This article focuses on the role of past standards stories and how they are deployed strategically in ways that shape the process of standards creation. It draws upon an ethnographic study over multiple years of standards meetings, discussions, and online activity. Building on existing work that examines how standards are shaped by stories, this study follows the development of Augmented Reality Markup Language and maps how the story of Hypertext Markup Language became the key story that actors utilized and debated (...) to push for participation, agreement, and material development of the standard. The authors present several different ways the recurring HTML story was effective at various points in the process as a diagnostic tool, promissory future, empirical evidence, and confidence building measure. Understanding these strategic deployments serves as an empirical example of how recurring stories of the past can shape standards development. These mappings illustrate how standards can be built on past standards sociologically as well as technologically and also broadens our theoretical tools for understanding the importance of stories in the sociology of standards. (shrink)

The increasingly ubiquitous use of technology has led to the concomitant rise of intensified data collection and the ethical issues associated with the privacy and security of that data. In order to address the question of how these ethical concerns are discussed in the literature surrounding the subject, we examined articles published in IEEE Security and Privacy, a magazine targeted towards a general, technically-oriented readership spanning both academia and industry. Our investigation of the intersection between the ethical and technological dimensions (...) of privacy and security is structured as a bibliometric analysis. Our dataset covers all articles published in IEEE Security and Privacy since its inception in 2003 to February 06, 2014. This venue was chosen not only because of its target readership, but also because a preliminary search of keywords related to ethics, privacy, and security topics in the ISI Web of Knowledge and IEEE Xplore indicated that IEEE Security and Privacy has published a preponderance of articles matching those topics. In fact, our search returned two-fold more articles for IEEE Security and Privacy than the next most prolific venue. These reasons, coupled with the fact that both academia and industry are well-represented in the authorship of articles makes IEEE Security and Privacy an excellent candidate for bibliometric analysis. Our analysis examines the ways articles in IEEE Security and Privacy relate ethics to information technology. Such articles can influence the development of law, policy and the future of information technology ethics. We employed thematic and JK-biplot analyses of content relating privacy and ethics and found eight dominant themes as well as the inter-theme relationships. Authors and institutional affiliations were examined to discern whether centers of research activity and/or authors dominated the overall field or thematic areas. Results suggest avenues for future work in critical areas, especially for closing present gaps in the coverage of ethics and information technology privacy and security themes particularly in the areas of ethics and privacy awareness. (shrink)

In recent years, many non-consequentialists such as Frances Kamm and Thomas Scanlon have been puzzling over what has come to be known as the Number Problem, which is how to show that the greater number in a rescue situation should be saved without aggregating the claims of the many, a typical kind of consequentialist move that seems to violate the separateness of persons. In this article, I argue that these non-consequentialists may be making the task more difficult than necessary, because (...) allowing aggregation does not prevent one from being a non-consequentialist. I shall explain how a non-consequentialist can still respect the separateness of persons while allowing for aggregation. (shrink)

In Part 1 of this wide-ranging interview Tony Lawson first discusses his role in the formation of IACR and how he relates to the generalized use of the term ‘Critical Realism’. He then provides com...

S. Matthew Liao argues here that children have a right to be loved. To do so he investigates questions such as whether children are rightholders; what grounds a child's right to beloved; whether love is an appropriate object of a right; and other philosophical and practical issues. His proposal is that all human beings have rights to the fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life; therefore, as human beings, children have human rights to the fundamental conditions for pursuing a (...) good life. Since being loved is one of those fundamental conditions, children thus have a right to be loved. Liao shows that this claim need not be merely empty rhetoric, and that the arguments for this right can hang together as a coherent whole. This is the first book to make a sustained philosophical case for the right of children to be loved. It makes a unique contribution to the fast-growing literature on family ethics, in particular, on children's rights and parental rights and responsibilities, and to the emerging field of the philosophy of human rights. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of philosophers have conducted empirical studies that survey people's intuitions about various subject matters in philosophy. Some have found that intuitions vary accordingly to seemingly irrelevant facts: facts about who is considering the hypothetical case, the presence or absence of certain kinds of content, or the context in which the hypothetical case is being considered. Our research applies this experimental philosophical methodology to Judith Jarvis Thomson's famous Loop Case, which she used to call into question (...) the validity of the intuitively plausible Doctrine of Double Effect. We found that intuitions about the Loop Case vary according to the context in which the case is considered. We contend that this undermines the supposed evidential status of intuitions about the Loop Case. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for philosophers who rely on the Loop Case to make philosophical arguments and for philosophers who use intuitions in general. (shrink)

