Results for 'Douglas Kutach'

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  1. Causation.Douglas Kutach - 2014 - Malden, MA: Polity.
    In most academic and non-academic circles throughout history, the world and its operation have been viewed in terms of cause and effect. The principles of causation have been applied, fruitfully, across the sciences, law, medicine, and in everyday life, despite the lack of any agreed-upon framework for understanding what causation ultimately amounts to. In this engaging and accessible introduction to the topic, Douglas Kutach explains and analyses the most prominent theories and examples in the philosophy of causation. The (...)
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  2. The entropy theory of counterfactuals.Douglas N. Kutach - 2002 - Philosophy of Science 69 (1):82-104.
    I assess the thesis that counterfactual asymmetries are explained by an asymmetry of the global entropy at the temporal boundaries of the universe, by developing a method of evaluating counterfactuals that includes, as a background assumption, the low entropy of the early universe. The resulting theory attempts to vindicate the common practice of holding the past mostly fixed under counterfactual supposition while at the same time allowing the counterfactual's antecedent to obtain by a natural physical development. Although the theory has (...)
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  3. (1 other version)The physical foundations of causation.Douglas Kutach - 2007 - In Huw Price & Richard Corry (eds.), Causation, Physics and the Constitution of Reality: Russell’s Republic Revisited. New York: Oxford University Press.
    I defend what may loosely be called an eliminativist account of causation by showing how several of the main features of causation, namely asymmetry, transitivity, and necessitation, arise from the combination of fundamental dynamical laws and a special constraint on the macroscopic structure of matter in the past. At the microscopic level, the causal features of necessitation and transitivity are grounded, but not the asymmetry. At the coarse-grained level of the macroscopic physics, the causal asymmetry is grounded, but not the (...)
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  4. Causation and Its Basis in Fundamental Physics.Douglas Kutach - 2013 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    I provide a comprehensive metaphysics of causation based on the idea that fundamentally things are governed by the laws of physics, and that derivatively difference-making can be assessed in terms of what fundamental laws of physics imply for hypothesized events. Highlights include a general philosophical methodology, the fundamental/derivative distinction, and my mature account of causal asymmetry.
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  5. Occasionalism in a Contemporary Context.Douglas Kutach & Özgür Koca - manuscript
    This essay was completed in January 2016 and accepted for publication in a collection on occasionalism by Nazif Muhtaroglu. It attempts to update the doctrine of occasionalism to make it independent of theism and fit better with contemporary physics and a modern understanding of causation. We find that modern physics provides an avenue to support the essential core of occasionalism.
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  6. The Asymmetry of Influence.Douglas Kutach - 2011 - In Craig Callender (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time. Oxford University Press.
    An explanation of our seeming inability to influence the past.
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  7. Empirical Analyses of Causation.Douglas Kutach - 2010 - In Allan Hazlett (ed.), New Waves in Metaphysics. Palgrave-Macmillan.
    Conceptual analyses can be subdivided into two classes, good and evil. Em- pirical analysis is the good kind, routinely practiced in the sciences. Orthodox analysis is the malevolent version that plagues philosophical discourse. In this paper, I will clarify the difference between them, provide some reasons to prefer good over evil, and illustrate their consequences for the metaphysics of causation. By conducting an empirical analysis of causation rather than an orthodox analysis, one can segregate the genuine metaphysical problems that need (...)
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  8. Time Travel and Time Machines.Douglas Kutach - 2013 - In Adrian Bardon & Heather Dyke (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Time. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 301–314.
    Thinking about time travel is an entertaining way to explore how to understand time and its location in the broad conceptual landscape that includes causation, fate, action, possibility, experience, and reality. It is uncontroversial that time travel towards the future exists, and time travel to the past is generally recognized as permitted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, though no one knows yet whether nature truly allows it. Coherent time travel stories have added flair to traditional debates over the metaphysical (...)
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  9. A Connection between Minkowski and Galilean Space‐times in Quantum Mechanics.Douglas Kutach - 2010 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 24 (1):15 – 29.
    Relativistic quantum theories are equipped with a background Minkowski spacetime and non-relativistic quantum theories with a Galilean space-time. Traditional investigations have distinguished their distinct space-time structures and have examined ways in which relativistic theories become sufficiently like Galilean theories in a low velocity approximation or limit. A different way to look at their relationship is to see that both kinds of theories are special cases of a certain five-dimensional generalization involving no limiting procedures or approximations. When one compares them, striking (...)
