The problem of two relativistically-moving pointlike particles of constant mass is undertaken in an arbitrary Lorentz frame using the classical Lagrangian mechanics of Stückelberg, Horwitz, and Piron. The particles are assumed to interact at events along their world lines at a common “world time,” an invariant dynamical parameter which is not in general synchronous with the particle proper time. The Lorentz-scalar interaction is assumed to be the Coulomb potential (i.e., the inverse square spacetime potential) of the spacetime event separation. The (...) classical orbit equations are found in 1 + 1 spacetime dimensions in the hyperbolic angle coordinates for the reduced problem. The solutions to the reduced motion in these coordinates are the spacetime generalizations of the nonrelativistic Kepler solutions. and they introduce an invariant eccentricity which is a function of other known constants of the motion for the reduced problem. Solutions compatible with physical scattering are obtained by the assumption that the eccentricity is a given function of the ratio of the particle masses. (shrink)

The classical two-body system with Lorentz-invariant Coulomb work function V = -k/ρ is solved in 3+1 dimensions using the manifestly covariant Hamiltonian mechanics of Stückelberg. Particular solutions for the reduced motion are obtained which correspond to bound attractive, unbound attractive, and repulsive scattering motion. A lack of perihelion precession is found in the bound attractive orbit, and the semiclassical hydrogen spectrum subsequently contains no fine structure corrections. It is argued that this prediction is indicative of the correct classical special relativistic (...) two-body theory. (shrink)

Objective: To survey members of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities and of the Society for Medical Decision Making to elicit the similarities and differences in their reasoning about two clinical cases that involved ethical dilemmas.Cases: Case 1 was that of a patient refusing treatment that a surgeon thought would be beneficial. Case 2 dealt with end-of-life care. The argument was whether intensive treatment should be continued of an unconscious patient with multiorgan failure.Method: Four questions, with structured multiple alternatives, (...) were asked about each case: identified core problems, needed additional information, appropriate next steps and who the decision maker should be.Observations and results: Substantial similarities were noticed between the two groups in identifying the core problems, the information needed and the appropriate next steps. SMDM members gave more weight to outcomes and trade-offs and ASBH members had patient autonomy trump other considerations more strongly. In case 1, more than 60% of ASBH respondents identified the patient alone as the decision maker, whereas members of SMDM were almost evenly divided between having the patient as the solo decision maker or preferring a group of some sort as the decision maker, a significant difference . In case 2, both groups agreed that the question of discontinuing treatment should be discussed with the family and that the family alone should not be the decision maker.Conclusion: Despite distinctively different methods of case analysis and little communication between the two professional communities, many similarities were observed in the actual decisions they reached on the two clinical dilemmas. (shrink)

This chapter aims to direct attention to the political dimension of the social media age. Although current events like the Cambridge Analytica data breach managed to raise awareness for the issue, the systematically organized and orchestrated mechanisms at play still remain oblivious to most. Next to dangerous monopoly-tendencies among the powerful players on the market, reliance on automated algorithms in dealing with content seems to enable large-scale manipulation that is applied for economical and political purposes alike. The successful replacement of (...) traditional parties by movements based on personality cults around marketable young faces like Emmanuel Macron or Austria’s Sebastian Kurz is strongly linked to products and services offered by an industry that simply provides likes and followers for cash. Inspired by Trump’s monopolization of the Twitter-channel, these new political acteurs use the potential of social media for effective message control, allowing them to avoid confrontations with professional journalists. In addition, an extremely active minority of organized agitators relies on the viral potential of the web to strongly influence and dictate public discourse – suggesting a shift from the Spiral of Silence to the dangerous illusion of a Nexus of Noise. (shrink)

The “Goldwater rule,” a policy adopted by the American Psychiatry Association in 1973, prohibits organization members from diagnosing or offering professional opinions regarding the mental health of public figures without both first-hand evaluation and authorization. Initially developed in response to a controversial survey of APA members during the 1964 Presidential election campaign, the ethics rule faced few large scale challenges until the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Since that time, a significant number of psychiatrists have either violated or (...) criticized the rule openly. This paper argues that whatever the initial merits of the rule, the prohibition has since been rendered obsolete by the combined lack of professional consensus supporting the policy, absence of a meaningful enforcement mechanism, and the credible statements of non-APA members in the mental health professions regarding public figures. (shrink)