To imagine is to form a mental representation that does not aim at things as they actually, presently, and subjectively are. One can use imagination to represent possibilities other than the actual, to represent times other than the present, and to represent perspectives other than one’s own. Unlike perceiving and believing, imagining something does not require one to consider that something to be the case. Unlike desiring or anticipating, imagining something does not require one to wish or expect that something (...) to be the case. // -/- Imagination is involved in a wide variety of human activities, and has been explored from a wide range of philosophical perspectives. Philosophers of mind have examined imagination’s role in mindreading and in pretense. Philosophical aestheticians have examined imagination’s role in creating and in engaging with different types of artworks. Epistemologists have examined imagination’s role in theoretical thought experiments and in practical decision-making. Philosophers of language have examined imagination’s role in irony and metaphor. // -/- Because of the breadth of the topic, this entry focuses exclusively on contemporary discussions of imagination in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition. (shrink)

In analyzing oppressive systems like racism, social theorists have articulated accounts of the dynamic interaction and mutual dependence between psychological components, such as individuals’ patterns of thought and action, and social components, such as formal institutions and informal interactions. We argue for the further inclusion of physical components, such as material artifacts and spatial environments. Drawing on socially situated and ecologically embedded approaches in the cognitive sciences, we argue that physical components of racism are not only shaped by, but also (...) shape psychological and social components of racism. Indeed, while our initial focus is on racism and racist things, we contend that our framework is also applicable to other oppressive systems, including sexism, classism, and ableism. This is because racist things are part of a broader class of oppressive things, which are material artifacts and spatial environments that are in congruence with an oppressive system. (shrink)

Our goal in this paper is to articulate a novel account of the ordinary concept ART. At the core of our account is the idea that a puzzle surrounding our thought and talk about art is best understood as just one instance of a far broader phenomenon. In particular, we claim that one can make progress on this puzzle by drawing on research from cognitive science on dual character concepts. Thus, we suggest that the very same sort of phenomenon that (...) is associated with ART can also be found in a broad class of other dual character concepts, including SCIENTIST, CHRISTIAN, GANGSTER, and many others. Instead of focusing narrowly on the case of ART, we try to offer a more general account of these concepts and the puzzles to which they give rise. Then, drawing on the general theory, we introduce a series of hypotheses about art concepts, and put those hypotheses to the test in three experimental studies. (shrink)

One aim of this essay is to contribute to understanding aesthetic communication—the process by which agents aim to convey thoughts and transmit knowledge about aesthetic matters to others. Our focus will be on the use of aesthetic adjectives in aesthetic communication. Although theorists working on the semantics of adjectives have developed sophisticated theories about gradable adjectives, they have tended to avoid studying aesthetic adjectives—the class of adjectives that play a central role in expressing aesthetic evaluations. And despite the wealth of (...) attention paid to aesthetic adjectives by philosophical aestheticians, they have paid little attention to contemporary linguistic theories of adjectives. We take our work to be a first step in remedying these lacunae. In this paper, we present four experiments that examine one aspect of how aesthetic adjectives ordinarily function: the context-sensitivity of their application standards. Our results present a prima facie empirical challenge to a common distinction between relative and absolute gradable adjectives because aesthetic adjectives are found to behave differently from both. Our results thus also constitute a prima facie vindication of some philosophical aestheticians’ contention that aesthetic adjectives constitute a particularly interesting segment of natural language, even if the boundaries of this segment might turn out to be different from what they had in mind. (shrink)