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  10. The Empirical Content of the Epistemic Asymmetry.Douglas Kutach - manuscript
    I conduct an empirical analysis of the temporally asymmetric character of our epistemic access to the world by providing an experimental scheme whose results represent the core empirical content of the epistemic asymmetry. I augment this empirical content by formulating a gedanken experiment inspired by a proposal from David Albert. This second experiment cannot be conducted using any technology that is likely to be developed in the foreseeable future, but the expected results help us to state an important constraint on (...)
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  11. Reductive Identities: An Empirical Fundamentalist Approach.Douglas Kutach - 2011 - Philosophia Naturalis 48 (1):67-101.
    I sketch a philosophical program called ‘Empirical Fundamentalism,’ whose signature feature is the extensive use of a distinction between fundamental and derivative reality. Within the framework of Empirical Fundamentalism, derivative reality is treated as an abstraction from fundamental reality. I show how one can understand reduction and supervenience in terms of abstraction, and then I apply the introduced machinery to understand the relation between water and H2O, mental states and brain states, and so on. The conclusion is that such relations (...)
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  12. Backtracking Influence.Douglas Kutach - 2011 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 25 (1):55-71.
    Backtracking influence is influence that zigzags in time. For example, backtracking influence exists when an event E_1 makes an event E_2 more likely by way of a nomic connection that goes from E_1 back in time to an event C and then forward in time to E_2. I contend that in our local region of spacetime, at least, backtracking influence is redundant in the sense that any existing backtracking influence exerted by E_1 on E_2 is equivalent to E_1's temporally direct (...)
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  13. Controlled and uncontrolled English for ontology editing.Brian Donohue, Douglas Kutach, Robert Ganger, Ron Rudnicki, Tien Pham, Geeth de Mel, Dave Braines & Barry Smith - 2015 - Semantic Technology for Intelligence, Defense and Security 1523:74-81.
    Ontologies formally represent reality in a way that limits ambiguity and facilitates automated reasoning and data fusion, but is often daunting to the non-technical user. Thus, many researchers have endeavored to hide the formal syntax and semantics of ontologies behind the constructs of Controlled Natural Languages (CNLs), which retain the formal properties of ontologies while simultaneously presenting that information in a comprehensible natural language format. In this paper, we build upon previous work in this field by evaluating prospects of implementing (...)
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  14. A Policy of No Interest? The Permanent Zero Interest Rate, and the Evils of Capitalism.Alexander Douglas - manuscript
    In 1937 Joan Robinson proposed that “when capitalism is rightly understood, the rate of interest will be set at zero and the major evils of capitalism will disappear”. A permanent zero rate would abolish capitalist profit except in limited cases, leaving nearly all output to be claimed by labour as wages. It would allow capital to be allocated on the basis of prospective social benefit rather than short-term profitability and a collateral basis that favours the wealthy. It would remove some (...)
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  15.  93
    Policy Equipoise and Interventional Superiority.Douglas MacKay - forthcoming - Journal of Development Effectiveness.
    According to the norm of policy equipoise, it is permissible to randomly assign participants to two or more interventions in a public policy randomized controlled trial (RCT) when there is meaningful uncertainty among the relevant expert community regarding which intervention is superior. While this norm is gaining traction in the research ethics literature, the idea of interventional superiority remains unclear. Is one intervention superior to another if it is reasonably expected to realize one outcome of interest more effectively, even though (...)
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  16. (1 other version)Consequentializing.Douglas W. Portmore - forthcoming - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    This is an encyclopedia entry on consequentializing. It explains what consequentializing is, what makes it possible, why someone might be motivated to consequentialize, and how to consequentialize a non-consequentialist theory.
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  17.  99
    Nudging and Social Media: The Choice Architecture of Online Life.Douglas R. Campbell - 2022 - Giornale Critico di Storia Delle Idee 2:93-114.
    This article is featured in a special issue dedicated to theme, "the human being in the digital era: awareness, critical thinking and political space in the age of the internet and artificial intelligence." In this article, I consider the way that social-media companies nudge us to spend more time on their platforms, and I argue that, in principle, these nudges are morally permissible: they are not manipulative and do not violate any obvious moral rules. The moral problem, I argue, is (...)
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  18. (1 other version)If Nudges Treat Their Targets as Rational Agents, Nonconsensual Neurointerventions Can Too.Thomas Douglas - 2022 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 1:1-16.
