The article uses the 2010 political success of the Tea Party phenomenon as a jumping-off point to examine a number of ideological tropes and rhetorical devices in American politics. It argues that the political language of the Tea Party is not – as is often assumed – empty moralizing at the expense of intellectual depth, but rather draws on a wide variety of American political and intellectual themes and traditions. The article uses the campaign literature and polemic of key Tea (...) Party affiliates – Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell, Glenn Beck, Ron Paul – as entry points to discuss the movement’s political strategies and interpretation of the role of government, individual liberty, American exceptionalism, constitutionalism, the free market, and the common people. In placing these discussions in their historical and intellectual context, the article argues for taking the Tea Party’s political message seriously, not least as a reflection of prevalent democratic concerns and frustrations with the American political system in its current incarnation. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

Background: In modern society, death has become ‘forbidden’ fed by the medical technology to conquer death. The technological paradigm is challenged by a social-liberal political ideology in postmodern Western societies. The question raised in this study was as follows: Which arguments, attitudes, values and paradoxes between modern and postmodern tendencies concerning treatment and care of older persons with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator appear in the literature? Aims: The aim of this study was to describe and interpret how the field of (...) tension concerning older persons with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator – especially end-of-life issues – has been expressed in the literature throughout the last decade. Methods: Paul Ricoeur’s reflexive interpretive approach was used to extract the meaningful content of the literature involving qualitative, quantitative and normative literature. Analysis and interpretation involved naive reading, structural analysis and critical interpretation. Ethical considerations: The investigation complied with the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki. Findings and discussions: The unifying theme was ‘Normativity under change’. The sub-themes were ‘Death has become legitimate’, ‘The technological imperative is challenged’ and ‘Patients and healthcare professionals need to talk about end-of-life issues’. There seems to be a considerable distance between the normative approach of how practice ought to be and findings in empirical studies. Conclusion: Modern as well as postmodern attitudes and perceptions illustrate contradictory tendencies regarding deactivation of the implantable cardioverter defibrillator and replacement of the implantable cardioverter defibrillator in older persons nearing the end of life. The tendencies challenge each other in a struggle to gain position. On the other hand, they can also complement each other because professionalism and health professional expertise cannot stand alone when the patient’s life is at stake but must be unfolded in an alliance with the patient who needs to be understood and accepted in his vulnerability. (shrink)

This commentary proceeds as follows. First, it is argued from both ethical and legal perspectives through an analysis of Court precedents that Etzioni’s has improperly developed a too narrow First Amendment interpretation and conclusion that Apple should comply with the FBI’s demand to provide the FBI with a key to open iPhones. That is, broad First Amendment considerations and not solely narrow First Amendment “compelled speech” or only Fourth Amendment privacy issues are offered and analyzed from both ethical and legal (...) perspectives. A key point here is that broad First Amendment considerations protect, with exceptions, political and ethical discretion space for “Press” organizations to exercise, or not, ethical responsibilities, including rights to publish or not publish information and opinions, rather than compliance with government orders to publish or not publish. Further, Court cases are discussed from both legal and ethical perspectives where the Courts have established that social media organizations such as Facebook and Twitter do and should have broad First Amendment protection of free expression and peaceful assembly as traditional media such as newspapers have. It is suggested that Apple can and should be considered a social media organization. In addition, special First Amendment protection and limitations concerning national security are analyzed. Second, it is suggested that Etzioni’s point that Apple protected its clients soley for “business profitability” reasons is also a too narrow interpretation since there are more complex, mixed, and combined ethical and political-economic reasons for protecting clients and First Amendment protections. Third, the philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s ethics process responsibility framework concerning relationships between ethics and law and the need for an ethics responsibility rather than a compliance approach, which is similar to Brandeis’ legal ethics approach, is compared with and offered as an alternative to Etzioni’s compliance based “Liberal communitarian” approach. It is suggested that the difference between the Rocoeur and Etzioni approaches is similar to the difference between compliance and ethics responsibility process programs in organizations. (shrink)