Imaginative resistance refers to a phenomenon in which people resist engaging in particular prompted imaginative activities. Philosophers have primarily theorized about this phenomenon from the armchair. In this paper, we demonstrate the utility of empirical methods for investigating imaginative resistance. We present two studies that help to establish the psychological reality of imaginative resistance, and to uncover one factor that is significant for explaining this phenomenon but low in psychological salience: genre. Furthermore, our studies have the methodological upshot of showing (...) how empirical tools can complement the predominant armchair approach to philosophical aesthetics. (shrink)

Imaginative immersion refers to a phenomenon in which one loses oneself in make-believe. Susanna Schellenberg says that the best explanation of imaginative immersion involves a radical revision to cognitive architecture. Instead of there being an attitude of belief and a distinct attitude of imagination, there should only be one attitude that represents a continuum between belief and imagination. -/- We argue otherwise. Although imaginative immersion is a crucial data point for theorizing about the imagination, positing a continuum between belief and (...) imagination is neither necessary nor sufficient for explaining the phenomenon. In addition, arguing against Schellenberg’s account reveals important but underappreciated lessons for theorizing about the imagination and for interpreting boxological representations of the mind. (shrink)

What grounds human rights? How do we determine that something is a genuine human right? This chapter offers a new answer: human beings have human rights to the fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life. The fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life are certain goods, capacities, and options that human beings qua human beings need whatever else they qua individuals might need in order to pursue a characteristically good human life. This chapter explains how this Fundamental Conditions Approach is (...) better than James Griffin’s Agency Approach as well as Martha Nussbaum’s Central Capabilities Approach. It also shows how it can be compatible with the increasingly popular Political Conceptions of human rights defended by John Rawls, Charles Beitz, and Joseph Raz. (shrink)

Imaginative resistance refers to a phenomenon in which people resist engaging in particular prompted imaginative activities. On one influential diagnosis of imaginative resistance, the systematic difficulties are due to these particular propositions’ discordance with real-world norms. This essay argues that this influential diagnosis is too simple. While imagination is indeed by default constrained by real-world norms during narrative engagement, it can be freed with the power of genre conventions and expectations.

Narrative representations can change our moral actions and thoughts, for better or for worse. In this article, I develop a theory of fictions' capacity for moral education and moral corruption that is fully sensitive to the diversity of fictions. Specifically, I argue that the way a fiction influences our moral actions and thoughts importantly depends on its genre. This theory promises new insights into practical ethical debates over pornography and media violence.

David Lewis argues that centered worlds give us a way to capture de se, or self-locating, contents in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. In recent years, centered worlds have also gained other uses in areas ranging widely from metaphysics to ethics. In this paper, I raise a problem for centered worlds and discuss the costs and benefits of different solutions. My investigation into the nature of centered worlds brings out potentially problematic implicit commitments of the theories that employ (...) them. In addition, my investigation shows that the conception of centered worlds widely attributed to David Lewis is not only problematic, but in fact not his. (shrink)

The goal of this short paper is to show that esthetic adjectives—exemplified by “beautiful” and “elegant”—do not pattern stably on a range of linguistic diagnostics that have been used to taxonomize the gradability properties of adjectives. We argue that a plausible explanation for this puzzling data involves distinguishing two properties of gradable adjectives that have been frequently conflated: whether an adjective’s applicability is sensitive to a comparison class, and whether an adjective’s applicability is context-dependent.

When philosophers consider what moral status human beings have, they tend to find themselves either supporting the idea that not all human beings are rightholders or adopting what Peter Singer calls a 'speciesist' position, where speciesism is defined as morally favoring a particular species—in this case, human beings—over others without sufficient justification. In this paper, I develop what I call the 'genetic basis for moral agency' account of rightholding, and I propose that this account can allow all human beings to (...) be rightholders without being speciesist. While my aim is to set out this account clearly rather than to defend it, I explain how this account is different from a potentiality account and I argue that it is preferable to an actual moral agency account of human moral status. (shrink)

