Animals are an important part of our social, economic and corporate world. Their wellbeing is significantly affected by the ways in which humans treat them. However, animals have long remained (and, indeed, continue to remain) effectively invisible in the business ethics and corporate responsibility discourse. This article argues in favor of the moral necessity of according animal welfare a higher priority in business. In line with most streams in both recent and traditional animal ethics, this article derives the avoidance (...) of unnecessary animal suffering as the moral minimum standard for responsible management in the livestock industry. Based on a broad range of different interpretations of what animal suffering may be necessary, the article discusses three distinct ways in which humans working in the animal industry could meet their moral responsibility to avoid unnecessary suffering, and, with this, increase animal welfare: by ameliorating circumstances for animals, by aiming at a two-pronged transformation, or by transforming into a “zero-suffering” business. Considering animal welfare as a legitimate ethical value in and of itself is a first step towards overcoming the anthropocentric bias in today's sustainability and corporate responsibility debate. (shrink)

This article examines the implications of utilitarianism for social justice, considering different cases of the trolley problems. Utilitarianism comprises a cluster of ethical theses, which have political and legal implications. In general, utilitarianism is assumed to augment the common good, such as pleasure, happiness, satisfaction, and utility, or to reduce pain, suffering, dissatisfaction, and disutility. The article investigates a key problem whether utilitarianism brings about social justice as a moral theory. In recent literature, many moral philosophers have developed (...) several thought experiments, known as trolley problems, that help understand the utilitarian applications to social justice. Philippa Foot and others formulated several thought experiments to help explain the utilitarian difference between the maximum good and the minimum loss. Considering different cases of the trolley problem, I argue that utilitarianism does not do egalitarian justice to all people because it does not eliminate unjust inequalities in society. I hold that utilitarianism is an ethical theory without an egalitarian morality. John Rawls posited a landmark theory of social justice in contrast to the utilitarian notion of social justice. Utilitarianism does not provide social justice to the few, the minority, or the weak in the social world. So, utilitarianism is an inadequate moral theory for acquiring social justice. In qualitative research methodology, I adopt a method of an empirically informed philosophical analysis to examine documentary resources, including journal papers, academic books, and conferences and congresses. (shrink)

The rapid expansion of the public discussion and research on just transition implies the risk of watering down either justice or the (eco-)socio-technical transition itself. We create a theoretical notion of just transition boundaries and propose it to help consider non-negotiable limits to just transition discourse and make sense of negotiations within such limits. Just transition boundaries are comprised of ecological and social boundaries. They determine that just transition-processes must bring societies effectively within the safety thresholds of the two (...) most critical planetary boundaries, climate change and biodiversity loss, and must do that by means and supportive measures that protect vulnerable groups from falling or getting stuck below social minimums in those processes. Boundaries leave room for plural values and visions for realizing transitions and remaining within safe thresholds in community-specific conditions. Context-specific additions to what just transition should cover are possible insofar as they do not contradict or risk just transition boundaries. In addition to justifying and conceptualizing just transition boundaries, we reflect on its implications for policymaking and research. (shrink)

Spanish Abstract: A partir de un análisis desde la historia del derecho, este artículo de investigación busca demostrar la existencia de un significado de justicia social en el discurso jurídico transnacional actual que se resume en la garantía de estos tres elementos: Estado Social de Derecho, dignidad humana e igualdad de oportunidades. Con esto, se pretende superar el simple estudio de teorías de filósofos de moda como John Rawls a la hora de abordar el problema de cómo entender (...) y materializar la justicia social, particularmente, en el plano constitucional. Finalmente, con la ayuda de algunos breves estudios de caso, se espera proveer un marco mínimo útil para entender cómo la justicia social puede lograrse a través del derecho. -/- English Abstract: Based on an analysis from legal history, this paper seeks to prove the existence of a meaning of social justice in the current transnational legal discourse that can be synthetized in the warranty of these three elements: Social Rule of Law, human dignity, and equal opportunities. Thus, it aims to overcome the mere study of theories of justice drawn up by trendy philosophers like John Ralws when addressing the problem on how to understand and achieve social justice, specially, in constitutional law. Finally, with the help of some brief case studies, the author hopes to provide a minimum framework useful to understand how social justice can be realized through law. (shrink)

Emotion recognition systems (ERS) offer the ability to identify the emotions of others, based on an analysis of their facial expressions and regardless of culture, ethnicity, context, gender or social class. By claiming universalism in the expression as well as in the recognition of emotions, we believe that ERS present significant risks of causing great harm to some individuals, in addition to targeting, in some contexts, specific social groups. Drawing on a wide range of multidisciplinary knowledge - including (...) philosophy, psychology, computer science and anthropology - this research project aims to identify the current limitations of ERS and the main risks that their use brings, with the goal of providing a clear and robust analysis of the use of ERS and their contribution to greater social justice. Pointing to technical limitations, we refute, on the one hand, the idea that ERS are able to prove the causal link between specific emotions and specific facial expressions. We support our argument with evidence of the inability of ERS to distinguish facial expressions of emotions from facial expressions as communication signals. On the other hand, due to the contextual and cultural limitations of current ERS, we refute the idea that ERS are able to recognise, with equal performance, the emotions of individuals, regardless of their culture, ethnicity, gender and social class. Our ethical analysis shows that the risks are considerably more numerous and important than the benefits that could be derived from using ERS. However, we have separated out a specific type of ERS, whose use is limited to the field of care, and which shows a remarkable potential to actively participate in social justice, not only by complying with the minimum requirements, but also by meeting the criterion of beneficence. While ERS currently pose significant risks, it is possible to consider the potential for specific types to participate in social justice and provide emotional and psychological support and assistance to certain members of society. (shrink)

This paper argues that, with modification, Rawls's social contract theory can produce principles of distributive justice applying to the severely disabled. It is a response to critics who claim that Rawls's assumption that the parties in the original position represent fully cooperating citizens excludes the disabled from the social contract. I propose that this idealizing assumption should be dropped at the constitutional stage of the contract where the parties decide on a social minimum. Knowing that they (...) might not be fully capable of social cooperation, the parties will choose a social minimum that is as high and comprehensive as is compatible with the difference principle. This will ensure that the disabled have an adequate income. (shrink)

This paper deals with the third and most disputed principle of John Rawls’s theory of justice: the so-called difference principle. My reasoning has three parts. I first present and examine the principle. My investigation is driven by three questions: what considerations lead Rawls to the acceptance of the principle; what the principle’s relation to effectiveness is; and what and how much the principle demands. A proper understanding of the principle permits me to spend the second half of the paper with (...) exploring the difficulties the principle encounters. I first discuss four well-known objections and argue that all of them, partly or entirely, hold against the principle. I then discuss the applicability of the principle with special attention to the relations among the three Rawlsian principles and the notion of the social minimum. Investigation of the first issue shows that the two other principles leave enough room for the difference principle, whereas in the second case I conclude that parties to the Rawlsian original position would prefer a social minimum principle to the difference principle. Finally, at the end of the paper, I briefly summarize my reasoning repeating its most important findings. (shrink)

