Energy efficiency and energy security are emerging concerns in climate change policy. But. there is little acknowledgment of energy justice issues. Marginalised and vulnerable communities may be disproportionately exposed to both climate change impacts (e.g. heat, flooding) and costs associated with energy transitions related to climate change mitigation and adaptation (e.g. particulate exposure from biofuel combustion). Climate change is producing energy-related impacts such as increased cooling costs. In some cases it threatens energy security. Higher electricity costs associated with ‘climate proofing’ (...) energy network infrastructure may exacerbate ‘fuel poverty’ - itself a form of injustice. In this paper we critically review the literature about multiple interrelations between energy policy, justice and climate change. We identify key issues, illuminate knowledge gaps, and synthesise findings to develop a conceptual model. We chart a research agenda and highlight policy implications. (shrink)

A window broke and Annie was involved. What’s of moral importance in a situation like this? Not whether Annie caused the window to break and not whether the window wouldn’t have broken if it weren’t for Annie. What’s morally important is whether Annie broke the window. In this thesis, I first generalise and argue for that claim; afterwards, I put it to work in ethics, applied ethics, and legal theory.

This paper argues that mandatory, government-enforced vaccination can be justified even within a libertarian political framework. If so, this implies that the case for mandatory vaccination is very strong indeed as it can be justified even within a framework that, at first glance, loads the philosophical dice against that conclusion. I argue that people who refuse vaccinations violate the ‘clean hands principle’, a moral principle that prohibits people from participating in the collective imposition of unjust harm or risk of harm. (...) In a libertarian framework, individuals may be forced to accept certain vaccines not because they have an enforceable duty to serve the common, and not because cost–benefit analysis recommends it, but because anti-vaxxers are wrongfully imposing undue harm upon others. (shrink)

When people understand a counterfactual such as “if the flowers had been roses, the trees would have been orange trees,” they think about the conjecture, “there were roses and orange trees,” and they also think about its opposite, the presupposed facts. We test whether people think about the opposite by representing alternates, for example, “poppies and apple trees,” or whether models can contain symbols, for example, “no roses and no orange trees.” We report the discovery of an inference‐to‐alternates effect—a tendency (...) to make an affirmative inference that refers to an alternate even from a negative minor premise, for example, “there were no orange trees, therefore there were poppies.” Nine experiments show the inference‐to‐alternates effect occurs in a binary context, but not a multiple context, and for direct and indirect reference; it can be induced and reduced by prior experience with similar inferences, and it also occurs for indicative conditionals. The results have implications for theories of counterfactual conditionals, and of negation. (shrink)

We examine two competing effects of beliefs on conditional inferences. The suppression effect occurs for conditionals, for example, “if she watered the plants they bloomed,” when beliefs about additional background conditions, for example, “if the sun shone they bloomed” decrease the frequency of inferences such as modus tollens (from “the plants did not bloom” to “therefore she did not water them”). In contrast, the counterfactual elevation effect occurs for counterfactual conditionals, for example, “if she had watered the plants they would (...) have bloomed,” when beliefs about the known or presupposed facts, “she did not water the plants and they did not bloom” increase the frequency of inferences such as modus tollens. We report six experiments that show that beliefs about additional conditions take precedence over beliefs about presupposed facts for counterfactuals. The modus tollens inference is suppressed for counterfactuals that contain additional conditions (Experiments 1a and 1b). The denial of the antecedent inference (from “she did not water the plants” to “therefore they did not bloom”) is suppressed for counterfactuals that contain alternatives (Experiments 2a and 2b). We report a new “switched‐suppression” effect for conditionals with negated components, for example, “if she had not watered the plants they would not have bloomed”: modus tollens is suppressed by alternatives and denial of the antecedent by additional conditions, rather than vice versa (Experiments 3a and 3b). We discuss the implications of the results for alternative theories of conditional reasoning. (shrink)

Although Eugen Fink often reflected upon the role religion, these reflections are yet to be addressed in secondary literature in any substantive sense. For Fink, religion is to be understood in relation to “play,” which is a metaphor for how the world presents itself. Religion is a non-repetitive, and entirely creative endeavor or “symbol” that is not achieved through work and toil, or through evaluation or power, but rather, through his idea of play and “cult” as the imaginative distanciation from (...) a predictable lifeworld. This paper describes Fink’s understanding of religion and its most relevant aspects found in Spiel als Weltsymbol. The paper is organized into five sections—1: An introduction to his phenomenological approach in general, and description of the role of “play”; 2: investigations into the relation between play and world; 3: a description of his phenomenology of religion; 4: engagements in the idea of cult-play and the sacred sphere, and 5: reflection on his idea of the play of God. (shrink)