Radical experimentalists argue that we should give up using intuitions as evidence in philosophy. In this paper, I first argue that the studies presented by the radical experimentalists in fact suggest that some intuitions are reliable. I next consider and reject a different way of handling the radical experimentalists' challenge, what I call the Argument from Robust Intuitions. I then propose a way of understanding why some intuitions can be unreliable and how intuitions can conflict, and I argue that on (...) this understanding, both moderate experimentalism and the standard philosophical practice of using intuitions as evidence can help resolve these conflicts. (shrink)

There is an increasingly widespread belief, both within and outside the discipline, that modern economics is irrelevant to the understanding of the real world. Economics and Reality traces this irrelevance to the failure of economists to match their methods with their subject, showing that formal, mathematical models are unsuitable to the social realities economists purport to address. Tony Lawson examines the various ways in which mainstream economics is rooted in positivist philosophy and examines the problems this causes. It focuses (...) on human agency, social structure and their interaction and explores how the understanding of this social phenomena can be used to transform the nature of economic practice. Economics and Reality concludes by showing how this newly transformed economics might set about shaping economic policy. (shrink)

The prospect of using memory modifying technologies raises interesting and important normative concerns. We first point out that those developing desirable memory modifying technologies should keep in mind certain technical and user-limitation issues. We next discuss certain normative issues that the use of these technologies can raise such as truthfulness, appropriate moral reaction, self-knowledge, agency, and moral obligations. Finally, we propose that as long as individuals using these technologies do not harm others and themselves in certain ways, and as long (...) as there is no prima facie duty to retain particular memories, it is up to individuals to determine the permissibility of particular uses of these technologies. (shrink)

Issues of pretense and imagination are of central interest to philosophers, psychologists, and researchers in allied fields. In this entry, we provide a roadmap of some of the central themes around which discussion has been focused. We begin with an overview of pretense, imagination, and the relationship between them. We then shift our attention to the four specific topics where the disciplines' research programs have intersected or where additional interactions could prove mutually beneficial: the psychological underpinnings of performing pretense and (...) of recognizing pretense, the cognitive capacities involved in imaginative engagement with fictions, and the real-world impact of make-believe. In the final section, we discuss more briefly a number of other mental activities that arguably involve imagining, including counterfactual reasoning, delusions, and dreaming. (shrink)

Anthropogenic climate change is arguably one of the biggest problems that confront us today. There is ample evidence that climate change is likely to affect adversely many aspects of life for all people around the world, and that existing solutions such as geoengineering might be too risky and ordinary behavioural and market solutions might not be sufficient to mitigate climate change. In this paper, we consider a new kind of solution to climate change, what we call human engineering, which involves (...) biomedical modifications of humans so that they can mitigate and/or adapt to climate change. We argue that human engineering is potentially less risky than geoengineering and that it could help behavioural and market solutions succeed in mitigating climate change. We also consider some possible ethical concerns regarding human engineering such as its safety, the implications of human engineering for our children and society, and we argue that these concerns can be addressed. Our upshot is that human engineering deserves further consideration in the debate about climate change. (shrink)

We refine a line of feminist criticism of pornography that focuses on pornographic works' pernicious effects. A.W. Eaton argues that inegalitarian pornography should be criticized because it is responsible for its consumers’ adoption of inegalitarian attitudes toward sex in the same way that other fictions are responsible for changes in their consumers’ attitudes. We argue that her argument can be improved with the recognition that different fictions can have different modes of persuasion. This is true of film and television: a (...) satirical movie such as Dr. Strangelove does not morally educate in the same way as a realistic series such as The Wire. We argue that this is also true of pornography: inegalitarian depictions of sex are not invariably responsible for consumers' adoption of inegalitarian attitudes toward sex in reality. Given that pornographic works of different genres may harm in different ways, different feminist criticisms are appropriate for different genres of pornography. (shrink)

A number of international organizations have claimed that children have a right to be loved, but there is a worry that this claim may just be an empty rhetoric. In this paper, I seek to show that there could be such a right by providing a justification for this right in terms of human rights, by demonstrating that love can be an appropriate object of a duty, and by proposing that biological parents should normally be made the primary bearers of (...) this duty, while all other able persons in appropriate circumstances have the associate duties to help biological parents discharge their duties. I also consider some policy implications of this right. (shrink)