    Andreas Schmidt and Neil Levy have recently defended nudging against the objection that nudges fail to treat nudgees as rational agents. Schmidt rejects two theses that have been taken to support the objection: that nudges harness irrational processes in the nudgee, and that they subvert the nudgee’s rationality. Levy rejects a third thesis that may support the objection: that nudges fail to give reasons. I argue that these defences can be extrapolated from nudges to some nonconsensual neurointerventions; if Schmidt’s and (...)
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  19. Basic Income, Cash Transfers, and Welfare State Paternalism.Douglas MacKay - 2019 - Journal of Political Philosophy 27 (4):422-447.
    Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.
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  20.  30
    Bioethics to the rescue! A response to Emmerich.Douglas Hardman & Phil Hutchinson - 2022 - Journal of Medical Ethics 48 (11):887-887.
    In our article, Where the ethical action is, we argue that medical and ethical modes of thought are not different in kind but merely different aspects of a clinical situation. In response, Emmerich argues that in so doing, we neglect several important features of healthcare and medical education. Although we applaud the spirit of Emmerich’s response, we argue that his critique is an attempt at a general defence of the value of bioethical expertise in clinical practice, rather than a specific (...)
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  21. Public Policy Experiments without Equipoise: When is Randomization Fair?Douglas MacKay & Emma Cohn - 2023 - Ethics and Human Research 45 (1):15-28.
    Government agencies and nonprofit organizations have increasingly turned to randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate public policy interventions. Random assignment is widely understood to be fair when there is equipoise; however, some scholars and practitioners argue that random assignment is also permissible when an intervention is reasonably expected to be superior to other trial arms. For example, some argue that random assignment to such an intervention is fair when the intervention is scarce, for it is sometimes fair to use a (...)
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  22. A Comprehensive Account of Blame: Self-Blame, Non-Moral Blame, and Blame for the Non-Voluntary.Douglas W. Portmore - 2022 - In Andreas Carlsson (ed.), Self-Blame and Moral Responsibility. New York, USA: Cambridge University Press.
    Blame is multifarious. It can be passionate or dispassionate. It can be expressed or kept private. We blame both the living and the dead. And we blame ourselves as well as others. What’s more, we blame ourselves, not only for our moral failings, but also for our non-moral failings: for our aesthetic bad taste, gustatory self-indulgence, or poor athletic performance. And we blame ourselves both for things over which we exerted agential control (e.g., our voluntary acts) and for things over (...)
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  23. Not Just A Tool: Why Social-Media Use Is Bad and Bad For Us, and The Duty to Quit.Douglas R. Campbell - 2024 - Journal of Global Ethics 20 (1):107-112.
    With an eye on the future of global ethics, I argue that social-media technologies are not morally neutral tools but are, for all intents and purposes, a kind of agent. They nudge us to do things that are bad for us. Moreover, I argue that we have a duty to quit using social-media platforms, not just on account of possible duties to preserve our own well-being but because users are akin to test subjects on whom developers are testing new nudges, (...)
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  24. In Defense of (Some) Online Echo Chambers.Douglas R. Campbell - 2023 - Ethics and Information Technology 25 (3):1-11.
    In this article, I argue that online echo chambers are in some cases and in some respects good. I do not attempt to refute arguments that they are harmful, but I argue that they are sometimes beneficial. In the first section, I argue that it is sometimes good to be insulated from views with which one disagrees. In the second section, I argue that the software-design principles that give rise to online echo chambers have a lot to recommend them. Further, (...)
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  25. The Soul’s Tomb: Plato on the Body as the Cause of Psychic Disorders.Douglas R. Campbell - 2022 - Apeiron 55 (1):119-139.
    I argue that, according to Plato, the body is the sole cause of psychic disorders. This view is expressed at Timaeus 86b in an ambiguous sentence that has been widely misunderstood by translators and commentators. The goal of this article is to offer a new understanding of Plato’s text and view. In the first section, I argue that although the body is the result of the gods’ best efforts, their sub-optimal materials meant that the soul is constantly vulnerable to the (...)
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  26. The Soul’s Tool: Plato on the Usefulness of the Body.Douglas R. Campbell - 2022 - Elenchos 43 (1):7-27.
    This paper concerns Plato’s characterization of the body as the soul’s tool. I take perception as an example of the body’s usefulness. I explore the Timaeus’ view that perception provides us with models of orderliness. Then, I argue that perception of confusing sensible objects is necessary for our cognitive development too. Lastly, I consider the instrumentality relationship more generally and its place in Plato’s teleological worldview.
