Some omissions seem to be causes. For example, suppose Barry promises to water Alice’s plant, doesn’t water it, and that the plant then dries up and dies. Barry’s not watering the plant – his omitting to water the plant – caused its death. But there is reason to believe that if omissions are ever causes, then there is far more causation by omission than we ordinarily think. In other words, there is reason to think the following thesis true.

This article asks whether being a child is, all things considered, good or bad for children. I defend a predicament view of childhood, which regards childhood as bad overall for children. I argue that four features of childhood make it regrettable: impaired capacity for practical reasoning, lack of an established practical identity, a need to be dominated, and profound and asymmetric vulnerability. I consider recent claims in the literature that childhood is good for children since it allows them to enjoy (...) special goods that aren't available in adulthood, or which are harder to access in adulthood. I raise some difficulties for these claims. Then I argue that whatever version of these views survives my criticism will not establish that childhood is overall good for children. This is because the goods of childhood aren't significant enough to outweigh the bad features associated with being a child. I conclude by suggesting that the badness of childhood for children means that we are likely to owe more to children than to adults. (shrink)

What justifies state-sponsored supports for individual welfare within a Kantian political system, as well as the purpose and extent of such supports and the form they may take, are vexed questions. This Element characterizes and assesses main contenders by examining the competing interpretations of Kant's larger political theory that found their social welfare claims. It then develops and defends an alternative based in civic respect. This emphasizes the perspective and institutional commitments that Kant's model of citizenship entails and what is (...) required to respect each as both a person and a participant in joint governance. (shrink)

In sentences such as “Some dogs are mammals,” the literal semantic meaning (“Some and possibly all dogs are mammals”) conflicts with the pragmatic meaning (“Not all dogs are mammals,” known as a scalar implicature). Prior work has shown that adults vary widely in the extent to which they adopt the semantic or pragmatic meaning of such utterances, yet the underlying reason for this variation is unknown. Drawing on theoretical models of scalar implicature derivation, we explore the hypothesis that the cognitive (...) abilities of executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) contribute to this observed variation. In Experiment 1, we show that individuals with better ToM are more likely to compute a scalar implicature and adopt the pragmatic meaning of an utterance; however, EF makes no unique contribution to scalar implicature comprehension after accounting for ToM. In Experiment 2, we replicate this finding and assess whether it generalizes to the comprehension of other pragmatic phenomena such as indirect requests (e.g., “It's hot in here” uttered to ask for something to be done) and metaphor (e.g., “to harvest courage”). This is the first evidence that differences in ToM are associated with pragmatic competence in neurotypical adults across distinct pragmatic phenomena. (shrink)

I use the psychological phenomenon of ‘attribute framing’ as a case study for exploring philosophical conceptions of semantics and the semantics-pragmatics divide. Attribute frames are pairs of sentences that use contradictory expressions to predicate the same property of an individual or object. Despite their equivalence, pairs of attribute frames have been observed to induce systematic variability in hearers’ responses. One explanation of such framing effects appeals to the distinct ‘reference point information’ conveyed by alternative frames. Although this information is taken (...) to be pragmatic, a live debate in the philosophy of language concerns the extent to which pragmatic information can really be held apart from semantics. Therefore, in this article I examine whether – and how – reference point information might be thought to intrude on the semantics of an attribute frame. I describe two ways in which the information might be considered broadly semantic, due to its being directly communicated or conventional. However, I argue that the framing data in fact support a narrower conception of semantics, and a semantics-pragmatics distinction that separates standing sentence meaning from enriched communicated meaning. (shrink)

This study provides an additional partial test of the Hunt-Vitell theory [1986, Journal of Macro-marketing, 8, 5-16; 1993, 'The General Theory of Marketing Ethics: A Retrospective and Revision', in N. C. Smith and J. A. Quelch (eds.), Ethics in Marketing (Irwin Inc., Homewood), pp. 775-784], within the consumer ethics context. Using structural equation modeling, the relationships among an individual's personal values (conceptualized by the typology of Schwartz [1992, 'Universals in the Content and Structure of Values: Theoretical Advances and Empirical Tests (...) in 20 Countries', in M. P. Zanna (ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 25, Academic Press, Orlando), pp. 1--65] ethical ideology and ethical beliefs are investigated. The validity of the model is assessed in a two-step procedure. First, a measurement model of constructs is tested for key validity dimensions. Next, the hypothesized causal relationships are examined in several path models, comparing no mediation, partial and complete mediation of ethical ideology. The empirical results indicate that individual differences in value priorities (resultant conservation and resultant self-enhancement) directly and indirectly (through idealism) influence the judgment of ethically questionable consumer practices. These findings may significantly contribute to the theoretical understanding of ethical decision-making. (shrink)