In addressing bioethical issues at the beginning of human life, such as abortion, in vitro fertilization, and embryonic stem cell research, one primary concern regards establishing when a developing human embryo or fetus can be considered a person. Thomas Aquinas argues that an embryo or fetus is not a human person until its body is informed by a rational soul. Aquinas's explicit account of human embryogenesis has been generally rejected by contemporary scholars due to its dependence upon medieval biological data, (...) which has been far surpassed by current scientific research. A number of scholars, however, have attempted to combine Aquinas's basic metaphysical account of human nature with current embryological data to develop a contemporary Thomistic account of a human person's beginning. In this article, I discuss two recent interpretations in which it is argued that a human person does not begin to exist until a fetus has developed a functioning cerebral cortex. (shrink)

As the first of its kind this collection draws together cutting edge scholarship in the field, focusing on the theory and practice of yoga in contemporary times ...

The Routledge Guidebook to Aquinas‘ Summa Theologiae introduces readers to a work which represents the pinnacle of medieval Western scholarship and which has inspired numerous commentaries, imitators, and opposing views. Outlining the main arguments Aquinas utilizes to support his conclusions on various philosophical questions, this clear and comprehensive guide explores: The historical context in which Aquinas wrote A critical discussion of the topics outlined in the text including theology, metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, ethics, and political theory. The ongoing influence of Summa (...) Theologiae in modern Philosophy and Theology Offering a close reading of the original work, this guidebook highlights the central themes of Aquinas’ masterwork and is an essential read for anyone seeking an understanding of this highly influential work in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

The process of engaging in historical empathy holds the potential for significant curricular and dispositional benefits for students in history classrooms. In order to realize these benefits, classroom teachers must be able to integrate historical empathy into their existing planning and teaching; a process that would benefit from empirical examination. This single subject case study examined the pedagogical reasoning process of an experienced classroom teacher who integrated historical empathy into an existing instructional unit designed to foster student knowledge of social (...) control as an enduring historical understanding. The findings of this study suggest that experienced teachers may only be able to partially anticipate the unique pedagogical needs integrating historical empathy requires, and that a holistic examination of pedagogical reasoning during all phases of planning and teaching may be most suitable for the task. (shrink)

"The Federalist" is commonly read as an exemplar of political realism. However, alongside Publius' arguments against the enthusiastic imagination --its tendency to inflame the passions, betray the intellect, and subvert political authority--are formative appeals to the imagination 's role in reconstituting the public authority shaken during the postrevolutionary years. This essay explores three central aspects of Publius' restorative appeal to the imagination : the appeal to the public veneration required for sustaining political authority across time; the strategies for shifting citizen (...) loyalty from the state and local level to that of a newly energized federal government; and the rhetorical elicitation of the public's imagination in aestheticized portrayals of Providential nationality. These aspects of Publius' argument make up the core of "The Federalist's aesthetics of rule. In each instance, Publius invokes the imagination as a heteronomic support to navigate familiar dilemmas of democratic self-authorization. (shrink)

Many epistemologists treat knowledge as a binary relation that holds between a subject and a proposition. The contrastive account of knowledge developed by Jonathan Schaffer maintains that knowledge is a ternary, contrastive relation that holds between a subject, a proposition, and a set of contextually salient alternative propositions the subject’s evidence must eliminate. For the contrastivist, it is never simply the case that S knows that p; in every case of knowledge S knows that p rather than q. This paper (...) offers a counterexample to the contrastive account of knowledge. Part 1 summarizes the contrastive theory developed by Schaffer in a series of recent papers. Part 2 presents an example from a class of cases characterized by compatibility between the proposition p and each of the alternative propositions that occupy q. In such cases the alternative propositions that partially constitute the ternary contrastive relation play no role in the acquisition of knowledge. Part 3 considers and rejects potential responses to the counterexample. The paper concludes that the contrastive theory is not a general account of knowledge. (shrink)

Hintikka and Sandu had argued that 'Frege's failure to grasp the idea of the standard interpretation of higher-order logic turns his entire foundational project into a hopeless daydream' and that he is 'inextricably committed to a non-standard interpretation' of higher-order logic. We disagree.

