Systems of private regulation based on certification have recently emerged to address environmental issues in the forest products industry and labor issues in the apparel industry. To explain why the same regulatory form has emerged across these fields, the author uses a historical and comparative case study approach, closely examining early moments and paying attention to “roads not taken.” Two types of factors led to the initial emergence of private certification: social movement campaigns targeting companies and a neo-liberal institutional context. (...) The analysis shows specific ways in which these factors led states, nongovernmental organizations, and companies to build or support certification associations. (shrink)

The implementation of transnational standards — in codes of conduct, certification, and monitoring initiatives — necessarily intertwines with domestic law and other types of rules. Yet much of the existing literature overlooks or obscures this fundamental point. Indeed, scholars often err either by treating private regulatory standards as transcendent or by viewing implementation as fundamentally a technical problem. This Article argues that understanding the operation of transnational private regulation requires attention to the layering of multiple rules in a given location. (...) It develops a framework for examining this layering and illustrates it by briefly looking at two major issues—community rights in sustainable forestry standards and freedom of association in fair labor standards — and their implementation in Indonesia. In various ways, these domains illustrate how conflict and complementarity between public and private standards structure the practice of private regulation. (shrink)

Does thought have distinctive experiential features? Is there, in addition to sensory phenomenology, a kind of cognitive phenomenology--phenomenology of a cognitive or conceptual character? Leading philosophers of mind debate whether conscious thought has cognitive phenomenology and whether it is part of conscious perception and conscious emotion.

Abstract The only biologically respectable notion of human nature is an extremely permissive one that names the reliable dispositions of the human species as a whole. This conception offers no ethical guidance in debates over enhancement, and indeed it has the result that alterations to human nature have been commonplace in the history of our species. Aristotelian conceptions of species natures, which are currently fashionable in meta-ethics and applied ethics, have no basis in biological fact. Moreover, because our folk psychology (...) finds this misleading Aristotelian conception highly tempting, we are in fact better off if we refrain from mentioning human nature altogether in debates over enhancement. Content Type Journal Article Category Special Issue Pages 1-16 DOI 10.1007/s13347-012-0063-x Authors Tim Lewens, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RH UK Journal Philosophy & Technology Online ISSN 2210-5441 Print ISSN 2210-5433. (shrink)

Australia’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has been widely perceived to have been a successful one, based on the relatively few number of lives lost to the virus compared to the rest of the world. There remain, nonetheless, serious ethical challenges at the heart of the Australian response to COVID-19. The broadly positive outcomes of Australia’s pandemic response mask more troubling developments within its political culture, and the costs it has imposed on its society. This article examines two concerns in (...) particular: the normalisation of fear and emergency through the language and policy responses adopted by governments, and the significant diminution of individual freedoms and human rights. (shrink)

Where in cognitive architecture do experiences of agency lie? This chapter defends the claim that such states qualify as a species of perception. Reference to ‘the sense of agency’ should not be taken as a mere façon de parler but picks out a genuinely perceptual system. The chapter begins by outlining the perceptual model of agentive experience before turning to its two main rivals: the doxastic model, according to which agentive experience is really a species of belief, and the telic (...) model, according to which agentive experience is really a species of agency. I conclude by defending the perceptual model against a number of objections to it, and by briefly exploring its implications for the question of how to approach the study of perception. (shrink)

Is human nature something that the natural and social sciences aim to describe, or is it a pernicious fiction? What role, if any, does ”human nature’ play in directing and informing scientific work? Can we talk about human nature without invoking---either implicitly or explicitly---a contrast with human culture? It might be tempting to think that the respectability of ”human nature’ is an issue that divides natural and social scientists along disciplinary boundaries, but the truth is more complex. The contributors to (...) this collection take very different stances with regard to the idea of human nature. They come from the fields of psychology, the philosophy of science, social and biological anthropology, evolutionary theory, and the study of animal cognition. Some of them are ”human nature’ enthusiasts, some are sceptics, and some say that human nature is a concept with many faces, each of which plays a role in its own investigative niche. Some want to eliminate the notion altogether, some think it unproblematic, others want to retain it with reforming modifications. Some say that human nature is a target for investigation that the human sciences cannot do without, others argue that the term does far more harm than good. The diverse perspectives articulated in this book help to explain why we disagree about human nature, and what, if anything, might resolve that disagreement. Introduction Tim Lewens 1 Doubling Down on the Nomological Notion of Human Nature Edouard Machery 2 Trait Bin and Trait Cluster Accounts of Human Nature Grant Ramsey 3 A Developmental Systems Account of Human Nature Karola Stotz and Paul Griffiths 4 Human Nature, Natural Pedagogy, and Evolutionary Causal Essentialism Cecilia Heyes 5 Human Nature John Dupré 6 Sceptical Reflections on Human Nature Kim Sterelny 7 The Social Construction of Human Nature Kevin N. Laland and Gillian R. Brown 8 The Use and Non-Use of the Human Nature Concept by Evolutionary Biologists Peter J. Richerson 9 Human Ontogenies as Historical Processes Christina Toren 10 Divide and Conquer Maria Kronfeldner. (shrink)