Throw: Harry throws a stone at Dick, hitting him. Intuitively, there is a moral difference between the first and the second case of each of these pairs.1 In the second case, the agent’s behavior is morally worse than his behavior in the first case. But in each pair, the agent’s behavior has the same outcome: in No Check and Shoot, the outcome is that a child dies, and Jim saves $40; in No Catch and Throw, the outcome is that Dick (...) is hit by a stone. Let us call these pairs of cases “the paradigm pairs.” The paradigm pairs, and others like them, provide evidence that common sense morality is not consequentialist: common sense morality does not judge the moral worth of actions just in terms of their consequences. But it has proved extremely difficult to provide an account of a morally relevant difference between the members of pairs like the ones above. One hypothesis about the difference that has received a lot of attention in the literature is that in the first kind of case the agent allows the outcome to occur, while in the second the agent makes the.. (shrink)

As the usual regulatory framework did not fit well during the last Ebola outbreak, innovative thinking still needed. In the absence of an outbreak, randomised controlled trials of clinical efficacy in humans cannot be done, while during an outbreak such trials will continue to face significant practical, philosophical, and ethical challenges. This article argues that researchers should also test the safety and effectiveness of novel vaccines in wild apes by employing a pluralistic approach to evidence. There are three reasons to (...) test vaccines in wild populations of apes: i) protect apes; ii) reduce Ebola transmission from wild animals to humans; and iii) accelerate vaccine development and licensing for humans. Data obtained from studies of vaccines among wild apes and chimpanzees may even be considered sufficient for licensing new vaccines for humans. This strategy will serve to benefit both wild apes and humans. (shrink)

This collection examines the question of nonhuman animal agency by shifting emphasis from the human perspective toward that of other animals, exploring modes of ...

Recently, a research program has emerged that aims to show that animals have a memory capacity that is similar to the human episodic memory capacity. Researchers within this program argue that nonhuman animals have episodic-like memory of personally experienced past events. In this paper, I specify and evaluate the goals of this research program and the progress it has made in achieving them. I will examine some of the data that the research program has produced, as well as the operational (...) definitions and assumptions that have gone into producing that data, in order to call into question the ultimate value of the episodic-like memory research program. I argue that there is a gap between the claims that the research program makes and the data it uses to support these claims, and that bridging this gap is essential if we want to claim that human episodic memory has a meaningful analog in animals. I end with some suggestions of how to potentially fix these problems. (shrink)

In his recent book, Frame It Again: New Tools for Rational Decision-Making, J. L. Bermúdez argues that it can be rational to evaluate the same thing differently when it is described using alternati...

Book synopis: A collection of more than 30 specially commissioned essays, this volume surveys the work of the 17th-century philosopher-scientist commonly regarded as the founder of modern philosophy, while integrating unique essays detailing the context and impact of his work. Covers the full range of historical and philosophical perspectives on the work of Descartes Discusses his seminal contributions to our understanding of skepticism, mind-body dualism, self-knowledge, innate ideas, substance, causality, God, and the nature of animals Explores the philosophical significance of (...) his contributions to mathematics and science Concludes with a section on the impact of Descartes's work on subsequent philosophers. (shrink)

This paper discusses the contribution of Madame Du Châtelet to the reception of Newtonianism in France prior to her translation of Newton’s Principia. It focuses on her Institutions de physique, a work normally considered for its contribution to the reception of Leibniz in France. By comparing the different editions of the Institutions, I argue that her interest in Newton antedated her interest in Leibniz, and that she did not see Leibniz’s metaphysics as incompatible with Newtonian science. Her Newtonianism can be (...) seen to be in the course of development between 1738 and 1742 and it was shaped by contemporary French debates and the achievement of French Newtonians like Maupertuis in confirming his theories. Her Institutions therefore is linked to the same drive to disseminate Newtonianism undertaken by popularisations such as Voltaire’s Elements de la philosophie de Newton and Algarotti’s Newtonianismo per le dame.Author Keywords: Emilie du Châtelet; Isaac Newton; Voltaire; French reception of Newtonianism. (shrink)

