A common theme from certain circles during the Yugoslav wars was that the seceding republics lacked a right to secede, but that if a right were accorded them by the EC or international community, it would have to be granted to the Serbian minorities in these republics, especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina, on pain of inconsistency. This microcosm argument is in fact unsound. On a reasonable conception of a right of self-determination and secession elaborated here, the Republic of Bosnia and (...) Herzegovina enjoyed a right of secession, while Bosnian Serbs did not. Nor did Bosnian Serbs restrict their claim to such a right to territories in which they held a majority; rather, they demanded "secession" for a whole swathe of lands which lacked even a Serb plurality before their brutal "ethnic cleansing". Either voluntarist or ethnicist conceptions of a right of secession might have been construed as supporting the microcosm argument, but both of those are terrible conceptions of the right of self-determination and secession. (shrink)

There was a lot of fuss a few years ago about the landing of left-wing populism in the global North at the hands of Syriza, Podemos, La France Insoumise, Corbyn and Sanders, but there has not been as much critical evaluation on their breakthroughs and limitations after their electoral defeats. Jorge Tamames’ book "For the People" attempts to do so by focusing on two particular case studies: Spain and the United States.

Alongwith the major organ of the doctrinal operations, the Permanent Resolution Act, this research presented a situation review article on the Doctrine of the Chittagong Peace Process in Bangladesh with few global strikeable issues. Unarmed surviving Parbatya Chittagong nation of Buddhists population in Bangladesh has not yet been able to form their government since 1997 to 2023, so it has been assumed that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina & Awami League Government of Bangladesh (ALGOB) cheated to weaponless freedom fighters Buddhists people (...) by taking their weapons through the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord 1997 that was signed between Bangladesh and Chittagong HillTracts in order to a Commonwealth of Independence of Autonomy Government, Formation of Legislative Assembly House and Parliament Building Construction, which is also the last official initiative of the Parbatya Peace Process in the Chinese Belt and Road. Following the theater of war between the US-led NATO—Ukraine alliance and the Russian Federation, the 3rd World War situations intended to expand between Bangladesh and Myanmar. This doctrinal paper has been presented through codification of situations of the post-seizure war-fighting battles surviving cold and silent conflicts in Parbatya, Chittagong Hill Tracts, in order to deliver the seized nation onto a free pathway. (shrink)

While this article sets out to advance our knowledge about the characteristics of Nigerian cybercriminals (Yahoo-Boys), it is also the first study to explore the narratives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) officers concerning them. It appraises symbolic interactionist insights to consider the ways in which contextual factors and worldview may help to illuminate officers’ narratives of cybercriminals and the interpretations and implications of such accounts. Semi-structured interviews of forty frontline EFCC officers formed the empirical basis of (...) this study and were subjected to a directed approach of qualitative content analysis. While prior studies, for example, indicated that only a group of cybercriminals deploy spiritual and magical powers to defraud victims (i.e. modus operandi), our data analysis extended this classification into more refined levels involving multiple features. In particular, analysis bifurcates cybercriminals and their operations based on three factors: [a] educational-attainment, [b] modus-operandi, and [c] networks-collaborators. Results also suggest that these cybercriminals and their operations are embedded in “masculinity-and-material-wealth”. These contributions thus have implications for a range of generally accepted viewpoints about these cybercriminals previously taken-for-granted. Since these criminals have victims all over the world, insights from our study may help various local and international agencies [a] to understand the actions/features of these two groups of cybercriminals better and develop more effective response strategies. [b] to appreciate the vulnerabilities of their victims better and develop more adequate support schemes. We also consider the limitations of social control agents’ narratives on criminals. (shrink)

