When ethics committees are consulted about patients who have or need court-appointed guardians, they lack empirical evidence about several common issues, including the relationship between guardianship and prolonged, potentially medically unnecessary hospitalizations for patients. To provide information about this issue, we conducted quantitative and qualitative analyses using a retrospective cohort from Veterans Healthcare Administration. To examine the relationship between guardianship appointment and hospital length of stay, we first compared 116 persons hospitalized prior to guardianship appointment to a comparison group (n (...) = 348) 3:1 matched for age, diagnosis, date of admission, and comorbidity. We then compared 91 persons hospitalized in the year following guardianship appointment to a second matched comparison group (n = 273). Mean length of stay was 30.75 days (SD = 46.70) amongst those admitted prior to guardianship, which was higher than the comparison group (M = 7.74, SD = 9.71, F = 20.75, p. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

Previous research (Kielbasa, Pomerantz, Krohn, & Sullivan, 2004; Pomerantz & Segrist, 2006) indicates that when psychologists consider a client with symptoms of depression or anxiety, payment method significantly influences diagnostic decisions. This study extends the scope of the previous research to consider clients with symptoms of social phobia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Psychologists in independent practice responded to vignettes of clients whose descriptions deliberately included subclinical impairment. Half of the participants were told that the clients would pay (...) via managed care; the other half were told that the clients would pay out-of-pocket. Confirming previous studies, payment method had a highly significant impact on diagnosis such that compared to out-of-pocket clients, managed care clients were much more likely to be assigned Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [DSM-IV]; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) diagnoses. Ethical implications relate to informed consent, accuracy and truthfulness in diagnosis, and psychologists' integrity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Insightlessness, the Deflationary TurnJennifer Radden (bio)Keywordsinsightlessness, deflationary turn, Harry Stack Sullivan, open placebos, space of reasonsMarga Reimer argues that treatment compliance in patients who are without any, or complete, insight into psychotic symptoms may be neither particularly abnormal nor entirely unreasonable. In broad sympathy with these conclusions, I wish only to add a couple of ancillary observations and some historical context.Reimer's discussion can be placed alongside other research (...) on aspects of psychosis putting forward what have been called "deflationary" accounts, accounts that depict psychotic symptoms as differing from normal states, traits, and responses in degree rather than kind. Such accounts have been offered about auditory hallucinations or "hearing voices" (Leudar and Thomas 2000; Romme and Escher 1989; Smith 2007), about delusional thinking (Bentall 2003; Bentall et al. 1989; Bracken and Thomas 2005; Hamilton 2007; Kinderman and Bentall 2007), and spiritual experiences (Jackson 1997; Jackson and Fulford 1997); in the introduction of the notion of "benign psychosis" (Jackson 2007), and even in recognition that insight is a complex, dimensional attribute (Amador and David 1998). Harkening back to the middle years of the twentieth century, and associated with Adolph Meyer's influence in the United States, as well as the influence of psychodynamic (and psychoanalytic) ideas, this deflationary turn challenges the neo-Kraepelinian presuppositions of our contemporary biomedical psychiatry. Rather than sharply separating psychotic states and symptoms from normal experience, the deflationary approach emphasizes the continuities and similarities linking them.Reimer proceeds in two separate steps. To the extent that treatment compliance among patients suffering psychotic states occurs in the absence of any or full insight, it is shown, this seems not dissimilar from other more ordinary cases where treatment compliant behavior occurs either without—or without regard for—a recognition that one is ill. (The term insightlessness is here used to indicate the absence of full and complete insight. This recognizes the dimensional and complex nature of insight, which has been shown to involve a range of beliefs over one's disorder, those about its presence, about the need for treatment, and about the social consequences of suffering it.)Had her discussion stopped here, Reimer would have completed the first "deflationary" step. By showing that this sort of insightless treatment compliance also occurs in the absence of mental disorder, she encourages us to see psychotic patients' lack of insight into their disorder as at least akin to more benign and commonplace responses. In doing so, she would have shifted something of the burden of proof within discussions of insight. Those insisting insightlessness is an irresoluble obstacle to positive treatment outcomes would [End Page 81] now be required to explain why this should be so. And those denying the analogy between the insightless compliance of the psychotic patient and more everyday cases such as those Reimer describes, might be called upon to show why these cases were disanalogous.Reimer does not leave matters there. She goes on to establish that none of the instances of insightless treatment compliance that she discusses can be judged to be entirely unreasonable. Treatment compliance without full insight is not only quite normal, it may not even be particularly irrational. As she explains, the patients in each case anticipate benefits from the treatment, even though such benefits are not understood in terms suggestive of pathology. Unfailingly, they conform to a general human tendency: [T]o act in accordance with what we perceive, rightly or wrongly, to be in our best interests.Reimer locates the error in more traditional thinking about lack of insight at the immodest assumption that there is but a single way to accurately characterize the patient's condition—medically. This view, which she attributes to contemporary psychiatry, she finds mistaken—and mistaken, I agree it is. Rather than one, there seem likely to be several accurate ways to frame things. And although the medical framing will best fit the interests and purposes of clinicians, other framings may better suit the interests of their patients.When the possibility of alternative, non-medical perspectives is granted, and our goal is to assess insightless compliance vis à vis rationality norms, a number of considerations gain salience. The insightless patient, Reimer shows, may... (shrink)

