourses of ethics, laws, and control. Code structure has changed across time, with an increased emphasis on compliance in post-SOX codes. Implications for research and practice are discussed in light of findings. (shrink)

Many have argued that moral judgment is driven by one of two types of processes. Rationalists argue that reasoned processes are the source of moral judgments, whereas sentimentalists argue that emotional processes are. We provide evidence that both positions are mistaken; there are multiple mental processes involved in moral judgment, and it is possible to manipulate which process is engaged when considering moral dilemmas by presenting them in a non-native language. The Foreign-Language Effect is the activation of systematic reasoning processes (...) by thinking in a foreign language. We demonstrate that the FLE extends to moral judgment. This indicates that different types of processes can lead to the formation of differing moral judgments. One implication of the FLE is that it raises the possibility that moral judgments can be made more systematic, and that the type of processing used to form them might be relevant to normative and applied ethics. (shrink)

Brecher argues that the practices of selling blood and kidneys are akin to the practices of prostitution and wage-labour since they all involve commodification and, by implication, should be subject to legal prohibition. I suggest that these practices need not involve commodification and that they should only be condemned if people are forced into them because of their lack of power. Rather than these practices being prohibited, I suggest that it would be preferable if they were subject to state regulation (...) in order to protect the weak from exploitation. (shrink)

In the first section of this paper, after briefly arguing for the assumption that experiential content is propositional, I’ll distinguish three interpretations of the claim that experience has content (the Mild, Medium, and Spicy Content Views). In the second section, I’ll flesh out Naïve Realism in greater detail, and I’ll reconstruct what I take to be the main argument for its incompatibility with the Content Views. The third section will be devoted to evaluation of existing arguments for the Mild Content (...) View (the arguments from accuracy and appearing), and the development of what I take to be a stronger argument (the argument from belief generation). In the final section, I’ll identify a flaw in the argument for the incompatibility of Naïve Realism with the Content Views, which opens the door to a reconciliation. (shrink)

This paper addresses what we consider to be the most pressing challenge for the emerging science of consciousness: the measurement problem of consciousness. That is, by what methods can we determine the presence of and properties of consciousness? Most methods are currently developed through evaluation of the presence of consciousness in humans and here we argue that there are particular problems in application of these methods to nonhuman cases—what we call the indicator validity problem and the extrapolation problem. The first (...) is a problem with the application of indicators developed using the differences between conscious and unconscious processing in humans to the identification of other conscious vs. nonconscious organisms or systems. The second is a problem in extrapolating any indicators developed in humans or other organisms to artificial systems. However, while pressing ethical concerns add urgency to the attribution of consciousness and its attendant moral status to nonhuman animals and intelligent machines, we cannot wait for certainty and we advocate the use of a precautionary principle to avoid causing unintentional harm. We also intend that the considerations and limitations discussed in this paper can be used to further analyze and refine the methods of consciousness science with the hope that one day we may be able to solve the measurement problem of consciousness. (shrink)

Over the past decade, feminist philosophers have gone a long way toward identifying and explaining the phenomenon that has come to be known as epistemic injustice. Epistemic injustice is injustice occurring within the domain of knowledge (e.g., knowledge production and transmission), which typically impacts structurally marginalized social groups. In this paper, we argue that, as they currently work, algorithms on social media exacerbate the problem of epistemic injustice and related problems of social distrust. In other words, we argue that algorithms (...) on social media recreate and reify the conditions that lead to some groups being systematically denied the full status of knowers, thereby corrupting the epistemic terrain and, with it, systems of social trust and cooperation. We argue that algorithms do this in two ways—namely, via what we are calling algorithmic targeting and algorithmic sorting. (shrink)

Hume's admiration for the Roman philosopher and statesman, Cicero, is well-known. Yet scholars have largely overlooked how Hume's interpretation of Cicero – initially as a Stoic, and subsequently as an academic sceptic – evolved with Hume's own intellectual development. Moreover, scholars tend to focus on Hume's debts to Cicero with regard either to his epistemological scepticism or his philosophy of religion. This essay suggests instead that Hume's engagement with Cicero was at its most intense, and productive, when evaluating the relationship (...) between morality and religious belief. Closer attention to the place of Cicero in Hume's writings illuminates our understanding of Hume's intellectual development, particularly in the crucial pre- Treatise years. It also, however, shines light on Hume's interpretation of the history of occidental philosophy (not least the consequences of its engagements with Christian theology), and on how Hume saw his own work to relate to this history. (shrink)

‘Sentience’ sometimes refers to the capacity for any type of subjective experience, and sometimes to the capacity to have subjective experiences with a positive or negative valence, such as pain or pleasure. We review recent controversies regarding sentience in fish and invertebrates and consider the deep methodological challenge posed by these cases. We then present two ways of responding to the challenge. In a policy-making context, precautionary thinking can help us treat animals appropriately despite continuing uncertainty about their sentience. In (...) a scientific context, we can draw inspiration from the science of human consciousness to disentangle conscious and unconscious perception (especially vision) in animals. Developing better ways to disentangle conscious and unconscious affect is a key priority for future research. (shrink)

One of the primary concerns in animal research is ensuring the welfare of laboratory animals. Modern views on animal welfare emphasize the role of animal sentience, i.e. the capacity to experience subjective states such as pleasure or suffering, as a central component of welfare. The increasing official recognition of animal sentience has had large effects on laboratory animal research. The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (Low et al., University of Cambridge, 2012) marked an official scientific recognition of the presence of sentience (...) in mammals, birds, and cephalopods. Animal sentience has furthermore been recognized in legislation in the European Union, UK, New Zealand and parts of Australia, with discussions underway in other parts of the world to follow suit. In this paper, we analyze this shift towards recognition of sentience in the regulation and practice in the treatment of laboratory animals and its effects on animal welfare and use. (shrink)