Publications by Chinese researchers in scientific journals have dramatically increased over the past decade; however, academic misconduct also becomes more prevalent in the country. The aim of this prospective study was to understand the perceptions of Chinese biomedical researchers towards academic misconduct and the trend from 2010 to 2015. A questionnaire comprising 10 questions was designed and then validated by ten biomedical researchers in China. In the years 2010 and 2015, respectively, the questionnaire was sent as a survey to biomedical (...) researchers at teaching hospitals, universities, and medical institutes in mainland China. Data were analyzed by the Chi squared test, one-way analysis of variance with the Tukey post hoc test, or Spearman’s rank correlation method, where appropriate. The overall response rates in 2010 and 2015 were 4.5% and 5.5%, respectively. Data from 15 participants in 2010 were invalid, and analysis was thus performed for 1263 participants. Among the participants, 54.7% thought that academic misconduct was serious-to-extremely serious, and 71.2% believed that the Chinese authorities paid no or little attention to the academic misconduct. Moreover, 70.2 and 65.2% of participants considered that the punishment for academic misconduct at the authority and institution levels, respectively, was not appropriate or severe enough. Inappropriate authorship and plagiarism were the most common forms of academic misconduct. The most important factor underlying academic misconduct was the academic assessment system, as judged by 50.7% of the participants. Participants estimated that 40.1% of published scientific articles were associated with some form of academic misconduct. Their perceptions towards academic misconduct had not significantly changed over the 5 years. Reform of the academic assessment system should be the fundamental approach to tackling this problem in China. (shrink)

In “Sideways Music”, Ned Markosian uses aesthetic intuitions about temporally-rotated music to argue that the metaphysics of time is different from the metaphysics of space. In response, I use aesthetic intuitions about spatially-rotated paintings to pose a dilemma for Markosian’s argument: either he accepts the intuitions about spatially-rotated paintings, in which case he must give up on some assumptions in his argument, or he rejects intuitions about spatially-rotated paintings, in which case an analogous response can be given regarding intuitions about (...) temporally-rotated music. That is, if Markosian wants to hold on to the assumptions that underwrite his argument, then he thereby offers his opponent the resources with which to resist his conclusion. As such, Markosian’s argument cannot offer a new independent consideration for adjudicating the metaphysical debate between the Dynamic Theorist and the Spacetime Theorist. [Unpublishable 2019]. (shrink)

Mitochondrial replacement techniques, known in the popular media as 'three-parent' or 'three-person' IVFs, have the potential to enable women with mitochondrial diseases to have children who are genetically related to them but without such diseases. In the debate regarding whether MRTs should be made available, an issue that has garnered considerable attention is whether MRTs affect the characteristics of an existing individual or whether they result in the creation of a new individual, given that MRTs involve the genetic manipulation of (...) the germline. In other words, do MRTs affect the qualitative identity or the numerical identity of the resulting child? For instance, a group of panelists on behalf of the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has claimed that MRTs affect only the qualitative identity of the resulting child, while the Working Group of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics has argued that MRTs would create a numerically distinct individual. In this article, I shall argue that MRTs do create a new and numerically distinct individual. Since my explanation is different from the NCOB's explanation, I shall also offer reasons why my explanation is preferable to the NCOB's explanation. (shrink)

In the last fifteen years, there has been significant interest in studying the brain structures involved in moral judgments using novel techniques from neuroscience such as functional magnetic resonance imaging. Many people, including a number of philosophers, believe that results from neuroscience have the potential to settle seemingly intractable debates concerning the nature, practice, and reliability of moral judgments. This has led to a flurry of scientific and philosophical activities, resulting in the rapid growth of the new field of moral (...) neuroscience. There is now a vast array of ongoing scientific research devoted towards understanding the neural correlates of moral judgments, accompanied by a large philosophical literature aimed at interpreting and examining the methodology and the results of this research. This is the first volume to take stock of fifteen years of research of this fast-growing field of moral neuroscience and to recommend future directions for research. It features the most up-to-date research in this area, and it presents a wide variety of perspectives on this topic. (shrink)