ChatGPT has taken the academic community by storm (Cotton, Cotton, and Shipway 2023; Cox and Tzoc 2023; Sullivan, Kelly, and McLaughlan 2023). Since its release in November 2022, chatGPT has predic...

We argue that the most plausible characterisation of the norm of truth—it is permissible to believe that p if and only if p is true—is unable to explain Transparency in doxastic deliberation, a task for which it is claimed to be equipped. In addition, the failure of the norm to do this work undermines the most plausible account of how the norm guides belief formation at all. Those attracted to normativism about belief for its perceived explanatory credentials had better look (...) elsewhere. (shrink)

Testimony is an invaluable source of knowledge. We rely on the reports of those around us for everything from the ingredients in our food and medicine to the identity of our family members. Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the epistemology of testimony. Despite the multitude of views offered, a single thesis is nearly universally accepted: testimonial knowledge is acquired through the process of transmission from speaker to hearer. In this book, Jennifer Lackey shows that this (...) thesis is false and, hence, that the literature on testimony has been shaped at its core by a view that is fundamentally misguided. She then defends a detailed alternative to this conception of testimony: whereas the views currently dominant focus on the epistemic status of what speakers believe, Lackey advances a theory that instead centers on what speakers say. The upshot is that, strictly speaking, we do not learn from one another's beliefs - we learn from one another's words. Once this shift in focus is in place, Lackey goes on to argue that, though positive reasons are necessary for testimonial knowledge, testimony itself is an irreducible epistemic source. This leads to the development of a theory that gives proper credence to testimony's epistemologically dual nature: both the speaker and the hearer must make a positive epistemic contribution to testimonial knowledge. The resulting view not only reveals that testimony has the capacity to generate knowledge, but it also gives appropriate weight to our nature as both socially indebted and individually rational creatures. The approach found in this book will, then, represent a radical departure from the views currently dominating the epistemology of testimony, and thus is intended to reshape our understanding of the deep and ubiquitous reliance we have on the testimony of those around us. (shrink)

Jennifer McKitrick offers an opinionated guide to the philosophy of dispositions. In her view, when an object has a disposition, it is such that, if a certain type of circumstance were to occur, a certain kind of event would occur. Since this is very common for this to be the case, dispositions are an abundant and diverse feature of our world.

Inhibition, an executive function, is critical for achieving goals that require suppressing unwanted behaviours, thoughts, or distractions. One hypothesis of the emotion and goal compatibility theory is that emotions of sadness and fear enhance inhibitory control. Across Experiments 1–4, we tested this hypothesis by inducing a happy, sad, fearful, and neutral emotional state prior to completing an inhibition task that indexed a specific facet of inhibition (oculomotor, resisting interference, behavioural, and cognitive). In Experiment 4, we included an anger induction to (...) examine whether valence or motivational-orientation best-predicted performance. We found support that fear and sadness enhanced inhibition except when inhibition required resisting interference. We argue that sadness and fear enhance inhibitory control aiding the detection and analysis of problems (i.e. sadness) or threats (i.e. fear) within one’s environment. In sum, this work highlights the importance of identifying how negative emotions can be beneficial for and interact with specific executive functions influencing down-stream processing including attention, cognition, and memory. (shrink)

