Objective: Deep brain stimulation targeted to the ventral intermediate nucleus of the thalamus is effective for motor symptoms in essential tremor, but there is limited data on cognitive outcomes. We examined cognitive outcomes in a large cohort of ET DBS patients.Methods: In a retrospective analysis, we used repeated-measures ANOVA testing to examine whether the age of tremor onset, age at DBS surgery, hemisphere side implanted with lead, unilateral vs. bilateral implantations, and presence of surgical complications influenced the cognitive outcomes. Neuropsychological (...) outcomes of interest were verbal memory, executive functioning, working memory, language functioning, visuospatial functioning, and general cognitive function.Results: We identified 50 ET DBS patients; 29 males; the mean age of tremor onset was 35.84 years with a median age of 38 years. The mean age at DBS was 68.18 years. There were 37 unilateral 30 left, seven right, and 13 bilateral brain implantations. In the subgroup analysis, there was a significant interaction between assessment and age of tremor onset ; F = 4.47; p = 0.043 for working memory. The post hoc testing found improvements for younger onset ET. Similarly, there was a significant interaction between assessment and complications vs. no complications subgroups; F = 4.34; p = 0.043 for verbal memory with worsening scores seen for ET patients with complications. The remaining tests were not significant.Conclusion: In this large cohort of ET patients with, DBS was not accompanied by a significant decline in many cognitive domains. These outcomes were possibly related to the selection of patients with normal cognitive functioning before surgery, unilateral DBS implantations for the majority, and selection of patients with optimal response to DBS. (shrink)

Although there is no more iconic, stalwart, and eloquent defender of liberty and representative democracy than J.S. Mill, he sometimes endorses non-democratic forms of governance. This article explains the reasons behind this seeming aberration and shows that Mill actually has complex and nuanced views of the transition from non-democratic to democratic government, including the comprehensive and parallel material, cultural, institutional, and character reforms that must occur, and the mechanism by which they will be enacted. Namely, an enlightened despot must cultivate (...) democratic virtues such as obedience, industriousness, spirit of nationality, and resistance to tyranny in the population and simultaneously prepare the way for his own demise and secure his own legitimacy by transitioning to the rule of law. This challenges recent scholarship that paints Mill’s non-democratic views as crudely and uncritically imperialist, because it fails to recognize and engage seriously with his sophisticated (if ultimately problematic) theory of individual and institutional development under enlightened colonialism. (shrink)

Two experiments investigated the role that mental set plays in reading aloud using the task choice procedure developed by Besner and Care [Besner, D., & Care, S. . A paradigm for exploring what the mind does while deciding what it should do. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 57, 311–320]. Subjects were presented with a word, and asked to either read it aloud or decide whether it appeared in upper/lower case. Task information, in the form of a brief auditory cue, appeared (...) 750 ms before the word, or at the same time as the word. Experiment 1 yielded evidence consistent with the claim that at least some pre-lexical processing can be carried out in parallel with decoding the task cue . Experiment 2 provided evidence that such processing is restricted to pre-lexical levels . These data suggest that a task set is a necessary preliminary to lexical processing when reading aloud. (shrink)

This paper outlines the effectiveness of films as a pedagogical tool for teaching philosophy. For the author, a film skillfully explores philosophical issues, capturing students’ attention and providing a setting for discussion. The author focuses on the use of Lars von Trier's Zentropa as a beneficial tool for discussion of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or. The film adequately illustrates the two positions of the aesthete and the judge, and demonstrates the adverse affects of avoiding choice in one's life. The film can also be (...) useful in an introductory course and a class on existentialism because it attends to the larger philosophical questions of how one should live their life. (shrink)

"Radically reorienting, challenging, provocative, this book moves progressive philosophy, feminist and queer theory, critical discussions of race and racism forward. Prophetically, it calls for an interrogation of all our oppositional theory and politics, offering new and alternative visions." —bell hooks In Queering Freedom, Shannon Winnubst examines contemporary categories of difference—sexuality, race, gender, class, and nationality—and how they operate within the politics of domination. Drawing on the work of Georges Bataille, Michel Foucault, and others, Winnubst engages feminist theory, race theory, (...) and queer theory as she sheds light on blind spots that have characterized thinking about freedom. Winnubst turns away from the language of rights, identity politics, and liberation toward bodies and experiences to calibrate normative ideas of time and space. Her views operate at the very limits of freedom, which contain individuals within strict boundaries that they are forbidden to cross. Winnubst develops strategies of "queering freedom" to undo the more subtle spatial and temporal norms and shatter structures of domination. This thoughtful and provocative work challenges the cornerstones of contemporary philosophies about the body and its politics. (shrink)