This chapter explores the interaction between the moral value and aesthetic value of food, in part by connecting it to existing discussions of the interaction between moral and aesthetic values of art. Along the way, this chapter considers food as art, the aesthetic value of food, and the role of expertise in uncovering aesthetic value. Ultimately this chapter argues against both food autonomism (the view that food's moral value is unconnected to its aesthetic value) and Carolyn Korsmeyer's food moralism (the (...) view that moral flaws can only make food aesthetically worse). Instead, it argues for the position of food immoralism: sometimes a moral flaw can make an item of food aesthetically better. This chapter concludes by drawing out broader implications of this position for discussions on the ethics of food and discussions on the interaction between the moral and aesthetic values of art. (shrink)

Using 3D seismic attributes and the support of a clay model that served as an analog, we mapped and analyzed a 32 km long, north–south-striking, right-lateral fault in the Woodford Shale, Anadarko Basin, Oklahoma, USA. Volumetric coherence, dip azimuth, and curvature delineated an approximately 1.5 km wide damage zone with multiple secondary faults, folds, and flexures. The clay analog enabled us to identify these features as belonging to a complex transpressional Riedel structure. We also suggest that the damage zone contains (...) dense subseismic fractures associated with multiscale faulting and secondary folding that may correspond to highly permeable features within the Woodford Shale. (shrink)

Many people believe in the intention principle, according to which an agent’s intention in performing an act can sometimes make an act that would otherwise have been permissible impermissible, other things being equal. Judith Jarvis Thomson, Frances Kamm and Thomas Scanlon have offered cases that seem to show that it can be permissible for an agent to act even when the agent has bad intentions. If valid, these cases would seem to cast doubt on the intention principle. In this paper, (...) I point out that these cases have confounding factors that have received little attention in the literature. I argue that these confounding factors undermine the putative force of these cases against the intention principle. Indeed, when cases without these confounding factors are considered, it becomes clear, so I argue, that intentions can be relevant for the permissibility of an act. (shrink)

As software piracy continues to be a threat to the growth of national and global economies, understanding why people continue to use pirated software and learning how to discourage the use of pirated software are urgent and important issues. In addition to applying the theory of planned behavior (TPB) perspective to capture behavioral intention to use pirated software, this paper considers perceived risk as a salient belief influencing attitude and intention toward using pirated software. Four perceived risk components related to (...) the use of pirated software (performance, social, prosecution and psychological risks) have been identified, measured and tested. Data were collected through an online survey of 305 participants. The results indicate that perceived prosecution risk has an impact on intention to use pirated software, and perceived psychological risk is a strong predictor of attitude toward using pirated software. In addition, attitude and perceived behavior control contribute significantly to the intended use of pirated software. However, the proposed direct relationship between subjective norm and intention to use pirated software is not supported. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

What are human rights? According to one longstanding account, the Naturalistic Conception of human rights, human rights are those that we have simply in virtue of being human. In recent years, however, a new and purportedly alternative conception of human rights has become increasingly popular. This is the so-called Political Conception of human rights, the proponents of which include John Rawls, Charles Beitz, and Joseph Raz. In this paper we argue for three claims. First, we demonstrate that Naturalistic Conceptions of (...) human rights can accommodate two of the most salient concerns that proponents of the Political Conception have raised about them. Second, we argue that the theoretical distance between Naturalistic and Political Conceptions is not as great as it has been made out to be. Finally, we argue that a Political Conception of human rights, on its own, lacks the resources necessary to determine the substantive content of human rights. If we are right, not only should the Naturalistic Conception not be rejected, the Political Conception is in fact incomplete without the theoretical resources that a Naturalistic Conception characteristically provides. These three claims, in tandem, provide a fresh and largely conciliatory perspective on the ongoing debate between proponents of Political and Naturalistic Conceptions of human rights. (shrink)