Testimony is a crucial source of knowledge: we are to a large extent reliant upon what others tell us. It has been the subject of much recent interest in epistemology, and this volume collects twelve original essays on the topic by some of the world's leading philosophers. It will be the starting point for future research in this fertile field. Contributors include Robert Audi, C. A. J. Coady, Elizabeth Fricker, Richard Fumerton, Sanford C. Goldberg, Peter Graham, Jennifer Lackey, Keith (...) Lehrer, Richard Moran, Frederick F. Schmitt, Ernest Sosa, and James Van Cleve. (shrink)

This study examines the influence of mood on corporate philanthropic giving. Drawing on group emotions theory and affect-infused decision theory, we advance the argument that firms allocate greater resources to philanthropy when headquarters-based employees are in a more positive affective state. We also describe three boundary conditions in this relationship—executives’ embeddedness in the firm, executives’ latitude to engage in philanthropic giving, and the firm’s track record of corporate social irresponsibility. We test our arguments using a longitudinal dataset of philanthropic giving (...) by U.S. firms. Our study contributes to the literature by shedding light on the role of affect in shaping the decision to allocate resources to corporate philanthropy. (shrink)

Upward mobility through the path of higher education has been an article of faith for generations of working-class, low-income, and immigrant college students. While we know this path usually entails financial sacrifices and hard work, very little attention has been paid to the deep personal compromises such students have to make as they enter worlds vastly different from their own. Measuring the true cost of higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, Moving Up without Losing Your Way looks at the (...) ethical dilemmas of upward mobility—the broken ties with family and friends, the severed connections with former communities, and the loss of identity—faced by students as they strive to earn a successful place in society. -/- Drawing upon philosophy, social science, personal stories, and interviews, Jennifer Morton reframes the college experience, factoring in not just educational and career opportunities but also essential relationships with family, friends, and community. Finding that student strivers tend to give up the latter for the former, negating their sense of self, Morton seeks to reverse this course. She urges educators to empower students with a new narrative of upward mobility—one that honestly situates ethical costs in historical, social, and economic contexts and that allows students to make informed decisions for themselves. -/- A powerful work with practical implications, Moving Up without Losing Your Way paves a hopeful road so that students might achieve social mobility while retaining their best selves. (shrink)

Delusions play a fundamental role in the history of psychology, philosophy and culture, dividing not only the mad from the sane but reason from unreason. Yet the very nature and extent of delusions are poorly understood. What are delusions? How do they differ from everyday errors or mistaken beliefs? Are they scientific categories? In this superb, panoramic investigation of delusion Jennifer Radden explores these questions and more, unravelling a fascinating story that ranges from Descartes’s demon to famous first-hand accounts (...) of delusion, such as Daniel Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Radden places delusion in both a clinical and cultural context and explores a fascinating range of themes: delusions as both individually and collectively held, including the phenomenon of folies á deux ; spiritual and religious delusions, in particular what distinguishes normal religious belief from delusions with religious themes; how we assess those suffering from delusion from a moral standpoint; and how we are to interpret violent actions when they are the result of delusional thinking. As well as more common delusions, such as those of grandeur, she also discusses some of the most interesting and perplexing forms of clinical delusion, such as Cotard and Capgras. (shrink)

Jennifer Hornsby offers here detailed discussions of ontology, human agency, and everyday psychological explanation. In her distinctive view of questions about the mind's place in nature she argues for a particular position in philosophy of mind: naive naturalism.

While much of our knowledge relies on testimony or the words of others, until recently few philosophers had much to say about the nature of testimony or how we learn from another's words, but testimony has now become a popular topic. Jennifer Lackey's Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge is a useful and intelligent guide, a well informed and appreciative but critical and provocative commentary on a large and growing body of literature.According to Lackey, most of (...) the literature assumes that testimony can spread but not create knowledge, much as memory can be a reminder of old but not a source of new truth. Lackey maintains that the assumption is mistaken and offers an account of testimony, according to which, testimony can give rise to new knowledge as well as transmit old truths from one person to another.In her introduction, Lackey characterizes what she calls the belief view of testimony and suggests that this view dominates today's literature. On the belief view, testimony is a vehicle for expressing belief, and when I tell you that p, I express my belief that p with the intention …. (shrink)