John Rawls’s use of the “fully cooperating assumption” has been criticized for hindering attempts to address the needs of disabled individuals, or non-cooperators. In response, philosophers sympathetic to Rawls’s project have extended his theory. I assess one such extension by Cynthia Stark, that proposes dropping Rawls’s assumption in the constitutional stage (of his four-stage sequence), and address the needs of non-cooperators via the social minimum. I defend Stark’s proposal against criticisms by Sophia Wong, Christie Hartley, and Elizabeth Edenberg (...) and Marilyn Friedman. Nevertheless, I argue that Stark’s proposal is crucially incomplete. Her formulation of the social minimum lacks accompanying criteria with which the adequacy of the provisions for non-cooperators may be assessed. Despite initial appearances, Stark’s proposal does not fully address the needs of non-cooperators. I conclude by considering two payoffs of identifying this lack of criteria. (shrink)

Robert Nozick is the most discussed libertarian philosopher of these days. The paper examines the question of whether he supported forced taxation. The normative basis of Nozick’s position, the neo-Lockean theory of natural human rights are analyzed. On the basis of this theory, his argument in favor of the moral justification of the minimal state is reconstructed. While this reconstruction leaves it ambiguous whether such the state should be funded by taxation, six arguments are offered in favor of such tax (...) funding. These arguments are based on the same normative premises as Nozick’s own argument and can therefore be supported by contemporary Nozickians even if Nozick himself rejected taxation. These arguments are shown to help overcome some of the critical objections faced by Nozick’s theory and neo-Lockeanism as a whole. However, accepting these arguments entails accepting not only the tax financing of the minimal state, but also the expansion of the functions of this state to provide citizens with a social minimum in the form of an unconditional basic income or some other form of redistribution. (shrink)

This paper examines the conservative point of view about distributive justice. The first section explains the methodology used to develop this point of view. The second section describes one conservative point of view and briefly provides empirical evidence that it reflects the viewpoint of many ordinary conservatives. The third section explains how this conservative view can ground objections to social safety net programs, using as examples the recent health reform legislation and more extensive proposals for a true national health (...) system. The fourth section sketches ways that non-conservative philosophers might try to refute those objections. Examining a conservative point of view leads to several important conclusions. One is that the conservative point of view is not properly represented in contemporary philosophical discussions. Another is that the conservative point of view cannot be refuted by appealing to existing egalitarian writings. A third is that if progressive philosophers such as myself want to address the conservative point of view, we must expand the range of issues that we discuss in contemporary political philosophy. Doing so is a vital task, because otherwise we ignore the political views held by as much as half the American population. (shrink)

In answering normative questions, researchers sometimes appeal to the concept of basic needs. Their guiding idea is that our first priority should be to ensure that everybody is able to meet these needs—to have enough in terms of food, water, shelter, and so on. This article provides an opinionated overview of basic needs in normative contexts. Any basic needs theory must answer three questions: (1) What are basic needs? (2) To what extent do basic needs generate reasons for action and (...) how are these reasons to be understood? (3) How are basic needs and their satisfaction to be measured? I address these questions in turn. Then I also briefly discuss the theoretical potential of appealing to basic needs in normative contexts. It turns out that future research in this area could benefit from a higher degree of interdisciplinarity and methodological reflection, and that, generally speaking, basic needs theories are more promising than they have often been claimed to be. (shrink)

DOI: 10.1080/00031305.2018.1564697 When the editors of Basic and Applied Social Psychology effectively banned the use of null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) from articles published in their journal, it set off a fire-storm of discussions both supporting the decision and defending the utility of NHST in scientific research. At the heart of NHST is the p-value which is the probability of obtaining an effect equal to or more extreme than the one observed in the sample data, given the null hypothesis (...) and other model assumptions. Although this is conceptually different from the probability of the null hypothesis being true, given the sample, p-values nonetheless can provide evidential information, toward making an inference about a parameter. Applying a 10,000-case simulation described in this article, the authors found that p-values’ inferential signals to either reject or not reject a null hypothesis about the mean (α = 0.05) were consistent for almost 70% of the cases with the parameter’s true location for the sampled-from population. Success increases if a hybrid decision criterion, minimum effect size plus p-value (MESP), is used. Here, rejecting the null also requires the difference of the observed statistic from the exact null to be meaningfully large or practically significant, in the researcher’s judgment and experience. The simulation compares performances of several methods: from p-value and/or effect size-based, to confidence-interval based, under various conditions of true location of the mean, test power, and comparative sizes of the meaningful distance and population variability. For any inference procedure that outputs a binary indicator, like flagging whether a p-value is significant, the output of one single experiment is not sufficient evidence for a definitive conclusion. Yet, if a tool like MESP generates a relatively reliable signal and is used knowledgeably as part of a research process, it can provide useful information. (shrink)

Particular applications of Privacy by Design (PbD) have proven to be valuable tools to protect privacy in many technological applications. However, PbD is not as promising when applied to technologies used for surveillance. After specifying how surveillance and privacy are understood in this paper, I will highlight the shortcomings of PbD when applied to surveillance, using a web-scanning system for counter-terrorism purposes as an example. I then suggest reworking PbD into a different approach: the Minimum Harm by Design (MHbD) (...) model. MHbD differs from PbD principally in that it acknowledges that the potential harms of surveillance bear not only upon privacy but also values that define the very constitution of a society and its political character. MHbD aims to identify and systematise the different categories of such harms and links them to current theories on surveillance on the one hand and on possible design measures on the other. (shrink)

My analysis takes as its point of departure the controversial assumption that contemporary ethical theories cannot capture adequately the ethical and social challenges of scientific and technological development. This assumption is rooted in the argument that classical ethical theory invariably addresses the issue of ethical responsibility in terms of whether and how intentional actions of individuals can be justified. Scientific and technological developments, however, have produced unintentional consequences and side-consequences. These consequences very often result from collective decisions concerning the (...) way we wish to organise our economies and society, rather than from individual actions. It has been apparent for a long time now that it is not sufficient to construct an ethics of science and technology on the basis of the image of a scientist who intentionally wants to create a Frankenstein. Thus, as a minimum we would require an ethical framework that addresses both the aspect of unintentional side consequences (rather than intentional actions) and the aspect of collective decisions (rather than individual decisions) with regard to complex societal systems, such as the operation of our economy. We do not have such a theory available. More disturbing than the principle shortcomings of ethical theory are the shortcomings of conventional ethical practice with respect to technological developments. Below I will suggest how four different developments can illustrate these shortcomings, which centre around the fact that individuals in our society can simply not be held fully accountable for their individual role within the context of scientific technological developments. I will call these shortcomings of a theory (and practice) of individual role responsibility. This may help us to reflect on robotics too, insofar as robots may be perceived as replacements for “roles”. From there, I will argue why we have to shift our attention to an ethics of knowledge assessment in the framework of deliberative procedures. (shrink)