One area of focus in contemporary debates on the Zhuangzi is whether the text endorses some kind of skepticism. For example, in chapter 2, Wang Ni expresses doubt toward "benevolence and rightness" and "the paths of right and wrong." He refuses to claim that there is something of which all things will agree to be right. However, the text repeatedly employs terms like "great knowledge" or "authentic knowledge", which hint at something endorsed or exalted by the text, if not right (...) in itself. Therefore, scholars have been trying to reconcile two sides of the Zhuangzi: the "guru" and the "skeptic."1 In the literature, scholars have refined their interpretation by differentiating skepticism into... (shrink)

Habits and habitudes are peculiar in that they are both a condition of human agency, as well as one of its most significant hurdles. They open up the world by providing us with ways of being within it (e.g., how we perceive, move about, and generally orient ourselves in space). However, they also confine our worldly behavior given their repetitive and often predictable nature. This tension between spontaneity and repetition arises out of the two-fold temporal structure of habits – i.e., (...) the habitual body simultaneously directs us toward the future and the past. An understanding of this tension is generally important for thinking about how individuals can do things differently. More urgently, this work has applications in the treatment of addictions and other compulsive behaviors where the difficulties of disrupting habitual repetition are much more pronounced. (shrink)

This essay explores the political significance of two largely unexplored texts on American radio that Adorno originally composed in English after emigrating to the United States: Current of Music: Elements of a Radio Theory and The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses. Here, productively complicating the traditional image of him, Adorno translates his theory to a broader public in ways that reflect a desire to understand and inform democratic citizenship as enacted at the level of the everyday customs, (...) conventions, and habits of the people. Ultimately, Adorno’s writings on radio in the United States show how he tries to strengthen the substantive practice of democracy through a unique form of democratic leadership as democratic pedagogy that represents the practical enactment of an early version of negative dialectics. With this justification for Adorno’s complicated commitments to democracy in mind, we might begin to read him as a twentieth-century democratic theorist and productively turn to an unlikely thinker, not just to read a message in a bottle but to help us chart our current position and navigate our future course. (shrink)

In our everyday social interactions, we try to make sense of what people are thinking, why they act as they do, and what they are likely to do next. This process is called mindreading. Mindreading, Shannon Spaulding argues in this book, is central to our ability to understand and interact with others. Philosophers and cognitive scientists have converged on the idea that mindreading involves theorizing about and simulating others’ mental states. She argues that this view of mindreading is limiting (...) and outdated. Most contemporary views of mindreading vastly underrepresent the diversity and complexity of mindreading. She articulates a new theory of mindreading that takes into account cutting edge philosophical and empirical research on in-group/out-group dynamics, social biases, and how our goals and the situational context influence how we interpret others’ behavior. -/- Spaulding's resulting theory of mindreading provides a more accurate, comprehensive, and perhaps pessimistic view of our abilities to understand others, with important epistemological and ethical implications. Deciding who is trustworthy, knowledgeable, and competent are epistemically and ethically fraught judgments: her new theory of mindreading sheds light on how these judgments are made and the conditions under which they are unreliable. -/- This book will be of great interest to students of philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, applied epistemology, cognitive science and moral psychology, as well as those interested in conceptual issues in psychology. (shrink)

In the early twenty-first century, we stand on the threshold of welcoming robots into domains of human activity that will expand their presence in our lives dramatically. One provocative new frontier in robotics, motivated by a convergence of demographic, economic, cultural, and institutional pressures, is the development of “carebots”—robots intended to assist or replace human caregivers in the practice of caring for vulnerable persons such as the elderly, young, sick, or disabled. I argue here that existing philosophical reflections on the (...) ethical implications of carebots neglect a critical dimension of the issue: namely, the potential moral value of caregiving practices for caregivers. This value, I argue, gives rise to considerations that must be weighed alongside consideration of the likely impact of carebots on care recipients. Focusing on the goods internal to caring practices, I then examine the potential impact of carebots on caregivers by means of three complementary ethical approaches: virtue ethics, care ethics, and the capabilities approach. Each of these, I argue, sheds new light on the contexts in which carebots might deprive potential caregivers of important moral goods central to caring practices, as well as those contexts in which carebots might help caregivers sustain or even enrich those practices, and their attendant goods. (shrink)

There is currently a great debate about whether the holobiont, i.e. a multicellular host and its residential microorganisms, constitutes a biological individual. We propose that resident microorganisms have a general and important role in the individuality of the host organism, not the holobiont. Drawing upon the Equilibrium Model of Immunity, we argue that microorganisms are scaffolds of immune capacities and processes that determine the constituency and persistence of the host organism. A scaffolding perspective accommodates the contingency and heterogeneity of resident (...) microorganisms while accounting for their necessity and unifying contributions to host individuality. In our symbiotic view of life, holobionts may not be organisms or units of selection, but macroorganisms cannot persist nor function as individuals without their scaffolding microorganisms. (shrink)