Is consciousness multisensory? Obviously it is multisensory in certain ways. Human beings typically possess the capacity to have experiences in at least the five familiar sensory modalities, and quite possibly in a number of other less commonly recognised modalities as well. But there are other respects in which it is far from obvious that consciousness is multisensory. This chapter is concerned with one such respect. Οur concern here is with whether consciousness contains experiences associated with distinct modalities at the same (...) time. We will describe those who endorse a positive answer to this question as endorsing a multisensory view (MSV) of the structure of consciousness, and those who endorse a negative answer to this question as having a unisensory view (USV) of the structure of consciousness. (shrink)

After being sorely neglected for some time, consciousness is well and truly back on the philosophical and scientific agenda. This entry provides a whistle-stop tour of some recent debates surrounding consciousness, with a particular focus on issues relevant to the scientific study of consciousness. The first half of this entry (the first to fourth sections) focuses on clarifying the explanandum of a science of consciousness and identifying constraints on an adequate account of consciousness; the second half of this entry (the (...) fifth to seventh sections) examines a number of the methodological challenges facing the science of consciousness. (shrink)

The on-going debate over the ‘admissible contents of perceptual experience’ concerns the range of properties that human beings are directly acquainted with in perceptual experience. Regarding vision, it is relatively uncontroversial that the following properties can figure in the contents of visual experience: colour, shape, illumination, spatial relations, motion, and texture. The controversy begins when we ask whether any properties besides these figure in visual experience. We argue that ‘ensemble properties’ should be added to the list of visually admissible properties. (...) Ensemble properties are features that belong to a set of perceptible objects as a whole as opposed to the individuals that constitute that set. They include such features as the mean size of an array of shapes or the average emotional expression of an array of faces. Recent work in vision science has yielded compelling evidence that the visual system routinely encodes such properties. We argue that epistemological considerations provide strong reasons to think that these properties figure in visual experience. Judgements about ensemble properties are immediately warranted by our perceptual experience, and the only plausible way that a perceptual experience could confer this warrant is if it confers awareness of ensemble properties. (shrink)

A central debate in the philosophy of perception concerns the range of properties that can be represented in perceptual experience. Are the contents of perceptual experience restricted to ‘low-level’ properties such as location, shape and texture, or can ‘high-level’ properties such as being a tomato, being a pine tree or being a watch also be represented in perceptual experience? This paper explores the bearing of gist perception on the admissible contents debate, arguing that it provides qualified support for the claim (...) that certain kinds of high-level properties—such as being a natural scene —can be perceptually represented. (shrink)

Tim Maudlin sets out a completely new method for describing the geometrical structure of spaces, and thus a better mathematical tool for describing and understanding space-time. He presents a historical review of the development of geometry and topology, and then his original Theory of Linear Structures.

Elisabeth Pacherie is a research fellow in philosophy at Institut Jean Nicod, Paris. Her main research and publications are in the areas of philosophy of mind, psychopathology and action theory. Her publications include a book on intentionality (_Naturaliser_ _l'intentionnalité_, Paris, PUF, 1993) and she is currently preparing a book on action and agency.

