In this paper, I argue that we face a challenge in understanding the relationship between the ‘value-oriented’ and ‘other-oriented’ dimensions of shame. On the one hand, an emphasis on shame's value-oriented dimension leads naturally to ‘The Self-Evaluation View’, an account which faces a challenge in explaining shame's other-oriented dimension. This is liable to push us towards ‘The Social Evaluation View’. However The Social Evaluation View faces the opposite challenge of convincingly accommodating shame's ‘value-oriented’ dimension. After rejecting one attempt to chart (...) a middle course between these extremes, I argue that progress can be made if we reject the widespread assumption that the other-oriented dimension of shame is best understood primarily terms of our concern with the way we appear to others. Instead, I outline an account which treats shame as manifesting our desire primarily for interpersonal connection and which elucidates the property of shamefulness in terms of merited avoidance. (shrink)

How should we understand the special way in which two people are connected when they make eye contact? In this paper, I argue that existing accounts of eye contact —Peacocke’s Reductive Approach and Eilan’s Second Person Approach— are unsatisfactory. In doing so, I make a case for thinking that the source of this dissatisfaction and the path forward can be identified by reflecting on our tendency to describe eye contact on the model of touch. On this basis, I outline a (...) ‘Transactional Approach’ to eye contact. (shrink)

The study examines the employment experience of workers with intellectual disability in the hotel sector in Australia. Through a qualitative case study, we interviewed managers and WWID, and held focus groups with supervisors and colleagues at three hotels. We have used the theoretical framework of corporate social responsibility to investigate HR practices that create an ethical climate which promote authentic work experiences for WWID. The study found that participative work practices provide evidence of how WWID fit in at the workplace. (...) When workers are confronted with work-related anxieties, the pragmatic nature of existential authenticity becomes a reality. Our findings reveal that managing workers ethically can lead to more authentic work experiences. In turn, this may promote social inclusion of WWID and improve their reported well-being. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 709-724, June 2022.

My aim in this paper is to show that the natural idea that humiliation is harmful calls explanation and to argue that the most straightforward ways of responding to this explanatory demand fall short in important ways. I end by considering a line of response which I take to be promising, which appeals to our need, as social animals, for interpersonal connection.

This work is available on its own or as part of the 7 volume set Selected Works of R. D. Laing.

We are social animals that seek to connect with others of our kind. This common thought stands in need of elaboration. In this article, I argue for three theses. First, that we pursue certain forms of communicative interaction for their own sake insofar as they are ways of connecting with another. Second, that interpersonal connection is a metaphysically primitive emotional relation which resists reductive analysis in terms of the states of individuals. And finally, that our desire for interpersonal connection has (...) a strong claim to being explanatorily and normatively prior to our desires for mutual-attachment, interpersonal belonging and approbation. (shrink)

There is a tendency in contemporary jurisprudence to regard political authority and, more particularly, legal intervention in human affairs as having no justification unless it can be defended by what Laing calls the principle of modern liberal autonomy (MLA). According to this principle, if consenting adults want to do something, unless it does specific harm to others here and now, the law has no business intervening. Harm to the self and general harm to society can constitute no justification for legal (...) regulation or prohibition. So pervasive is this understanding of legal intervention in human affairs, that it is common now to encounter arguments in favour of permissive laws on, for example, private drug use, pornography, sexual and reproductive choice, based on the idea that to intervene in these areas would constitute a breach of the liberal ideal. The only alternative to modern liberal autonomy is assumed to be radical oppression, in which the State intervenes in the individual’s life to impose unwarranted measures designed to further its own ends. The legacy of Stalin, Hitler and other modern tyrants has undermined conceptual appeals to the common good. So widespread is this liberal assumption in the Western, English-speaking world that critics of the outlook embodied by MLA are customarily regarded with suspicion and charged with paternalism, narrow-mindedness and intolerance. Laing highlights contradictions inherent in the modern liberal tradition. She argues that there is a certain reliance on the notion of the common good within the natural law tradition that is instructive. According to this view, the common good constitutes a mean between two extremes: on the one hand, contemporary liberalism’s over-insistence on radical individual autonomy and, on the other hand, totalitarianism’s over-emphasis on collective social benefit. There is, I will argue, substantial terrain between the conceptual excesses of modern liberalism and oppressive tyranny that needs to be acknowledged and discussed. (shrink)

The controversial British psychiatrist describes, explores, and reflects on facts and feelings, imaginings and memories, repressions and discoveries, and pains and joys of his life as child and man.

In this paper, the authors address the perceived recent trend of funding and publishing bodies that seem to have taken a regard of qualitative research as a subordinate to, or even a subset of, quantitative research. In this reflection, they pull on insights that Hans-Georg Gadamer offered around the history of the natural and human science bifurcation, ending with a plea that qualitative research needs to be received, appraised, judged, and promoted by different lenses and criteria of value.