An investigation into Aristotle's metaphysics of nature as expounded in the Physics. It focuses in particular his conception of change, a concept which is shown to possess a unique metaphysical structure, with implications that should engage the attention of contemporary analysis. First published in hardback in 1982, the book is now available for the first time in paperback. 'A powerful and appealing explanatory scheme which succeeds on the whole in drawing together a great many seemingly disparate elements in the Physics (...) into a neat unitary stucture.' Canadian Philosophical Review. (shrink)

This paper investigates the structure of English restrictive relative clauses. It provides support for the view that restrictive relative clauses are structurally ambiguous between two structures: the head-internal, raising structure and the matching structure, which has both an internal and an external head. We present a new test from extraposition facts that distinguishes between the raising and matching structures for relative clauses. Furthermore, this paper presents an account of the semantics of raising relative clauses which is intended to complete the (...) picture of the semantics of relative clauses. In particular, we argue that raising relative clauses are not islands for Quantifier Raising (QR) and that in these clauses there is successive cyclic movement through a CP-adjoined position. (shrink)

This article reports the findings of a qualitative study that explored the organizational influences on moral distress for health professionals working in pediatric intensive care units across Canada. Participants were recruited to the study from PICUs across Canada. The PICU is a high-tech, fast-paced, high-pressure environment where caregivers frequently face conflict and ethical tension in the care of critically ill children. A number of themes including relationships with management, organizational structure and processes, workload and resources, and team dynamics were identified. (...) This study provides a rare and important multi-disciplinary perspective on this topic and the findings have implications for administrators and leaders who seek to improve the moral climate of healthcare delivery. (shrink)

The practice of health-care professional involvement in capital punishment has come under scrutiny since the implementation of lethal injection as a method of execution, raising questions of the goals of medicine and the ethics of medicalized procedures. The American Medical Association and other professional associations have issued statements prohibiting physician involvement in capital punishment because medicine is dedicated to preserving life. I address the three primary arguments against health-care professionals being involved in lethal injection and argue that they are not (...) strong enough to prohibit physician involvement in the lethal injection process. (shrink)

We believe we owe one another respect. We believe we ought to pay what we owe by treating one another ‘with respect.’ If we could understand these beliefs we would be well on the way to understanding morality itself. If we could justify these beliefs we could vindicate a central part of our moral experience.Respect comes in many varieties. We respect some people for their upright character, others for their exceptional achievements. There are people we respect as forces of nature: (...) we go to great lengths to accommodate their moods, wiles, and demands. Finally, most of us seem to respect people simply because they are people. This is the sort of respect of special interest to moral theory.In order to be worthy of this last sort of respect, it is not only sufficient but necessary that one be a person. We can, of course, take a similar attitude towardnonpersons. (shrink)

With more countries implementing Open Notes, the practice of providing patients with unhindered access to their clinical visit notes, research on this practice is finally increasing. Many studies report positive findings, especially around self-reported outcomes, such as feeling more in control of one’s care, increased medication adherence and a strengthened patient–doctor relationship. 1 However, comparatively less research has been done on the potential ramifications that may also arise from Open Notes. Blease’s recent article underscores this and demonstrates why Open Notes (...) must also be considered in terms of nocebo effects, negative side effects that arise from negative expectations. 2 The article presents a compelling and well-thought-out argument for how nocebo effects may vary across different populations by linking patient–clinician communication inequalities with and by presenting preliminary evidence of nocebo effects. Blease’s argument does not detract from Open Notes, but rather takes a balanced approach by imploring us... (shrink)

With recent controversies surrounding the eligibility of athletes with disorders of sex development and hyperandrogenism, as well as continued discussion of the conditions transgender athletes must meet to compete in high-performance sport, a wide array of scholars representing a diverse range of disciplines have weighed in on both the appropriateness of classifying athletes into the female and male categories and the best practices of doing so. In response to cases of high-profile athletes’ sex being called into question, the International Olympic (...) Committee, the International Association of Athletics Federations, and the National Collegiate Athletics Association, among others, published or updated policies addressing who is eligible to compete in the women’s sport category and under what conditions. This paper addresses the areas in which philosophical reasoning and ethical analysis can contribute to reopened debates about the surveillance of the women’s category in sport. Emphasis is placed on determining where the onus of responsibility should fall for ensuring the new policies are followed. (shrink)