This paper examines the neo-Aristotelian account of species natures as ‘life-forms’, which we owe to Philippa Foot, Michael Thompson and their defenders. I begin by developing two problems for their view: a problem of underdetermination and a problem generated by psychological work on ‘folk essentialism’. I move on to consider their important transcendental argument, which suggests that claims about life-forms are presupposed by all efforts to describe the organic world. In response, I sketch a neo-Kantian projectivist position, which agrees that (...) life-forms are presupposed in these contexts, while denying that such life-forms are real. This position makes a better sense of the phenomena cited in support of the neo-Aristotelian view, while avoiding the problems raised for that view in the first half of this paper. (shrink)

Unlike surrogacy and cloning, reproduction via gamete donation is widely assumed to be morally unproblematic. Recently, a number of authors have argued that this assumption is mistaken: gamete donors, they claim, have parental responsibilities that they typically treat too lightly. In this paper I argue that the ‘parental neglect’ case against gamete donation fails. I begin by examining and rejecting the view that gamete donors have parental responsibilities; I claim that none of the current accounts of parenthood provides good reason (...) for ascribing parenthood to gamete donors. I then argue that even if gamete donors do have parental responsibilities for ‘their’ children, it is not clear that they treat these responsibilities too lightly. I conclude the paper by examining the wider question of just what kind of responsibilities gamete donors might have towards the children that they have a role in creating. (shrink)

An open source open access logic textbook.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.4 (2003) 361-367 [Access article in PDF] Psychopathology and Two Kinds of Narrative Account of the Self Tim Thornton Keywords self, narrative, reductionism, embodiment, Dennett, Strawson, McDowell The self plays an important role in psycho pathology. Conditions such as dementia raise the question of how much loss of memory and awareness there can be before there is, if ever, also a loss of the self. (...) Syndromes such as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) or Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) raise the possibility of a fragmentation of one self into a number of selves. Depersonalization disorder suggests a kind of diminution both of the sense of self and the reality of the world. Symptoms such as thought insertion suggest a different kind of fragmentation of the coherence of thought within a self.At the same time there is something prima facie paradoxical about the very idea of the fragmentation or loss of self. It seems to be one thing for a self to suffer loss, quite another to think of the self as being lost. Although the experiences or beliefs had or entertained by a self might be disordered or chaotic, how can a self be anything other than whole and seem real and whole to itself?The narrative approach to the self looks like a tool purpose built to shed light on some aspects of psychopathology. The papers in this issue have examined its application to four revealing case histories and questioned its effectiveness in accounting for features of psychopathology. But in this short note I wish to stand back from the particular cases discussed in previous papers and to shed light on the general approach by setting out two contrasting versions of it. Crudely put, the first forges a connection between the concepts of self and personality; the second between the concepts of self and person. I will use the contrast between these two to draw some general lessons for the philosophy of psychopathology. Dennett's Austere Narrative Account I will start with Dennett's influential version of a narrative account of the self. His central idea is that the very idea of a self should be understood as dependent on a particular kind of interpretative strategy. Roughly, this contrasts with the idea that it is a more basic datum calling out for notice prior to adopting a specific theoretical perspective.Dennett suggests an analogy with centers of gravity both to outline the consequences of this view for the reality of selves, and the connection between the self and the interpretative strategy involved. [End Page 361] A center of gravity is just an abstractum. It's just a fictional object. But when I say it's a fictional object, I do not mean to disparage it; it's a wonderful fictional object, and it has a perfectly legitimate place within serious, sober, echt physical science. (Dennett 1992) The concept of a center of gravity is deployed within a branch of physics to describe and predict the behavior of physical systems acting under physical forces. It is the theoretical context that determines the nature of centers of gravity; at the same time, they contribute to that broader context. Dennett stresses that they are abstract or calculation-bound theoretical objects to contrast with objects that are also theoretically posited but causally interactive, such as microphysical particles (Dennett 1987, 53).Dennett has also used the analogy with abstracta to account for mental states such as beliefs, desires, and other propositional attitudes, which he suggests are ascribed using a particular interpretative strategy: the "Intentional Stance" (Dennett 1987, 13-42). The suggestion is that by showing the necessity of adopting that stance to make sense of human behavior he can defend a form of objectivity about mental states even while rejecting the industrial-strength realism that requires identifying mental states with physical, and thus causally interactive, internal states.Selves are given similar treatment. Like centers of gravity or mental states, they are theoretical, even fictional, entities articulated within an interpretative theoretical stance: A self is also an abstract object, a theorist's fiction... (shrink)

Historische en systematische artikelen van Nederlandstalige filosofen over diverse aspecten van scepticisme, toen en nu, in filosofie, religie en wetenschap.