This is a series of essays critical of the utilitarian bioethics now dominating contemporary discussion. Analysing questions of moral theory as well as applied ethics this book aims to supply essays on matters as diverse as beginning and end-of-life issues as well as animal rights, the act-omission distinction and the principle of double effect in caring in medical ethics.

A modification of the regular medium-form periodic table is presented in which certain elements are placed in more than one position. H is included at the top of both the alkali metals and the halogens; He is above Be and above Ne. The column of noble gases is duplicated as Groups O and 18. The elements of the second and third periods are duplicated above the transition metals. This arrangement displays more patterns and connections between the elements than are seen (...) in the regular format. It fits more facts and so gives better guidance to useful predictions. (shrink)

Professor Kemp Smith in providing a new edition of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion , embodying all the author’s additions and corrections, has given expression to the perennial interest and fascination which this work has possessed for many minds during the odd one hundred and fifty years since it was first published by Hume’s nephew. The editor himself has performed a great service by contributing an Introduction and a clear and concise summary of the Dialogues , in both of which (...) he expounds his own view as to how Hume’s discussion is to be interpreted. Hume employs three characters—Demea, Philo, and Cleanthes; and. (shrink)

A critic of utilitarianism, in a paper entitled “Innocence and Consequentialism” Laing argues that Singer cannot without contradicting himself reject baby farming (a thought experiment that involves mass-producing deliberately brain damaged children for live birth for the greater good of organ harvesting) and at the same time hold on to his “personism” a term coined by Jenny Teichman to describe his fluctuating (and Laing says, discriminatory) theory of human moral value. His explanation that baby farming undermines attitudes of care and (...) concern for the very young, can be applied to babies and the unborn (non-persons on his view) and contradicts positions that he adopts elsewhere in his work. (shrink)

This article challenges the view most recently expounded by Emily Jackson that ‘decisional privacy’ ought to be respected in the realm of artificial reproduction (AR). On this view, it is considered an unjust infringement of individual liberty for the state to interfere with individual or group freedom artificially to produce a child. It is our contention that a proper evaluation of AR and of the relevance of welfare will be sensitive not only to the rights of ‘commissioning parties’ to AR (...) but also to public policy considerations. We argue that AR has implications for the common good, by involving matters of human reproduction, kinship, race, parenthood and identity. In this paper we challenge presuppositions concerning decisional privacy. We examine the essential commodification of human life implicit in AR and the systematicity that makes this possible. We address the objection that it is an ethically neutral way of having children and consider the problem of ‘existential debt’. After examining objections to the thesis that AR is illegitimate for reasons of public policy and the common good, we return to the issue of decisional privacy in the light of considerations concerning the legitimate role of the state in matters affecting human reproduction. (shrink)

The article discusses questions on the significance of blood relatedness in the context of identity arguments about artificial reproduction (AR). Kinship, origins, and biological connections are significant to human beings. The author explains that family relationships bear on the identity of human beings. Moreover, she emphasizes that once these principles are neglected, it is possible to create people in ways that threaten significant human bonds and alienate people who are naturally related spelling loss, confusion and grief for them.

The Groningen Protocol and contemporary defences of the legalisation of infanticide are predicated on actualism and personism. According to these related ideas, human beings achieve their moral status in virtue of the degree to which they are capable of laying value upon their lives or exhibiting certain qualities, like not being in pain or being desirable to third party family members. This article challenges these notions suggesting that both ideas depend on arbitrary and discriminatory notions of human moral status. Our (...) propensity to sleep, fall unconscious, pass out and so on, demonstrates that we very often exhibit our status as “potential persons.” Our abilities can and do fluctuate. The equal dignity principle, distinguished in turn from both the excesses of vitalism and consequentialism, is analyzed in the context of human rights logic and law. The normalization of non-voluntary euthanasia, via such ad hoc practices as the Groningen Protocol is considered. Substituted ‘consent’ to the euthanasia of infants or others, is scrutinized and the implications of institutionalizing non-voluntary euthanasia in the context of financial, research and political interests are considered. The impact on the medical and legal professions, carers, families and coroners, as well as public attitudes more generally, is discussed. It is suggested that eroding the value of human life carries with it significant destructive and hazardous long-term implications for societies. To elevate some long-term implications whilst ignoring others demonstrates the irrational nature of the effort to institutionalize euthanasia. (shrink)

The recent interest in wisdom in professional health care practice is explored in this article. Key features of wisdom are identified via consideration of certain classical, ancient and modern sources. Common themes are discussed in terms of their contribution to ‘clinical wisdom’ itself and this is reviewed against the nature of contemporary nursing education. The distinctive features of wisdom (recognition of contextual factors, the place of the person and timeliness) may enable their significance for practice to be promoted in more (...) coherent ways in nursing education. Wisdom as practical knowledge (phronesis) is offered as a complementary perspective within the educational preparation and practice of students of nursing. Certain limitations within contemporary UK nursing education are identified that may inhibit development of clinical wisdom. These are: the modularization of programmes in higher education institutions, the division of pastoral and academic support and the relationship between theory and practice. (shrink)