In its January 20th, 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the United States Supreme Court ruled that certain restrictions on independent expenditures by corporations for political advocacy violate the First Amendment of the Constitution, which provides that “Congress shall make no law […] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Justice Kennedy, writing for the 5-4 (...) majority, held that “[b]y suppressing the speech of manifold corporations, both for-profit and non-profit, the Government prevents their voices and view-points from reaching the public and advising voters on which person or entities are hostile to their interests” (Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission 558 U.S. 38-9 (2010); emphasis added). Much of the language of the opinion, and some of its reasoning, as this passage illustrates, presupposes that corporations are agents capable of speech, and that it is (at least in part) in the light of this that limitations on political advocacy by corporations are prohibited by the Constitution. -/- While there are other strands in the argument, they are interwoven with the conception of the corporation as agent and speaker, with its voice and its viewpoints. The dissenters on the court objected on precisely this point (among others). Justice Stevens wrote sarcastically in his dissent, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, that “[u]nder the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech” (558 U.S. 33 (2010)). Justice Sotomayor suggested in oral argument that the Court’s century-old practice of treating corporations as persons rests on a conceptual mistake. -/- My concern in this essay is not with the question whether the restrictions violate the Constitution. There are many issues that bear on this which will be outside the scope of my discussion. My concern is with the proper conceptual framework for understanding the agency of corporations and corporate speech, and the role that conceptions of these play in the background of the majority’s reasoning. The issue is legal, but it also has philosophical, conceptual and semantic aspects. It will be the latter aspects, and their potential to shed light on legal reasoning, that are my main focus. An adequate framework requires saying what properly speaking the corporation is, how agency is expressed through the corporation, whose agency it is, centrally whether the corporation is an agent or person in its own right, and in what sense it can be said to be capable of speech. I draw on recent work in collective action theory, particularly with respect to the semantics of collective action sentences (Ludwig 2007) and the analysis of the proxy agency in collective action (Ludwig 2014), to show (i) that corporations are neither genuine agents nor (therefore) capable of engaging in genuine speech, (ii) that consequently the First Amendment does not apply to corporations per se, and (iii) that a better understanding of the mechanisms of corporate agency casts doubt on more indirect arguments for extending the First Amendment to “corporate speech” as well. (shrink)

The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools is a novel foray into a genre previously associated with so-called “transitional” democracies from the post- Communist world and the global South. This basic fact notwithstanding, a systematic comparison with the broader universe of truth commission-hosting countries reveals that the circumstances surrounding the Canadian TRC are not entirely novel. This article develops this argument by distilling from the transitional justice literature several bases of comparison designed to explain how (...) a truth commission’s capacity to promote new cultures of justice and accountability in the wake of massive violations of human rights is affected by the socio-political context in which the commission occurs; the injustices it is asked to investigate; and the nature of its mandate. It concludes that these factors, compounded by considerations unique to the Canadian context, all militate against success. If Canadian citizens and policymakers fail to meet this profound ethical challenge, they will find themselves occupying the transition-wrecking role played more fami- liarly by the recalcitrant and unreformed military and security forces in the world’s more evidently authoritarian states. (shrink)

This paper investigates the recurrent music ban on musical video broadcasting and the issues of quality of musical contents that have warranted such a phenomenon by the National Broadcasting Commission in Nigeria. The major contention was the justification or otherwise of the ban. The paper employed observational and analytical methodologies to examine the causes of the bans on musical videos in Nigeria by NBC, the reactions of the affected artistes and their fans and the negative effects of erotic lyrics, (...) nudity and suggestive dance steps by minors, ladydancers and the musicians on the youths and other categories of musical video audiences. The paper submits that the NBC’s gestures are commendable and should be sustained while quality assurance efforts should be intensified through promotion of quality musical videos produced more for the purpose of entertainment than education or information. The paper also calls for collaborative efforts among all stakeholders in the music industry to achieve quality in the musical videos produced for general public consumption. This paper encourages musicians to invite creativity into the musical industry in Nigeria by coming out with songs and performances that reflect the cultural values of the country rather than mere entertainment songs and acts that have a greater tendency to corrupt younger minds. (shrink)