"[A] lucid discussion of race that does not sell out the black experience." —Tommy Lott, author of The Invention of Race Revealing Whiteness explores how white privilege operates as an unseen, invisible, and unquestioned norm in society today. In this personal and selfsearching book, Shannon Sullivan interrogates her own whiteness and how being white has affected her. By looking closely at the subtleties of white domination, she issues a call for other white people to own up to their unspoken (...) privilege and confront environments that condone or perpetuate it. Sullivan’s theorizing about race and privilege draws on American pragmatism, psychology, race theory, and feminist thought. As it articulates a way to live beyond the barriers that white privilege has created, this book offers readers a clear and honest confrontation with a trenchant and vexing concern. (shrink)

*North American Society for Social Philosophy (NASSP) Book Award 2019.* -/- *International Studies Association (ISA) - International Ethics Section Book Award 2021.* -/- Although military mores have relied primarily on just war theory, the ethic of cooperation in warfare (ECW)—between enemies even as they are trying to kill each other—is as central to the practice of warfare and to conceptualization of its morality. Neither game theory nor unilateral moral duties (God-given or otherwise) can explain the explicit language of cooperation in (...) developing and enforcing principles of military ethics and the law of armed conflict. -/- The ethic of cooperation is borne of various motivations: reciprocity, self-preservation, and efficiency, to be sure, but also a sense of warrior honor and concern with human rights. This shared morality can persist despite making it more difficult for one side or the other to win and, unfortunately, its well-meaning motivations often lead to unintended tragic consequences. -/- This book explores three manifestations of this significant yet overlooked ethic of cooperation in warfare: (1) for a “fair fight,” (2) to protect classes of individuals (e.g., non-combatants or prisoners of war), and (3) to end the war quickly. Such cooperation can take unexpected forms, from ad hoc decisions on the battlefield to institutionalization in international law, and is the source of some critical tensions in one of the most significant developments in warfare in recent years: namely, how to handle terrorism or other forms of warfare that lie outside the purview of international law. -/- Each type of ECW raises questions internal to that ethic, such as inconsistencies in the concept of “parity” across different weapons bans, contradictions within the warrior ethic that heavily influence—and therefore confuse—notions of the “fair fight,” the disconnect between what protections a person receives and his responsibility for the war (e.g., political leaders), or the limited decisiveness of outcomes generated by very short wars. -/- Their simultaneous application also generates significant tensions and raises questions about the proper relationship of ECW to the immediate goal of war itself, which is to win, and thus yield either a political settlement or a justicial decision. For example, the ECWs for a “fair fight” and to protect classes of individuals can make it harder to win the war, but even more concerning is that they can also kill more people, which in the latter case contravenes its very purpose. -/- Human history is in some ways the story of trying to concurrently wage and tame war, and the architecture of warfare itself is informed by the ECW, in particular: (a) the political nature of war, (b) the abdication from jus ad bellum judgments in order to concentrate on justice within war (jus in bello), and (c) the ways in which modern nation-states collude to define “legitimacy” in war. -/- The combination of these three features leave questions of justicial right and responsibility for war disturbingly unresolved, it also generates new challenges in a geopolitical context in which cooperative and non-cooperative (e.g. contemporary terrorism) forms of warfare clash. (shrink)

ABSTRACT One of Derrida's most significant insights concerns the irreducibility yet interdependence of unconditioned ideal and conditioned actuality. First, relying especially on the concept of hospitality, I argue that this insight allows for the development of a powerful account of ethical and political action. Second, I show the usefulness of this account for feminist critical practice, especially with regard to the ideal of inclusion and the concept of “woman.” Third, and finally, I explore how this insight could guide feminist action (...) in relation to two specific situations: feminism's relations to transgender issues and to reproductive freedom. (shrink)

Holobionts are multicellular eukaryotes with multiple species of persistent symbionts. They are not individuals in the genetic sense— composed of and regulated by the same genome—but they are anatomical, physiological, developmental, immunological, and evolutionary units, evolved from a shared relationship between different species. We argue that many of the interactions between human and microbiota symbionts and the reproductive process of a new holobiont are best understood as instances of reciprocal scaffolding of developmental processes and mutual construction of developmental, ecological, and (...) evolutionary niches. Our examples show that mother, fetus, and different symbiotic microbial communities induce or constitute conditions for the development and reproduction of one another. These include the direct induction of maternal or fetus physiological changes, the restructuring of ecological relations between communities, and evolutionary selection against undesirable competitors. The mutual scaffolding and niche constructing processes start early—prior to amniotic rupture. We are evolutionarily, physiologically, and developmentally integrated holobiont systems, strung together through mutual reliance and mutual construction. Bringing the processes of niche construction and developmental scaffolding together to interpret holobiont birth conceptually scaffolds two new directions for research: in niche construction, identifying the evolutionary implications of organisms actively constructing multiple overlapping niches and scaffolds, and in Evolutionary Developmental Biology, characterizing evolutionary and ecological processes as developmental causes. (shrink)

