This paper discusses the inefficacy problem that arises in contexts of “collective harm.‘ These are contexts in which by acting in a certain sort of way, people collectively cause harm, or fail to prevent it, but no individual act of the relevant sort seems to itself make a difference. The inefficacy problem is that if acting in the relevant way won’t make a difference, it’s unclear why it would be wrong. Each individual can argue, “things will be just as bad (...) whether or not I act in this way, so there’s no point in doing otherwise.‘ The goal of this paper is to give an overview of some of the main responses available to the problem and to highlight central issues that arise for each type of response. In the final section, I explain what I take to be the most promising strategy and discuss the form that this strategy should take. (shrink)

There are many cases in which people collectively cause some morally significant outcome (such as a harmful or beneficial outcome) but no individual act seems to make a difference. The problem in such cases is that it seems each person can argue, ‘it makes no difference whether or not I do X, so I have no reason to do it.’ The challenge is to say where this argument goes wrong. My approach begins from the observation that underlying the problem and (...) motivating the typical responses to it is a standard, intuitive assumption. The assumption is that if an act will not make a difference with respect to an outcome, then it cannot play a sig- nificant, non-superfluous role in bringing that outcome about. In other words, helping to bring about an outcome requires making a difference. I argue that the key to solving the problem is to reject this assumption. I develop an account of what it is to help to bring about an outcome, where this does not require making a difference, and I use this explain our reasons for action in the problem cases. This account also yields an error theory that explains why the standard assumption is so tempting, even though it is mistaken. (shrink)

The predominant view of moral virtue can be traced back to Aristotle. He believed that moral virtue must involve intellectual excellence. To have moral virtue one must have practical wisdom - the ability to deliberate well and to see what is morally relevant in a given context. Julia Driver challenges this classical theory of virtue, arguing that it fails to take into account virtues which do seem to involve ignorance or epistemic defect. Some 'virtues of ignorance' are counterexamples to (...) accounts of virtue which hold that moral virtue must involve practical wisdom. Modesty, for example, is generally considered to be a virtue even though the modest person may be making an inaccurate assessment of his or her accomplishments. Driver argues that we should abandon the highly intellectualist view of virtue and instead adopt a consequentialist perspective which holds that virtue is simply a character trait which systematically produces good consequences. (shrink)

The emerging field of synthetic biology aims to engineer novel biological entities. The envisioned future bio-based economy builds largely on “cell factories”: organisms that have been metabolically engineered to sustainably produce substances for human ends. In this paper, we argue that synthetic biology’s goal of creating efficient production vessels for industrial applications implies a set of ontological assumptions according to which living organisms are machines. Traditionally, a machine is understood as a technological, isolated and controllable production unit consisting of parts. (...) But modified organisms, or hybrids, require us to think beyond the machine paradigm and its associated dichotomies between artificial and natural, organisms and artefacts. We ask: How may we conceptualise hybrids beyond limiting ontological categories? Our main claim is that the hybrids created by synthetic biology should be considered not as machines but as metabolic systems. We shall show how the philosophical account of metabolism can inform an ontology of hybrids that moves beyond what we call the “machine ontology”, considering that metabolism enables thinking beyond the dominant dichotomies and allows us to understand and design lifeforms in a bio-based economy. Thus, the aim of this paper is twofold: first, to develop the philosophical ontology of hybrids, and second, to move synthetic biology beyond the problematically limiting view of hybrids. (shrink)

Julia Annas; XII*—How Basic are Basic Actions?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 78, Issue 1, 1 June 1978, Pages 195–214, https://doi.org/10.1093.

This paper explores a problem for Michael McKenna’s conversation model of moral responsibility that views blame as characteristically part of a conversational exchange. The problem for this model on which this paper focuses is the problem of private blame. Sometimes when we blame we do so without any intention to engage in a communicative exchange. It is argued that McKenna’s model cannot adequately account for private blame.