In 2008, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was initiated to address the historical and contemporary injustices and impacts of Indian Residential Schools. Of the many goals of the TRC, I focus on reconciliation and how the TRC aims to promote this through public education and engagement. To explore this, I consider two questions: 1) who does the TRC include in the process of reconciliation? And 2) how might I, as someone who is not Indigenous (specifically, as (...) someone who is “white”), be engaged by the TRC? Ethical queries arise which speak to broader concerns about the TRC’s capability to fulfill its public education goals. I raise several concerns about whether the TRC’s plan to convoke the collective will result in over-simplifying the process by relying on blunt, poorly defined identity categories that erase the heterogeneity of those residing in Canada, as well as the complexity of the conflict among us. I attempt to situate myself in-between proclamations of “success” or “failure” of the TRC, to better understand what can be learned from contested truths and experiences of uncertainty. (shrink)

This paper, being introductory in kind and limited in its scope and objective, tries to outline some basic issues of Higher Education Governance and Student-Participation in the same. The paper focuses on Students’ Union, Election and Representation of Students in the said Union, and the role of Lyngdoh Commission in the regard. It assumes that Lyngdoh Commission, with its recommendations on Students’ Union Election, has contributed considerably to the issue of Student-Participation in Higher Education Governance. The paper adopts (...) the method of qualitative data analysis and survey of relevant literature in the process of meeting its objectives. (shrink)

This paper looks at the specific proposed amendments to European directive 2007/36/EC and 2013/34/EU, and evaluates as to how such amendments alter shareholders’ moral responsibilities. To be responsible is here simply to be understood as being under an obligation, where an obligation is a requirement on an agent to either act or refrain from acting in a given way. In order to determine whether changes to the proposed directives alter shareholders’ moral responsibilities the following analysis argues that we need to (...) look at three factors: whether such changes do in fact alter the subject matter of shareholders’ obligations, a closer look at the agent i.e. shareholders to whom the obligation is to apply and thirdly whether they do actually apply. (shrink)

Open science (OS) is considered the new paradigm for science and knowledge dissemination. OS fosters cooperative work and new ways of distributing knowledge by promoting effective data sharing (as early and broadly as possible) and a dynamic exchange of research outcomes, not only publications. On the other hand, intellectual property (IP) legislation seeks to balance the moral and economic rights of creators and inventors with the wider interests and needs of society. Managing knowledge outcomes in a new open research and (...) innovation ecosystem is challenging and should become part of the EU’s IP strategy, underpinning EU policies with the new open science–open innovation paradigm. (shrink)

Problem kobiecej tożsamości jest zagadnieniem żywym we współczesnym dyskursie feministycznym. Szczególne miejsce zajmuje on zwłaszcza we francuskiej myśli feministycznej, reprezentowanej między innymi przez liberalną feministkę Élisabeth Badinter. Najnowsza książka filozofki, zatytułowana Konflikt: kobieta i matka, stanowi szczegółowe opracowanie obowiązujących obecnie poglądów na naturę kobiety jako matki, która pragnie także realizować swoje własne, indywidualne potrzeby. Stąd tytułowy konflikt wartości, będący podłożem współczesnego kryzysu kobiecej tożsamości. Początki tożsamościowego myślenia kobiet przypisuje się matce europejskiego feminizmu, Simone de Beauvoir. Badinter, kontynuując tożsamościowe (...) rozważanie de Beauvoir, analizuje wpływ myślenia naturalistycznego i maternalistycznego na obowiązujący obecnie status kobiet. Filozofka zajmuje się także wyjątkowym przypadkiem Francuzek, które ze względu na historyczną specyfikę realiów życia we Francji jako jedyne realizują współcześnie model spełnionej kobiety i zaangażowanej matki. (shrink)

In October 2014, a European Commission conference discussed SETI (Science, Engineering, Technology and Industry) achievements and their potential future impact on the economy and individuals’ well-being. This article highlights and discusses three of the salient features to emerge from the conference: the connection between science and technology, the issue of data privacy, and the need to develop ethical foresight.