Contemporary international law separates the international justice of war from the domestic justice of society, but empirically, there is a correlation between democratic governance and military effectiveness, which could have a number of causes. A contemporary reconstruction from _The Seven Military Classics_ of Chinese military philosophy offers potential lessons for how domestic virtues may yield military and geopolitical victory. This chapter reconstructs arguments from the seven treatises into a collective an amalgamated conception of “good governance” that weaves together military strategy (...) and virtue ethics and maintains that good governance at home actually wins wars abroad. A reconstructed classical Chinese conception of “good governance” presents theoretical and ethical challenges, but also offers viable justicial content for contemporary jus ad bellum considerations beyond sovereign self-defense or human rights. It presents a way of instantiating the sprawling conception of human rights that falls short in contemporary discourse. (shrink)

The attitude toward li 利 is often identified as a key difference between the Mencius 孟子 and the Mozi 墨子. A common view is that for the Mencius, rightness (yi 義) and li are incompatible; but for the Mozi they are not necessarily so. In this paper I argue that the Mencius and the Mozi are in broad agreement on the issue of li, and their attitudes toward li are not as different as may seem at first glance. If we (...) take a finer-grained understanding of li in two ways, namely the self-regarding li and the other-regarding li, then both the Mencius and the Mozi would criticize the former but encourage the latter. The term li in the Mencius has a range of meanings, and it is not clear whether the Mencius actually opposes all li-pursuing activities. Mencius would agree with Mozi that, at least in some cases, one is obligated to seek li for others. Furthermore, despite their criticism of self-regarding li, both Mencius and Mozi allow that in some cases it is morally permissible to act from the motive of self-regarding li, as long as this motive coexists with the motive of rightness. That is, self-regarding li and rightness are not always mutually exclusive, even for Mencius, who seems to be more critical of li. (shrink)