It is widely thought that functionalism and the qualia theory are better positioned to accommodate the ‘affective’ aspect of pain phenomenology than representationalism. In this paper, we attempt to overturn this opinion by raising problems for both functionalism and the qualia theory on this score. With regard to functionalism, we argue that it gets the order of explanation wrong: pain experience gives rise to the effects it does because it hurts, and not the other way around. With regard to the (...) qualia theory, we argue that it fails to capture the sense in which pain 's affective phenomenology rationalises various bodily-directed beliefs, desires, and behaviours. Representationalism, in contrast, escapes both of these problems: it gets the order of explanation right and it explains how pain 's affective phenomenology can rationalise bodily-directed beliefs, desires, and behaviours. For this reason, we argue that representationalism has a significant advantage in the debates about pain 's affective phenomenology. We end the paper by examining objections, including the question of what representationalists should say about so-called ‘disassociation cases’, such as pain asymbolia. (shrink)

This book employs contemporary philosophy, scientific research, and clinical reports to argue that pain, though real, is not an appropriate object of scientific generalisations or an appropriate target for medical intervention. Each pain experience is instead complex and idiosyncratic in a way which undermines scientific utility. In addition to contributing novel arguments and developing a novel position on the nature of pain, the book provides an interdisciplinary overview of dominant models of pain. The author lays the needed groundwork for improved (...) models and targeted treatments at a time when pain science, pain medicine, and philosophy are explicitly searching for both and failing to find them. The Complex Reality of Pain will be of interest to a broad range of researchers and students, including those working in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, cognitive science, neuroscience, medicine, health, cognitive and behavioural psychology, and pain science. (shrink)

Background Few studies have been conducted to assess the quality of orientation practices for ethics advisory committees that conduct ethics consultation. This survey study focused on several Harvard teaching hospitals, exploring orientation quality and committee members’ self-evaluation in the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities ethics consultation competencies. Methods We conducted a survey study that involved 116 members and 16 chairs of ethics advisory committees, respectively. Predictor variables included professional demographics, duration on committees and level of training. Outcome variables included (...) familiarity with and preparedness in the ASBH competencies and satisfaction with orientations. We hypothesised that responses would be associated with both the aforementioned predictors and whether or not participants had encountered the ASBH competencies in training. Results A majority of respondents found their orientation curricula to be helpful, although a significant portion of respondents did not receive any orientation or were unsatisfied with their orientation. Familiarity with ASBH competencies was a statistically significant predictor of respondents’ self-evaluation in particular categories. Standard educational materials were reported as offered during orientation, such as readings and case studies ; different medium resources were less evidenced such as videos on ethics consultation. Conclusions Institutions should re-evaluate orientation practices for ethics committee members that perform ethics consultation. Integrating ASBH competencies and useful methods into a resourceful pedagogy will help improve both member satisfaction with orientation and preparation in consultation. (shrink)

BackgroundArtificial intelligence has been described as the “fourth industrial revolution” with transformative and global implications, including in healthcare, public health, and global health. AI approaches hold promise for improving health systems worldwide, as well as individual and population health outcomes. While AI may have potential for advancing health equity within and between countries, we must consider the ethical implications of its deployment in order to mitigate its potential harms, particularly for the most vulnerable. This scoping review addresses the following question: (...) What ethical issues have been identified in relation to AI in the field of health, including from a global health perspective?MethodsEight electronic databases were searched for peer reviewed and grey literature published before April 2018 using the concepts of health, ethics, and AI, and their related terms. Records were independently screened by two reviewers and were included if they reported on AI in relation to health and ethics and were written in the English language. Data was charted on a piloted data charting form, and a descriptive and thematic analysis was performed.ResultsUpon reviewing 12,722 articles, 103 met the predetermined inclusion criteria. The literature was primarily focused on the ethics of AI in health care, particularly on carer robots, diagnostics, and precision medicine, but was largely silent on ethics of AI in public and population health. The literature highlighted a number of common ethical concerns related to privacy, trust, accountability and responsibility, and bias. Largely missing from the literature was the ethics of AI in global health, particularly in the context of low- and middle-income countries.ConclusionsThe ethical issues surrounding AI in the field of health are both vast and complex. While AI holds the potential to improve health and health systems, our analysis suggests that its introduction should be approached with cautious optimism. The dearth of literature on the ethics of AI within LMICs, as well as in public health, also points to a critical need for further research into the ethical implications of AI within both global and public health, to ensure that its development and implementation is ethical for everyone, everywhere. (shrink)

On the Genealogy of Universals: The Metaphysical Origins of Analytic Philosophy, by MacBrideFraser. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. viii + 263.