In one of his more recent works, Paul Ricoeur attempts to re-instate the philosophical discussion of memory at the very center of a more general discourse on human existence. In his exposition, Ricoeur relies upon what he himself characterizes as a phenomenology of memory. It is the aim of the present article to supplement the phenomenological account of memory discussed by Ricoeur with a hermeneutics of memory conscious of its own limitations. Such a hermeneutical supplement would not only be (...) of complementary value but also provoke a rethinking of the relation between key concepts in the western discourse on memory, such as image, imprint, and trace. In this regard, the proposed hermeneutical reconfiguration of memory exceeds its own limitations and overflows into an investigation of the primordial passive and past ground, which motivates and allows the hermeneutical activity in the first place. Following the analyses of Emmanuel Lévinas, I will argue that this immemorial past must be conceived in terms of a responsibility that cannot be fulfilled. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Pictures of Music Education by Estelle R. JorgensenPaul WoodfordEstelle R. Jorgensen, Pictures of Music Education. Indiana University Press, 2011Estelle Jorgensen has long been a mainstay of the philosophy of the music education community, having served as founding chair of the Philosophy of Music Education Special Research Interest Group of the National Association of Music Educators (formerly the Music Educators National Conference) and founding co-chair of the International Society (...) for the Philosophy of Music Education along with Frede V. Nielsen whose work is the focus of this special issue. She remains editor of the Philosophy of Music Education Review, one of the premiere professional journals in the field of music education, and general editor of the Indiana University Press book series Counterpoints: Music and Education, which has published several of her books, including the current one, Pictures of Music Education (2011), that is the subject of this review. Over the course of her career, she has also contributed many chapters to other leading professional books and to the success of international symposia as host and frequent keynote speaker. One could easily continue to enumerate Jorgensen’s many contributions to the profession, but owing to lack of space it will suffice to simply observe that the field of music education would not be what it is today had it not been for her leadership, mentorship, and commitment to building a community of scholars. It is thus a pleasure to have been invited to review the aforementioned book, which [End Page 209] ventures into “the ground between metaphor and model,” the tension between the figurative and literal, to define music education as fundamentally imaginative and open-ended.1Among the advantages of conceiving of the nature of music education as involving a dialectical tension between various metaphors and derived models, Jorgensen recounts, is that the former, because figurative, evocative, and overlapping, allow for the kinds and degrees of ambiguity and slippage that are necessary for the exercise of imagination leading to more open and productive conversation about ideas. Models, on the other hand, are by definition more literal and thus more subject to direct criticism because intended to represent reality in ways that can be empirically tested through application to practice. Indeed, models make systematic assessment and critique of ideas possible. As Jorgensen continues, models serve to simplify “difficult ideas in terms that can be readily grasped, studied, and tested,” which is particularly important to the credibility of the music teaching profession in the eyes of today’s politicians and the public.2 Nevertheless, and for the obvious reason that what Jorgensen refers to as metaphoric models are derived from metaphors and thus bear some similarity, their boundaries can be “fuzzy.”3 As already suggested, it is here, in the fertile ground between metaphor and model, that Jorgensen thinks the most creative and productive thinking about music education philosophy and practice can occur as scholars and teachers recognize and grapple with, and perhaps celebrate, the various tensions and paradoxes found therein. This approach is intended by her as an alternative to the either/or grand narratives that have in the past stifled conversation by reducing philosophy, research, and pedagogy to a search for “the ‘one’ … true or best way, or ‘high road’ to music education.”4 Jorgensen’s own purpose is more modest, and potentially more liberating, which is to open “other fruitful avenues for understanding the ways in which people come to know music.”5The book consists of fourteen chapters in all, each one, with the exception of the introductory and concluding ones, dedicated to a specific metaphor and its chosen derived model that has been “systematically teased out” before being analyzed for its potential strengths and weaknesses when applied to music education.6 Owing to limited space, it is not practical here to address all of the metaphors and models that Jorgensen presents for the reader’s consideration, but it behooves me to provide a short list in order to facilitate discussion of the overall aims of the book. They are: boutique and consumption; village and community; artist and apprenticeship; revolutionary and transgression; factory and production; garden and growth; therapist and healing; court and... (shrink)