Although Thomas More is an exemplary figure of both personal and moral integrity, his Utopia is not straightforwardly ‘integer’ in another meaning of the term, i.e., it does not unequivocally describe a ‘whole, intact or pure’ conception of the ideal society. Rather, Utopia is patently ambiguous and challenges the reader to disambiguate the narrative and to make up his own mind on how to construct the ideal society. In this paper, I analyze utopias and dystopias in general as evaluative thought (...) experiments that appeal to our imagination and deploy possible worlds. Subsequently, I argue that More’s Utopia is a successful evaluative thought experiment that actually underscores More’s integrity, because by means of its exacerbated ambiguity, it both triggers and properly respects the deliberation and evaluation of the reader in his capacity as thought experimenter. (shrink)

What does it matter if the climate changes? This kind of question does not admit of a scientific answer. Natural science can tell us what some of its biophysical effects are likely to be; social scientists can estimate what consequences such effects could have for human lives and livelihoods. But how should we respond? The question is, at root, about how we think we should live—and different people have myriad different ideas about this. The distinctive task of ethics is to (...) bring some clarity and order to these ideas. (shrink)

Many contemporary scholars defend the position that J. S. Mill was a ‘eudaimonist’, in a sense implying that he was not an ‘experiential’ hedonist. One ‘activist’ argument for this interpretation rests on the claim that Mill’s core axiological uses of ‘pleasure’ in Utilitarianism should be understood to refer to worthy or pleasurable activities rather than mental states. This paper offers a three-stage rebuttal of the activist interpretation. Firstly, in the Analysis, the Examination and the Logic, Mill explicitly identifies pleasures and (...) pains as mental states. Secondly, if we read Mill’s core axiological uses of ‘pleasure’ in Utilitarianism along activist lines, the text’s overall coherence and intelligibility becomes even more questionable than on the traditional experientialist reading. Finally, in his discussions of Plato, Mill seems to distance himself from the axiological view that non-hedonic features of mind or character have intrinsic value in their own right. In consequence, in the small number of cases in Utilitarianism in which Mill clearly speaks of ‘pleasures’ as activities, this is best construed as a derivative usage. (shrink)

Traditional Consequentialism is based on a demanding principle of impartial maximization. Michael Slote's 'Satisficing Consequentialism' aims to reduce the demands of Consequentialism, by no longer requiring us to bring about the best possible outcome. This paper presents a new objection to Satisficing Consequentialism. We begin with a simple thought experiment, in which an agent must choose whether to save the lives of ten innocent people by using a sand bag or by killing an innocent person. The main aim of the (...) paper is to demonstrate that, if it is to avoid making unreasonable demands, Satisficing Consequentialism must allow such an agent to kill. It is argued that this result is much more counter-intuitive than the fact that Maximizing Consequentialism permits agents to kill in order to produce the best consequences. The conclusion is that Satisficing Consequentialism is not an acceptable moral theory. (shrink)

We seem to enjoy a very special kind of epistemic relation to our own conscious states. In The Conscious Mind (TCM), David Chalmers argues that our phenomenal judgments are fully‐justified or certain because we are acquainted with the phenomenal states that are the objects of such judgments. Chalmers holds that the acquaintance account of phenomenal justification is superior to reliabilist accounts of how it is that our PJs are justified, because it alone can underwrite the certainty of our phenomenal judgments. (...) I argue that Chalmers is unable to sustain this claim. (shrink)

Select annotated bibliography of works on Epicurus and Epicureanism, organized by subject. First published in 2015 but periodically updated since then.

Despite a prevalence of articles exploring links between sport and art in the 1970s and 1980s, philosophers in the new millennium pay relatively little explicit attention to issues related to aesthetics generally. After providing a synopsis of earlier debates over the questions ‘is sport art?’ and ‘are aesthetics implicit to sport?’, a pragmatically informed conception of aesthetic experience will be developed. Aesthetic experience, it will be argued, vitally informs sport ethics, game logic, and participant meaning. Finally, I will argue that (...) embodying pragmatic conceptions of art as its ideal metaphor re-opens space to best realize the deep potential of sport as a meaningful human practice. (shrink)