This study examined the relationship between ethical leadership as perceived by employees and the family satisfaction of the employees’ spouses. It also considered the mediating role of the employees’ ethical leadership in the family domain as perceived by their spouses, and the moderating role of the employees’ identification with leader. The results, which were based on a sample of 193 employee–spouse dyads in China, indicated that employees’ perceptions of ethical leadership in the workplace positively influenced their spouses’ family satisfaction. Moreover, (...) employees’ ethical leadership in the family domain mediated this relationship. Furthermore, whereas identification with leader strengthened the relationship between the employees’ perceptions of ethical leadership in the workplace and their ethical leadership demonstrations in the family domain, it weakened the relationship between their ethical leadership demonstrations in the family domain and their spouses’ family satisfaction. The theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

This article analyzes new material on the history of the amicable numbers. It discusses Hebrew texts which throw new light on the diffusion in Medieval Europe of Ṯābit ibn Qurra's work. We find Ṯābit's theorem on amicable numbers in a Hebrew translation, made in Saragossa in 1395, of an arithmetical commentary written by Abū al-Ṣalt al-Andalusī, and also in an original Hebrew text probably written by the Jewish Provençal scholar Qalonymos ben Qalonymos. These texts lend strong support to the surmise (...) that the Arabic tradition concerning amicable numbers could not have remained unknown to European mathematicians before the work of Descartes and Fermat in the 17th century. Dans cet article, on analyse des données nouvelles concernant l'histoire des nombres amiables. Les textes hébreux qui sont cités permettent d'éclairer la diffusion, dans l'Europe médiévale, des résultats établis par Tābit ibn Qurra au IX e siècle: en effet, le théorème sur les nombres amiables auquel est attaché son nom apparaît aussi bien dans une traduction effectuée à Saragosse, en 1395, d'un commentaire arithmétique d'Abū al-Ṣalt al-Andalusī, que dans une composition originale attribuée au savant juif provençal Qalonymos ben Qalonymos d'Arles. Ces témoignages renforcent l'hypothèse selon laquelle la tradition arabe dans ce domaine n'a pas pu être ignorée des mathématiciens européens, avant les résultats énoncés par Descartes et Fermat au XVII e siècle. (shrink)

Despite the therapeutic potential of human embryonic stem (HES) cells, many people believe that HES cell research should be banned. The reason is that the present method of extracting HES cells involves the destruction of the embryo, which for many is the beginning of a person. This paper examines a number of compromise solutions such as parthenogenesis, the use of defective embryos, genetically creating a "pseudo embryo" that can never form a placenta, and determining embryo death, and argues that none (...) of these proposals are likely to satisfy embryoists, that is, those who regard the embryo as a person. This paper then proposes a method of extracting HES cells, what might be called the Blastocyst Transfer Method, that meets the ethical requirements of embryoists, and it considers some possible concerns regarding this method. It concludes by encouraging future HES cell research to investigate this method. (shrink)

Participants in some clinical trials are at risk of being harmed and sometimes are seriously harmed as a result of not being provided with available, relevant risk information. We argue that this situation is unacceptable and that there is a moral duty to disclose all adverse clinical trial results to participants in clinical trials. This duty is grounded in the human right not to be placed at risk of harm without informed consent. We consider objections to disclosure grounded in considerations (...) of commercial interest, and we argue that these concerns are insufficient to override the moral duty to disclose adverse clinical trial results. However, we also develop a proposal that enables commercial interests to be protected, while promoting the duty to disclose adverse clinical trial results. (shrink)

A number of prominent bioethicists such as Mike Parker, Anneke Lucassen, and Bartha Maria Knoppers have called for the adoption of a system in which by default, genetic information is shared among family members. In this paper, I suggest that a main reason given in support of this call to share genetic information among family members is the idea that genetic information is essentially familial in nature. Upon examining this ‘familial nature of genetics’ argument, I show that most genetic information (...) are only shared in a weaker way among family members and do not necessarily lead to the actual manifestation of particular diseases. The upshot is that the idea that genetic information is familial in nature does not provide a sufficient ground for why we should move towards a system in which by default, genetic information is shared among family members. (shrink)