(2006). Liberalism, Nihilism and Modernity in the Political Thought of John Gray. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 9, The Political Theory of John Gray, pp. 285-304.

Order of information plays a crucial role in the process of updating beliefs across time. In fact, the presence of order effects makes a classical or Bayesian approach to inference difficult. As a result, the existing models of inference, such as the belief-adjustment model, merely provide an ad hoc explanation for these effects. We postulate a quantum inference model for order effects based on the axiomatic principles of quantum probability theory. The quantum inference model explains order effects by transforming a (...) state vector with different sequences of operators for different orderings of information. We demonstrate this process by fitting the quantum model to data collected in a medical diagnostic task and a jury decision-making task. To further test the quantum inference model, a new jury decision-making experiment is developed. Using the results of this experiment, we compare the quantum inference model with two versions of the belief-adjustment model, the adding model and the averaging model. We show that both the quantum model and the adding model provide good fits to the data. To distinguish the quantum model from the adding model, we develop a new experiment involving extreme evidence. The results from this new experiment suggest that the adding model faces limitations when accounting for tasks involving extreme evidence, whereas the quantum inference model does not. Ultimately, we argue that the quantum model provides a more coherent account for order effects that was not possible before. (shrink)

Spanning 24 centuries, this anthology collects over thirty selections of important Western writing about melancholy and its related conditions by philosophers, doctors, religious and literary figures, and modern psychologists. Truly interdisciplinary, it is the first such anthology. As it traces Western attitudes, it reveals a conversation across centuries and continents as the authors interpret, respond, and build on each other's work. Editor Jennifer Radden provides an extensive, in-depth introduction that draws links and parallels between the selections, and reveals the (...) ambiguous relationship between these historical accounts of melancholy and today's psychiatric views on depression. This important new collection is also beautifully illustrated with depictions of melancholy from Western fine art. (shrink)

Analysis, 78: 737–53. doi:_ 10.1093/analys/any055 _.

Like more than two hundred thousand other Americans, George Floyd howled horribly for air before his death. But his breathlessness was not born from a virus. He was murdered with the burden of anti...

Discussions of whistleblowing whether in academic literature or in more popular media have tended to very one-sided assessments of the moral worth of the act. Indeed, much of the current literature concentrates on psychological or managerial aspects of whistleblowing while taking for granted this or that moral position or eschewing any normative commitment on the question. The purpose of this article is firstly to reemphasise the importance and complexity of the normative foundations of whistleblowing acts; and secondly, through a moral (...) philosophical analysis of the component decisions that make up any act of whistleblowing, to contribute to a more balanced and less polarised treatment of the topic. It is argued that the polarisation of views on the topic is in part due to a failure to decompose the act of whistleblowing into a number of inevitable component moral decisions leading up to the act. It is furthermore argued on the basis of the analysis that it is impossible to state a priori as a matter of general principle that whistleblowing is always morally right or morally wrong . The article will close with a reflection on the degree to which the weighing up of good and bad in the act of whistleblowing differs sharply among cultures; and with a conjecture as to a possible relation to a people's history which may serve as a pointer to interesting future empirical research on the topic. (shrink)

The use of placebo in clinical practice has been the topic of extensive debate in the bioethics literature, with much scholarship focusing on concerns regarding deception. While considerations of placebo without deception have largely centred on open-label placebo, this paper considers a different kind of ethical quandary regarding placebo without an intent to deceive—one where the provider believes a treatment is effective due to a direct physiological mechanism, even though that belief may not be supported by rigorous scientific evidence. This (...) is often the case with complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) techniques and also with some mainstream therapies that have not proven to be better than sham. Using one such CAM technique as a case study—electroencephalography (EEG) neurofeedback for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)—this paper explores the ethics of providing therapies that may have some beneficial effect, although one that is likely due to placebo effect. First, we provide background on EEG neurofeedback for ADHD and its evidence base, showing how it has proven to be equivalent to—but not better than—sham neurofeedback. Subsequently, we explore whether offering therapies that are claimed to work via specific physical pathways, but may actually work due to the placebo effect, constitute deception. We suggest that this practice may constitute unintentional deception regarding mechanism of action. Ultimately, we argue that providers have increased information provision obligations when offering treatments that diverge from standard of care and we make recommendations for mitigating unintentional deception. (shrink)