According to tranditional philosophical terminology and to most interpretations of Cartesianism, Descartes is a dualist. This dualism is expressed in his fundamental distinction between two substances—mind and matter—and, though admitted to be full of difficulties and by many to be untenable, it has very generally been regarded as at least a clearly intelligible doctrine, consistently held by Descartes. That this is not so has been shown by Professor Boyce Gibson in his able and careful analysis of Cartesianism. The aim of (...) the present essay is to draw attention to another difficulty that has not been sufficiently noticed; whether it is an actual one or only an apparent one due to a misunderstanding of Descartes is a question that may be left to those who read him differently and who may be able to remove one more charge of inconsistency. The general contention is that Descartes—and this point is conceded in expositions of Descartes—seeks to prove that there are material bodies, that material bodies are necessary for his own account of the physical universe, and that yet his own theory of matter as extension, even combined with motion, makes the existence of bodies impossible and hence any proof of such existence impossible. In fact, the employment of the idea of motion only serves to emphasize the difficulty and inconsistency of the theory. (shrink)

THE question which I am to raise for discussion is one which has long been debated by philosophers, and consequently I consider it doubtful whether anything very new can be said on the matter. But it may be profitable to review once more the present position of the controversy and to have in mind the reasons which at present make the question of interest and of importance.

David Hume , a member of the well-known Border family of Home, was born on April 26, 1711. After a period of preparatory training he matriculated at Edinburgh College in 1723, although he may have entered earlier. His course during this period is obscure; according to his own statement the curriculum was mainly literary; on leaving College he records that his interests lay predominantly in this direction, and, being left to his own choice, he was able to indulge his inclinations. (...) An attempt to train him for a legal career ended in failure; and he continued to live at his ancestral home of Ninewells, to the west of Berwick, for some years, devoting himself. (shrink)

The title of this article might quite well be given the more hackneyed form, Has Kant answered Hume? Much of the discussion pertains to this latter question, but as the aim is also to emphasize some points concerned with Kant himself a deviation in title may be permissible.

No one who is interested in the problem of value and attempts to read through the literature on the subject can fail to be struck by the extraordinary diversity of opinion. Some of this difference of view is traceable to ambiguities in language; there are various terms employed, each of which, of course, may or may not express anyvalid idea—terms like value, values, kinds of value, sorts of things that have value, value-objects, things that have value. The terms value and (...) values are subject to and lead to much confusion, even on the part of those who are aware of the existence of such a danger. Much of the difference may probably be due to two other importantfactors: first, the education and training in earlier years whereby emotional reactions to words instead of intelligent understanding of their meaning and validity are induced, and, second, the continual reliance upon moral experience, which reliance may seem to be necessary, but which may be invalidated by the consideration, generally overlooked and unappraised, that moral, like social, experience might not be what it is if certain views were not entertainedand did not prevail. The latter possibility would put moral and social studies on a plane quite different from that of physical investigations, for the moral and social inquirer would always have to bear in mind that the facts with which he is confronted, and to which he seeks to appeal, may exist to confront him and his fellowmen only in the sense that they arise from the acceptance and effectuation of a belief or theory, and would not be but for the effectuation of the belief or theory. The other factor, that of the influence of education and training upon emotional reactions, is also important in relation to a study of value, for it is necessary to be on guard against confusing reactions to words and reactions to objects, things, or situations. (shrink)

The subject of the present paper is the central conception of a philosophy that has been particularly dominant and influential, and the following remarks are prompted because of difficulties experienced in the attempt to understand that philosophy. The aim of the paper is to point out what seems to be a serious defect in that type of philosophy; but it is even more its aim to emphasize the danger into which philosophy in all its forms may easily fall, and against (...) which it must exercise precautions. (shrink)

It is well known to readers of the Republic that, according to Plato's representation, a casual meeting of several friends develops into a sederunt for the express purpose of finding a solution to the question, what is justice? The question has its origin in the remark of the aged Cephalus, quoting Pindar, that whoever lives a life of justice and holiness, Sweet hope, the nourisher of age, his heart Delighting, with him lives; which most of all Governs the many veering (...) thoughts of man. (shrink)

A consideration of the concept of authority. The term authority derives from the Latin 'auctoritas'. Although often regarded as synonymous with 'potestas' or power, authority is more properly considered power legitimately exercised. Whereas Stalin had the power to kill millions of innocents he did not have the authority to do so. Accordingly, it is often said that the supreme authority is God himself who is both omnipotent and all good. On this view God is the source of the eternal law (...) which is observed both in the fullness of the physical universe and also in the moral universe that governs men and angels. Accordingly the book of Proverbs states that “By me kings reign and lawgivers decree just things” (Prov. 8:15). (shrink)