Many debates about the moral status of things—for example, debates about the natural rights of human fetuses or nonhuman animals—eventually migrate towards a discussion of the capacities of the things in question—for example, their capacities to feel pain, think, or love. Yet the move towards capacities is often controversial: if a human’s capacities are the basis of its moral status, how could a human having lesser capacities than you and I have the same "serious" moral status as you and I? (...) This book answers this question by arguing that if something is human, it has a set of typical human capacities; that if something has a set of typical human capacities, it has serious moral status; and thus all human beings have the same sort of serious moral status as you and I. Beginning from what our common intuitions tell us about situations involving "temporary incapacitation"—where a human organism has, then loses, then regains a certain capacity—this book argues for substantive conclusions regarding human fetuses and embryos, humans in a permanent vegetative state, humans suffering from brain diseases, and humans born with genetic disorders. Since these conclusions must have some impact on our ongoing moral and political debates about the proper treatment of such humans, this book will be useful to professionals and students in philosophy, bioethics, law, medicine, and public policy. (shrink)

This book explores the rise of theoretical physics in 19th century Germany. The authors show how the junior second physicist in German universities over time became the theoretical physicist, of equal standing to the experimental physicist. Gustav Kirchhoff, Hermann von Helmholtz, and Max Planck are among the great German theoretical physicists whose work and career are examined in this book. Physics was then the only natural science in which theoretical work developed into a major teaching and research specialty in its (...) own right. Readers will discover how German physicists arrived at a well-defined field of theoretical physics with well understood and generally accepted goals and needs. The authors explain the nature of the work of theoretical physics with many examples, taking care always to locate the research within the workplace. The book is a revised and shortened version of Intellectual Mastery of Nature: Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein, a two-volume work by the same authors. This new edition represents a reformulation of the larger work. It retains what is most important in the original work, while including new material, sharpening discussions, and making the research more accessible to readers. It presents a thorough examination of a seminal era in physics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Scholars studying organizational justice have been slow to incorporate insights from behavioral ethics research, despite the fields’ conceptual affinities. We maintain that this stems from differences in the paradigmatic approaches taken by scholars in each area. First, justice research historically has assumed that individuals are motivated by a desire for instrumental control of worthwhile outcomes or by a concern with social status, while behavioral ethics has paid more attention to the role of internalized moral convictions and duties. Second, organizational justice (...) researchers have investigated one set of individual differences, behavioral researchers have examined another. Third, justice scholars focus on social identities while behavioral ethics scholars also investigate moral identities. As an impetus to future inquiry, our review attends to contemporary organizational justice research that takes into account concepts derived from behavioral ethics. In so doing we hope to highlight an avenue for integrative scholarship that will further our understanding of organizational justice. (shrink)

The proper role, if any, for religion-based arguments is a live and sometimes heated issue within the field of bioethics. The issue attracts heat primarily because bioethical analyses influence the outcomes of controversial court cases and help shape legislation in sensitive biopolicy areas. A problem for religious bioethicists who seek to influence biopolicy is that there is now widespread academic and public acceptance, at least within liberal democracies, that the state should not base its policies on any particular religion’s metaphysical (...) claims or esoteric moral system. In response, bioethicists motivated by religious concerns have adopted two identifiable strategies. Sometimes they rely on slippery-slope arguments that, sometimes at least, have empirically testable premises. A more questionable response is the manipulation and misuse of secular-sounding moral language, such as references to “human dignity,” and the plights of groups of people labeled “vulnerable.”. (shrink)

_Intelligence Unbound_ explores the prospects, promises, and potential dangers of machine intelligence and uploaded minds in a collection of state-of-the-art essays from internationally recognized philosophers, AI researchers, science fiction authors, and theorists. Compelling and intellectually sophisticated exploration of the latest thinking on Artificial Intelligence and machine minds Features contributions from an international cast of philosophers, Artificial Intelligence researchers, science fiction authors, and more Offers current, diverse perspectives on machine intelligence and uploaded minds, emerging topics of tremendous interest Illuminates the nature (...) and ethics of tomorrow’s machine minds—and of the convergence of humans and machines—to consider the pros and cons of a variety of intriguing possibilities Considers classic philosophical puzzles as well as the latest topics debated by scholars Covers a wide range of viewpoints and arguments regarding the prospects of uploading and machine intelligence, including proponents and skeptics, pros and cons. (shrink)