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  27. Deserving to Suffer.Douglas W. Portmore - forthcoming - The Journal of Ethics:1-19.
    I argue that the blameworthy deserve to suffer in that they deserve to feel guilt, which is the unpleasant experience of appreciating one’s apparent culpability for having done wrong. I argue that the blameworthy deserve to feel guilt because they owe it to those whom they’ve culpably wronged to (a) hold themselves accountable, (b) manifest the proper regard for those whom they’ve wronged, and (c) appreciate their culpability for, and the moral significance of, their wrongdoing. And I argue that the (...)
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  28. Consequentializing agent‐centered restrictions: A Kantsequentialist approach.Douglas W. Portmore - 2023 - Analytic Philosophy 64 (4):443-467.
    There is, on a given moral view, an agent-centered restriction against performing acts of a certain type if that view prohibits agents from performing an instance of that act-type even to prevent two or more others from each performing a morally comparable instance of that act-type. The fact that commonsense morality includes many such agent-centered restrictions has been seen by several philosophers as a decisive objection against consequentialism. Despite this, I argue that agent-centered restrictions are more plausibly accommodated within a (...)
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  29. Organized Sound, Sounds Heard, and Silence.Douglas C. Wadle - 2023 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 10.
    In this paper I argue that composer John Cage’s so-called ‘silent piece’, 4’33”, is music. I first defend it against the charge that it does not involve the organization of sound, which has been taken to be a necessary feature of music. I then argue that 4’33” satisfies the only other condition that must be met for it to be music: it bears the right socio-historical connections to its predecessors within its tradition (Western art music). I argue further that one (...)
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  30. Self‐Motion and Cognition: Plato's Theory of the Soul.Douglas R. Campbell - 2021 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 59 (4):523-544.
    I argue that Plato believes that the soul must be both the principle of motion and the subject of cognition because it moves things specifically by means of its thoughts. I begin by arguing that the soul moves things by means of such acts as examination and deliberation, and that this view is developed in response to Anaxagoras. I then argue that every kind of soul enjoys a kind of cognition, with even plant souls having a form of Aristotelian discrimination (...)
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  31. Plato on Sunaitia.Douglas R. Campbell - 2023 - Apeiron 56 (4):739-768.
    I argue that Plato thinks that a sunaition is a mere tool used by a soul (or by the cosmic nous) to promote an intended outcome. In the first section, I develop the connection between sunaitia and Plato’s teleology. In the second section, I argue that sunaitia belong to Plato’s theory of the soul as a self-mover: specifically, they are those things that are set in motion by the soul in the service of some goal. I also argue against several (...)
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  32. Análise da interpretação possível do geocentrismo através das tradições de pesquisa.Douglas Antonio Bassani - 2023 - Griot : Revista de Filosofia 23:59-69.
    A pesquisa tem como objetivo analisar aspectos/elementos da cosmologia de Aristóteles a partir da filosofia da ciência de Larry Laudan. A tentativa é apresentar neste artigo uma interpretação possível sobre o processo evolutivo da cosmologia da época sob o enfoque da filosofia de Laudan, baseado nas tradições de pesquisa, teorias específicas, modelo reticulado, progresso científico, metodologia, axiologia, etc. Abordaremos sobre a questão da aceitação das teorias específicas, a questão da eficácia na resolução de problemas, entre outras questões importantes para a (...)
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  33. Government Policy Experiments and the Ethics of Randomization.Douglas MacKay - 2020 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 48 (4):319-352.
    Governments are increasingly using randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate policy interventions. RCTs are often understood to provide the highest quality evidence regarding the causal efficacy of an intervention. While randomization plays an essential epistemic role in the context of policy RCTs however, it also plays an important distributive role. By randomly assigning participants to either the intervention or control arm of an RCT, people are subject to different policies and so, often, to different types and levels of benefits. In (...)
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  34. Consequentialism and Moral Rationalism.Douglas W. Portmore - 2011 - In Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.
    IN THIS PAPER, I make a presumptive case for moral rationalism: the view that agents can be morally required to do only what they have decisive reason to do, all things considered. And I argue that this view leads us to reject all traditional versions of act‐consequentialism. I begin by explaining how moral rationalism leads us to reject utilitarianism.
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  35. From Tapestry to Loom: Broadening the Perspective on Values in Science.Heather Douglas - 2018 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 10 (8).