The rise to power of Donald Trump has been shocking in many ways. One of these was that it disrupted the preexisting consensus that overt racism would be death to a national political campaign. In this paper, I argue that Trump made use of what I call “racial figleaves”—additional utterances that provide just enough cover to give reassurance to voters who are racially resentful but don’t wish to see themselves as racist. These figleaves also, I argue, play a (...) key role in shifting our norms about what counts as racist: they bring it about that something which would previously have been seen as revealing obvious racism is now seen as the sort of thing that a nonracist might say. This gives them tremendous power to corrupt not just our political discourse but our culture more broadly. (shrink)

Research on conspiracy theories has proliferated since 2016, in part due to the US election of President Trump, the COVID-19 pandemic, and increasingly threatening environmental conditions. In the rush to publication given these concerning social consequences, researchers have increasingly treated as definitive a 2016 paper by Michael Wood (Political Psychology, 37(5), 695–705, 2016) that concludes that the phrase “conspiracy theory” has no negative effect upon people’s willingness to endorse a claim. We revisit Wood’s findings and its (re)uptake in the (...) recent literature. Is the label “conspiracy theory” a pejorative? If so, does it sway or affect people’s belief in specific claims of conspiracy (i.e. particular conspiracy theories), or is the effect one that concerns claims of conspiracy more generally (i.e. all conspiracy theories)? Through an examination of the conceptual and methodological scope of Wood’s work and the results of our similar quasi-experimental design, we argue that it is premature to suggest the label “conspiracy theory” has no impact on the believability of a claim, or that it has no rhetorical power. (shrink)

As we await the Second Coming of President Donald Trump, it is important to understand that his conservative Evangelical supporters view him not as a new Christ but as a new Constantine, a guardian of Western Civilization in a crucial period when we face threatened conquest by foreign enemies and infiltrators, Postmodern Neo-Marxism, and Militant Islam Thus he should be seen also as a new Charles Martel. He need not be a Bible-reading pietist to fulfill these roles, so Christians (...) need not be ashamed of him if he isn’t. (shrink)

A brief critique of President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.

Graphical AbstractFunding agencies (and journals) seem to be discriminating against ideas that are contrary to the mainstream, leading to leading to the preferential funding of predictable and safe research over radically new ideas. To remedy this problem a restructuring of the scientific funding system is needed, e.g. by utilizing laymen - together with scientists - to evaluate grant proposals.

This edited collection uses critical theory in order to understand the rise of the Alt-Right and the election of Donald Trump—and, in doing so, to assert the necessity and value of various disciplines within the humanities. While neoliberal mainstream culture has expressed shock at the seemingly expeditious rise of the Alt-Right movement and the outcome of the 2016 United States presidential election, a rich tradition of theory may not only explain the occurrence of this “phenomenon,” but may also chart (...) an alternative understanding of the movement, revealing the persistence of right-wing populism throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Though the humanities have seen themselves undervalued and under attack in recent years, the historical and cultural contextualization of the current moment via theory is a means of reaffirming the value of the humanities in teaching the ever-important and multifaceted skill of critical literacy. This book re-affirms the humanities, particularly the study of literature, theory, and philosophy, through questions such as how the humanities can help us understand the here and now. (shrink)

People -- Who was Huet? -- The censura : why and when? -- The birth of skepticism -- Malebranche's surprising silence -- The downfall of cartesianism -- Kinds -- Huet a cartesian? -- Descartes and skepticism : the standard interpretation -- Descartes and skepticism : the texts -- Thoughts -- The cogito : an inference? -- The transparency of mind -- The cogito as pragmatic tautology -- Doubts -- The reality of doubt -- The generation of doubt -- The response (...) to doubt -- Rules -- The criterion of truth -- The trump argument -- Circles -- The simple circularity of the meditations -- The inner circle(s) -- Gods -- Gassendist influences -- The objections of objections -- The rejection of intentionality -- Virtues -- Descartes's voice -- Betting the family farm -- The propagation of light -- The heart-beat -- The moving earth -- Faith and reason -- Descartes as methodological academic skeptic. (shrink)