The Polymath Project is an online collaborative enterprise that was initiated in 2009, when Timothy Gowers asked whether and how groups could work together to solve mathematical problems that “do not naturally split up into a vast number of subtasks.” Gowers proposed to answer this question himself by actually trying to set up such a collaboration, based on interactions taking place in the comment-threads of a series of posts on a WordPress blog. Hence, the first project officially started in early (...) 2009, to be proclaimed successful only 6 weeks later (Gowers and Nielsen 2009). From its inception until April 2018, 15 more Polymath problems (and a handful of smaller or related ones) have been launched. These projects have attracted attention from different scholarly communities, including the philosophy of mathematical practices, from the perspective of which the Polymath Project can be seen as a vast repository of mathematics in action. This chapter continues previous work by its authors on the topic in question and topics related. More specifically, for the purposes of this volume, it is our aim to both summarize and expand upon these earlier contributions. The starting point is the above observation that in the past decade, the issue of “massively collaborative mathematics” (to be qualified below) has drawn quite some attention. However, does it also warrant intensive philosophical attention in particular? For, as exciting as these developments might be from mathematical and other points of view, the enhanced possibilities that have come with it do not per se give rise to any philosophical import. In Van Bendegem (2011), one of us has indeed tentatively argued for the philosophical relevance of these new dynamics of proof construction flowing from the wide availability and efficiency of Internet technology. We shall below briefly rehearse and update the argument given there. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:388 BOOK REVIEWS Nielsen's essays. The development of such notions need not be a defense of religion. It may weU be that passions elicited and developed in some religious beliefs are not to be encouraged. (This is part of Hume's argument in The Natural History of ReUgion.) The chief shortcoming of Nielsen in this area is his apparent inability to recognize any form of religious interest other (...) than a speculative, intellectual interest in an explanation of the world's existence. Again, in view of his profes!!ed intimate knowledge of Kierkegaard, this is a puzzling shortcoming. In the volume's closing peroration, Nielsen pronounces the demise of the philosophy of religion. Its issues-the truth, justifiability, and coherence of religious beliefs (his list)-have been.settled: negative on one or more counts. What needs to happen next is, he says, an examination of religions as human phenomena and of the needs expressed through them. This he regards as a new agenda. But, if our focus on the issues is broader than Nielsen's, we can recognize that these studies (he mentions Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Weber, Durkheim, and Fromm} are a part of the philosophy of religion. From a perspective broadened in this and other dimensions, it appears that the issues in philosophy of religiontruth, justifiability, and coherence-are not settled. Nor are they boring. H endriw Oollege, Oonway, Arkansas JOHN CHURCHILL The Architecture of Religion: A Theoretical Essay. By PAUL WIEBE. San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1984. Pp. 153; index. The Architecture of Religion is a brave book. Not only does the author outline the essential structure (the "architecture") of religion, he also defines the essential task of the modern age, traces the general contours of true religion, and suggests a corresponding design for the study of religion, properly conceived. In fact, he could easily be criticized for trying to do too much, especially in a first book. But, in this reviewer's opinion, he should not be criticized on these grounds. There should be a place in academic life for addressing life's most serious concerns in bold new ways, even if the results are only provisional, and the publisher is to be commended for bringing Paul Wiebe's attempt to construct a theory of religion to a general audience. None of this means, of course, that the theory itself should not be criticized. That is what every theorist expects, and Wiebe is no exception. He begins by telling us that religion is "that basic human reality in BOOK REVIEWS 889 which humans master what they judge to be the one profound ill by confronting this ill with a good just as profound" (p. 29). Presumably, everyone has an interest in profound matters in which goods and ills are conceptualized and drawn into focus, and to this extent everyone is basically religious, no matter what he regards as life's greatest good. This idea has a Tillichian ring, which is not surprising given the author's background. Yet Wiebe criticizes Tillich for using the descriptive concept of ultimate concern in a normative way, judging alien religions as idolatrous faiths and claims that his own central concept of profound interest is purely formal and perfectly neutral, being altogether free of the " hermeneutical imperialism " which mars Tillich's account. In view of the fact that Wiebe uses his theory to discount traditional authorities in religion and to outline the shapes of true religion, this promise of neutrality seems overblown. Maybe the critical edge of his theory comes from other aspects of the theory, not from the concept of a profound interest-but then why couldn't the same be said of Tillich7 In any cruse, Wiebe follows Tillich in supposing that all people are religious. "No human life,'' he says, "is ever without religion" (p. 28). But common sense deserves a word here. Surely there is a difference between people whose interests are scattered and ever changing and people whose lives are ruled by dominant religious concerns. And surely there is a difference between one who believes that life's ills have a (religious) remedy and one who believes that there are no remedies at all. Such differences... (shrink)