In this article, the authors examine the circumstances under which scholars can become effective figures of identification in medicine, after whom prizes or institutions are named – and under which circumstances scholars cannot or can no longer fulfill such a role. Trends and changes in professional cultural memory are examined, illustrated by the biographies and receptions of the human geneticist Hans Nachtsheim, the circulatory researcher Rudolf Thauer, the urologist Dora Teleky as well as the dentists Karl Häupl and Elsbeth von (...) Schnizer. This study shows that the evaluation criteria themselves are historically changeable and that gender is an important influencing factor. While formal criteria (e. g., membership in parties and organizations) have traditionally been important evaluation criteria, the authors advocate that actions in research and clinical practice be given even greater attention in the future. (shrink)

This is the text of the Lindley Lecture for 2015 given by Julia Annas, an American philosopher.

This 2001 translation makes one of the most important texts in ancient philosophy available to modern readers. Cicero is increasingly being appreciated as an intelligent and well-educated amateur philosopher, and in this work he presents the major ethical theories of his time in a way designed to get the reader philosophically engaged in the important debates. Raphael Woolf's translation does justice to Cicero's argumentative vigour as well as to the philosophical ideas involved, while Julia Annas's introduction and notes provide (...) a clear and accessible explanation of the philosophical context of the work. This edition will appeal to all readers interested in this central text in ancient philosophy and the history of ethics. (shrink)

Informed by a provocative exhibition at the Louvre curated by the author, _The Severed Head_ unpacks artistic representations of severed heads from the Paleolithic period to the present. Surveying paintings, sculptures, and drawings, Julia Kristeva turns her famed critical eye to a study of the head as symbol and metaphor, as religious object and physical fact, further developing a critical theme in her work--_the power of horror_--and the potential for the face to provide an experience of the sacred. Kristeva (...) considers the head as icon, artifact, and locus of thought, seeking a keener understanding of the violence and desire that drives us to sever, and in some cases keep, such a potent object. Her study stretches all the way back to 6,000 B.C.E., with humans' early decoration and worship of skulls, and follows with the Medusa myth; the mandylion of Laon (a holy relic in which the face of a saint appears on a piece of cloth); the biblical story of John the Baptist and his counterpart, Salome; tales of the guillotine; modern murder mysteries; and even the rhetoric surrounding the fight for and against capital punishment. Kristeva interprets these "capital visions" through the lens of psychoanalysis, drawing infinite connections between their manifestation and sacred experience and very much affirming the possibility of the sacred, even in an era of "faceless" interaction. (shrink)

In his Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, Hegel states that the essential characteristic of spirit is to exhibit the structure of manifestation. This paper argues that for Hegel the structure of manifestation is actualized in habituated bodily actions, which sheds light on Hegel’s understanding of the relation between body and soul. Furthermore, the paper shows that there is an intrinsic relation between Hegel’s theory of habit and his aesthetics. Insofar as it exemplifies the structure of manifestation, habit has an expressive dimension (...) for Hegel, and is therefore essentially complemented by its portrayal in classical works of art by virtue of the specific relation between form and content that such works exhibit. According to the interpretation presented here, Hegel’s philosophy of mind and his philosophy of aesthetics mutually complement and illuminate each other. (shrink)

Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) and Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) are two of the most commonly used health measures to determine resource prioritization and the population burden of disease, respectively. There are different types of problems with the use of QALYs and DALYs for measuring health benefits. Some of these problems have to do with measurement, for example, the weights they ascribe to health states might fail to reflect with exact accuracy the actual well-being or health levels of individuals. But even (...) if these weights represent accurately the well-being levels of individuals, there is room for questioning whether these measures capture everything that we care about in these cases, or whether there are important issues that they leave out, including considerations of fairness or equality. In this regard, the measures have been criticized for treating the aggregation of small benefits as greater than the aggregation of fewer but bigger benefits,1for disregarding fair chances in favor of utility maximization,2and for raising problems when applied in the context of variable population size.3Perhaps one of the most pervasive ethical issues that has been associated with the use of these measures is the fact that they seem to discriminate against disabled people.4Since the measures assume that disabled people have lower well-being and a shorter life span, treating a disabled person’s medical condition contributes less to the maximization of years of life with good health than treating a non-disabled patient’s medical condition. (shrink)