Identification of Pygopus in Drosophila as a dedicated component of the Wg (fly homolog of mammalian Wnt) signaling cascade initiated many inquiries into the mechanism of its function. Surprisingly, the nearly exclusive role for Pygopus in Wg signal transduction in flies is not seen in mice, where Pygopus appears to have both Wnt‐related and Wnt‐independent functions. This review addresses the initial findings of Pygopus as a Wg/Wnt co‐activator in light of recent data from both fly and mammalian studies. We compare (...) and contrast the developmental phenotypes of pygopus mutants to those characterized for known Wg/Wnt transducers and explore the data regarding a role for mammalian Pygopus 2 in tumorigenesis. We further analyze the roles of the two conserved domains of Pygopus proteins in transcription, and propose a model for the molecular mechanism of Pygopus function in both Wg/Wnt signaling and Wnt‐independent transcriptional regulation. BioEssays 30:448–456, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Timothy Richard's Buddhist-Christian StudiesLai Pan-chiuTimothy Richard (1845–1919), one of the most well-known nineteenth-century British missionaries who worked in China, is still remembered today for his efforts to disseminate "Western learning" and to promote social welfare and political reform in China.2 Interestingly, although Richard's missionary, educational, and political activities undoubtedly dominated his life in China, he also found the time to translate a number of Buddhist texts from Chinese into (...) English.3 Unlike many of his fellow Christian missionaries, who either despised or ignored Chinese Buddhism, Richard endeavored to promote a dialogue between Christianity and other religions, especially Chinese Buddhism. In fact, his translations inspired several other European missionaries and Sinologists to take a greater interest in Chinese Buddhism, particularly Richard's biographer William E. Soothill (1861–1935) and Karl Ludvig Reichelt (1877–1952),4 the founder of Tao Fong Shan, which continues to promote Buddhist-Christian dialogue several decades after its foundation.5 However, Richard's translations of Chinese Buddhist texts, particular his translation of The Awakening of Faith, have been largely neglected by both Buddhists and Sinologists. As a result, the significance of Richard's dialogue with Chinese Buddhism has not yet been properly evaluated.Two recent studies of Richard have focused on his translation of the Buddhist texts and his dialogue with Chinese Buddhism.6 Unlike previous studies, which have viewed Richard as a missionary and analyzed his interpretation of Buddhism from the perspective of interreligious dialogue, the present study attempts to treat him as a Sinologist and review his Buddhist studies from the perspective of Oriental studies. This paper attempts to evaluate critically Richard's interpretation of Chinese Buddhism in the light of the recent debate over Orientalism triggered by the influential critique of the Orientalist enterprise by Edward Said (1935–2003).7 Richard King has examined European studies of Eastern religions in light of this debate and has tried to determine whether these "Orientalist" studies displayed the characteristics of the Orientalist approach criticized by Said. Such characteristics included "textualism" (which identifies a religion with a set of "sacred" texts), "essentialism" (which tends to assume a dualistic demarcation between the East and the West), and the colonial ideology (which legitimated Europeans' pride in their cultural superiority and colonial power).8 Whereas King's study was concerned principally with India, the present study focuses on the [End Page 23] case of Timothy Richard in China but will adopt a similar perspective. I will consider whether Richard's representation of Chinese Buddhism is infected by the textualism, essentialism, and dualistic demarcation between the East and the West that Said identified as the hallmarks of Orientalism, and whether it tended to reflect or legitimize Western colonial ideologies.My exposition of Richard's position will be based mainly on two of his most important works, The New Testament of Higher Buddhism (1910) and An Epistle to All Buddhists (1916). These texts will help us to understand why Richard translated Buddhist texts into English and how he saw the relationship between his studies of Chinese Buddhism and his missionary work. I will try to show that Richard's attempts to promote Buddhist-Christian dialogue were underlain and motivated by his concern for a kingdom—not the Earthly United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, of which he was a citizen, nor a Heavenly Kingdom unrelated to the present world, but an imminent "Kingdom of World Peace," whose blessings would be enjoyed by all the peoples of the Earth.Richard's Studies of Chinese Buddhism in Their Historical ContextsIn order to understand the historical significance of Timothy Richard's study of Chinese Buddhism, it is necessary to place him in the historical context of the missionary attitudes toward Chinese religions and of the studies of Buddhism in the West.Catholic missionaries had been active in China since the sixteenth century, long before the arrival of the Protestant missionaries in the early nineteenth century. Although some of the Catholic missionaries, especially the Jesuits, initially dressed like Buddhist monks, they soon changed into the robes of Confucian scholars, having discovered that most Chinese respected Confucian scholars more than Buddhist monks. Besides changing their outward... (shrink)

I admit that when I think of pragmatism’s contributions to political philosophy, I primarily think of Jane Addams and John Dewey. Their contributions to democratic theory and practice have been extremely important in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, so much so that “pragmatist politics” and “Deweyan democracy” are virtually synonymous. I also think of W.E.B. Du Bois’s criticisms of anti-Black racism and white supremacy in the United States and across the globe. In any case, my first instincts have never (...) been to turn to William James for political inspiration or insight. I’m not alone in thinking and... (shrink)

Die Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre 1794/95 (GWL) ist die erste und einzige von Fichte selbst veröffentlichte Fassung der Wissenschaftslehre und übte großen Einfluss auf ihre philosophiegeschichtliche Rezeption aus. Der Text ist schwer verständlich, denn er war nicht als ein für sich stehendes Werk, sondern als Handschrift für die Zuhörer an der Universität in Jena vorgesehen. Fichte hat ihn neben anderen Texten in einem Semester so schnell redigiert, dass man diese Fassung kaum als eine deutliche Gestaltung der Kerngedanken der Wissenschaftslehre und (...) noch viel weniger als ein vollständiges System derselben betrachten kann. Die neuere Fichte-Forschung hat in den letzten Jahrzehnten größere Aufmerksamkeit auf die neue Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre (die sogenannte Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo), die Sittenlehre, die Rechtslehre sowie ihre jeweiligen späteren Fassungen gerichtet, weil die Zeitgenossen Fichtes die weitgehende Tragweite der Wissenschaftslehre nicht genügend hätten wahrnehmen können. Es mag also beim gegenwärtigen Forschungsstand als altmodisch erscheinen, noch auf die Fassung von 1794/95 zurückzugehen. Die vorliegende Untersuchung tut jedoch eben dies und mit gutem Grund. Denn trotz der vielfältigen wissenschaftlichen Abhandlungen über die GWL bleibt es immer noch dunkel, wie man z. B. den unverhältnismäßig langen und verwirrenden „Abschnitt E“ im zweiten Teil der GWL über die Grundlage des theoretischen Wissens interpretieren und verstehen soll. In der Sekundärliteratur findet man verschiedene Einstellungen, von treuer Wiedergabe über interpretatorische Abschwächung bis hin zur Ermahnung, aber keine hat sich meiner Meinung nach auf den Abschnitt E einen passenden Reim gemacht. (shrink)