Rational choice and other accounts of trust base it in objective assessments of the risks and benefits of trusting. But rational subjects must choose in the light of what knowledge they have, and that knowledge determines their capacities for trust. This is an epistemological issue, but not at the usual level of the philosophy of knowledge. Rather, it is an issue of pragmatic rationality for a given actor. It is commonly argued that trust is inherently embedded in iterated, thick relationships. (...) But such relationships are merely one source of relevant knowledge in a street-level epistemological account. Early experience may heavily influence later capacity for trust. For example, bad experience may lead to lower levels of trust and therefore fewer opportunities for mutual gain. (shrink)

‘Free action’ is subject to the causal theory of reference and thus that The essential nature of free actions can be discovered only by empirical investigation, not by conceptual analysis. Heller ’s proposal, if true, would have significant philosophical implications. Consider the enduring issue we will call the Compatibility Issue : whether the thesis of determinism is logically compatible with the claim that.

Destructive narcissism is recognized increasingly as a serious impairment to good corporate leadership and ethical conduct. The Chief Executive Officer’s letter to shareholders (an important formal corporate communications medium) has potential to provide linguistic traces of destructive narcissism and insight to aspects of corporate leadership and the ambient ethical culture of a company. We demonstrate this potential through selective analyses of the letters of the Chief Executive Officers of Enron, Starbucks, and General Motors.

Hume's place in history -- Moral psychology -- Strategic analysis -- Convention -- Political theory -- Justice as order -- Utilitarianism -- Value theory -- Retrospective.

Liberal proponents of genetic engineering maintain that developing human germline modification technologies is morally desirable because it will result in a net improvement in human health and well-being. Skeptics of germline modification, in contrast, fear evolutionary harms that could flow from intervening in the human germline, and worry that such programs, even if well intentioned, could lead to a recapitulation of the scientifically and morally discredited projects of the old eugenics. Some bioconservatives have appealed as well to the value of (...) retaining our “given” human biological nature as a reason for restraining the development and use of human genetic modification technologies even where they would tend to increase well-being. In this article, I argue that germline intervention will be necessary merely to sustain the levels of genetic health that we presently enjoy for future generations—a goal that should appeal to bioliberals and bioconservatives alike. This is due to the population-genetic consequences of relaxed selection pressures in human populations caused by the increasing efficacy and availability of conventional medicine. This heterodox conclusion, which I present as a problem of intergenerational justice, has been overlooked in medicine and bioethics due to certain misconceptions about human evolution, which I attempt to rectify, as well as the sordid history of Darwinian approaches to medicine and social policy, which I distinguish from the present argument. (shrink)

This book presents an overview of the later medieval trinitarian theology of the rival Franciscan and Dominican intellectual traditions, and includes detailed studies of thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, ...

With a never-before published paper by Lord Henry Cavendish, as well as a biography on him, this book offers a fascinating discourse on the rise of scientific attitudes and ways of knowing. A pioneering British physicist in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Cavendish was widely considered to be the first full-time scientist in the modern sense. Through the lens of this unique thinker and writer, this book is about the birth of modern science.

Philosophy proceeds, supposedly, by way of rational inquiry and argument, yet, as Jonathan Glover has written, “philosophers persistently disagree” to such an extent that the “apparent lack of clear progress or of a body of established results is an embarrassment”. To outside observers, this may appear puzzling. Even professional philosophers sometimes worry about their discipline’s lack of consensus, continuing disagreement on standards and methods, and increasingly fragmented, hyperspecialized state of play. Though philosophy hesitates to speak with one voice, it can (...) endorse and teach values to do with intellectual rigor and honesty, charity to opponents, and openness to evidence. If these are passed down effectively from teachers to students, we might hope that philosophers will bring their characteristic skills and values to some of the great practical questions of our age, not least those relating to global injustice and risks to humanity’s future. All too often, the debates that surround these questions are dominated by tribalism, dogma, and emotional manipulation. With dedication, and perhaps a bit of good luck, philosophical training might provide something of a corrective. If philosophy fails in that respect by not living up to its ideals, that’s a situation we can identify and try to alter. (shrink)

In their efforts to apportion blame and channel retaliatory action in the post September 11 world, scholars and pundits alike have used a series of rhetorical techniques to great effect, manufacturing an image of Islam, the proverbial Other, that is highly conducive to the needs of liberal democracies but hardly a reflection of any one of the many 'authentic' Islams. This has largely been achieved by ignoring the many differences within the Islamic movement and asserting that social identities are based (...) on a stable, uniform kernel that moves unchanged throughout history and across the globe. This inevitably results in caricatures that have many uses; in portraits of dissenting groups it tends towards demonization. In this wide-ranging essay--which considers a variety of discursive sites, from contemporary film and art to the War on Terror--a scholar of religion asks the reader to consider how the classifications we use to name and thereby negotiate our social worlds--foremost among them the classification religion itself--are implicitly political and are being wielded in the public arena to carry out generally undisclosed/under analyzed social work. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 63-65.