This chapter outlines six distinct reasons for rejecting retributivism, not the least of which is that it’s unclear that agents possess the kind of free will and moral responsibility needed to justify it. It then sketches a novel non-retributive alternative called the public health-quarantine model. The core idea of the model is that the right to harm in self-defense and defense of others justifies incapacitating the criminally dangerous with the minimum harm required for adequate protection. The model also draws (...) on the public health framework and prioritizes prevention and social justice. It is argued that not only does the public health-quarantine model offer a stark contrast to retributivism, it also provides a more humane, holistic, and effective approach to dealing with criminal behavior, one that is superior to both retributivism and other leading non-retributive alternatives. (shrink)

Highlights: -/- • Breastfeeding and breastfeeding support can contribute to mitigating climate change. • Achieving global nutrition targets will save more emissions than fuel-switching. • Breastfeeding support programmes support a just transition. • This work can support the expansion of mitigation options in energy system models. -/- Abstract: -/- Renewable gas has been proposed as a solution to decarbonise industrial processes, specifically heat demand. As part of this effort, the breast-milk substitutes industry is proposing to use renewable gas as a (...) substitute for fossil natural gas. However, decarbonising the industrial processing of breast-milk substitutes can increase social license for these products, potentially undermining breastfeeding. World Health Organisation nutrition targets aim to increase exclusive breastfeeding to at least 50% globally by 2025 to improve maternal, infant, and young child health and nutrition. This target will have implications for the energy transition. A weakness of existing energy models is that demands for end-use products such as breast-milk substitutes are typically not considered explicitly. This paper develops an analytical framework for explicitly representing infant feeding methods in energy systems models. We compare the emissions saved in Ireland from decarbonising the industrial processing of breast-milk substitutes with renewable gas with the emissions saved by an increase in exclusive breastfeeding to 50% in both Ireland and a key export market, China. We demonstrate that the emissions saved from achieving the minimum global breastfeeding target are greater than when renewable gas is used to displace natural gas in the production of breast-milk substitutes in Ireland. We discuss the decarbonisation of breast-milk substitutes in relation to the principle of justice as non-maleficence, a principle based on the commitment to avoid harm, a novel application of a principle of justice. We conclude that breastfeeding support can be considered a demand-side measure for mitigating climate change by reducing the demand for energy services to produce breast-milk substitutes. A key recommendation is to position breastfeeding support as both a public health and a climate justice issue that is relevant for a just transition. The framework developed for this paper could be applied to support the inclusion of a wider range of mitigation options with social justice outcomes in energy system models. [Open access]. (shrink)

Consumer boycotts have become a frequent form of social protest in the digital age. The corporate malpractices motivating them are varied, including environmental pollution, lack of minimum labour standards, severe mistreatment of animals, lobbying and misinformation campaigns, collaboration or complicity with illegitimate political regimes, and systematic tax evasion and tax fraud. In this article, I argue that organised consumer boycotts should be regarded as a legitimate and purposeful instrument for structural change, provided they conform to a number of (...) normative criteria. In order to show this, the practice and empirical context of consumer boycotts are first outlined. I then lay out and refute three general objections to this practice. Although each of these objections fails, their discussion generates insights concerning the normative standards with which boycotters must comply if they want their campaigns to be both legitimate and successful. These normative criteria are detailed along the lines of two guiding principles, proportionality and transparency. In the final step, I elaborate on structural change as the deeper purpose of consumer boycotts. (shrink)

Perfectionism about well-being is, at a minimum, the view that people’s lives go well when, and because they realize their capacities. It is common to link perfectionism with an idea of human essence or nature, to yield the view that what constitutes people’s well-being is the development and exercise of characteristically human capacities. The first part of this paper considers the very serious problems associated with the idea of human nature or essence, and argues that perfectionism would be more (...) plausible if it abandons reliance on it and focuses instead on the unfolding of some valuable capacities that need not be unique to, or shared by all human beings. This revised perfectionism is evaluative all the way down, pragmatic but not unprincipled, and holistic. In its second part, the paper articulates this account in terms of the dignitarian approach—the view that we have reason to organize our personal and social life in such a way that we respond appropriately to the valuable features of individuals that give rise to their dignity. Dignity is a non-conventional, normative status based on a diverse and disjunctive set of valuable capacities. The dignitarian approach helps develop, defend, and identify the implications of the revised perfectionism suggested in the previous part of the paper while also allowing us to make sense of the role of some generalizations that animated some of the plausibility of traditional perfectionism—and this without the pitfalls of reliance on an idea of human nature. On this paper’s proposed view—Dignitarian Perfectionism—human individuals’ well-being consists, at least in part, in developing and exercising the capacities at the basis of their dignity. (shrink)

I am grateful to Philip Reed for his article ‘Expressivism at the Beginning and End of Life’. His piece compellingly demonstrates the import of expanding analyses concerning the expressivist thesis beyond the reproductive sphere to the end-of-life sphere. I hope that his intervention spurns further work on this connection. In what follows, I want to focus on what I take to be moments of slippage in his use of the concept of disability, a slippage to which many disability theorists succumb. (...) In short, I argue that there are crucial moments in his argument where Reed runs together cases of disability that should be kept distinct—at minimum for the context in which he discusses them. Namely, forms of disability the suffering of which justice can eliminate versus those that ‘no amount of accessibility and social justice could eliminate’. (shrink)

As the title of the article suggests, “The Burqa Ban”: Legal Precursors for Denmark, American Experiences and Experiments, and Philosophical and Critical Examinations, the authors embark on a factually investigative as well as a reflective response. More precisely, they use The 2018 Danish “Burqa Ban”: Joining a European Trend and Sending a National Message (published as a concurrent but separate article in this issue of INTERNATIONAL STUDIES JOURNAL) as a platform for further analysis and discussion of different perspectives. These include (...) case-law at the international level while focusing attention on recent rulings and judicial reasoning by the ECtHR and the ECJ; critical thought-experiments in religion, morality, human rights, and the democratic public space; a contextualized account of burqa-wearing interventions by federal and state governments and, moreover, various courts in the United States; and philosophical commentary and, in some instances, criticism of the Danish and/or European (French, etc.) approach. The different contributions have different aims. The section on case-law at the international level reports on those central judgments that, in effect, helped to pave the path for the Kingdom of Denmark’s burqa ban. Concerning the concurring judges at the ECtHR, the opinions served to uphold a preexisting ban and to grant a wide margin of appreciation to the national authorities, thereby limiting the Court’s own review. -/- As regards to the ECJ, the legality of company rules that contain a policy of neutrality for the workplace was examined, with a similar outcome. The authors who discuss religion, morality, human rights and the democratic public space are endeavoring to, respectively, appeal to ethics as a testing stone for law and to both challenge and address several forms of “expressivist worry” in connection with face veils. In doing so, the authors ask a number of thought-provoking questions that hopefully will inspire public policymakers to careful analysis. While the section that is devoted to American perspectives highlights a comprehensive survey of political and legal responses to, in particular, full-face veils like the burqa, the relevant author also incorporates public perceptions and, in the course of examining these, draws a parallel to “the fate” of the hoodie. The constitutionality of burqa-wearing in America, so it also appears, is partially an open question, but differentiating between religious, political, or personal reasons is a de jure premise. Given that the Danish legislators who drafted law L 219 to ban burqa-wearing in public places rely on a reference to political Islam, they relegate religious and personal reasons to the private domain, thereby also adopting secularism as a premise. This is explored in the last author response of the article, more precisely, in an account of the underlying materialism that, in turn, is applied to Muslim women. If policymakers and legislators engaged in Thinking Things Through exercises, they could, as a minimum, avoid law-making strategies that are not in the spirit of the theory they themselves invoke, albeit tacitly. While the aim of, as it were, arresting culturally self-contradicting legislators is unique for the section in question, all the authors who contribute to the joint research project have one end-goal in common, namely to inform about important perspectives while at the same time opening up for parameters for (more) fruitful, constructive and (if need be) critical debate in the future. With this in mind, four recommendations are presented by the research director for the project. Legally, politically, socially and culturally, conflict-resolution should not translate the relationship between rulers and the ruled into a separation ideology, an instance of controllers versus the controlled. All things being equal, that is the objective limit for a democratic society. (shrink)