Intellectual engineering movements in early 20th century America – including scientific management, the progressive engineering platform, and technocracy – have received a great deal of attention from historians. Contemporaneous with these American movements, a British engineer was also developing a system of social and economic reform: the engineer was Major Clifford Hugh Douglas and the reforms would form the foundations of the Social Credit philosophy. While Social Credit has been studied extensively as a political and economic system, little consideration has (...) been given to the influence of Douglas’ engineering career on his ideology or to the relationship between Douglas and the American engineering reformists. This paper remedies this lacuna by analyzing Douglas’ proposed reforms in an engineering context. It is argued that the set of reforms proposed by Douglas in the final years of the First World War was an engineer’s view of the economic re-organization necessary for the betterment of the lower classes, the alleviation of scarcity, and the loosening of the noose which the existing financial system held around the neck of productive industry. Developed contemporaneously with, but ideologically independent from, the American intellectual engineering movements, Douglas’ reforms represent a technical response to the ills of World War I British society. It is concluded that Douglas’ engineering training and experience was central to his reform platform. (shrink)

Essays on atheism by Kurt Baier, John Dewey, Paul Edwards, Antony Flew, Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, Sidney Hook, Walter Kaufmann, Corliss Lamont, Wallace I. Matson, H.J. McCloskey, Ernest Nagel, Kai Nielsen, Richard Robinson, Bertrand Russell, and Michael Scriven.

For two ideally rational agents, does learning a finite amount of shared evidence necessitate agreement? No. But does it at least guard against belief polarization, the case in which their opinions get further apart? No. OK, but are rational agents guaranteed to avoid polarization if they have access to an infinite, increasing stream of shared evidence? No.

Prioritarianism pertains to the generic idea that it matters more to benefit people, the worse off they are, and while prioritarianism is not uncontroversial, it is considered a generally plausible and widely shared distributive principle often applied to healthcare prioritisation. In this paper, I identify social justice prioritarianism, severity prioritarianism and age-weighted prioritarianism as three different interpretations of the general prioritarian idea and discuss them in light of the effect of pandemic consequences on healthcare priority setting. On this analysis, the (...) paper arrives at the following three conclusions: that we have strong prioritarian reasons for special concern about the vulnerable and socially disadvantaged in reference to pandemic effects, that severity of illness is an important factor in identifying the worse off in priority setting but that this must not over-ride the special priority to the socially disadvantaged and that the maximisation rationale of the age-weighted view runs against the core prioritarian idea, and the age-weighted prioritarianism is thus unfitting as a prioritarian response to the COVID-19 case. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Pettigrew reports a generalization of the celebrated accuracy-dominance theorem due to Predd et al., but Pettigrew’s proof is incorrect. I will explain the mistakes and provide a correct proof.

[This essay originally appeared in the Journal of Value Inquiry, vol. 6 (1972), pp. 144-157.] I In recent years the concept of a point of view has come to play an important role in philosophical ethics. Writers such as Kurt Baier, William Frankena, Paul Taylor, Kai Nielsen, G.J. Warnock, and J.O. Urmson1 have all urged a view of the nature of morality according to which, in making a moral judgment, what a person is doing is expressing a preference (...) from within a certain point of view. Different accounts are given of just how “the moral point of view” is to be distinguished from other points of view,2 but most of these writers – Baier, Frankena, Nielsen, and Warnock – say that it is distinguished at least in part by the fact that anyone taking this point of view is thereby committing himself to the impartial promotion of “the interests of everyone alike,” where no one’s interests (including those of the agent himself) are given more importance than anyone else’s interests. On this view, moral principles are easily and naturally contrasted with principles of prudence; the egoist, by definition, has no moral principles since he does not care about promoting “the interests of everyone alike.” As an egoist, he is only.. (shrink)

This essay has two aims. The first is to correct an increasingly popular way of misunderstanding Belot's Orgulity Argument. The Orgulity Argument charges Bayesianism with defect as a normative epistemology. For concreteness, our argument focuses on Cisewski et al.'s recent rejoinder to Belot. The conditions that underwrite their version of the argument are too strong and Belot does not endorse them on our reading. A more compelling version of the Orgulity Argument than Cisewski et al. present is available, however---a point (...) that we make by drawing an analogy with de Finetti's argument against mandating countable additivity. Having presented the best version of the Orgulity Argument, our second aim is to develop a reply to it. We extend Elga's idea of appealing to finitely additive probability to show that the challenge posed by the Orgulity Argument can be met. (shrink)

This article identifies value‐satiability sufficientarianism as a distinctive version of the sufficiency view, which has been ignored in the literature on distributive justice. This is unfortunate because value‐satiability sufficientarianism is much better equipped than alternative sufficiency views to cope with the standard objections against sufficiency. Most often, sufficientarianism refers to satiability as a feature of moral principles and reasons. But value‐satiability sufficientarianism also invokes satiability in the space of value‐theory, as it determines the sufficiency threshold at the point where justice‐relevant (...) values have been completely fulfilled. The article gives examples of how this view is widely apparent in the literature, and it provides some reasons in its favour. It then presents the two standard objections against sufficientarianism – the threshold objection and the indifference objection – and argues that these critiques do not apply to value‐satiability sufficientarianism. The general argument of the article therefore proves sufficientarianism more difficult to refute than is commonly credited. (shrink)