In this paper, I argue that Kant gives a philosophically plausible derivation of the general duty of benevolence and that this derivation can be used to show how to derive other general duties of commission with the universalizability tests. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first, I explain Kant’s notion of a general duty. In the second, I introduce the universalizability tests. In the third, I examine and argue against an account in the secondary literature of (...) how to derive general duties from these tests. In the fourth, I look at Kant’s derivation of the duty of benevolence in the Metaphysics of Morals, and I suggest how this reasoning can be extended to other duties. (shrink)

We reflect on a decade of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) as a discourse emerging from the European Commission (EC) 10 years ago. We discuss the foundations for RRI, its emergence during the Seventh Framework programme and its subsequent evolution during Horizon 2020. We discuss how an original vision for RRI became framed around five so-called ‘keys’: gender, open access, science communication, ethics and public engagement. We consider the prospects for RRI within the context of the EC’s Open Science (...) agenda and Horizon Europe programme, before closing with some reflections on the contribution RRI has made to debates concerning the relationship between science, innovation and society over the last decade. (shrink)

Normative discourse includes statements which appear to be truth-apt expressions of normative beliefs. But normative oughts do not seem to fit cleanly amongst the natural facts. This makes many naturalistically inclined philosophers sympathetic to some form of expressivist view that normative statements get their meaning from how they express desire-like attitudes. However, there are a serious semantic challenges for expressivism, which lead others to accept the idea that normative statements are representational of reality after all. This paper presents another option (...) that derives from the general program in the theory of meaning to emphasize the commissive role of language over any descriptive or expressive roles. Here this emphasis is used to sketch a version of metaethical inferentialism and contrast it with expressivism. I conclude with some observations about new perspectives this view offers on three other issues in metaethics. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine how a research institution’s social structure and academic opinion leaders’ presence shaped the early adoption of a scientific innovation. Our case considers the early engagement of mathematical economists at the Cowles Commission with John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern’s Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. We argue that scholars with administrative leadership functions who were not only scientifically but also organizationally central – in our case the director of research Jacob Marschak – played a (...) crucial role in promoting the adoption of the Theory of Games. We support our argument with a scientometric analysis of all acknowledgments made in 488 papers published from 1944 to 1955 in the two main paper series at Cowles. We apply blockmodeling techniques to the acknowledgments network to reconstruct the formal and informal social structure at Cowles at the time. Our findings suggest that studies of the early adoption of scientific theories benefit from complementary perspectives on the role of academic leaders and scientists. Our study reveals the importance of formal and informal social structures and the agenda of administrative leaders in these structures to explain their adoption. (shrink)

This work examines the development and performance of federal independent regulatory bodies in Canada in the period up to 1979, with particular attention to the operation of legislative schemes that include executive review and appeal powers. The author assesses the impact of the exercise of these powers on the administrative law process, and proposes new models for the generation, interpretation, implementation, review, and enforcement of regulatory policy. The study includes a series of representative case studies based on documentation and extensive (...) interviews with individuals drawn from government, agencies, and other parties, including counsel for public interest groups. This enables author, writing from her experience as a participant-observer embedded in the public interest legal sector, to draw on the experiences and perspectives of a broad range of participants in the regulatory process, including but not limited to those dealing with the regulated energy, transportation, communications, and foreign investment sectors. Legal principles identified as emergent in leading judicial decisions in administrative law are used to assess the powers and practices used in executive reviews and appeals. The author finds those powers and practices to be flawed and proposes changes. The proposed models are designed to accord with emerging legal principles and avoid flaws of the types identified in the review and appeal provisions. This work, written under contract with the Administrative Law Project of the Law Reform Commission of Canada, formed one part of a comprehensive study of administrative law at the federal level in Canada. (shrink)

In this Article I argue that the citizenship status of Israel’s Palestinian citizens has been eroding since the "events" of October 2000 and that, as a result, Israel, within its rpe-1967 borders, may be moving from a form of democracy that has been termed "ethnic democracy" towards a form of non-democratic state that has been termed "ethnocracy." My argument is based primarily on two legal documents: the new Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, 2003, which denies Palestinian citizens the right (...) to unite with their closest family members who are residents of the Occupied Territories, and the decision of the High Court of Justice that upheld the constitutionality of this law in 2006. Two other developments that seem to support my thesis are analyzed as well: the "events" of October 2000 themselves and the report of the state commission of inquiry that investigated these events, and the plan, advanced by Yvette Lieberman and his political party, "Yisrael Beytenu," to shift the border between Israel and the West Bank westward, depriving tens of thousands of citizen-Palestinians of their Israeli citizenship. (shrink)