    After raising some minor philosophical points about Kevin Elliott’s A Tapestry of Values (2017), I argue that we should expand on the themes raised in the book and that philosophers of science need to pay as much attention to the loom of science (i.e., the institutional structures which guide the pursuit of science) as the tapestry of science. The loom of science includes such institutional aspects as patents, funding sources, and evaluation regimes that shape how science gets pursued, and that (...)
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  36. Introduction.Thomas Douglas & David Birks - 2018 - In David Birks & Thomas Douglas (eds.), Treatment for Crime: Philosophical Essays on Neurointerventions in Criminal Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Crime-preventing neurointerventions (CPNs) are increasingly being used or advocated for crime prevention. There is increasing use of testosterone-lowering agents to prevent recidivism in sexual offenders, and strong political and scientific interest in developing pharmaceutical treatments for psychopathy and anti-social behaviour. Recent developments suggest that we may ultimately have at our disposal a range of drugs capable of suppressing violent aggression, and it is not difficult to imagine possible applications of such drugs in crime prevention. But should neurointerventions be used in (...)
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  37. Control, Attitudes, and Accountability.Douglas W. Portmore - 2013 - In David Shoemaker (ed.), Oxford studies in agency and responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    It seems that we can be directly accountable for our reasons-responsive attitudes—e.g., our beliefs, desires, and intentions. Yet, we rarely, if ever, have volitional control over such attitudes, volitional control being the sort of control that we exert over our intentional actions. This presents a trilemma: (Horn 1) deny that we can be directly accountable for our reasons-responsive attitudes, (Horn 2) deny that φ’s being under our control is necessary for our being directly accountable for φ-ing, or (Horn 3) deny (...)
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  38. Uniformly convex Banach spaces are reflexive—constructively.Douglas S. Bridges, Hajime Ishihara & Maarten McKubre-Jordens - 2013 - Mathematical Logic Quarterly 59 (4-5):352-356.
    We propose a natural definition of what it means in a constructive context for a Banach space to be reflexive, and then prove a constructive counterpart of the Milman-Pettis theorem that uniformly convex Banach spaces are reflexive.
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  39. The Duty to Rescue and Investigators' Obligations.Douglas MacKay & Tina Rulli - 2017 - Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 27 (1):71-105.
    The duty to rescue is a highly plausible and powerful ethical principle. It requires agents to assist others in extreme need in cases where doing so does not conflict with some weighty moral aim; requires little personal sacrifice; and is likely to significantly benefit the recipients.1 As a general obligation, it binds all persons simply qua persons, and it is owed to all persons simply qua persons. Clinical investigators working in low-income countries frequently encounter sick or destitute people to whom (...)
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  40. Plato's Theory of Reincarnation: Eschatology and Natural Philosophy.Douglas R. Campbell - 2022 - Review of Metaphysics 75 (4):643-665.
    This article concerns the place of Plato’s eschatology in his philosophy. I argue that the theory of reincarnation appeals to Plato due to its power to explain how non-human animals came to be. Further, the outlines of this theory are entailed by other commitments, such as that embodiment disrupts psychic functioning, that virtue is always rewarded and vice punished, and that the soul is immortal. I conclude by arguing that Plato develops a view of reincarnation as the chief tool that (...)
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  41. Statutory Interpretation: Pragmatics and Argumentation.Douglas Walton, Fabrizio Macagno & Giovanni Sartor - 2021 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Statutory interpretation involves the reconstruction of the meaning of a legal statement when it cannot be considered as accepted or granted. This phenomenon needs to be considered not only from the legal and linguistic perspective, but also from the argumentative one - which focuses on the strategies for defending a controversial or doubtful viewpoint. This book draws upon linguistics, legal theory, computing, and dialectics to present an argumentation-based approach to statutory interpretation. By translating and summarizing the existing legal interpretative canons (...)
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  42. Maximalism and Moral Harmony.Douglas W. Portmore - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2):318-341.
    Maximalism is the view that an agent is permitted to perform a certain type of action if and only if she is permitted to perform some instance of this type, where φ-ing is an instance of ψ-ing if and only if φ-ing entails ψ-ing but not vice versa. Now, the aim of this paper is not to defend maximalism, but to defend a certain account of our options that when combined with maximalism results in a theory that accommodates the idea (...)
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  43. Cancel Culture, Then and Now: A Platonic Approach to the Shaming of People and the Exclusion of Ideas.Douglas R. Campbell - 2023 - Journal of Cyberspace Studies 7 (2):147-166.