This commentary builds on Haico te Kulve and Arie Rip’s ( 2011 ) notion of “engagement agents,” individuals that must be able to move between multiple dimensions, or “levels” of research, innovation, and policy processes. The commentary compares and contrasts the role of the engagement agent within the Constructive Technology Assessment and integration approaches, and suggests that on-site integration research represents one way to transform both social and natural scientists into competent and informed “engagement agents,” a new generation of researchers (...) that possess the knowledge and capacities to forge “novel linkages” between the oftentimes disparate terrains of science, politics, and policy. (shrink)

Alongside the robots, rockets, kitchen appliances, and other technical wonders displayed at the great expositions and world’s fairs of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, visitors frequently found deceptively staid demonstrations of banal bureaucratic tools: cards, fiches, and files. Yet these technologies of information management were aestheticized and presented as integral to the generation and pursuit of the fairs’ ambitious ‘world projects’: global networks, universal intelligences, efficient cities, colonized galaxies. The small, moving parts of information functioned as critical tools for city- (...) and world-building. In this article we begin with the 1964–5 World’s Fair, where bits and fragments of information fueled space-age visions, then trace those mid-century imaginaries back to the 1939–40 World’s Fair and a constellation of expos at the turn of the century, to see how the small, moving parts of information management ‘scale up’ to generate grand fantasies, and, at the same time, how they serve to index their own particular political and cultural milieux. (shrink)

The responsibility gap, commonly described as a core challenge for the effective governance of, and trust in, AI and autonomous systems (AI/AS), is traditionally associated with a failure of the epistemic and/or the control condition of moral responsibility: the ability to know what we are doing and exercise competent control over this doing. Yet these two conditions are a red herring when it comes to understanding the responsibility challenges presented by AI/AS, since evidence from the cognitive sciences shows that individual (...) humans face very similar responsibility challenges with regard to these two conditions. While the problems of epistemic opacity and attenuated behaviour control are not unique to AI/AS technologies (though they can be exacerbated by them), we show that we can learn important lessons for AI/AS development and governance from how philosophers have recently revised the traditional concept of moral responsibility in response to these challenges to responsible human agency from the cognitive sciences. The resulting instrumentalist views of responsibility, which emphasize the forward-looking and flexible role of agency cultivation, hold considerable promise for integrating AI/AS into a healthy moral ecology. We note that there nevertheless is a gap in AI/AS responsibility that has yet to be extensively studied and addressed, one grounded in a relational asymmetry of vulnerability between human agents and sociotechnical systems like AI/AS. In the conclusion of this paper we note that attention to this vulnerability gap must inform and enable future attempts to construct trustworthy AI/AS systems and preserve the conditions for responsible human agency. (shrink)

Adverse childhood experiences are known to have deleterious effects on individuals across the life span, but less is known about how they affect grit, a strong predictor of achievements and well-being. This study seeks to investigate the effect of ACEs on grit in a sample of Chinese college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected from 1,871 students across 12 universities in China. Findings indicated a significant effect of ACEs on grit, particularly abuse and neglect dimensions of ACE. Since (...) grit is particularly important for professional success, those who have experienced abuse and neglect victimization may struggle throughout their education, and subsequently, in their careers. This calls for interventions to buffer the effects of ACEs on grit. (shrink)

The ethnographic turn in religious studies has responded to important developments, such as the rejection of value neutrality and the need to better address the lived experience of individuals and communities. In this essay, I affirm the value of ethnography as a method in comparative religious ethics, but distinguish between two ways of framing ethnography in relation to ethics. The first way insists on the hard limits of translating values across cultures, and tends to marginalize or dismiss normative inquiry. The (...) second way allows for the interpretation of practices of ethical justification in diverse cultural contexts. I argue that this second category of ethnography is more congenial to the work of comparative religious ethicists, since an integral part of ethical inquiry involves reflecting on, and making arguments about, social norms and practices. (shrink)

After a regime-changing war, a state often engages in lustration—condemnation and punishment of dangerous, corrupt, or culpable remnants of the previous system—e.g., de-Nazification or the more recent de-Ba’athification in Iraq. This common practice poses an important moral dilemma for liberals because even thoughtful and nuanced lustration involves condemning groups of people, instead of treating each case individually. It also raises important questions about collective agency, group treatment, and rectifying historical injustices. Liberals often oppose lustration because it denies moral individualism and (...) ignores rule of law, and their only justifications for lustration are consequentialist ones. This article suggests that lustration may not necessarily be a problem for liberals. While group treatment might be justified on grounds of convenience and pragmatism in times of transitional justice, there are also valid moral arguments consistent with moral individualism and due process for wholesale group punishment after a war. This article offers four overlapping moral justifications, in a robust defense of the core concept of lustration that is covered by each argument. (shrink)

In most testimonial transactions between adults, the hearer’s obligation is to accord the speaker a level of credibility that matches the evidence that what she is saying is true. When the speaker...