In a highly influential work, List and Pettit (Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents, Oxford University Press, 2011) draw upon the theory of judgement aggregation to offer an argument for the existence of nonreductive group agents; they also suggest that nonreductive group agency is a widespread phenomenon. In this paper, we argue for the following two claims. First, that the axioms they consider cannot naturally be interpreted as either descriptive characterisations or normative constraints upon group judgements, (...) in general. This makes it unclear how the List and Pettit argument is to apply to real world group behaviour. Second, by examining empirical data about how group judgements are made by a powerful international regulatory board, we show how each of the List and Pettit axioms can be violated in ways which are straightforwardly explicable at the level of the individual. This suggests that group agency may best be understood as a pluralistic phenomenon, where close inspection of the dynamics of intragroup deliberation can reveal that what prima facie appears to be a nonreductive group agent is, in fact, reducible. (shrink)

In this paper I analyse how procreative freedom poses a challenge for rule-consequentialism. First, I reconstruct the rule-consequentialist case for procreative freedom. Second, I argue that population scenarios resulting from very low fertility pose a problem for rule-consequentialism since such scenarios cannot secure population growth or even avoid human extinction in the long run. Third, I argue that population scenarios resulting from excessive procreation also pose a problem for rule-consequentialism since they are incompatible with the promotion of optimific consequences in (...) various ways. Were the rule-consequentialist to avoid these types of scenarios, the challenge would consist in doing so while retaining the liberal approach to individual rights and freedoms that made rule-consequentialism an advantageous competitor against moral theories like act-consequentialism. These population scenarios raise more general questions about how rule-consequentialism ought to conceptualise the application of universal rules in the long-term, intergenerational context. This is an important place for inquiry given that rule-consequentialism is originally conceived as a forward-looking theory. (shrink)

En 1966, Rodolfo Walsh viaja al Litoral y escribe una serie de notas para la revista Panorama. Fernando Birri, en 1960, realiza en Santa Fe su documental Tire dié. Según algunos datos, se conjetura que Juan L. Ortiz escribió El Gualeguay durante la década del 60. En estas discursividades literarias y visuales se configuran narrativas e imágenes no solamente del presente de su realización, sino también del pasado y, en gran medida, de lo que devendrá en la región del litoral (...) argentino a partir del registro de una modernidad desigual. Por eso, nos preguntamos: ¿qué tensiones tejen y arrojan entre la modernidad desigual y las formas de exclusión?, ¿de qué modo estas narrativas -documental, poética y periodística- conforman un archivo donde lo estético y lo político no dejan de inscribirse entre sí? Estos son algunos puntos de partida para explorar y poner en relación una visualidad y narratividad de la región, bajo los regímenes de discursividad del archivo de los 60 y desde el enfoque amplio de la geografía cultural. (shrink)

BereitsGleichheitUngleichheitinGerechtigkeitUngerechtigkeit der Antike wird Gerechtigkeit im engen Zusammenhang mit Ungleichheit und Ungerechtigkeit diskutiert. Im Dialog Georgias beispielsweise erläutert Platon, inwiefern StrafeStrafeRechtfertigung, Funktion, Wirksamkeit von Strafe eine vergangene Ungerechtigkeit ausgleicht und dadurch wieder eine harmonische Gleichheit herstellt (Georgias 466a–480e). Auch in seinem Hauptwerk Politeia verteidigt er, dass Gerechtigkeit die Tüchtigkeit der Seele sei und sich Ungerechtigkeit daher niemals lohnen könne.

Teniendo en cuenta las principales objeciones que se le han planteado a la problematización ética de Michel Foucault, en el presente trabajo proponemos reconstruir dos motivos para pensar su dimensión afirmativa: la cultura y el “combate de las formas”. La cultura como objeto de crítica y transformación posible y las _formas_ como relevo histórico de los universales, ideales y trascendentales, son referencias constantes en el pensamiento de Foucault que, recuperadas a la luz de los planteos y aportes teórico-metodológicos de sus (...) últimas indagaciones, permiten reunir la faz crítica de la genealogía con la orientación propositiva del arte de vivir. Planteando la relación entre verdad y poder como _disposición característica de nuestra cultura_ y precisando una constitución _polémica _del _ethos _que enlaza indefectiblemente con las configuraciones de la _vida en común_, indicaremos los aportes e inquietudes que se abren para continuar pensando la problematización ética de Foucault. (shrink)