I want to examine critically a certain strategy of moral justification which I shall call instrumentalism. By this I mean the view that a moral theory is rationally justified if the actions, life-plan, or set of social arrangements it prescribes can be shown to be the best means to the achievement of an agent's final ends, whatever these may be. Instrumentalism presupposes a commitment to what I shall call the Humean conception of the self. By this I mean a (...) certain way of conceiving the motivational and structural constituents of the self. Briefly, the self on this conception is motivated by its desires for states of affairs that are temporally or spatiotemporally external to the self. And it is structured by the normative requirements of instrumental rationality: The self is conceived as rationally coherent to the extent that theoretical reason calculates and schedules the satisfaction of as many of its desires as possible, with the minimum necessary costs. The motivational and structural elements of the Humean conception of the self combine to form a familiar explanatory model of human agency: We make sense of an agent's behavior by ascribing to her the desire to achieve the ends that she does in fact achieve, and the theoretically rational belief that, given the information and resources available to her, behaving as she did was the most efficient way to do so. I shall want to argue that to the extent that instrumentalism is successful in providing an objective justification of a moral theory - and I shall contend that it cannot be completely successful - it cannot provide a moral justification. But when we attempt to modify it so as to produce a specifically moral justification, we see that either it is impossible to do this, or else the Humean notion of instrumental rationality is doing no justificatory work. (shrink)

Wszalek offers a detailed examination of the challenges involved in assisting people with language and communication impairments in the comprehension of legal language and concepts (LLC). If we settle for a minimum threshold of LLC comprehension, we are likely to observe that some people will not meet this threshold due to personal choices, such as not having practiced reading sufficiently or having avoided intellectually stimulating social interactions.

What is so striking about Breaking Bad is how centrally impairment and disability feature in the lives of the characters of this series. It is unusual for a television series to cast characters with visible or invisible impairments. On the rare occasions that television shows do have characters with impairments, these characters serve no purpose other than to contribute to their ‘Otherness.’ Breaking Bad not only centralizes impairment, but impairment drives and sustains the story lines. I use three interrelated themes (...) from Disability Scholarship to analyze Breaking Bad. The first theme, Bodily Control, is that good bodies are controlled bodies and that uncontrolled, messy bodies are frightening, bad bodies. Indeed, the messiness of impairment and disability is so bad, that impaired and disabled individuals are excluded or shut out or excluded from many areas of public life. The second theme, Normalcy, is that the effect of hiding away impairment, of attempting to conceal disability, is that society becomes defined by, and structured around, the concept of normalcy. Normalcy, being normal, attaining and maintaining normalcy, is the preoccupation of most in society. To fail to be normal, or to fall from what is considered to be normal, is a source of tremendous anxiety for most people. These two themes, Bodily Control and Normalcy are conceptually connected: impairment, disease and dying are so feared because they are socially invisible and, therefore unknown and unknowable. They are the undiscussable taboos. The third theme, Bodily Realism, is that having a realistic view of the body, which would at minimum require accepting the fact that human bodies are fragile things, prone to disease and accident and are ultimately destined to die, makes one more at ease in the world, and able to live better lives and live as a better person. Indeed, so the argument goes, our lives would be richer, more rewarding—emotionally and morally—if we cared less about normalcy because of a dread of abnormalcy, but instead learned to accept if not positively value the physical variability of human existence. (shrink)

This paper recommends that chemistry educators shift to a different ‘idea of nature’, an alternative ‘worldview.’ Much of contemporary science and technology deals in one way or another with dynamic coherences that display novel and important properties. The notion of how the world works that such studies and practices generate (and require) is quite different from the earlier concepts that are now integrated into science education. Eventual success in meeting contemporary technological and social challenges requires general diffusion of an (...) overall outlook that focuses on creative generation of novel and useful coherences, replacing a worldview that concentrates on analysis of pre-existing items to minimum constituents. Such a shift in emphasis would amount to general adoption of a new basic model of how nature functions. Chemistry educators can and should provide leadership for this urgently-needed development. (shrink)

During the last two centuries, occidental philosophical meditation has triumphantly advanced through previously poorly charted fields. Science has reallocated the methods as well as the goals of philosophy, forcing scholars to advance a little further, embrace new cognitive challenges and correspond to new social needs. As a result, our everyday life has become easier and our world is a better place to live in. But still, an optimum situation is not achieved. As a matter of fact, there are more (...) things at stake in our era than there were in previous ones. Even basic prerequisites for a prosperous life are not fully met. For the first time in the history of mankind, we can not even be sure about the survival of our planet, not to mention well being of it’s living entities –man included. So far, where is the improvement? Our ancestors may not have had the luxury of fast transportation, immediate information or adequate medical treatment, still they could take some things for granted: they positively knew that they and their successors would be given the minimum of chances: they, at least, would have a place to live. (shrink)

RésuméJe me penche sur un aspect de la philosophie sociale de Popper, à savoir les principes d'évaluation des interprétations historiques. Ma thèse globale est que suivant la perspective poppèrienne, notre choix parmi des interprétations historiques doit user d'au moins deux des critères qu'applique Popper au choix parmi diverses théories scientifiques : une interprétation devrait logiquement se prêter à une réfutation et elle devrait être consistante. Afin de montrer la pertinence et la fécondité de cette approche, je me concentre sur l'interprétation (...) historique des causes de la montée du nazisme que propose Erich Fromm, en particulier dansEscape from Freedom.Je montrerai que l'application de notions psychanalytiques dans le cadre de son interprétation historique a une valeur explicative faible, voire nulle. Son échec à expliquer certaines questions sociales tient à plusieurs raisons. Premièrement, l'auteur ne fournit pas, quoi qu'il en dise, d'explication causale convaincante. Ensuite, les concepts et les multiples hypotheèsesad hocauxquels il a recours tendent è rendre son interprétation irréfutable. Enfin, Fromm s'appuie sur des assomptions théoriques contradictoires. Mon analyse est basée sur la notion fondamentale de Popper voulant que la connaissance scientifique empirique exige au strict minimum une ouverture des interprétations historiques à la critique intersubjective. C'est cette exigence qui permet de les critiquer — c'est-à-dire les accepter, les réfuter et les corriger — sur une base rationnelle. (shrink)