In colonial states and settings, constitutional arrangements are often forged within contexts that serve to maintain structural racism against Indigenous people. In 2013 the New Zealand government initiated national conversations about the constitutional arrangements in Aotearoa. Māori leadership preceded this, initiating a comprehensive engagement process among Māori in 2010, which resulted in a report by Matike Mai Aotearoa which articulated a collective Māori vision of a written constitution congruent with te Tiriti o Waitangi by 2040.This conceptual article explores the Matike (...) Mai Aotearoa report on constitutional transformation as a novel means to address structural racism within the health system as a key domain within the constitutional sphere. Matike Mai suggests alternative conceptual structural formations through its focus on the kāwanatanga, the relational and the tino rangatiratanga sphere. This framework is informed by a range of Indigenous ethical values such as tikanga, belonging, and balance that can usefully inform the redesign of the health sector.We assert that constitutional transformation and decolonization are potentially powerful ethical sources of disruption to whiteness and structural racism. We argue that, to eliminate entrenched health disparities, change processes need to be informed by the Indigenous inspirations expressed in the Matike Mai report. (shrink)

The present debate over the creation and potential deployment of lethal autonomous weapons, or ‘killer robots’, is garnering more and more attention. Much of the argument revolves around whether such machines would be able to uphold the principle of noncombatant immunity. However, much of the present debate fails to take into consideration the practical realties of contemporary armed conflict, particularly generating military objectives and the adherence to a targeting process. This paper argues that we must look to the targeting process (...) if we are to gain a fuller picture of the consequences of creating or fielding lethal autonomous robots. This paper argues that once we look to how militaries actually create military objectives, and thus identify potential targets, we face an additional problem: the Strategic Robot Problem. The ability to create targeting lists using military doctrine and targeting processes is inherently strategic, and handing this capability over to a machine undermines existing comman.. (shrink)

The diverse array of plants at Kew is a haven for wildlife throughout the year. In spring, enchanting wildlfowl babies appear; summer flowers attract a host of insect pollinators; come autumn, parakeets and squirrels raid chestnuts, while in winter swans court – this is Heather Angel’s Wild Kew. In all, a stunning array of photographs and advice, the result of devoting a year to capturing Kew’s wildlife.

Many philosophers are skeptical about disjunctivism —a theory of perceptual experience which holds roughly that a situation in which I see a banana that is as it appears to me to be and one in which I have a hallucination as of a banana are mentally completely different. Often this skepticism is rooted in the suspicion that such a view cannot adequately account for the bad case—in particular, that such a view cannot explain why what it’s like to have a (...) hallucination can be exactly like what it’s like to have a veridical experience, that it cannot explain why the hallucination I have in the bad case is subjectively indistinguishable from the kind of experience I have in the good case, and that it cannot offer a viable account of the nature of hallucination. -/- In this paper, I argue that a proper formulation of disjunctivism can avoid these objections. Disjunctivism should be formulated as the weakest claim required to preserve its primary motivation, viz., Naïve Realism—the view that veridical experience fundamentally consists in the subject perceiving entities in her environment. And the weakest claim required to preserve Naïve Realism allows for many sorts of commonalities across the good and hallucinatory cases, commonalities that can be marshaled in responding to the objections. Most importantly, disjunctivism properly formulated is compatible with “positive” accounts of the nature of hallucination. (shrink)

Although epistemic values have become widely accepted as part of scientific reasoning, non-epistemic values have been largely relegated to the "external" parts of science (the selection of hypotheses, restrictions on methodologies, and the use of scientific technologies). I argue that because of inductive risk, or the risk of error, non-epistemic values are required in science wherever non-epistemic consequences of error should be considered. I use examples from dioxin studies to illustrate how non-epistemic consequences of error can and should be considered (...) in the internal stages of science: choice of methodology, characterization of data, and interpretation of results. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAutonomous weapons systems pose many challenges in complex battlefield environments. Previous discussions of them have largely focused on technological or policy issues. In contrast, we focus here on the challenge of trust in an AWS. One type of human trust depends only on judgments about the predictability or reliability of the trustee, and so are suitable for all manner of artifacts. However, AWSs that are worthy of the descriptor “autonomous” will not exhibit the required strong predictability in the complex, changing (...) contexts of war. Instead, warfighters need to develop deeper, interpersonal trust that is grounded in understanding the values, beliefs, and dispositions of the AWS. Current acquisition, training, and deployment processes preclude the development of such trust, and so there are currently no routes for a warfighter to develop trust in an AWS. We thus survey three possible changes to current practices in order to facilitate the type of deep trust that is required for appropri... (shrink)

This study investigated the effects of internal and demographic variables on civic development in late adolescence using the construct civic purpose. We conducted surveys on civic engagement with 480 high school seniors, and surveyed them again two years later. Using multivariate regression and linear mixed models, we tested the main effects of civic purpose dimensions (beyond-the-self motivation, future civic intention), ethnicity, and education on civic development from Time 1 to Time 2. Results showed that while there is an overall decrease (...) in civic engagement in the transition out of high school, both internal and social factors protected participants from steep civic decline. Interaction effects varied. Ethnicity and education interacted in different ways with the dimensions of civic purpose to predict change in traditional and expressive political engagement, and community service engagement. (shrink)

It might initially appear impossible to inquire into whether p while trusting someone that p. At the very least, it might appear that doing so would be irrational. In this paper, I shall argue that things are not as they appear. Not only is it possible for a person to inquire into whether p while trusting someone that p, it is very often rational. Indeed, combining inquiry and trust in this way is an epistemic balancing act central to a well-lived (...) epistemic life. (shrink)