ABSTRACT Massimo Reichlin, in an earlier article in this journal, defended a version of the ‘argument from potential’ (AFP), which concludes that the human embryo should be protected from the moment of conception. But R. Alta Charo, in her essay entitled ‘Every Cell is Sacred: Logical Consequences of the Argument from Potential in the Age of Cloning’, claims that versions of the AFP like Reichlin’s are vulnerable to a rather embarrassing problem: with the advent of human cloning, such versions of (...) the AFP entail that every somatic cell in the human body ought to be protected. Since this entailment is clearly absurd, Charo argues, these versions of the AFP should be rejected. I argue that the reasons Charo cites for believing in this entailment are inconclusive. For example, the four reasons she gives for doubting any differences between the nature of skin cells and zygotes are ultimately unconvincing. Against Charo, I maintain that there is a relevant distinction between the sort of potential possessed by the somatic cell and the sort of potential possessed by the early human embryo. Since only the latter sort of potential falls within the scope of the AFP, the alleged absurd entailment Charo invites us to consider is no entailment at all. Hence the AFP cannot be rejected on the grounds Charo advances. Even in an age of cloning, the claim that some cells are ‘sacred’ because of their potential does not entail the claim that every cell is sacred. (shrink)

In his commentary, David Galin raises several important issues that deserve to be addressed. In this response, I do three things. First, I briefly discuss the relation between the present work and the metaphoric theories of thought developed by cognitive lin- guists such as Lakoff and Johnson (1998). Second, I address some of the confusions that seem to have arisen about my use of the terms ''substantive thought'' and ''nucleus.'' Third, I briefly discuss some of the directions that Galin suggests (...) for further research. (shrink)

I take the opportunity that Froese, Gould, and Seth provide to clarify further , 2011) some aspects of Descriptive Experience Sampling by distinguishing DES from the Explicitation Interview method ; and to comment on Froese and colleagues' suggestion of the Double Blind Interview as a way of evaluating DES, EI, and other methods.

This chapter contains sections titled: Participatory Democracy Social Capital and Participatory Democracy Ideal Theory Deliberative Democracy Audience Democracy Corporate Democracy Normative Claims for Democracy Concluding Remarks Notes References.

Most new democracies face a challenge of reshaping the political culture to support the new democratic political order. This can often be a long-term process, complicated by the Realpolitik of governing in a new political (and often economic) system. One of the mechanisms of cultural change is generational change. New generations socialized after a democratic transition are presumably educated into the political norms of the new democratic regime. However, one can also imagine that the young lack clear political cues because (...) they grow up under a system in transition, or even reject the new order if it is accompanied by widespread social dislocation. The study of generational change in new democracies thus provides insights into the processes transforming a nation's political culture. We analyze generational change in the new democracies of East Asia using the Second Wave of the East Asian Barometer. We examine support for a democratic/authoritarian regime and the citizenship norms that underlie a democratic process (such as the rule of law and political tolerance). Our results yield evidence of significant generational change in regime norms in these new democracies, which suggests that the political culture is gradually being transformed. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 2, Page 14-15, February 2012.

During the past decade, debate has intensified about the role of long-term opioid therapy in the management of chronic nonmalignant pain. Specialists in pain management have discussed the issues extensively and now generally agree that a selected population of patients with chronic pain can attain sustained analgesia without significant adverse consequences. This perspective, however, is not uniformly accepted by pain specialists and has not been widely disseminated to other disciplines or the public. Rather, the more traditional perspective, which ascribes both (...) transitory benefit and substantial cumulative risk to long-term opioid therapy, continues to predominate. According to this perspective, the inevitability of tolerance limits the possibility of sustained efficacy, and other pharmacological properties increase the likelihood of adverse outcomes, including persistent side-effects, impairment in physical and psychosocial functioning, and addiction. If accurate, these outcomes would indeed justify the withholding of opioid therapy for all but the most extreme cases of chronic nonmalignant pain. (shrink)