Within the immigration debate, libertarians have typically come down in favor of open borders by defending two main ideas: i) individuals have a right to free movement; and ii) immigration restrictions are economically inefficient, so that lifting them can make everyone better off. This entry describes the rationale for open borders from a libertarian perspective (in part by analogy to the debate around minimum wage laws). Three main objections within the immigration literature are then discussed: i) the view that (...) states may restrict immigration to protect the interests (e.g. jobs) of their domestic needy; ii) the claim that restrictions are justified as a means of preserving culture; and iii) the influential argument that the right to freedom of association entails a right to exclude. These arguments are well-known, and I describe some of the compelling responses to be found in the recent literature. The essay then turns to more neglected critiques. The first concerns how liberal regimes should think about immigration from countries where the dominant norms are illiberal. The second examines the idea that political and economic institutions are sensitive to immigration policy, especially in the long run. Both of these critiques approach the topic from a non-ideal theory perspective, emphasizing the “public choice” dimensions of immigration policy. The entry closes by suggesting that this form of critique is especially important for open-borders libertarians to respond to given their general commitments to non-ideal, non-romantic theorizing in the context of government institutions and policy. (shrink)

Reedition of papers in English spanning from 1986 to 2009 /// Historical background -- An imposed legacy -- Twentieth century contemporaneity -- Appendix: The philosophy of teaching legal philosophy in Hungary /// HISTORICAL BACKGROUND -- PHILOSOPHY OF LAW IN CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE: A SKETCH OF HISTORY [1999] 11–21 // PHILOSOPHISING ON LAW IN THE TURMOIL OF COMMUNIST TAKEOVER IN HUNGARY (TWO PORTRAITS, INTERWAR AND POSTWAR: JULIUS MOÓR & ISTVÁN LOSONCZY) [2001–2002] 23–39: Julius Moór 23 / István Losonczy 29 // (...) ON THE SURVIVAL OF ILMAR TAMMELO’S LETTER AND MANUSCRIPT ADDRESSED TO PROFESSOR MOÓR [2009] 41–44 // PROFESSIONAL DISTRESS AND SCARCITY: ALEXANDER HORVÁTH AND THE LEGACY OF NATURAL LAW IN HUNGARY [2005] 45–50 // HUNGARIAN LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE 20TH CENTURY [2011] 51–72: I. The Pre-war Period [1. Bódog (Felix) Somló (1871–1920) 52] / II. The Inter-war Period [2. Gyula (Julius) Moór (1888–1950) 54 / 3. Barna Horváth (1896–1973) 55 / 4. József Szabó (1909–1992) 57 / 5. István Bibó (1911–1979) 58 / 6. Tibor Vas (1911–1983) 59 / 7. István Losonczy (1918–1980) 60] III. The Post-war Period (Communism) 61 [8. Imre Szabó (1912–1991) 62 / 9. Vilmos Peschka (1929–2006) 63 / 10. Kálmán Kulcsár (1928–2010) 65] IV. Contemporary Trends and Perspectives 66 [11. Csaba Varga (b. 1941) 66 / 12. András Sajó (b. 1949) 69 / 13. Béla Pokol (b. 1950) 70] V. Our Understanding of the Law Today 71 --- AN IMPOSED LEGACY -- LOOKING BACK [1999] 75–94: 1. On Ideologies and Marxism in general 75 / 2. Life of an Intellectual in Communism 79 / 3. On Marxism and its Socialist Cultivation in Particular 82 / 4. Legal Philosophising [4.1. Approaches to Law 87 / 4.2. Arriving at a Legal Ontology 91] 5. Conclusion 94 // LEGAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE MARXISM OF SOCIALISM: HUNGARIAN OVERVIEW IN AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE [2003] 95–151: I. Development and Balance of Marxist Philosophising on Law in Hungary [1. Preliminaries (until 1948) 96 / 2. Stalinism (from the Soviet Occupation on) {a) Liquidation of the »Residues« 98 / b) Soviet-type Uniformisation [Gleichschaltung] 99 / c) Denial of the Past, with a Dual Effect 99 / d) »Socialist Legality«, Drawn from the Progressive Past of Western Europe 103 / e) Search for the Germs of Scholarly Evolution 103} 3. Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation (from the 1960s) [a) Epigonism Becoming the Scholarly Ideal 104 / b) Stalinism in a Critical Self-perspective 105 / c) Disciples Diversified Launching their own Trends 107 / d) Comparatism 110 / e) (Re)discovery of the Western Legal Philosophy as a Competitor 112 / f) A Leading Mediatory Role within the »Socialist World Order« 114} 4. Disintegration (in the 1980s) {a) Attempt at Laying New Foundations for Marxism with Epigonism Exhausted 115 / b) Competitive Trends Becoming Exclusive 115 / c) Western Legal Philosophy Acknowledged as a Fellow-traveller within the Socialist Orbit Proper 116 / d) Hungarian Legal Theory Transforming into a National Corpus 118 / e) The Practical Promotion of Some Balance 119} 5. End-game for a Substitute State Religion (in the 1990s) 120] II. Marxist Legal Philosophising in an International Perspective [Ad 1: To the Preliminaries 122 / Ad 2: To Stalinism 124 / Ad 3: To Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation {a) Late Separation from Vishinskiy’s Theory 125 / b) From Ideological Self-closure to an Apparently Scholarly Openness 127 / c) From Political Ideology to Genuine Scholarship 130 / d) International Recognition of Socialist Jurisprudence as an Independent Trend 135 / e) Together with Western Trends 137} Ad 4: To Disintegration {a) Loss of Attraction as Mere Epigonism 139 / b) Exclusivity of Competing Trends 139 / c) Fellowship with »Bourgeois« Trends 140 / d) An own Trend, Internationally Recognised 141 / e) A yet Progressive Role 142} Ad 5: To the Present state 143] III. A Temporary Balance 145 // AUTONOMY AND INSTRUMENTALITY OF LAW IN A SUPERSTRUCTURAL PERSPECTIVE [1986] 151–175: 1. The Strange Fate of Concepts 151 / I. A Relational Category 2. Basis and Superstructure: The Genuine Meaning 154 / 3. Exerting Social Influence as a Conceptual Minimum 156 / 4. Relationships within the Prevailing Totality 158 / 5. Attempts at Interpretation in Hungary 159 / 6. The Lukácsian Stand 162 / 7. Lukács’s Recognitions 168 / 8. Some Criticism 169 / II. The Law’s Understanding 171 / 9. Law Interpreted as Superstructure 171 / 10. Conclusions Drawn for the Law’s Understanding 173 // LEGAL THEORY IN TRANSITION (A PREFACE FROM HUNGARY) [2000] 177–186 // DEVELOPMENT OF THEORETICAL LEGAL THOUGHT IN HUNGARY AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM [2006] 187–215: 1. International Environment 188 / 2. The Situation in Hungary 190 / 3. Outlook I: The Historical-comparative Study of Legal Cultures and of the Lawyerly Way of Thinking 203 / 4. Outlook II: The Paradigmatic Enigma of the Transition to Rule of Law 207 / 5. Incongruity in Practice 213 / 6. Perspectives 214 --- TWENTIETH CENTURY CONTEMPORANEITY -- CHANGE OF PARADIGMS IN LEGAL RECONSTRUCTION: CARL SCHMITT AND THE TEMPTATION TO FINALLY REACH A SYNTHESIS [2002] 219–234: 1. Dangers of Intellectualism 219 / 2. Schmitt in Facts 221 / 3. Schmitt and Kelsen 222 / 4. On Bordering Conditions 226 / 5. With Kelsen in Transubstantiation 230 / 6. Polarisation as the Path of Theoretical Development 232 // KELSENIAN DOCUMENTS IN HUNGARY: CHAPTERS ON CONTACTS, INCLUDING THE GENESIS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY [2006] 235–243: 1. Preludes 235 / 2. The Search for Moór’s Bequeath 235 / 3. Moór’s Collegiality 238 / 4. Bibó as a Disciple Translating 241 // THE »HART-PHENOMENON« [2002] 245–267: I. The Hart-miracle 246 [1. The Scene of Britain at the Time 247 / 2. The Personal Career 250 / 3. The Opus’ Career 252 / 4. Verbal Sociologism 255 / 5. Growing into the British Pattern 259] II. The Hart-phenomenon 260 [6. Origination of a Strange Orthodoxy 261 / 7. Mastering Periods of the 20th Century 263 / 8. Raising the Issue of Reception in Hungary 365] // LITERATURE? A SUBSTITUTE FOR LEGAL PHILOSOPHY? [2007] 269–287: 1. The Enigma of Law and its Study 269 / 2. “Law and Literature” 271 / 3. Varieties of “Law and Literature” 274 / 4. The German Study of Artistic Representations 280 / 5. Some Literary Reconsiderations 285 / 6. Conclusion 287 --- APPENDIX -- THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN HUNGARY [2007] 291–320: I. Why and How to Philosophise in Law? 291 / II. The State of Teaching Legal Philosophy 294 / III. The Philosophy of Teaching Legal Philosophy 296 / IV. Programme at the Catholic University of Hungary 300 [1. Graduate Studies 300 {a) Basic Subjects 301 / b) Facultative Seminars 305 / c) Closing Subjects 309 / d) Written Memoranda and the Thesis 312} 2. Postgraduate Studies 313 / 3. Conclusion 317] V. Perspectives 318 /// Index of Subjects 321 / Index of Normative Materials 328 / Index of Names 329 . (shrink)