Although they are often grouped together in comparison with non-dualist theories, Plato's soul-body dualism, and Descartes' mind-body dualism, are fundamentally different. The doctrines examined are those of the Phaedo and the Meditations. The main difference, from which others flow, lies in Plato's acceptance and Descartes' rejection of the assumption that the soul (= intellect) is identical with what animates the body.

ABSTRACTGaze-cuing refers to the spontaneous orienting of attention towards a gazed-at location, characterised by shorter response times to gazed-at than non-gazed at targets. Previous research suggests that processing of these gaze cues interacts with the processing of facial expression cues to enhance gaze-cuing. However, whether only negative emotions can enhance gaze-cuing is still debated, and whether this emotional modulation varies as a function of individual differences still remains largely unclear. Combining data from seven experiments, we investigated the emotional modulation of (...) gaze-cuing in the general population as a function of participant sex, and self-reported subclinical trait anxiety, depression, and autistic traits. We found that emotional enhancement of gaze-cuing can occur for both positive and negative expressions, the higher the score on the Attention to Detail subscale of the Autism Spectrum Quotient, the smaller the emotiona... (shrink)

In this article, I seek to address an aspect of the general inattention to miscarriage by examining a pressing topic: the moral meanings of pregnancy loss. I focus primarily on the import of such meanings for women in their ethical relationship with themselves, while also finding significant the meaning of miscarriage in community, that is, for our shared moral lives. Exploring miscarriage as a moral phenomenon is critical for figuring out miscarriage’s impact on our ethical self-conception—on how we understand ourselves (...) as moral agents—and in forming and deforming how we understand one another in the broader context of our moral communities—in intimate realms, in public realms, and in various realms in between. -/- I begin by articulating the need for a dedicated perinatal ethics, then developing an overview of this approach. It is against this backdrop that miscarriage’s complex moral meaning can best emerge. I then consider a few promising yet problematic concepts for comprehending the moral meanings of miscarriage, including moral agency, reactive attitudes (in this case, betrayal and guilt), moral responsibility, and moral standing. (shrink)

Our paper contributes to emerging management research on the effects of societal inequality. It aims to study the relationship between societal-level inequality and perceived unequal HR practices within organizations based on relationships which we term “relation-based inequality” (RBI). We further examine the moderating effect of country corruption on the RBI-employee commitment link. Thus, whereas previous research has looked at single countries, there is still much to know about societal effects of inequality and corruption on employee perceptions and attitudes at work (...) across countries. By surveying 691employees from five countries and using country-level indicators we take a first step in this direction, and establish that inequality (income, health and education) is linked to higher levels of relation-based HR practices. We also show that the effect of RBI is different for continuance, affective and normative commitment, and contingent on country corruption levels. (shrink)

"--Everett K. Rowson, New York University"This is a serious piece of scholarship filled with many very fine insights.

This volume contributes to the growing literature on the morality of procreation and parenting. About half of the chapters take up questions about the morality of bringing children into existence. The other half of the volume considers moral and political questions about adoption and parenting. This collection builds on existing literature by advancing novel perspectives on existing debates. It also raises new issues deserving of our attention.

Psychotherapy was an invention of European modernity, but as the 20th century unfolded, and we trace how it crossed national and continental borders, its goals and the particular techniques by which it operated become harder to pin down. This introduction briefly draws together the historical literature on psychotherapy in Europe, asking comparative questions about the role of location and culture, and networks of transmission and transformation. It introduces the six articles in this special issue on Greece, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Russia, Britain (...) and Sweden as well as its parallel special issue of History of Psychology on ‘Psychotherapy in the Americas’. It traces what these articles tell us about how therapeutic developments were entangled with the dramatic, and often traumatic, political events across the continent: in the wake of the Second World War, the emergence of Communist and authoritarian regimes, the establishment of welfare states and the advance of neoliberalism. (shrink)