The article discusses Michael Slote's Satisficing Consequentialism, which is the view that moral agents are not required to maximise the good, but merely to produce a sufficient amount of good. It is argued that Satisficing Consequentialism is not an acceptable alternative to Maximising Consequentialism. In particular, it is argued that Satisficing Consequentialism cannot be less demanding in practice than Maximising Consequentialism without also endorsing a wide range of clearly unacceptable actions. It is then argued that Slote's inability to provide adequate (...) reasons for moral satisficing stems from a mistaken analogy between rationality and morals. The sense of 'good enough' which is relevant to morality is one which focusses on the effort an agent puts in, rather than on the outcome she produces. However, replacing outcomes with efforts would undermine Slote's Consequentialist project. Finally, it is suggested that similar problems will be faced by others who seek to construct essentially Consequentialist theories which are not unduly demanding. (shrink)

[About the book] Although this collection of articles is not formally a commentary on Elizabeth Anscombe's famous article of the same title, in which she criticised the moral philosophy prevalent in 1958, a number of the contributors do take Anscombe's work as a starting point. Taken together the collection could be seen as a demonstration of the extent to which moral philosophers have since attempted to answer Anscombe's challenge, and to develop an approach to their subject which, while psychologically plausible, (...) is neither based on divine law nor permissive of the impermissible. (shrink)

In 1935/1936 Kurt Gödel wrote three notebooks on the foundations of quantum mechanics, which have now been entirely transcribed for the first time. Whereas a lot of the material is rather technical in character, many of Gödel's remarks have a philosophical background and concentrate on Leibnizian monadology as well as on vitalism. Obviously influenced by the vitalistic writings of Hans Driesch and his ‘proofs’ for the existence of an entelechy in every living organism, Gödel briefly develops the idea of a (...) computing machine which closely resembles Turing's groundbreaking conception. After introducing the notebooks on quantum mechanics, this article describes Gödel's vitalistic Weltbild and the ideas leading to the development of his computing machine. It investigates a notion of lawlike sequence which closely resembles Turing's concept of a computable number and which Gödel himself calls ‘problematic’, and compares it to the opposed concept of randomness, drawing upon the notion of program-size complexity. Finally, Gödel's machine is implemented in a dialect of the Lisp programing language. (shrink)

Pettit endorses a ‘republican’ conception of social freedom of the person as consisting of a state of non-domination, and takes this to refute Mill’s ‘liberal’ claim that non-domineering but coercive interference can compromise social freedom of choice. This paper argues that Pettit’s interpretation is true to the extent that Mill believes that the legitimate, non-arbitrary and just coercion of would-be dominators, for the sake of preventing them from dominating others, can render them unfree to choose to do so without rendering (...) them socially unfree (qua dominated) persons in their own right. However, contra Pettit, Mill is correct to reject the ‘republican’ view for at least two reasons. Firstly, it enables him to avoid commitment to the implausible implication that would-be dominators who sincerely deny any interest in a shared system of basic liberties are automatically rendered unfree persons by the coercion necessary to uphold such a system. Secondly, it enables him to avoid begging the question against ‘immoralists’ like Nietzsche, whose opposition to systems of reciprocal non-domination is at least partly motivated by the losses of social freedom of choice they entail for those they deem to be worthy of dominating others. (shrink)

An infinite future thus threatens to paralyze utilitarianism. Utilitarians need principled ways to determine which possible infinite futures are better or worse. In this article, I discuss a recent suggestion of Peter Vallentyne and Shelly Kagan. I conclude that the best way forward for utilitarians is, in fact, to by-pass the infinite utility debate altogether. (edited).

Maximizing Hedonism maintains that the most pleasurable pleasures are the best. Francis Bradley argues that this is either incompatible with Mill’s Qualitative Hedonism, or renders the latter redundant. Some ‘sympathetic’ interpreters respond that Mill was either a Non-Maximizing Hedonist or a Non-Hedonist. However, Bradley’s argument is fallacious, and these ‘sympathetic’ interpretations cannot provide adequate accounts of: Mill’s identification with the Protagorean Socrates; his criticisms of the Gorgian Socrates; or his apparent belief that Callicles is misguided to attempt to show that (...) the pleasures of the intelligent can be more valuable than the pleasures of fools without also being more pleasurable. -/- L’hédonisme maximisateur maintient que les plaisirs les plus plaisants sont les meilleurs. Francis Bradley soutient que soit cela est incompatible avec l’hédonisme qualitatif de Mill, soit cela rend ce dernier redondant. Certains interprètes bien intentionnés répondent que Mill était soit un hédoniste non-maximisateur, soit un non-hédoniste. L’argument de Bradley est toutefois fallacieux et ces interprétations bien intentionnées ne peuvent rendre compte de manière adéquate de l’identification de Mill avec le Socrate protagorien, de ses critiques du Socrate gorgien, ni de sa conviction apparente que Calliclès a tort de tenter de montrer que les plaisirs de la personne intelligente peuvent être plus précieux que les plaisirs de l’idiot sans pour autant être plus plaisants. (shrink)