Individuals with a balanced time perspective, which includes good thoughts about the past, awareness of present constraints and adaptive planning for a positive future, are more likely to report optimal wellbeing. However, people who have had traumas such as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are likely to have less balanced time perspectives and lower overall wellbeing when compared to those with fewer or no ACEs. Time perspective can be improved viatime-travel narrativesthat support people in feeling connected to a wise and loving (...) future version of themselves, an approach that has until now only been provided in counseling contexts. Our team used an iterative inclusive design process to shape a scalable time-travel narrative tool – a responsive and progressive web application calledTime Machine.Among other functionalities, Time Machine allowed people to record and listen to messages as if they were from and to their past and future selves. Using pre-planned as well aspost-hocanalyses, we analyzed quantitative and qualitative data from 96 paid design partners (participants) who were taken through a 26-day pilot study of the technology. Among other effects, the results revealed: (1) high engagement throughout the design process, (2) improvements in self-reported time perspective and overall wellbeing scores that were greater for those using Time Machine during an optional-use period, (3) twice as much improvement in overall wellbeing scores for design partners with high ACEs (16%) versus low ACEs (8%), and (4) feelings of unconditional love apparently mediating the relationship between scores on time perspective and overall wellbeing measures. We discuss the limitations of these results as well as implications for the future role of spiritually informed scalable time-travel narrative technologies in healthcare and wellness. (shrink)

Abstract:Open neural tube defects or myelomeningoceles are a common congenital condition caused by failure of closure of the neural tube early in gestation, leading to a number of neurologic sequelae including paralysis, hindbrain herniation, hydrocephalus and neurogenic bowel and bladder dysfunction. Traditionally, the condition was treated by closure of the defect postnatally but a recently completed randomized controlled trial of prenatal versus postnatal closure demonstrated improved neurologic outcomes in the prenatal closure group. Fetal surgery, or more precisely maternal-fetal surgery, raises (...) a number of ethical issues that we address including who the patient is, informed consent, surgical innovation and equipoise as well maternal assumption of risk. As the procedure becomes more widely adopted into practice, we suggest close monitoring of new fetal surgery centers, in order to ensure that the positive results of the trial are maintained without increased risk to both the mother and fetus. (shrink)

Death is ironic; as the archi-semiotician and first historian, death fixes object and meaning in a semiotic complex, separates non-sensuous meaning from bare physical existence, but thereby exposes meaning to the capriciousness of interpretation and tradition. The pause, however, conserves that which does not happen in repose, yet does not interrupt history, and lets history emerge in a movement in which all determination of meaning is suspended. This essay is written in memory of Werner Hamacher, whose life in writing shaped (...) language around its distance and delay from the fixity of sound and sense, which, as he argued, are the subliminal conditions to every communication, presentation, and form in general: formative limits that separate and conjoin that which is and the surplus of un-actuality and incompletion that accompanies each instant of our intentional lives. (shrink)

In a recent scholarly debate, the Anthropocene concept has been criticized for diverting attention from the political aspects of contemporary environmental crises, not least by way of the long timescales it implies. This article therefore takes on the matter of long-termism as an historical and political phenomenon, by applying a conceptual historical perspective. Examples are drawn from historical studies of forest politics. It is argued that conceptions of the long term, as in all concepts in political language, are historical and (...) therefore problematic to legitimately define conclusively. However, many of the environmental crises looming in our time do indeed call for long-term perspectives. As a solution in accordance with its historical and democratic conceptual character, it is suggested that political long-termism paradoxically can and should be constantly deliberated upon and renewed in the short term. Its conceptual history can then serve two purposes: First, history can offer exempla of how long-termism can be conceptualized and institutionalized in ways that encourage continuous deliberation and reconceptualization. Second, historical conceptualizations of the long term can be drawn upon, both negatively and positively, in this continuous deliberation. (shrink)