Calls for the “translation” of research from bench to bedside are increasingly demanding. What is translation, and why does it matter? We sketch the recent history of outcome-oriented translational research in the United States, with a particular focus on the Roadmap Initiative of the National Institutes of Health. Our main example of contemporary translational research is stem cell research, which has superseded genomics as the translational object of choice. We explore the nature of and obstacles to translational research and assess (...) the ethical and biomedical challenges of embracing a translational ethos. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

We first argue that there are cases of “blameless non-belief.” That is, some people—through no fault of their own—fail to enter into a conscious relationship with God. But if so, then it would be unjust of God to make certain particular goods depend upon one having a conscious relationship with God. So, given that God is just, then despite what some theists believe, a relationship with God cannot be a necessary condition for the attainment of these goods; there might, e.g., (...) be atheists in heaven, even assuming that theism is true. This implies that religion is a far less important component of people’s lives than many might think. (shrink)

Every step forward, in life and in thought, is a return to a beginning in that it empties that much more the plan by which the journey is directed. The journey that began this work was with the recondite lore of aphasia. This early work led to a psychology of language, perception, action, and feeling based on the principle of microgenesis. This psychology and its corre sponding brain process are detailed in my book, Life of the Mind, a vade mecum (...) for the ideas that are developed further in this work. Now this psychology, a single thought exposed at progressively deeper levels, is extended to the problems of time awareness, consciousness and the nature of the self. It is astonishing, is it not, that an aphasic error, a slip of the tongue, can be a peephole on some of the ultimate mysteries of life? Over the last few years I have had the occasion to present portions of this work at various conferences and to different audiences, and have found, to my dismay, that the theory is often difficult for many to grasp. (shrink)

Drawing on recent attempts to critically reconstruct the ideas of Heinrich Wölfflin, this paper argues that there is a specific ‘logic of depiction’ that is distinctive to visual as opposed to verbal forms of representation. The aim is to provide a set of objective parameters that can allow a comparative analysis of the formal organization of pictures despite differences in period, subject matter, format, etc. The paper seeks to show that such an analysis is possible and that it possesses explanatory (...) force. Its frame is a critical engagement with Richard Wollheim's theory of style. Wollheim holds that general style terms are merely tools of classification and that they are relative to the changing point of view of those who seek to understand the art of the past. However, the critical reconstruction of Wölfflin's fundamental concepts aims to identify necessary conditions for visual representation as such. The fundamental concepts function not as taxonomic categories but as ‘limit concepts’ that demarcate a scale of possibilities and thus enable meaningful comparison of artworks. (shrink)

People judge that an individual who attempts to harm someone but fails should be blamed and punished more when they imagine how things could have turned out worse, compared to when they imagine how things could have turned out the same, or when they think only about what happened. This moral counterfactual amplification effect occurs when people believe the protagonist had no reason for the attempt to harm, and not when the protagonist had a reason, as Experiment 1 shows. It (...) occurs for intentional failed attempts to harm and also for accidental near-misses, as Experiment 2 shows, but not for failed attempts in which the harm occurs anyway by another cause, for both general judgments about the event and specific judgments about the individual's actions, as Experiments 3 and 4 show. The implications for understanding the role of counterfactual thoughts in moral judgement are discussed. (shrink)

This paper examines the assumptions underpinning one of the constitutive elements of the modern concept of art: the idea of aesthetic autonomy. I argue that the orientation of recent art practice towards what has come to be termed ‘site-specificity’ is best understood as a progressive relinquishment of the principle of aesthetic autonomy. I develop this position through a close analysis of the work of Miwon Kwon. The paper is intended as a case-study that investigates the problematic relation between historical and (...) philosophical enquiry. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This note presents a simple, novel diagnostic for determining the phrase structural status of negative markers cross-linguistically, a topic of enduring interest (for recent approaches and references see Haegeman; Zanuttini; Giannakidou, Landscape and Polarity). If the sentential negative marker in a given language is phrasal (an XP, generally adverbial), it will occur in the collocation why not?; if it is a head (an X 0, generally clitic-like), it will not. In the latter languages, the word for ‘no’ can sometimes be (...) used, itself (presumably) a phrasal negative adverb. (A fortiori, languages with possibly word-internal morphological markers for sentential negation, such as Turkish, will not allow these markers in the collocation.) The first group of languages, those with XP negative markers, is given in 1: (1) a. English why not? * why no?1 b. German warum nicht? * warum nein? c. Dutch waarom niet? * waarom nee? d. Danish hvorfor ikke? * hvorfor nej? e. Icelandic hverfor ekki? * hvarfor nej? f. French pourquoi pas? * pourquoi non?2 g. Tsez shida anu? * shida ey? The second class of languages, those with X0 negative markers, is given in 2. (shrink)