Cognitive modeling of human behavior has advanced the understanding of underlying processes in several domains of psychology and cognitive science. In this article, we outline how we expect cognitive modeling to improve comprehension of individual cognitive processes in human-agent interaction and, particularly, human-robot interaction (HRI). We argue that cognitive models offer advantages compared to data-analytical models, specifically for research questions with expressed interest in theories of cognitive functions. However, the implementation of cognitive models is arguably more complex than common statistical (...) procedures. Additionally, cognitive modeling paradigms typically have an explicit commitment to an underlying computational theory. We propose a conceptual framework for designing cognitive models that aims to identify whether the use of cognitive modeling is applicable to a given research question. The framework consists of five external and internal aspects related to the modeling process: research question, level of analysis, modeling paradigms, computational properties, and iterative model development. In addition to deriving our framework from a concise literature analysis, we discuss challenges and potentials of cognitive modeling. We expect cognitive models to leverage personalized human behavior prediction, agent behavior generation, and interaction pretraining as well as adaptation, which we outline with application examples from personalized HRI. (shrink)

A basic feature of liberal political philosophy is its commitment to religious neut‐rality. Contemporary philosophical discussion of intergenerational justice violates this com‐mitment, as it proceeds on the basis of controversial metaphysical assumptions. The Contractualist notion of a power imbalance between generations and Derek Parfit’s non‐identity claims both presuppose that humans are not reborn. Yet belief in rebirth underlies Hindu and Buddhist traditions espoused by millions throughout the world. These traditions clearly constitute what John Rawls dubs “reasonable comprehensive doctrines”, and therefore (...) cannot be dismissed by political liberals. In many societies, including the USA, the UK, and India, belief in rebirth exists alongside other traditions, as well as modern Western views. A liberal theory for such societies must be impartial regarding rebirth, and the after‐life in general. Two alternatives forms of liberal neutrality are sketched, based on Contractualism and Consequentialism. (shrink)

This paper's ?I examines Derek Parfit's main, metaphysical, argument for reductionism about personal identity. ?II considers three possible ethical arguments for reductionism, and suggests a new approach to the question of what matters about personal identity which has to do with the notion of an ethical narrative.

In this article the editor of the Philosophical Quarterly briefly outlines the editorial process at that journal; explains why it is foolhardy to attempt to predict the future of philosophy; and, finally, attempts such a prediction. Drawing on his recent book Ethics for a Broken World, he argues that climate change, or some other disaster, may lead to a broken world where the optimistic assumptions underlying contemporary philosophy no longer apply. He argues that the possibility of a broken world has (...) deep and unexpected implications for philosophy. (shrink)

Presents a radically anti-foundationalist reading of Nietzsche's philosophy of religion.

According to standard philosophical and clinical understandings, pain is an essentially mental phenomenon. In a challenge to this standard conception, a recent burst of empirical work in experimental philosophy, such as that by Justin Sytsma and Kevin Reuter, purports to show that people ordinarily conceive of pain as an essentially bodily phenomenon—specifically, a quality of bodily disturbance. In response to this bodily view, other recent experimental studies have provided evidence that the ordinary concept of pain is more complex than previously (...) assumed: rather than tracking only bodily or only mental aspects of pain, the ordinary concept of pain can actually track either of these aspects. The polyeidic analysis of the folk concept of pain, as proposed by Emma Borg et al., captures this complexity. Whereas previous empirical support for the polyeidic view has focused on the context-sensitivity of the folk concept of pain, here we discuss individual differences in people’s ‘pain priors’—namely, their standing tendencies to think of pain in relatively mind-centric or body-centric ways. We describe a preliminary empirical study and present a small number of findings, which will be explored further in future work. The results we discuss are part of a larger programme of work which seeks to integrate philosophical pain research into clinical practice. For example, we hypothesise that variations in how patients with chronic pain are thinking about pain could help predict their responses to treatment. (shrink)