The study of the ontology of virtual actions is essentially an examination of the nature of actions in virtual environments directly. This article first examined traditional research on the subject and then showed that these researches ignored findings about the nature of virtual actions. Previous studies have dealt with virtual action mostly from an ethical, psychological, or legal framework and focused on the individual or social effects of virtual action. In addition, these studies discuss not the virtual action itself, (...) but its effect or consequences. Based on these findings, in this study, it was emphasized that a virtual action should be investigated through two different types at a minimum, and an alternative method was developed for studies on virtual actions. According to this method, which is called the Sophisticated Action Model, it has been argued that in virtual action research, firstly the subject performing the action and then the environment in which the action takes place should be analyzed. It is claimed that the difference of virtual subject and environment will also differentiate the ontology of virtual action. In this context, the focus of the article is on the fact that an action augmented by any virtual action has completely different ontologies. The status of augmented actions within virtual actions is considered superior to other virtual actions. The fact that augmented actions, which have such an important status among virtual actions, were ignored in previous studies makes these studies on virtual actions incomplete and flawed. The nature of augmented actions takes virtual actions to a completely different atmosphere. The article concludes by emphasizing this distinctive nature of augmented actions, the ontological separation of virtual actions, and the importance of the Sophisticated Action Model for further studies. (shrink)

The article considers the problem of ensuring the economic security of trade enterprises by forming an optimal pricing policy. The methodology of formation the minimum and maximum selling prices of trade enterprise, maintenance of margin of economic security, which is based on research of turnover costs and working capital of trade enterprise is offered. Based on statistical data of trade enterprises, the types of prices by product range are determined, which form a stable economic situation and ensure economic security (...) of trade enterprise. The necessity of forming the optimal price policy and selling prices of trade enterprises with the use of Pareto efficiency tools and construction of single-criteria and multi-criteria tasks, indicators of quality of commodity resources of trade enterprises is substantiated. Using the Excel software processor and the «Regression» function, economic-mathematical models of optimal prices for the product range of trade enterprises are built. The results testified to the effectiveness of the proposed model of the optimal pricing policy of trade enterprises, as the obtained values are within the minimum selling prices, which provides economic security of trade enterprises. The process of forming the pricing policy of trade enterprises to ensure economic security is proposed, which is based on the principles of pricing, appropriate methodological tools and monitoring of market environment factors. Organizational, economic, legal, social and market (marketing) mechanisms for the formation of effective pricing policy of trade enterprises aimed at ensuring economic security are identified. This study is practically interesting for personnel of trade enterprises, regardless of organizationallegal forms of ownership and activities, and theoretically – for researchers dealing with pricing. (shrink)

What is the ethical basis for democracy? What reasons do we have to go along with democratic decisions even when we disagree with them? When can we justly ignore democratic decisions? These three questions are intimately connected: understanding what is ultimately important about democracy helps us to understand the authority of democratic decisions over our personal views, and the limits of such authority. Thomas Christiano’s ambitious new book, The Constitution of Equality, aims to provide such an understanding through a discussion (...) of all three questions. Briefly put, in Christiano’s view, public equality is the moral foundation of both democracy and liberal rights, and it serves to explain the authority of democracy as well as its limits. The book aims first of all to ground the principle of public equality in a number of principles related to the nature of personhood, dignity, well-being and formal considerations of justice, on the one hand, and in the need for publicity for social justice, on the other (Chaps. 1 and 2). The book then aims to show how both democracy and basic liberal rights are grounded in the principle of public equality, which tells us that in the establishment of law and policy we must treat persons as equals in ways that they can see are treating them as equals (Chaps. 3 and 4). The account clarifies the nature and roles of adversarial politics and public deliberation in political life (Chap. 5). Finally, the book argues that democratic decisions have authority over personal views and that violations of democratic and liberal rights are beyond the legitimate authority of democracy, and that the creation of persistent minorities in a democratic society, and the failure to ensure a basic minimum for all persons weaken the legitimate authority of democracy (Chaps. 6 and 7). I shall begin by addressing Christiano’s view on the basis of equality, and then shall focus mainly on the central argument for public equality, democracy and its.. (shrink)