This paper discusses limitarianism in light of three popular objections to the redistribution of extreme wealth: (i) that such redistribution legitimizes envy, which is a morally objectionable attitude; (ii) that it disincentivizes the wealthy to invest and work, leading to a diminished social product, and, thereby, making everyone worse-off; and (iii) that it undercuts the pursuit and achievement of human excellence by depriving successful people of resources through which they may otherwise excel. We argue that these objections fail to undermine (...) limitarianism. An elaborated defence against them, rather, reveals how the Standard Defence of limitarianism may be expanded and strengthened by relying explicitly on the importance of preventing a society of envy, avoiding harm to non-rich citizens, and ensuring that humans are given the opportunities to excel in ways that go beyond those that allow for the amassment of wealth. (shrink)

Telic sufficientarianism is the view that it is better, other things equal, if people are lifted above some sufficiency threshold of special moral importance. In a recent contribution, Shlomi Segall has raised the following objection to this position: The telic ideal of sufficiency can neither be grounded on any personal value, nor any impersonal value. Consequently, sufficientarianism is groundless. This article contains a rejoinder to this critique. Its main claim is that the value of autonomy holds strong potential for grounding (...) sufficiency. It argues, firstly, that autonomy carries both personal value for its recipient as well as impersonal value, and that both of these values are suitable for grounding sufficiency. It thus follows that we should reject both and. Secondly, although autonomy is presumably the strongest candidate for grounding sufficiency, the article provides some counterargument to Segall's rejection of the other candidates — the impersonal value of virtue; the personal value for the allocator; and the personal value for others. If the arguments are sound, they show that we need not worry about sufficientarianism being groundless. (shrink)

Public reason demands that policies are justified to all reasonable citizens. Public health aims at protecting or improving aggregated health outcomes. Since health is not an uncontroversial value, an insurmountable chasm between public reason and public health seems to preclude any viable synthesis between the two outlooks. For any given public health policy, some reasonable citizen seems to have a reason to support ‘no policy’ over ‘some policy’, meaning that the policy cannot be justified to all. The paper first spells (...) out what exactly this conflict is about. Then, using smoking as a case, the paper outlines a model of reconciliation between public reason and public health that should give us some optimism if we want to have public health policies that are compatible with treating citizens as free and equal in the public reason sense. (shrink)

Argues that morality can exist without religion, suggests that values and principles of conduct emerge from life, and examines the consequences of moral absolutism.

Organizational ethics and institutional theories are extended by recovering Weberian and Pre-Weberian theorizing that emphasized the joining of ethics and institutional theories. Understanding how ethics and institutional systems influence each other can advance our understanding of the nature and causes of structural organizational ethics issues and help guide potential reforms. We consider the interplay of these elements during the recession of 2008–2009, highlighting how structural ethics problems may have to be addressed at the institutional levels and not solely the individual (...) or organizational levels. (shrink)

A standard way to challenge convergence-based accounts of inductive success is to claim that they are too weak to constrain inductive inferences in the short run. We respond to such a challenge by answering some questions raised by Juhl (1994). When it comes to predicting limiting relative frequencies in the framework of Reichenbach, we show that speed-optimal convergence—a long-run success condition—induces dynamic coherence in the short run.

The method of appealing to considered judgments in Wide Reflective Equilibrium has been thought to have unwelcome relativistic or ethnocentric implications. This belief, which is widely held, is, I shall argue, mistaken. Wide Reflective equilibrium has no such untoward implications. I shall first specify what I am talking about in speaking of relativism, then generally characterize WRE, then deploy some central arguments for it and finally try to show that it has no relativistic implications.