This paper investigates the association between board characteristics and the company’s corporate social responsibility assurance decision in China. By examining 2054 firm-years of Chinese listed companies with CSR reports from 2008 to 2012, we find that firms with a large board size, more female directors, and separation of CEO and chairman positions are more likely to engage in CSR assurance. Gender diversity also influences the CSR assurance provider choice. However, board independence and overseas background of the CEO do not affect (...) the CSR assurance decision. Inconsistent with our prediction, firms with foreign directors are less likely to engage in voluntary CSR assurance. In summary, this research provides in-depth insights into the determinants of Chinese firms’ voluntary CSR assurance. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 13, Issue 6, pp 652 - 668 Do biological parents have the right to parent their own biological children? It might seem obvious that the answer is yes, but the philosophical justification for this right is uncertain. In recent years, there has been a flurry of philosophical activity aimed at providing fresh justifications for this right. In this paper, I shall propose a new answer, namely, the right to parent one’s own biological children is a human right. (...) I call this the human rights account of parental rights and I shall explain how this account is better than these other alternatives. (shrink)

What are you and I essentially? When do you and I come into and go out of existence? A common response is that we are essentially organisms, that is, we come into existence as organisms and go out of existence when we cease to be organisms. Jeff McMahan has put forward two arguments against the Organism View: the case of dicephalus and a special case of hemispheric commissurotomy. In this paper, I defend the Organism View against these two cases. Because (...) it is possible to devise more McMahanian-type cases, I also provide a more general solution to these kinds of cases. (shrink)

Some philosophers have criticized experimental philosophy for being superfluous. Jackson implies that experimental philosophy studies are unnecessary. More recently, Dunaway, Edmunds, and Manley empirically demonstrate that experimental studies do not deliver surprising results, which is a pro tanto reason for foregoing conducting such studies. This paper gives theoretical and empirical considerations against the superfluity criticism. The questions concerning the surprisingness of experimental philosophy studies have not been properly disambiguated, and their metaphilosophical significance have not been properly assessed. Once the most (...) relevant question is identified, a re-analysis of Dunaway and colleagues’ data actually undermines the superfluity criticism. (shrink)

The story of Ashley, a nine-year-old from Seattle, has caused a good deal of controversy since it appeared in the Los Angeles Times on January 3, 2007.1 Ashley was born with a condition called static encephalopathy, a severe brain impairment that leaves her unable to walk, talk, eat, sit up, or roll over. According to her doctors, Ashley has reached, and will remain at, the developmental level of a three-month-old.

Methodologically, philosophical aesthetics is undergoing an evolution that takes it closer to the sciences. Taking this methodological convergence as the starting point, I argue for a pragmatist and pluralist view of aesthetic explanations. To bring concreteness to discussion, I focus on vindicating genre explanations, which are explanations of aesthetic phenomena that centrally cite a work's genre classification. I show that theoretical resources that philosophers of science have developed with attention to actual scientific practice and the special sciences can be used (...) to make room for genre explanations in aesthetics. In turn, making room for genre explanations also demonstrates the plausibility of the pragmatist and pluralist view of aesthetic explanations. (shrink)

A major challenge to the Doctrine of Double Effect is the concern that an agent’s intention can be identified in such a fine-grained way as to eliminate an intention to harm from a putative example of an intended harm, and yet, the resulting case appears to be a case of impermissibility. This is the so-called “closeness problem.” Many people believe that one can address the closeness problem by adopting Warren Quinn’s version of the DDE, call it DDE*, which distinguishes between (...) harmful direct agency and harmful indirect agency. In this paper, I first argue that Quinn’s DDE* is just as vulnerable to the closeness problem as the DDE is. Second, some might think that what we should therefore do is give up on intentions altogether and move towards some kind of non-state-of-mind, victim-based deontology. I shall argue against this move and explain why intentions are indispensable to an adequate nonconsequentialist theory. Finally, I shall propose a new way of answering the closeness problem. (shrink)