Philosophy and Christianity make truth claims about many of the same things. They both claim to provide answers to the deep questions of life. But how are they related to one another? Four Views on Christianity and Philosophy introduces readers to four predominant views on the relationship between philosophy and the Christian faith and their implications for life. Each author identifies the propositional relation between philosophy and Christianity along with a section devoted to the implications for living a life devoted (...) to the pursuit of wisdom. -/- The contributors and views include: -/- Graham Oppy—Conflict: Philosophy Trumps Christianity K. Scott Oliphint—Covenant: Christianity Trumps Philosophy Timothy McGrew—Convergence: Philosophy Confirms Christianity Paul Moser—Conformation: Philosophy Reconceived Under Christianity. (shrink)

abstract This paper examines, from a philosophical point of view, the ethics of the role of the family and the deceased in decisions about organ retrieval. The paper asks: Who, out of the individual and the family, should have the ultimate power to donate or withhold organs? On the side of respecting the wishes of the deceased individual, the paper considers and rejects arguments by analogy with bequest and from posthumous bodily integrity. It develops an argument for posthumous autonomy based (...) on the liberal idea of self‐development and argues that this establishes a right of veto over donation. It claims, however, that whether the family's power to veto would conflict with posthumous autonomy rights depends on how it comes about. On the side of respecting the family's wishes, the paper first considers an argument from family distress. This supports a contingent, non‐rights‐based reason for the family's power that is trumped by the deceased's rights. It then outlines and criticises an argument based on family autonomy. The conclusion is that the individual has the right to veto the family's wish to donate and that, while the family has no right to veto the individual's wishes to donate, it can legitimately acquire this power and has done so in practice. (shrink)

The normative significance of proximity in ethics is considered, giving an overview of the contemporary debates about proximity in ethics and focusing on three main perspectives that take proximity to have normative significance. The first perspective is represented by meta-ethical positions, where a basic moral claim is said to originate from an irreducible, particular and unique otherness that shows up in human vulnerability. The second perspective presents a psychologically and philosophically based analysis of human emotions, which is taken to form (...) a basis for rudimentary moral sensitivity and care. The third version of an ethics of proximity claims that personal relationships and partiality overrride impartialist and universalist ethical considerations. On the basis of this analysis, the sources of normativity and the essence of proximity as a normative consideration are elaborated. Finally, the relevance of an ethics of proximity to professional ethics in healthcare is discussed. From an ethics of proximity, it might be argued that institutions must attempt to organise medical care and nursing care so that a certain partiality and patient-centred care might be favoured and trump distributivist considerations of justice in healthcare. (shrink)

This book analyzes for the first time in English the ethical theory that underpins Qur’anic legislation by providing a classification of specific verses in which Islam’s holy book discusses moral issues. The principal purpose of this book is to demonstrate the ways in which the Qur’an theoretically and practically provides the moral code to which Muslims around the world adhere. The author divides his analysis into a survey of Qur’anic attitudes towards the basic ethical issues of obligation and responsibility, issues (...) of moral psychology such as motivation and intention, as well as matters of social ethics such as the function of law in society. He then explores the meanings of individual morality, morality within the family and civil society, and the relationship of morality to the idea of the state. (shrink)

This article employs an intersectional analysis of ethical discourse guiding the US context in the era of Trump. Illustrating the viability of intersectionality for the broader utility of Christian social ethics, this essay explores the contemporary development of surreality and sub-rosa morality indicative of the current political situation in the United States in the wake of Donald Trump’s political ascendancy from the reality TV boardroom of The Apprentice to the Oval Office of the White House. Faced with the (...) escalating nature of lies and deception emanating from the Trump administration, this article provides the moral rationale for civil disobedience as well as suggesting prescriptions for a redemptive ethic intended to remedy the legitimation crises which have become the defining ethos of our time. (shrink)

When President Donald Trump honored radio host Rush Limbaugh with the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the State of the Union Address in 2020, nearly everyone knew why this was happening. A rad...

My aim in this paper is to suggest that intentions are, as G. E. M. Anscombe puts it, not exclusively “private and interior” act-descriptions that agents alone determine. Rather, I argue that the true intention of an action is frequently constrained, and sometimes even determined, by the intersubjective and retrospective view of an action. I begin by offering an interpretation of Hegel’s account of intention in The Philosophy of Right—an interpretation that fits well with work by Charles Taylor and Michael (...) Quante, but not with a recent paper by Arto Laitinen. Next I offer examples that support the view—consistent with my reading of Hegel—that sometimes the intersubjective and retrospective account of an action trumps the agent’s prior subjective act-description. Finally, I suggest that the Hegelian view I sketch might be taken as a kind of externalism about intentions, on the order of externalism about epistemic justification. (shrink)