According to Shannon Sullivan, thinking about the body as being in transaction with its social, political, cultural, and physical surroundings is not a new idea.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 149-162 [Access article in PDF] Buddhist-Christian Complementarity in the Perspective of Quantum Physics Lai Pan-chiu Chinese University of Hong Kong Introduction The idea of Buddhist-Christian complementarity is by no means new. 1 But what is meant by "complementarity"? In quantum physics, the concept of "complementarity" has been extensively discussed due to the principle of complementarity introduced by Niels Bohr (1885-1962). This principle is also (...) one of the hotly debated issues in the areas of religion and natural science. Many scholars attempt to show that there are cases in Christian theology comparable to the complementarity in quantum physics. The most discussed case is perhaps the Christological doctrine of two natures in Jesus Christ. 2 Some scholars even attempt to interpret the relationship between theology and science in terms of complementarity. 3 This kind of discussion is not merely fanciful imagination originated by Christian theologians, since even Niels Bohr himself did advise Christian theologians to apply the complementary way of thinking in theology. 4 An interesting question may then be whether the principle of complementarity in quantum physics may cast light on the problem concerning Buddhist-Christian complementarity. This is the issue this essay attempts to address. Complementarity in Quantum Physics Modern physics, especially the theory of relativity and quantum physics, as Werner Heisenberg pointed out, brings forth to us an important philosophical issue—the relationship between language and reality. Some modern physicists find that they have to make use of ordinary language to establish a visual understanding or presentation of some events, which can hitherto only be expressed by a bundle of mathematical formulae. However, the ordinary language, together with its derived concepts, used in classical physics cannot adequately interpret some of the discoveries of modern physics. For example, conventional concepts of time and space can no longer apply directly in the general theory of relativity. The inadequacy of the classical concepts of "wave" and "particle" in quantum physics is another illustrative case. According to Bohr's theory, physicists can make use of these classical concepts in a [End Page 149] loose way, even though these concepts may seem to contradict each other when applied together. 5The principle of complementarity proposed by Niels Bohr refers specifically to the use of the two seemingly contradictory concepts in classical physics—"particle" and "wave"—to explain the behavior of a particular entity, light. Wave and particle are mutually exclusive concepts in classical physics. According to the classical understanding, wave possesses some characteristics that particle does not have, such as reflection, refraction, diffusion and interference. In reverse, particle also possesses some characteristics that wave does not have, such as occupying certain space. However, quantum physicists have discovered that in some experiments, light "behaves" as wave, whereas in others it behaves as particle. The results of experiments seem to suggest that neither "wave" nor "particle" can adequately explain the quantum phenomena. For this reason, some physicists, including Albert Einstein, suggest abandoning the use of the concepts of wave and particle in the subatomic realm. Contrary to this view, Bohr insists that the concepts of "wave" and "particle" remain usable and useful in quantum physics because "however far the phenomena transcend the scope of classical physical explanation, the account of all evidence must be expressed in classical terms." 6 As Bohr puts it, "the fundamental postulate of the indivisibility of the quantum of action is itself, from the classical point of view, an irrational element which inevitably requires us to forego a causal mode of description and which, because of the coupling between phenomena and their observation, forces us to adopt a new mode of description designated as complementary in the sense that any given application of classical concepts precludes the simultaneous use of other classical concepts which in a different connection are equally necessary for the elucidation of the phenomena." 7The principle of complementarity can thus be understood as a method or "mode of description" using two or more mutually exclusive concepts of a specific realm (classical physics) to explain a phenomenon of another realm (quantum physics) that... (shrink)

New technologies from artificial intelligence to drones, and biomedical enhancement make the future of the human family increasingly hard to predict and protect. This book explores how the philosophical tradition of virtue ethics can help us to cultivate the moral wisdom we need to live wisely and well with emerging technologies.