    In this article, I approach some phenomena seen predominantly on social-media sites that are grouped together as cancel culture with guidance from two major themes in Plato’s thought. In the first section, I argue that shame can play a constructive and valuable role in a person’s improvement, just as we see Socrates throughout Plato’s dialogues use shame to help his interlocutors improve. This insight can help us understand the value of shaming people online for, among other things, their morally reprehensible (...)
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  44. What Timaeus Can Teach Us: The Importance of Plato’s Timaeus in the 21st Century.Douglas R. Campbell - 2023 - Athena 18:58-73.
    In this article, I make the case for the continued relevance of Plato’s Timaeus. I begin by sketching Allan Bloom’s picture of the natural sciences today in The Closing of the American Mind, according to which the natural sciences are, objectionably, increasingly specialized and have ejected humans qua humans from their purview. I argue that Plato’s Timaeus, despite the falsity of virtually all of its scientific claims, provides a model for how we can pursue scientific questions in a comprehensive way (...)
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  45. Nonconsensual Neurocorrectives and Bodily Integrity: a Reply to Shaw and Barn.Thomas Douglas - 2016 - Neuroethics 12 (1):107-118.
    In this issue, Elizabeth Shaw and Gulzaar Barn offer a number of replies to my arguments in ‘Criminal Rehabilitation Through Medical Intervention: Moral Liability and the Right to Bodily Integrity’, Journal of Ethics. In this article I respond to some of their criticisms.
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  46. The ethics of public policy RCTs: The principle of policy equipoise.Douglas MacKay - 2017 - Bioethics 32 (1):59-67.
    In this article, I ask whether a principle analogous to the principle of clinical equipoise should govern the design and conduct of RCTs evaluating the effectiveness of policy interventions. I answer this question affirmatively, and introduce and defend the principle of policy equipoise. According to this principle, all arms of a policy RCT must be, at minimum, in a state of equipoise with the best proven policy that is also morally and practically attainable and sustainable. For all arms of a (...)
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  47. Desert, Control, and Moral Responsibility.Douglas W. Portmore - 2019 - Acta Analytica 34 (4):407-426.
    In this paper, I take it for granted both that there are two types of blameworthiness—accountability blameworthiness and attributability blameworthiness—and that avoidability is necessary only for the former. My task, then, is to explain why avoidability is necessary for accountability blameworthiness but not for attributability blameworthiness. I argue that what explains this is both the fact that these two types of blameworthiness make different sorts of reactive attitudes fitting and that only one of these two types of attitudes requires having (...)
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  48. A conception of genetic parenthood.Thomas Douglas & Katrien Devolder - 2018 - Bioethics 33 (1):54-59.
    We seek to develop a plausible conception of genetic parenthood, taking a recent discussion by Heidi Mertes as our point of departure. Mertes considers two conceptions of genetic parenthood—one invoking genetic resemblance, and the other genetic inheritance—and presents counter-examples to both conceptions. We revise Mertes’ second conception so as to avoid these and related counter-examples.
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  49. Why Katz is Wrong: A Lab-Created Creature Can Still Have an Ancient Evolutionary History.Douglas Ian Campbell - 2022 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 25 (2):109-112.
    Katz denies that organisms created in a lab as part of a de-extinction attempt will be authentic members of the extinct species, on the basis that they will lack the original species’ defining biological and evolutionary history. Against Katz, I note that an evolutionary lineage is conferred on an organism through its inheriting genes from forebears already possessed of such a lineage, and that de-extinction amounts to a delayed, human-assisted reproductive process, in which genes are inherited from forebears long dead. (...)
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  50. Parenting the Parents: The Ethics of Parent-Targeted Paternalism in the Context of Anti-poverty Policies.Douglas MacKay - 2019 - In Nicolás Brando & Gottfried Schweiger (eds.), Philosophy and Child Poverty: Reflections on the Ethics and Politics of Poor Children and Their Families. Springer. pp. 321-340.
    Governments often aim to improve children’s wellbeing by targeting the decision-making of their parents. In this paper, I explore this phenomenon, providing an ethical evaluation of the ways in which governments target parental decision-making in the context of anti-poverty policies. I first introduce and motivate the concept of parent-targeted paternalism to categorize such policies. I then investigate whether parent-targeted paternalism is ever pro tanto wrong, arguing that it is when directed at parents who meet a threshold of parental competency. I (...)
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