It is generally accepted that morally justified healthcare rationing must be non-discriminatory and cost-effective. However, given conventional concepts of cost-effectiveness, resources spent on disabled people are spent less cost-effectively, ceteris paribus, than resources spent on non-disabled people. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that standard cost-effectiveness discriminates against the disabled. Call this thedisability discrimination problem.Part of the disability discrimination involved in cost-effectiveness stems from the way in which health-related quality of life is accounted for and measured. This paper offers and (...) defends a patient-sensitive account of health-related quality of life, which can effectively make cost-effectiveness less discriminatory against the disabled and thus more morally justified. (shrink)

This paper seeks to analyse small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) managers' representations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and CSR communication in a corporate communication perspective. The basic question is: how strategic is CSR communication in SMEs? Corporate communication and CSR theories are used to establish an ideal typology of CSR concepts informing an analysis of qualitative data in the form of interviews with three middle managers in two Danish SMEs. A CSR communication model published earlier by the authors is challenged (...) from a SME perspective. Results from an Internet-based questionnaire survey of 1071 SMEs pave the way for the analysis. Our analysis shows that SME managers clearly have an inside-out approach to CSR, with a strong emphasis on the internal (corporate culture) dimension. However, SMEs and/or SME managers tend not to communicate externally about the CSR activities of the company. Based on these findings, the paper argues that CSR communication in SMEs is challenged by the global economy and is under revision. The contribution of the paper is to provide an insight into SMEs' present stage in relation to a possible future approach to strategic CSR communication. The paper also reminds us that SMEs have no interest in turning their local and authentic practice into a forced marketing and branding exercise, leaving them with an artificial picture of who they are and strive to be in the future. They should keep on acting locally but force themselves to think globally. (shrink)

An article of mine in The Heythrop Journal a decade ago discussed Descartes’ “Olympica” dream-sequence, the original of which is lost, but the details of which are preserved in a French version in...

This article examines Aristotle's model of deliberation as inquiry (zêtêsis), arguing that Aristotle does not treat the presumption of open alternatives as a precondition for rational deliberation. Deliberation aims to uncover acts that are up to us and conducive to our ends; it essentially consists in causal mapping. Unlike the comparative model presupposed in the literature on deliberation, Aristotle's model can account for the virtuous agent's deliberation, as well as deliberation with a view to “satisficing” desires and deliberation that fails (...) to uncover any expedient course of action. Aristotle's account of the constraints governing rational deliberation is furthermore not incompatibilist—for all Aristotle says, we may deliberate rationally despite being committed to the truth of determinism. (shrink)

Torbjörn Tännsjö has written a clear and thought-provoking book on healthcare priority setting. He argues that different branches of ethical theory—utilitarianism, egalitarianism, and prioritarianism—are in general agreement on real-world healthcare priorities, and that it is human irrationality that stands in the way of complying with their recommendations. While I am generally sympathetic to the overall project and line of argumentation taken by the book, this paper raises two concerns with Tännsjö’s argument. First, that he is wrong to set aside deontic (...) constraints as irrelevant or as pointing in the same direction as consequentialism. Secondly, that his argument against prioritarianism in favor of utilitarianism is insufficient and under-developed. Given these problems, I conclude that we should welcome Tännsjö’s contribution but with these qualifications in mind. (shrink)

For both philosophers and managers, reasoning with ourselves and others can be used both as (1) a way of knowing what is ethical and (2) a way of acting to help ourselves, others and organizations behave ethically. However, for many of us, knowing is frequently not the same as acting. Four areas are addressed: (1) thirteen limitations of ethical reasoning as an action strategy; (2) how a better understanding of these limitations can strengthen ethical reasoning as an action strategy; (3) (...) how an understanding of these limitations can serve as a conceptual foundation for exploring other ethical action strategies; and, (4) implications for experiential learning and teaching. (shrink)

Internal due process systems are the formal mechanisms thatmany organizations use to address and resolve ethics conflicts.Problematical due process systems such asinvestigation-punishment and grievance-arbitration systemsnarrowly constrain the political and moral space needed formeaningful ethics voice, praxis, and community. The relativelyuncommon employee board and mediator-counselor types of systemscan help solve such problems. The employee board andmediator-counselor systems permit questioning not only of guiltwith respect to policy violations but also the appropriateness ofthe policies as well as potential biases in an organization'sembedded tradition-system (...) that may be contributing to unethicalbehavior. Theoretical implications for organization ethics,praxis, community, and integrative social contracts theories areexplored. Several case examples are discussed. (shrink)

The article analyses the role and moral force of consent in BDSM (Sado-masochistic and related practice). The view defended accepts consent as a key feature in sexual morality, and explains in detail the relation between consent and autonomy. In brief, it is argued that consent as a genuine extension of personal autonomy both justifies and draws limits to justifiable BDSM-practices: autonomy-undermining practices cannot be justified by appealing to autonomy. The paper discusses in detail the necessary conditions for consent with an (...) emphasis on relevant pitfalls in the context of BDSM and moves to an analysis of the prevalent “official” morality of the BDSM-community, expressed in the slogan “safe, sane, and consensual.” Finally, it draws attention to an un-discussed parallel between sexual morality and the concept of exit-rights as it is known from political philosophy. (shrink)