Rabbinic tales of drought, disaster, and charismatic holy men illuminate critical questions about power, ethics, and ecology in Jewish late antiquity. Through a sustained reading of the Babylonian Talmud's tractate on fasts in response to drought, this book shows how Bavli Taʿanit challenges Deuteronomy's claim that virtue can assure abundance and that misfortune is an unambiguous sign of divine rebuke. Employing a new method for analyzing lengthy talmudic narratives, Julia Watts Belser traces complex strands of aggadic dialectic to show (...) how Bavli Taʿanit's redactors articulate a strikingly self-critical theological and ethical discourse. Bavli Taʿanit castigates rabbis for misuse of power, exposing the limits of their perception and critiquing prevailing obsessions with social status. But it also celebrates the possibilities of performative perception - the power of an adroit interpreter to transform events in the world and interpret crisis in a way that draws forth blessing. (shrink)

As the COVID-19 pandemic was unfolding, a surge in scams was registered across the globe. While COVID-19 poses higher health risks for older adults, it is unknown whether older adults are also facing higher financial risks as a result of COVID-19 scams. Here, we examined age differences in vulnerability to COVID-19 scams and individual difference measures that might help explain them. A lifespan sample of sixty-eight younger, 79 middle-aged, and 63 older adults recruited through Prolific completed questions and questionnaires online. (...) In a within-subjects design, each participant responded to five COVID-19 solicitations, psychological measures, and demographic questions. Age group comparisons revealed that older adults were marginally less likely to perceive COVID-19 solicitations as genuine than middle-aged adults were. In addition, older adults perceived significantly fewer benefits than both younger and middle-aged adults did and perceived marginally higher risks than younger adults did. Hence, older adults did not exhibit greater vulnerability to COVID-19 scams. Regardless of age, intentions to respond to COVID-19 solicitations were positively predicted by higher levels of educational attainment, being married, past fraud victimization, and higher levels of positive urgency. As expected, stronger genuineness and benefit perceptions positively predicted action intentions, whereas stronger risk perceptions negatively predicted action intentions As such, COVID-19 scam susceptibility appears to be the result of a impulse control issue that is not easily inhibited, not even by past experiences of scam victimization. (shrink)

El objetivo fundamental por el cual las sociedades establecen arreglos institucionales es el de abaratar los costos de transacción. Para alcanzar dicha meta se han ensayado diferentes métodos de diseño que colocan el énfasis principalmente en los sistemas de incentivos dirigidos a estimular un comportamiento de obediencia de las reglas institucionales. Mostraremos por una parte que el punto de vista interno asumido por los usuarios en relación con las instituciones contribuye a bajar los costos de transacción, y por la otra (...) que el mensaje valorativo de la autoridad normativa cumple un papel decisivo en la construcción de tal punto de vista. (shrink)

Dance has traditionally been viewed from a Eurocentric perspective as a mode of self-expression that involves the human body moving through space, performed for the purposes of art, and viewed by an audience. In this Hypothesis and Theory article, we synthesize findings from anthropology, sociology, psychology, dance pedagogy, and neuroscience to propose The Synchronicity Hypothesis of Dance, which states that humans dance to enhance both intra- and inter-brain synchrony. We outline a neurocentric definition of dance, which suggests that dance involves (...) neurobehavioral processes in seven distinct areas including sensory, motor, cognitive, social, emotional, rhythmic, and creative. We explore The Synchronicity Hypothesis of Dance through several avenues. First, we examine evolutionary theories of dance, which suggest that dance drives interpersonal coordination. Second, we examine fundamental movement patterns, which emerge throughout development and are omnipresent across cultures of the world. Third, we examine how each of the seven neurobehaviors increases intra- and inter-brain synchrony. Fourth, we examine the neuroimaging literature on dance to identify the brain regions most involved in and affected by dance. The findings presented here support our hypothesis that we engage in dance for the purpose of intrinsic reward, which as a result of dance-induced increases in neural synchrony, leads to enhanced interpersonal coordination. This hypothesis suggests that dance may be helpful to repattern oscillatory activity, leading to clinical improvements in autism spectrum disorder and other disorders with oscillatory activity impairments. Finally, we offer suggestions for future directions and discuss the idea that our consciousness can be redefined not just as an individual process but as a shared experience that we can positively influence by dancing together. (shrink)