This review of Richard Tuck's Free Riding conveys Tuck's crucial distinction between the logic of collective action which fails due to the problem of causal negligibility, and free riding, which has been modeled as a Prisoner's Dilemma and involves casually impacting another actor in an adverse manner. Tuck also distinguishes the practice of voting which he argues neither fails due to the worry of causal negligibility or due to free riding; instead it represents a problem of achieving sufficiency of votes (...) representing a minimum winning coalition. This article clarifies how the problem of collective action resembles perfect free market competition which is defined to be characterized by a state in which no single agent can impact the price of a good. Similarly, in a large scale collective action, no single actor can have a causal impact on the outcome of the vast enterprise. This inability to make a difference due to the negligibility of each individual's causal power differentiates collective action and the tragedy of the commons from other social problems. (shrink)

This paper addresses issues regarding perceptions of surveillance technologies in Europe. It analyses existing studies in order to explore how perceptions of surveillance affect and are affected by the negative effects of surveillance and how perceptions and effectiveness of surveillance technologies relate to each other. The paper identifies 12 negative effects of surveillance including, among others, privacy intrusion, the chilling effect and social exclusion, and classifies them into three groups. It further illustrates the different ways in which perceptions and (...) effectiveness of surveillance interact with each other, distinguishing between perceived security and perceived effectiveness. Finally, the paper advances a methodology to take into account perception issues when designing new surveillance technologies. By doing so, it rejects manipulative measures aiming at improving perceptions only and suggests measures that address the background conditions affecting perceptions. (shrink)

CATEGORY: Philosophy play; historical fiction; comedy; social criticism. STORYLINE: Katherine, a slightly neurotic American lawyer, has tried very hard to find personal happiness in the form of friends and lovers. But she has not succeeded, and is therefore very unhappy. So she travels to London, hoping that Christianus — a well-known satisfactionist — may be able to help her. TOPICS: In the course of the play, Katherine and Christianus converse about many philosophical issues: the modern American military presence in (...) Iraq; the meaning of life; the ethics of abortion; assessing WHO death statistics; the potential personhood of foetuses; ancient Egyptian moustaches and beards; defining criteria for progress in human society; objectivity and subjectivity; Chicago futures trading developments; the virtues of cryonics technology; a U.S. Supreme Court case; important and unimportant knowledge; and spiritualist dualism vs. scientific materialism . NOTES: This work features elaborate footnotes and comments by the author, to enhance the reader's experience of the play and its philosophizing characters. (shrink)

In law and common-sense morality, it is generally assumed that adults who meet a minimum threshold of parental competency have a presumptive right to parent their biological children. But what is the basis of this right? According to one prominent account, the right to parent one’s biological child is best understood as being grounded in an intimate relationship that develops between babies and their birth parents during the process of gestation. This paper identifies three major problems facing this view—the (...) explanatory, adjudicatory, and theoretical problems—and explains how an alternative autonomy-based account is capable of avoiding them. (shrink)

It is questionable whether counterfeiting in many areas of life contributes to unethical behavior to a wider extent. If the notion is supported by data, then the moral damage in a society could be prevented by reducing the counterfeit self and behavior to a bare minimum. This study aimed at empirically testing the measurement model of counterfeit self of Wood et al. (2008) among Indonesians as well as theoretically reviewing counterfeit self roles in unethical behavior. The participants of this (...) study were 1,655 high school students (764 males, 891 females; Mage = 15.76 years old; SDage = 1.08 years) recruited through a purposive sampling technique in North Sumatera and West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The data analysis technique used was Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The results showed that the counterfeit self model--comprised of counterfeit self dimensions, namely Self-alienation (ALIEN), Inauthentic Living (LIVE), and Accepting External Influence (EXT)--was supported by the empirical data. However, the dimension of EXT could not be represented by its indicators. The study contributed to the psychological body of knowledge that the EXT dimension might need to be excluded from the measurement of counterfeit self on teenagers, especially in Indonesia and other Eastern countries. (shrink)

Feminist social theory and female body experience are the twin themes of Iris Marion Young's twelve outstanding essays written over the past decade and brought together here. Her contributions to social theory raise critical questions about women and citizenship, the relations of capitalism and women's oppression, and the differences between a feminist theory that emphasizes women's difference and one that assumes a gender-neutral humanity. Loosely following a phenomenological method of description, Young's essays on female embodiment discuss female movement, (...) pregnancy, clothing, and the breasted body. In an introduction that situates her work in the context of shifts in feminist theory and politics over the past decade, Young emphasizes the rootedness of her theorizing in a dedicated and seasoned political activism. (shrink)

Mandatory minimum sentencing provisions have been a feature of the U.S. justice system since 1790. But they have expanded considerably under the war on drugs, and their use has expanded considerably under the Trump Administration; some states are also poised to expand drug-related mandatory minimums further in efforts to fight the current opioid epidemic. In this paper I outline and evaluate three prominent arguments for and against the use of mandatory minimums in the war on drugs—they appeal, respectively, to (...) proportionality, consistency, and efficiency. I ultimately defend the view that the use of mandatory minimums in the war on drugs is unjust. -/- . (shrink)

To investigate the impact of framing on rule-breaking behavior in social dilemmas, we incorporated a rule in a one-shot resource game with two framing-treatments: One frame was a give-some dilemma (i.e., a variant of a public goods game) and the other frame a take-some dilemma (i.e., a variant of a commons dilemma game). In each frame, all participants were part of one single collective sharing a common good. Each participant was initially equipped with one of five different endowments of (...) points from which they must give/could take amounts to/from the common good. The exact amounts of contributions/withdrawals were regulated by the rule. Participants decided whether to cooperate and comply with the rule or to break the rule to their own advantage and at the expense of the collective (i.e., giving lower/taking higher amounts). Results of an online-experiment with 202 participants showed a significantly higher proportion of individuals breaking the rule in the take-some frame than in the give-some frame. In addition, endowment size influenced the proportion of rule-breaking behavior in the take-some frame. However, the average amounts of points not given/taken too much were not different between the frames. (shrink)

According to social scientists, people’s beliefs about climate change are more strongly influenced by cultural values than concrete evidence. But how could disheartening climate news help shape their socio-cultural values and beliefs? Some explanations follow.

Socialist buildings in the city of Kruja (Albania) date back after the Second World War between the years 1945-1990. These buildings were built during the time of the socialist Albanian dictatorship and the totalitarian communist regime. A questionnaire with 30 questions was conducted and 14 people were interviewed. The interviewed residents belong to a certain area of the city of Kruja. Based on the results obtained, diagrams have been conceived and mathematical regression models have been developed which will serve as (...) a base for drawing conclusions. The purpose of this study is to find a relationship that specifies the role of the inhabitants, the role of the dwellings, the physical-mechanical characteristics, and their energy efficiency, in order to improve the living conditions of the inhabitants. The independent variables interact with each other assuming positive or negative values depending on the probabilistic mathematical regression, giving different results based on the calculated data. The variables that co-exist among them are living space, quality of life, time spent at home, social interaction of residents, dwelling humidity level, dwelling orientation, satisfaction level of the inhabitants, dwelling improvements demand, and monthly electricity bills. (shrink)