In the present article, I offer a new reading of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, specifically her argument that ideologies such as racism engender totalitarianism when the lonely and disenfranchised laborers of modern society develop a pathological fixation on formal logic, which I term “logomania.” That is, such logical deductions, from horrifically false premises, are the closest thing to thinking that individuals can engage in after their psyches, relationships, and communities have broken down. And it is only thus that (...) totalitarianism can achieve power, since it offers at least some form of connectedness and meaning, regardless how terrifying and violent. The danger persists, clearly, with the resurgence of the far Right, including in the extraordinary regime of Trump in the United States. From this I conclude that, along with the admirable calls to fight loneliness and rebuild our communities, we should also supplement all formal logical instruction and community education with instruction in creative thinking (including aesthetics), thereby discouraging the monomaniac reliance on formal logic as inadvertent weapon of totalitarianism. (shrink)

Restless Ideas is a lively new textbook of contemporary social theory that speaks directly to the anxious age in which we live today. In addition to providing a highly readable guided tour of major social theories from the mid-20th to the early 21st century, this book is full of dynamic examples that show how these theories may be used to deepen our understanding of current events and of our own life experiences. The emergence of demagogic political leaders like Donald (...) class='Hi'>Trump in the USA, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey; the rise of religious fundamentalism, terrorism, and political populism; the digital echo-chamber of social media; and the underlying causes of Brexit are only some of the many current social issues that can be framed through contemporary social theories. Similarly, the politics of sexual, racial and ethnic minorities can be analyzed through the prism of theoretical perspectives such as queer theory, standpoint and intersectional theory, postcolonial theory and critical race theory, while the ongoing struggles for gender equality and gender justice can usefully be examined through the generational perspectives of feminist theories. This book sets the stage with a critical discussion of the loaded history of the social theory canon and makes the argument that there has never been a better time than the present to broaden our understanding of our shared global heritage of social theory, to include some of the formerly excluded classics of past social thinkers, and to open the doors to current social thinkers theorizing from the margins. The book traces the modern roots of contemporary social theory back to the works of the early structural functionalists, systems theorists, conflict theorists, symbolic interactionists, ethnomethodologists and sociobiologists, building on and at times inverting the canon with the critical advancements to social theory. Later chapters focus on the current influence of structuration theory, third wave critical theory, postmodernism and poststructuralism, critical race theory, postcolonialism, liquid and late modernity theories, and globalization theories. These perspectives include the works of contemporary social theorists such as Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Juliet Mitchell, Dorothy Smith, Judith Butler, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Gayatri Spivak, Homi K. Bhabha, Zygmunt Bauman, Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser, Manuel Castells and Ulrich Beck. The underlying premise - and the promise - of this book is that social theory has the power to provide us with the skills for more informed observation, analysis, and empathic understanding of social behavior and social interaction. In a word: the value of social theory may be seen in how it can enhance social literacy - by deepening our understanding of the world around us, and by empowering us to become practical theorists in our own lives. (shrink)

In this paper, I plan to show that the use of a specific population concept—Millstein’s Causal Interactionist Population Concept (CIPC)—has interesting and counter-intuitive ramifications for discussions of the reality of biological race in human beings. These peculiar ramifications apply to human beings writ large and to individuals. While this in and of itself may not be problematic, I plan to show that the ramifications that follow from applying Millstein’s CIPC to human beings complicates specific biological racial realist accounts—naïve or otherwise. (...) I conclude with the notion that even if biological races do exist—by fulfilling all of the criteria needed for Millstein’s population concept (which, given particular worries raised by Gannett (Synthese 177:363–385, 2010), and Winther and Kaplan (Theoria 60:54–80, 2013) may not)—the lower-bound limit for the scope of biological racial realism is at the level of populations, and as such they cannot say anything about whether or not individual organisms themselves have races. (shrink)

This text explores how human beings construe experience: experience as a resource, as a potential for understanding, representing and acting on reality.

Written both for general readers and college students, Dialogues on Climate Justice provides an engaging philosophical introduction to climate justice, and should be of interest to anyone wanting to think seriously about the climate crisis. -/- The story follows the life and conversations of Hope, a fictional protagonist whose life is shaped by a terrifyingly real problem: climate change. From the election of Donald Trump in 2016 until the 2060s, the book documents Hope’s discussions with a diverse cast of (...) characters. As she ages, her conversations move from establishing the nature of the problem, to engaging with climate skepticism, to exploring her own climate responsibilities, through managing contentious international negotiations, to considering big technological fixes, and finally, as an older woman, to reflecting with her granddaughter on what one generation owes another. Following a philosophical tradition established by Plato more than two thousand years ago, these dialogues are not only philosophically substantive and carefully argued, but also distinctly human. The differing perspectives on display mirror those involved in real-world climate dialogues going on today. (shrink)