In debates over issues such as abortion, a primary principle on which the Roman Catholic outlook is based is the natural law mandate to respect human life rooted in the Aristotelian philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. This principle, however, is limited by focusing on the obligation not to kill innocent humans and thereby neglects another important facet of the Aristotelian-Thomistic ethical viewpoint—namely, obligations that bind human beings in relationships of mutual dependence and responsibility. I argue that there is a need to (...) cultivate a “virtue of acknowledged responsibility” and conclude by addressing a prevalent issue in contemporary society: absent paternal responsibility. My aim is to show that there is an interesting and often neglected rationale in Catholic moral understanding for “deadbeat dad” laws that compel men to take responsibility for any children or fetuses they father and to assist women who give birth to those children or carry those fetuses. (shrink)

This squib investigates the nature and syntactic placement of the restriction of quantificational determiners under the copy theory of movement and presents a brief argument from the interaction of antecedent-contained deletion (ACD) and Principle C that while relative clauses in ACD must be deleted from their base positions, complements and adjuncts in NP need not be, and hence must not be.

∗Thanks to J. C. Beall, Alex Byrne, Jason Decker, Tyler Doggett, Paul Elbourne, Adam Elga, Warren Goldfarb, Delia Graff, Richard Heck, Charles Parsons, Mark Richard, Susanna Siegel, Jason Stanley, Judith Thomson, Carol Voeller, Brian Weatherson, Ralph Wedgwood, Steve Yablo, Cheryl Zoll, and an anonymous referee for valuable comments and discussions. Versions of this material were presented in my seminar at MIT in the Fall of 2000, and at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Parts of this paper (...) also derive from my comments on a paper of Scott Soames at the ‘Liars and Heaps’ conference at the University of Connecticut in the Fall of 2002. I am grateful for the help of these audiences, and especially to Prof. Soames. (shrink)

The emergence of Bildwissenschaft as a new interdisciplinary formation that is intended to encompass all images calls for an analysis of the grounds on which the claim to universality can be upheld. I argue that whereas the lifting of scope restrictions imposes only a weak universality requirement, the identification of features that belong to the entire class of entities that are categorized as images imposes a strong universality requirement. Reflection on this issue brings into focus the distinctive character of Bildwissenschaft (...) and the features that distinguish it not only from other related disciplines such as art history and visual studies, but also from recent work in the philosophy of the image. (shrink)

American universities rely upon a large workforce of adjunct faculty—contract workers who receive low pay, no benefits, and no job security. Many news sources, magazines, and activists claim that adjuncts are exploited and should receive better pay and treatment. This paper never affirms nor denies that adjuncts are exploited. Instead, we show that any attempt to provide a significantly better deal faces unpleasant constraints and trade-offs. “Adjunct justice” would cost universities somewhere between an additional $15–50 billion per year. At most, (...) universities can provide justice for a minority of adjuncts at the expense of the majority, as well as at the expense of poor students. Universities may indeed be exploiting adjuncts, but they cannot rectify this mistake without significant moral costs. (shrink)

The book brings together thirteen essays presented to medical and psychiatric societies, mainly during the 1970's and 1980's. In these essays, Gadamer justifies the reasons for a philosophical interest in health and medicine, and a corresponding need for health practitioners to enter into a dialogue with philosophy.