The conceptual pair of own-world and common world constitutes an archaic pair, originally introduced by Heraclitus. More than two millennia after its introduction, Binswanger picked up this conceptual pair in the attempt to understand existence and mental disorder. Ever since, this conceptual pair has been part of the conceptualization of schizophrenia in phenomenological psychopathology. However, the concepts of ídios kósmos and koinós kósmos have seldomly been elaborated and expanded upon, and certain unclarities rest within the literature. This paper resolves some (...) of these unclarities and contributes to a theory of anthropological proportions, which furthers our understanding of ídios kósmos and koinós kósmos. The paper begins with an exploration of the theoretical underpinnings of this conceptual pair, i.e., it discusses the concept of world, what is understood by common world, and what it means to live in an own-world. This theoretical exploration segues into an in-depth analysis of the alterations of experiential life in schizophrenia, which can be illuminated via this conceptual pair. It is further argued that this conceptual pair contributes to an understanding of the puzzling phenomenon of double bookkeeping. Finally, the paper concludes in a discussion of clinical implications of this conceptual pair, stressing the importance of a mindfulness of the alterations to the ídios kósmos and koinós kósmos in schizophrenia. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reflections on Futures for Music Education PhilosophyEstelle R. JorgensenIn 1990, when I convened the first International Symposium for the Philosophy of Music Education at Bloomington, Indiana, there was one dominant philosophy of music education in the United States and another was about to make its appearance. The five succeeding symposia (Toronto, Canada, in 1994, led by David Elliott; Los Angeles, United States, in 1997, led by Anthony Palmer and (...) Frank Heuser; Birmingham, United Kingdom, in 2000, led by Mary Reichling and Forest Hansen; Lake Forest, Illinois, United States, in 2003, led by Iris Yob, Frank Heuser, and Forest Hansen; and Hamburg, Germany, in 2005, led by Charlene Morton, Paul Woodford, Frede Nielsen, and Jürgen Vogt) have promoted other philosophies. And this burgeoning of different voices and perspectives has greatly enriched the philosophical underpinnings of music education and moved us from relying on a narrow range of philosophical views towards a plethora of them.In our infant society, the International Society for Philosophy of Music Education (ISPME), we are creating and institutionalizing a forum that can nurture and critique ideas and practices and sustain the work of philosophical reflection in music education over the longer term. We have also benefited from long-term commitments by the Indiana University School of Music and Indiana University [End Page 15] Press to publishing the Philosophy of Music Education Review, now in its fourteenth volume (building on three years of publication of the Philosophy of Music Education Newsletter), and the Counterpoints: Music and Education series that provides an important venue for publishing cutting-edge scholarship in our field. And over the past two years, we have begun to build an international team of philosophers committed to establishing a strong philosophical society in music education.Beyond institutionalizing philosophical scholarship in music education, our society is committed to creating a genuinely international community that offers a global perspective. In the past, music education grew up within national borders and its work was often nationalistic in emphasis. Now, we face new challenges of thinking beyond these national commitments to a world of music education. This world might be seen as what Maxine Greene aptly terms "multiplicities and pluralities,"1 the many differing groups forged within language groups, religious perspectives, political ideologies, economic strictures, and familial obligations. And as philosophers, we work especially within our various linguistic and cultural traditions as we also seek to transcend these traditions in a common discourse.How shall we address philosophically the multiplicities and pluralities, commonalities and differences in music education internationally? Radical relativism and pluralism offer contrasting perspectives.2 Radical relativism sees the host of different music education beliefs and practices around the world as incommensurable and focuses on differences between them. For example, viewing Japanese and British music education within this stance would suggest that since Japanese and British music education reflect Japanese and British society and culture respectively, each cannot be understood in terms of the other, they are different and incommensurate with the other, and it is important to understand each in its own terms. Pluralism, however, sees differences as commensurable and focuses on shared attributes. Since human beings are the creators of culture and society, common threads amidst the differences emerge from this common humanity. For example, as a reflection of their different societies and cultures, although we expect to encounter differences between British and Japanese music education, we may also observe commonalities since they both bear the imprint of a shared humanity.Notwithstanding that musics and educational systems seem, upon first glance and when considered specifically, to be incommensurable, a deeper and more general examination turns up evidence supporting a pluralist perspective.3 Historically, cultures regularly borrow from different others as if there were common human threads. Maurice Ravel, Carl Orff, and Paul Simon are among twentieth-century composers to draw on cultures from the Far East and Africa. In music [End Page 16] education, Masafumi Ogawa's study of the introduction of Luther Whiting Mason's ideas into Japan in the nineteenth century,4 the dissemination of Shinichi Suzuki's ideas into the United States, the spread of Zoltán Kodály's, Émile Jaques-Dalcroze's, and Carl Orff's and Gunild... (shrink)