My goal in this essay will be to show, contra Parfit, that the separateness of human persons—although metaphysically shallow—has a moral significance that should not be overlooked. Parfit holds that his reductionist view of personal identity lends support to consequentialism; I reject this claim because it rests on the assumption that the separateness of human persons has an arbitrariness that renders it morally insignificant. This assumption is flawed because this separateness is grounded in our 'person practices', which reflect some of (...) the morally relevant aspects of our nature: if we imagine a species of person whose members are not naturally separate from each other, it is reasonable to suppose that the morality of this different species of person would be drastically different from human morality. Thus, if consequentialists aim to offer a human moral theory, they overlook the separateness of human persons with peril. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.1 (2001) 127-141 [Access article in PDF] Lawyers, Ethics, and To Kill a Mockingbird Tim Dare I Lawyers are widely thought to be callous, self-serving, devious, and indifferent to justice, truth, and the public good. The law profession could do with a hero, and some think Atticus Finch of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird fits the bill. 1 Claudia Carver, for instance, urging lawyers to (...) adopt Atticus as a role model, writes: "I had lots of heroes when growing up.... Only one remains very much 'alive' for me.... Atticus made me believe in lawyer heroes." 2 Not everyone endorses Atticus's nomination. Most influentially, Monroe Freedman argues that Atticus is hardly admirable since, as a state legislator and community leader in a segregated society, he lives "his own life as the passive participant in that pervasive injustice." 3Although there is plainly disagreement between Freedman and his opponents, there is also an important point of consensus. Both sides to the debate accept that Atticus's suitability as a role model is settled by his character. Freedman argues that Atticus should not be a role model because he is not the admirable figure he is made out to be: appointed counsel to an unpopular defendant, Atticus admits that he had hoped "to get through life without a case of this kind" (p. 98). He excuses the leader of a lynch mob as "basically a good man" who "just has his blind spots along with the rest of us" (p. 173). He sees that "one of these days we're going to pay the bill" for racism, but hopes that payment, and so justice for blacks, will not come during his children's life times (pp. 243-44). 4 On the other hand, a leading Atticus supporter, Thomas Shaffer, argues that Atticus shows us precisely that what matters in professional ethics is character rather than moral principle: [End Page 127] One thing you could say about Atticus is that he had character.... We say that a good person has character, but we do not mean to say only that he believes in discernible moral principles and, under those principles, makes good decisions. We mean also to say something about who he is and to relate who he is to his good decisions. When discussion proceeds in this way, principles need not even be explicit. We can say, "How would Atticus see this situation?" or "What would Atticus do" rather than, "What principles apply?" 5So understood, the debate about Atticus connects with the recent resurrection of virtue ethics and with concomitant suggestions that a virtue or character-based ethics might provide a particularly promising approach to professional ethics in general and to legal ethics in particular.In the following essay, I argue that this character-based appeal to Atticus is misplaced. Although Atticus can teach us important lessons, they are not about the priority of virtue or character. Neither side to the debate has Atticus quite right. Sorting out what it is about him that makes him an appropriate or inappropriate role model for lawyers will both enrich our appreciation of a fine novel and further our understanding of what it is to be an ethical lawyer. More generally, my analysis will suggest that virtue ethics has little to offer toward an understanding of the moral responsibility of lawyers. II In brief, To Kill a Mockingbird is the story of the trial of a black man, Tom Robinson, for the rape of a white woman, Mayella Ewell, in racist Alabama in the 1930s. Appointed to defend Robinson, Atticus Finch takes the task seriously, drawing upon himself and his children the slurs and taunts of neighbors. At trial he proves that Robinson could not have raped Mayella, showing that her attacker was left-handed with two good arms, whereas Robinson had lost the use of his left arm in a cotton-gin accident. Robinson is convicted nonetheless. The verdict does not surprise Atticus. Racism, "Maycomb's usual disease" (p. 98), has made it a forgone conclusion. Indeed, shortly afterward, Tom is... (shrink)