It has been 40 years since the seminal papers on pharmacy's status as a profession sparked debate about the pharmacist's role in health care, yet the questions they raised are just as poignant today as they were then. Questions about whether pharmacists are the experts when it comes to drug therapy information can be answered practically by assessing the perception of pharmacists' obligations to patients as being dependent on or independent of physicians' responsibilities. Both options have important implications for pharmacy's (...) status as a profession, the value that pharmacists can add to health care, and a pharmacist's right to deny a patient emergency contraception. (shrink)

Some of the most powerful persons today are those most successful at convincing others they have the greatest claim to victimhood. This new, socio-political shift marks the rise of what recently has been called “victimhood culture.” This article addresses how certain Christian theological views on God’s wrath, along with differing appropriations of the church’s collective victimhood both have played significant roles in generating a “culture war of victimhood”—a mode of conflict in which individuals and parties fight for the status of (...) being the most socially oppressed and marginalized, especially for the purpose of gaining power. To better understand this collective intentionality of victimhood, the article provides a multidisciplinary exploration into recent works in sociology of religion, anthropology, and historical theology. (shrink)

This essay demonstrates Ricoeur’s explication of the various roles religion can play especially in regards to acts of collective violence, and also how his conceptions take us beyond the traditional dichotomies of religion as necessarily violent, or necessarily peaceful. It focuses on three essays where his most formidable reflections on religion and violence can be found: “Religion and Symbolic Violence”, “Power and Violence”, and “State and Violence”. First, the essay hermeneutically describes the intricate relationship between violence and religion within these (...) three essays, pointing to three perils of religion especially regarding communities, the figure of the magistrate within some religiously motivated political revolutions, and the danger of ecclesiastical orders demonstrating not only authority but also forms of domination. The essay then phenomenologically ties these three threads together, demonstrating a way of understanding both the promises and perils of religion as it relates to violence, both in the work of Ricoeur and beyond it. (shrink)

How we use our own victimhood and that of others has been changing in recent years. Today it may be used to decry an injustice of violence, to garner attention to our causes, to command a unique moral and ecclesial authority, or even to gain advantage over other groups. The many possible uses of victimhood lead us to study phenomenologically its influence upon our human condition, considering especially its cultural manifestations, and religious underpinnings. The contributions investigate the topic through four (...) sections: 1) Blame, Liability, Ressentiment, 2) Christianity, Atonement, Scapegoating, 3) Trauma, Survivor Guilt, Exile, and 4) Culture, Globalization Media. (shrink)

Sacrifice, solidarity, and social decadence were essential themes not only for Patočka's philosophical work, but also for his personal life. In the "Varna Lectures" sacrifice is characterized uniquely as the privation of a clear telos, as counter-escapist, and as sutured to a comportment of finite life that is non-causal and non-purposive. In his Heretical Essays a similar hope is expressed to extract meaningfulness from use-value, and to deploy a Socratic and Christian "Care for the Soul" that can counteract the decadences (...) of our age. These interests and developments of the practice and notion of sacrifice point to Patočka's double-hereticism, both of the post-industrial age of technological advancement, and of what had become the unthought-through of the Christian tradition. In both senses, his theory of sacrifice is not unlike that of St. Paul, who saw the necessity of counter-acting the decadence and pompousness of the Corinthians by calling them to become "scum of the earth." This helps reveal how sacrifice presumes, in general, an operative notion of waste, and this paper seeks to lend further understanding to the relation between solidarity and sacrifice by developing, from out of Patočka's own work, precisely how waste figures prominently in such a relation. Waste may be refused by merit of being deemed to have no value; waste can mark a layer of expenditure of using "something up" in a way that overlooks its societal surplus; and waste could depict whatever is, like a wasteland, uncultivable and barren. Waste then is employed in the essay as a heuristic tool for understanding how the normalization of the relation between solidarity and sacrifice is in need of being inverted, and how this inversion has consequences also for how solidarity can be considered in relation to atonement. (shrink)

Inconspicuous turns: Heidegger and the "inapparent" theological turn -- Inconspicuous revelation: Marion, Heidegger, and an antinomic phenomenality -- Inconspicuous phenomenology: on Heidegger's unscheinbarkeit or inapparent -- Inconspicuous lifeworld of religion: Henry's "life," Heidegger's "world" -- Inconspicuous liturgy: Lacoste, Heidegger, and the space of godhood -- Inconspicuous adoration: Nancy, Heidegger, and a praise of the ordinary -- Inconspicuous evidence: Janicaud, religious experience, and a methodological atheism -- Inconspicuous faith: Chretien, Heidegger, and forgetting -- Inconspicuous God: Levinas, Heidegger, and the idolatry of (...) incomprehensibility -- The spectacle of God: inverting the sacred/profane paradigm. (shrink)