Die Gedenkschrift zu Ehren von Elisabeth und Werner Leinfellner spannt einen Bogen von aktuellen philosophischen Diskursen zum Werk und Leben des 2010 verstorbenen Wissenschaftler-Ehepaares. Fur viele sind beide untrennbar mit der Osterreichischen Ludwig Wittgenstein Gesellschaft (OLWG) und dem Internationalen Wittgenstein Symposien in Kirchberg am Wechsel verbunden. Die Artikel in diesem Band befassen sich mit aktueller Wittgensteinforschung und der Sprachkritik (Mauthner und Wittgenstein) ebenso wie dem Wirken von Elisabeth und Werner Leinfellner. Daruber hinaus geben sie Einblicke in das Werden der OLWG (...) und das osterreichische Geistesleben in der zweiten Halfte des 20. Jhdts. Mitarbeiter des Buches: Marco Bastianelli, Christian Erbacher, Johann Gotschl, Peter Kampits, Christian Kanzian, Peter Keicher, Eckehart Kohler, Camilla R. Nielsen, Klaus Puhl, Mary Snell-Hornby, Ilse Somavilla, Joseph Wang, Anja Weiberg, Paul Weingartner und Franz M. Wuketits. Herausgeber sind Sascha Windholz und Walter Feigl.". (shrink)

Bayesians since Savage (1972) have appealed to asymptotic results to counter charges of excessive subjectivity. Their claim is that objectionable differences in prior probability judgments will vanish as agents learn from evidence, and individual agents will converge to the truth. Glymour (1980), Earman (1992) and others have voiced the complaint that the theorems used to support these claims tell us, not how probabilities updated on evidence will actually}behave in the limit, but merely how Bayesian agents believe they will behave, suggesting (...) that the theorems are too weak to underwrite notions of scientific objectivity and intersubjective agreement. I investigate, in a very general framework, the conditions under which updated probabilities actually converge to a settled opinion and the conditions under which the updated probabilities of two agents actually converge to the same settled opinion. I call this mode of convergence deterministic, and derive results that extend those found in Huttegger (2015b). The results here lead to a simple characterization of deterministic convergence for Bayesian learners and give rise to an interesting argument for what I call strong regularity, the view that probabilities of non-empty events should be bounded away from zero. (shrink)

Understanding of organizational ethics phenomena requires complex understanding of organizational practices in their real world contexts. We can try to understand and build theory about these complex real world practices from the points of view of: a traditional deductive, ethics literature-based, literature gap formulation approach; or, an inductive, practitioner-based literature gap formulation approach. This consideration of inductive, practitioner-based versus deductive, literature-based literature gap formulation is related to the discussion concerning “engaged scholarship” and relationships and gaps between theory and practice in (...) organization studies [Van De Ven, 2007, Engaged Scholarship: A Guide for Organizational and Research Knowledge ]. However, there is an important difference with respect to the key issue of ethics literature versus practitioner-based literature gap formulation. This article offers examples of the two different approaches and makes comparisons between them. Implications for practice-based organizational ethics theory building, Ph.D. education, and public intellectual work are considered. (shrink)

Dialogic leadership as ethics method respects, values, and works toward organizational objectives. However, in those situations where there may be conflicts and/or contradictions between what is ethical and what is in the material interest of individuals and/or the organization, the dialogic leader initiates discussion with others (peers, subordinates, superiors) about what is ethical with at least something of a prior ethics truth intention and not singularly a value neutral, constrained optimization of organizational objectives. Cases are considered where dialogic leadership: (1) (...) helped build ethical organizational culture; (2) was effective; and, (3) as a by-product, produced integrative win-win results. Philosophical foundations for the method as well as differences between dialogic leadership and Theory X forcing leadership, Theory Y win-win integrative leadership, industrial democracy, participative management, action inquiry, and double-loop learning action science are explored. Limitations of the method are also explored. (shrink)