On January, 27, 2017, U.S. President Donald J. Trump issued Executive Order 13769 on immigration and travel, which restricted entry into the U.S. of the citizens of seven primarily Muslim countries. Many academics reacted with outrage, including me and other members of the Academy of Management, of which I was President at the time. Some scholarly associations condemned EO 13769 as immoral, but the AOM did not immediately issue such a condemnation because the AOM’s Constitution included a policy of (...) no-political-stands and a principle that nobody, including the AOM President, could represent personal views as those of the organization. Within a few weeks, the AOM Constitution was changed, and in October, 2017, the AOM joined other associations in issuing a condemnation. An article was published in this journal on this situation that was subsequently amended through a published Correction, but the Correction only partially addressed the problems in the original. The main contribution of this commentary is to take up the invitation in Tsoukas to examine the case for insights on theoretical and conceptual questions raised in the literature on prototypicality and moral imagination. It also briefly outlines the most significant omitted errors of fact in Tsoukas that were not corrected in Tsoukas, and describes the most important methodological problems in Tsoukas. The conclusion suggests that the complex, nuanced, and evolving interactions that unfolded at the AOM are not fully addressed theoretically or conceptually in this literature. (shrink)

Our cultural disagreements can often be anticipated, negotiated and resolved using shared methods of moral reasoning. This claim is incompatible with any extreme version of communitarianism or strong ethical relativism, which hold that one's culture is the final arbiter of good, bad, right and wrong, or that the rights of the community should trump individual rights within that community. This view is discussed and found to be implausible using the example of common grounds for responding to different cultural views (...) about being truthful in medical practice. Its implausibility stems from difficulties individuating cultures, and accounting for intercultural goals, values and methods. Given our increasingly diverse populations, problems arise as clinicians from one culture try to care respectfully and compassionately for people from other groups. Yet working from shared values and goals, we can use some bridging methods such as discussing grim news in the third person. Claims that something is a cultural belief or attitude, moreover, cannot always be taken at face value. Various meanings of ‘multiculturalism’ are distinguished. (shrink)

Recognized in his day as a man of letters equaling Rousseau and Voltaire in France and rivaling Samuel Johnson, David Hume passed from favor in the Victorian age--his work, it seemed, did not pursue Truth but rather indulged in popularization. Although Hume is once more considered as one of the greatest British philosophers, scholars now tend to focus on his thought rather than his writing. To round out our understanding of Hume, M. A. Box in this book charts the interrelated (...) development of Hume's literary ambitions, theories of style, and compositional practice from his Treatise in 1739 through the Enquiries. In so doing, Box makes the case for Hume's career-long concern with the presentational modes of reaching an audience for his philosophical writings. Hume reacted to the popular failure of his masterpiece, A Treatise of Human Nature, Box suggests, by self-consciously exploring strategies in his subsequent works for agreeably bringing his readership to participate in the act of philosophizing. Combining a sensitive grasp of the ways Restoration period and eighteenth-century writers conceived the relations between rhetoric and philosophy with sound readings of particular texts, Box shows how Hume's literary concerns went beyond matters of style to involve persona, structure, and doctrine. While this book helps explain long-standing ambiguities surrounding Hume, especially by pointing out the tension between his created persona and his own voice, it also serves as an excellent introduction to his philosophy. (shrink)

Metabolism is a criterion of life. Three senses are distinguished. The weakest allows strong A-Life: virtual creatures having physical existence in computer electronics, but not bodies, are classes as 'alive'. The second excludes strong A-Life but allows that some non-biochemical A-Life robots could be classed as alive. The third, which stresses the body's self-production by energy budgeting and self-equilibrating energy exchanges of some (necessary) complexity, excludes both strong A-Life and living non-biochemical robots.

The study presents the broad outlines for a relationalist interpretation of the Indian epistemological doctrine svataḥ prāmāṇya. Due to the inadequacy of the main western interpretations thereof, the paper’s approach can be considered an inference to the best explanation. Its main part is devoted to the typologization of various epistemological doctrines based on the svataḥ prāmāṇya principle in terms of strong and weak disjunctivism. Three paradigm cases of strong disjunctivism and a special variety of weak disjunctivism have thus been identified (...) in Indian epistemology, which allowed to draw a conclusion that strong disjunctivism constituted one of its general paradigms. (shrink)