We live in a world of crowds and corporations, artworks and artifacts, legislatures and languages, money and markets. These are all social objects — they are made, at least in part, by people and by communities. But what exactly are these things? How are they made, and what is the role of people in making them? In The Ant Trap, Brian Epstein rewrites our understanding of the nature of the social world and the foundations of the social (...) sciences. Epstein explains and challenges the three prevailing traditions about how the social world is made. One tradition takes the social world to be built out of people, much as traffic is built out of cars. A second tradition also takes people to be the building blocks of the social world, but focuses on thoughts and attitudes we have toward one another. And a third tradition takes the social world to be a collective projection onto the physical world. Epstein shows that these share critical flaws. Most fundamentally, all three traditions overestimate the role of people in building the social world: they are overly anthropocentric. Epstein starts from scratch, bringing the resources of contemporary metaphysics to bear. In the place of traditional theories, he introduces a model based on a new distinction between the grounds and the anchors of social facts. Epstein illustrates the model with a study of the nature of law, and shows how to interpret the prevailing traditions about the social world. Then he turns to social groups, and to what it means for a group to take an action or have an intention. Contrary to the overwhelming consensus, these often depend on more than the actions and intentions of group members. (shrink)

The kinds of real or natural kinds that support explanation and prediction in the social sciences are difficult to identify and track because they change through time, intersect with one another, and they do not always exhibit their properties when one encounters them. As a result, conceptual practices directed at these kinds will often refer in ways that are partial, equivocal, or redundant. To improve this epistemic situation, it is important to employ open-ended classificatory concepts, to understand when different (...) research programs are tracking the same real kind, and to maintain an ongoing commitment to interact causally with real kinds to focus reference on those kinds. A tempting view of these non-idealized epistemic conditions should be avoided: that they signal an ontological structure of the social world so plentiful that it would permit ameliorated classificatory schemes to achieve their normative aims regardless of whether they defer to real-kind classificatory schemes. To ground these discussions, the essay appeals to an overlooked convergence in the systematic naturalistic frameworks of Richard Boyd and Ruth Millikan. (shrink)

Recently, an increasing number of scholars have been showing interest in old-fashioned racism again. While recent studies on old-fashioned racism apparently increase our knowledge of this psychological theory of racism, the studies actually shed light on a different type of racism, namely offensive racism. The aim of this text is to argue that psychological theories of racism, like old-fashioned racism and modern racism, depend on societies’ social norms. I will show that questionnaires are highly sensitive to social norms, (...) and if there is change in social norms, the original measurement object alters. The theory of old-fashioned racism implicitly assumes agents that follow (or conform to) the social norm to behave prejudiced. Today, however, this social norm does not exist in Western societies. If agents express the same prejudices today, they indicate their willingness to breach the social norm to behave unprejudiced. Thereby, classic old-fashioned racism measures reflect a new kind of racism today. (shrink)

Prominent Ukrainian historian Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky (1919–1984) repeatedly addressed the topic of the Ukrainian revolution of 1917 – the 1920s, especially considering its intellectual origins and implications in the context of the history of Ukrainian social and political thought. Analysis of his works shows the manner in which the Ukrainian revolution as an event structures the history of Ukrainian social and political thought in both senses of the term “history”: as history itself and as its historiography. Based on this (...) analysis, the article considers changes in the meaning of the revolution for modern Ukrainians, as well as the credibility – in the context of these changes – of the classifications of the historiography of Ukrainian social and political thought, which rest on the key meaning of the revolution for modern Ukrainian history. The article also supports the conclusion that the rejection of the evolutionary model which I. Lysiak-Rudnytsky most directly addressed will help to outline a well-balanced and reliable history of Ukrainian social and political thought without excessive historicism. (shrink)

There is broad agreement among social researchers and social ontologists that the project of dividing humans into social kinds should be guided by at least two methodological commitments. First, a commitment to what best serves moral and political interests, and second, a commitment to describing accurately the causal structures of social reality. However, researchers have not sufficiently analyzed how these two commitments interact and constrain one another. In the absence of that analysis, several confusions have set (...) in, threatening to undermine shared goals for the responsible modeling of social kinds of humans. This essay first explains the source and substance of these confusions. Then, by distinguishing different value-laden investigative questions into the classification of social kinds of humans, it sets out specific relations of dependence and constraint between empirically-driven investigations and value-driven investigations into social kinds of humans. The result is a more detailed and fruitful framework for thinking about the classification of social kinds that respects both normative interests and mind-independent causal regularities. (shrink)

In this essay, I develop the concept of episodic value, which describes a form of value connected to a particular object or individual expressed and delivered through a narrative. Narrative can bestow special kinds of value on objects, as exemplified by auction articles or museum collections. To clarify the nature of episodic value, I show how the notion of episodic value fundamentally differs from the traditional axiological picture. I extend my discussion of episodic value to argue that the notion of (...) episodic value readily incorporates the role of narratives into the construction of identity in personal and social contexts. My main contentions are twofold. First, events or experiences from our personal narratives are episodically valuable insofar as they contribute to shaping our narrative identities. Second, when engaged in a collective action, we write a joint narrative with other participants that confers special meanings on the actions of each participant. (shrink)

Proponents of enactivism should be interested in exploring what notion of action best captures the type of action-perception link that the view proposes, such that it covers all the aspects in which our doings constitute and are constituted by our perceiving. This article proposes and defends the thesis that the notion of sensorimotor dependencies is insufficient to account for the reality of human perception, and that the central enactive notion should be that of perceptual practices. Sensorimotor enactivism is insufficient because (...) it has no traction on socially dependent perceptions, which are essential to the role and significance of perception in our lives. Since the social dimension is a central desideratum in a theory of human perception, enactivism needs a notion that accounts for such an aspect. This article sketches the main features of the Wittgenstein-inspired notion of perceptual practices as the central notion to understand perception. Perception, I claim, is properly understood as woven into a type of social practices that includes food, dance, dress, music, etc. More specifically, perceptual practices are the enactment of culturally structured, normatively rich techniques of commerce of meaningful multi- and inter-modal perceptible material. I argue that perceptual practices explain three central features of socially dependent perception: attentional focus, aspects’ saliency, and modal-specific harmony-like relations. (shrink)

Any progress in shaping up an externalist psychiatry, so previous discussion suggested, must begin from questions about the ontology of social causation. So far, research and theory have adhered to a naturalistic approach to the social causes of illness, concentrating mostly on the ‘social determinants of mental health’ (inequality, discrimination, housing insecurity, etc.). The paper starts with an assessment of ‘social determinants’ through the lens of epidemiology and critical psychiatry. It illustrates existing practical and political approaches (...) that fight these constraints and it highlights their therapeutic value. It argues, though, that a focus on social determinants is not sufficient for fully realizing externalism because a great portion of sociogenic illness remains causally indeterminate. Alongside political action, externalism requires a social etiology that is established by virtue of the meaning that it holds for patients, rather than by virtue of its capacity to identify objective social causes of illness. This entails abandoning naturalism about social causation and embracing constructivism. The paper shows that this methodological shift is less contradictory and more effective than it is commonly imagined. Drawing from further anthropological evidence, it concludes that only by lending support to projects that balance a focus on constraints with social construction will psychiatry be truly externalist. At stake is a prospect of effective treatment for sociogenic illness for the countless in struggle. (shrink)