While gender and race often are considered socially constructed, this book argues that they are physiologically constituted through the biopsychosocial effects of sexism and racism. This means that to be fully successful, critical philosophy of race and feminist philosophy need to examine not only the financial, legal, political and other forms of racist and sexism oppression, but also their physiological operations. Examining a complex tangle of affects, emotions, knowledge, and privilege, The Physiology of Sexist and Racist Oppression develops an understanding (...) of the human body whose unconscious habits are biological. On this account, affect and emotion are thoroughly somatic, not something "mental" or extra-biological layered on top of the body. They also are interpersonal, social, and can be transactionally transmitted between people.Ranging from the stomach and the gut to the hips and the heart, from autoimmune diseases to epigenetic markers, Sullivan demonstrates the gastrointestinal effects of sexual abuse that disproportionately affect women, often manifesting as IBS, Crohn's disease, or similar functional disorders. She also explores the transgenerational effects of racism via epigenetic changes in African American women, who experience much higher pre-term birth rates than white women do, and she reveals the unjust benefits for heart health experienced by white people as a result of their racial privilege. Finally, developing the notion of a physiological therapy that doesn't prioritize bringing unconscious habits to conscious awareness, Sullivan closes with a double-barreled approach for both working for institutional change and transforming biologically unconscious habits. The Physiology of Sexist and Racist Oppression skillfully combines feminist and critical philosophy of race with the biological and health sciences. The result is a critical physiology of race and gender that offers new strategies for fighting male and white privilege. (shrink)

Warrior cultures throughout history have developed unique codes that restrict their behavior and set them apart from the rest of society. But what possible reason could a warrior have for accepting such restraints? Why should those whose profession can force them into hellish kill-or-be-killed conditions care about such lofty concepts as honor, courage, nobility, duty, and sacrifice? And why should it matter so much to the warriors themselves that they be something more than mere murderers? The Code of the Warrior (...) tackles these timely issues and takes the reader on a tour of warrior cultures and their values, from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the 'barbaric' Vikings and Celts, from legendary chivalric knights to Native American tribesmen, from Chinese warrior monks pursuing enlightenment to Japanese samurai practicing death. Drawing these rich traditions up to the present, the author quests for a code for the warriors of today, as they do battle in asymmetric conflicts against unconventional forces and the scourge of global terrorism. (shrink)

In this chapter, against the backdrop of campus responses to Israel and Gaza, I consider the mission of the university and whether that mission is served by institutional neutrality. On my view, it is not so easy (and may be impossible) to prise apart universities’ core functions and “public matters.” I argue that institutional neutrality is at best a useful fiction and at worst a way of concealing universities’ commitments and reinscribing the status quo. Along the way, I offer a (...) primer on academic and expressive freedoms in the context of universities, and on the importance of articulating and balancing core university values, including the duty of care. I conclude by offering advice on when universities should take a public stand on socio-political matters. -/- [This chapter is forthcoming in 2026 in an as-yet untitled edited collection edited by Marc Spooner and James McNinch and published by University of Regina Press.]. (shrink)

This paper explores the ambiguous impact of new information and communications technologies on the cultivation of moral skills in human beings. Just as twentieth century advances in machine automation resulted in the economic devaluation of practical knowledge and skillsets historically cultivated by machinists, artisans, and other highly trained workers , while also driving the cultivation of new skills in a variety of engineering and white collar occupations, ICTs are also recognized as potential causes of a complex pattern of economic deskilling, (...) reskilling, and upskilling. In this paper, I adapt the conceptual apparatus of sociological debates over economic deskilling to illuminate a different potential for technological deskilling/upskilling, namely the ability of ICTs to contribute to the moral deskilling of human users, a potential that exists alongside rich but currently underrealized possibilities for moral reskilling and/or upskilling. I flesh out this general hypothesis by means of examples involving automated weapons technology, new media practices, and social robotics. I conclude that since moral skills are essential prerequisites for the effective development of practical wisdom and virtuous character, and since market and cultural forces are not presently aligned to bring about the more salutary of the ambiguous potentials presented here, the future shape of these developments warrants our close attention—and perhaps active intervention. (shrink)

Through systematic case analyses of much-discussed social media cases, both negative aspects and best practices of social media use are revealed. Ethical theory is applied to these cases as a means of analysis to reveal the moral principles associated with each case. Four cases are analyzed, ranging from bad to arguably innovative. Based upon comparing the moral principles upheld or violated, descriptive ethics are used to infer normative ethical guidelines to govern the use of social media. Fifteen ethical guidelines derived (...) from the cases and normative moral theory are offered as a way to begin a discussion that leads to a deeper understanding of ethics in the burgeoning realm of digital engagement. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Technology gives readers a view into this increasingly vital and urgently needed domain of philosophical understanding, offering an in-depth collection of leading and emerging voices in the philosophy of technology. The thirty-two contributions in this volume cut across and connect diverse philosophical traditions, methodologies, and subfields, providing the reader with provocative and original insights on the history, concepts, problems and challenges that mark humanity's attempts to attain deeper and more lasting wisdom about our complex (...) and evolving relationship to technology. (shrink)