Introduction: contemporary conditions and diagrammatic trajectory -- From joy to the gap: the accessing of the infinite by the finite (Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson) -- The care of the self versus the ethics of desire: two diagrams of the production of subjectivity (and of the subject's relation to truth) (Foucault versus Lacan) -- The aesthetic paradigm: from the folding of the finite-infinite relation to schizoanalytic metamodelisation (to biopolitics) (Guattari) -- The strange temporality of the subject: life in-between the infinite and the (...) finite (Deleuze contra Badiou) -- Desiring-machines, chaoids, probeheads: towards a speculative production of subjectivity (Deleuze and Guattari) -- Conclusion: composite diagram and relations of adjacency. (shrink)

This special issue of Science, Technology, & Human Values assembles papers that consider relations among science, ethics, and justice. The papers are drawn from a 2011 National Science Foundation-sponsored workshop that brought together interdisciplinary scholars to consider, incorporate, and attend to the meanings, uses, and social consequences of ethical questions and justice ideals in technoscientific projects. The papers included in this special issue examine key areas that emerged from this workshop, including public participation, the production of knowledge, what counts as (...) consent, ownership of biomaterials, and others. Together, the papers raise questions about new directions and articulations of power, justice, and inequalities in science and technology studies. (shrink)

Proponents of “the affective appeal” :787–812, 2014; Zagzebski in Philos Phenomenol Res 66:104–124, 2003) argue that we can make progress in the longstanding debate about the nature of moral motivation by appealing to the affective dimension of affective episodes such as emotions, which allegedly play either a causal or constitutive role in moral judgements. Specifically, they claim that appealing to affect vindicates a version of Motivational Internalism—roughly, the view that there is a necessary connection between moral judgment and motivation—that is (...) both more empirically respectable and less theoretically controversial than non-affective versions. We here argue that the affective appeal fails: versions of Internalism which appeal to affect are neither more empirically supported, nor clearly less controversial, than versions of Internalism which make no such appeal. Although affect doubtless has an important role to play in explaining moral motivation, we are sceptical that establishing any such role advances the debate. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Paragrana Jahrgang: 25 Heft: 2 Seiten: 80-93.

Jennifer Hornsby; V*—Which Physical Events are Mental Events?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 81, Issue 1, 1 June 1981, Pages 73–92, https://do.

Wherever philosophers disagree, one of the things at issue is likely to be what they disagree about, itself. In addition to asking whether moral realism is true, and which forms of moral realism are more likely to be true than others, we can also ask what it would mean for some form of moral realism to be true. The usual aspiration of such inquiry is to find definitions that all can agree on, so that we can use terms in a (...) uniform way. But we doubt that this aspiration is always possible, or even desirable. It will be our goal in this chapter to sketch out some of our reasons for such skepticism, and to lay out a picture of what philosophical inquiry can look like in metaethics and beyond, even when it is impossible to reach uniform agreement on the terms of the debate. (shrink)

Launched by the United Nations in 2000, the Global Compact (GC) promotes private sector compliance with 10 basic principles covering human rights, labour standards, the environment, and anti-corruption. Its sponsors aim to establish a global corporate social responsibility (CSR) network based on a pledge to observe the 10 principles adopted by companies across the range of company size and regional origin, backed by a modest reporting system and collaborative programmes. The author analyzes the GC's progress toward building a global network (...) from its launch through 2006 and finds that, while the GC's nominal membership base of nearly 3000 companies makes it the largest system among collective action institutions (CAIs) for corporate responsibility, the GC has not reached 'critical mass'. Deficiencies in its nascent global network include limited market penetration among the largest corporations, a membership heavily weighted toward Western European companies, and major weaknesses in compliance with its reporting system. The author concludes that the GC must improve both penetration and compliance if it is to succeed in building a global standard for CSR. (shrink)

Introduction -- From paideia to humanism -- Pietism and the problem of human craft (Menschen-Kunst) -- The harmonious harp-playing of humanity: J. G. Herder -- Ethical formation and the invention of the religion of art -- The rise of the Bildungsroman and the commodification of literature -- Authorship and its resignation in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister -- "The Bildung of self-consciousness itself towards science": Hegel.

Bioethics has already had a rich interaction with the relatively new field of neurotechnology. Scholars have wondered whether neurotechnological interventions, such as deep brain stimulation, are threats to personal identity, lead to alienation or create dilemmas between authenticity and autonomy, impact autonomy, detract from agency, or lead to self-estrangement. Many of these ethical investigations are concerned not with the targeted health benefits of neurotechnology but with whether and how they fit into users' lives in more personal and profound ways.In some (...) ways, this focus on general bioethical issues... (shrink)

This article offers a new theory of suffering as significantly disrupted agency. In presenting it, I here make three significant contributions. First, I subject the leading account of suffering as undesired unpleasant experience (Brady, 2018) to its first dose of sustained scrutiny. Second and drawing on this discussion, I identify and liberate eight desiderata for any account of suffering. Third, I present the novel account of suffering as significantly disrupted agency and argue that it satisfies these desiderata. Moreover, I argue (...) that elaborating this proposal with a minimal model of agency allows us to capture both the suffering of a wide range of organisms and the complex dynamics of suffering as it is endured. I conclude by briefly highlighting some of the potential implications of the theory for further theoretical and practical inquiries. (shrink)

Launched by the United Nations in 2000, the Global Compact (GC) promotes private sector compliance with 10 basic principles covering human rights, labour standards, the environment, and anti‐corruption. Its sponsors aim to establish a global corporate social responsibility (CSR) network based on a pledge to observe the 10 principles adopted by companies across the range of company size and regional origin, backed by a modest reporting system and collaborative programmes. The author analyzes the GC's progress toward building a global network (...) from its launch through 2006 and finds that, while the GC's nominal membership base of nearly 3000 companies makes it the largest system among collective action institutions (CAIs) for corporate responsibility, the GC has not reached ‘critical mass’. Deficiencies in its nascent global network include limited market penetration among the largest corporations, a membership heavily weighted toward Western European companies, and major weaknesses in compliance with its reporting system. The author concludes that the GC must improve both penetration and compliance if it is to succeed in building a global standard for CSR. (shrink)

Promiscuous realism is the thesis that there are many equally legitimate ways of classifying the world’s entities. Advocates of promiscuous realism are typically taken to hold the further the- sis, often undistinguished, that kind terms usefully deployed in scientific generalisations are no more natural than those deployed for any other purposes. Call this further thesis promiscuous nat- uralism. I here defend a version of promiscuous realism which denies promiscuous naturalism. To do so, I introduce the notion of a promiscuous kind: (...) a kind that is maximally usefully referenced in predictive and explanatory generalisations, none of which are scientific generalisations. I first defend the claim that pain is a promiscuous kind before extending these considerations to everyday mental kinds more generally. I draw on further reflections from both everyday life and contem- porary psychology to make credible the novel suggestion that our everyday theory of our minds is for the explanation and prediction of individuals. Combined with the complex idiosyncrasy of individual minds, this suggested aim of everyday theory gives us reason to think that promiscuity is prevalent among everyday mental kinds. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell developed a conception of the nature of the visual field, and of other sensory fields, as part of his project of explaining the construction of the external world. Wittgenstein's remarks on the visual field in the Tractatus are in part a response to Russell. Wittgenstein, against Russell, analyses the visual field in terms of facts rather than objects. Further, his conception of the field is, in a distinctive sense, depsychologised.

It has been claimed that empirical work in psychology requires the attribution of representational content to perceptual states: that is, the attribution of veridicality conditions to those states. This is a claim that can only be evaluated by the examination of actual empirical research. In this paper I argue that talk of ‘representation’ in at least one area of research in the psychology of perception can be reinterpreted so as to avoid the attribution of veridicality conditions. This area is the (...) study of human capacities to perceive the relative numerosities of collections of objects. (shrink)