The elections and political parties are necessary ingredients of democratic governance. Elections are a necessary condition of representative democracy. In representative democracy citizens participate in politics primarily by choosing political authorities in competitive elections. Elections, hence, are a necessary and crucial instrument to make democracy work. In India, free and fair elections are held at regular intervals as per guidelines of the constitution and the Election Commission. To make them free of flaws it is essential to reform them from (...) time to time. Electoral reform means introducing fair electoral systems for conducting fair elections. It also rejuvenates the existing systems to enhance and increase the efficiency of the same. Following the demands of electoral reforms several committees were being set up. Some of the measures like reduction of voting age and anti defection law are appreciable but there are other vital areas in election field completely neglected. This paper will evaluate about different attempts made for electoral reforms in India. Different challenges before the Election Commission are also been discussed, also how it can be made effective as suggested by Commission in India will be presented. A comparative analysis with other democratic countries like U.S.A and U.K. is added to it. (shrink)

Note: This draft was updated on November 10, 2020. Discussing federal statutes, Justice Scalia tells us that “[t]he stark reality is that the only thing that one can say for sure was agreed to by both houses and the president (on signing the bill) is the text of the statute. The rest is legal fiction." How should we take this claim? If we take "text" to mean the printed text, that text without more is just a series of marks. If (...) instead we take "text" (as we must) to refer to something off the page such as the "meaning" of the series of marks at issue, what is that meaning and how do we know that all the legislators "agreed" on that "meaning"? In seeking answers here, we necessarily delve into semiotics (i.e., the “general theory of signs”) by noting that meaningful ink marks ("signifiers) signify a meaning beyond themselves (the "signified.") Thus, understanding how signs function is integral to lawyers' textual and linguistic analysis. Additionally, as this article demonstrates, legal analysis and rhetoric are much impoverished if lawyers ignore nonverbal signs such as icons, indices, and nonverbal symbols. In providing a broad overview of semiotics for lawyers, this article thus (1) begins with a general definition of signs and the related notion of intentionality. It then turns to, among other things, (2) the structure and concomitants of signs in more detail (including the signifier and the signified), (3) the possible correlations of the signifier and the signified that generate signs of interest to lawyers such as the index, the icon, and the symbol; (5) the expansion of legal rhetoric through use of the index, the icon, and the non-verbal as well as the verbal symbol, (6) the nature of various semiotic acts in public and private law (including assertives, commissives, directives, and verdictives); (7) the interpretation and construction of semiotic acts (including contracts as commissives and legislation as directives); (8) the role of speaker or reader meaning in the interpretation and construction of semiotic acts; (9) the semiotics of meaning, time, and the fixation of meaning debate; (10) the impact of signifier drift; (11) the distinction between sense and understanding; and (12) some brief reflections on semiotics and the First Amendment. This article also provides an Appendix of further terms and concepts useful to lawyers in their explorations of semiotics. (shrink)

commissioned for the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change.

A commissioned article about philosopher of ecology Levi Bryant, and his theory of urban space.

A commissioned 3-volume (800 pages) in-depth introduction to the philosophy of science, peer-reviewed by 11 specialists. (In Hebrew).

This text, commissioned by the OSUN Global Observatory of Academic Freedom, discusses how the concept of academic freedom is codified in Colombian Law and regulations of public and private higher education institutions. It also explores common conceptions of academic freedom among Colombian scholars, as well as commonly observed threats to it.

I offer a brief survey of thematic elements in contemporary literature on forgiveness and then an overview of the responses to that literature comprising the contents of this volume. I concentrate on the extent to which work in moral psychology provides a needed corrective to some excesses in philosophical aversion to empirically informed theorizing. I aim to complicate what has been referred to at times as the standard or classic view, by which philosophers often mean the predominant view of forgiveness (...) in the first half of the thirty-year boom in contemporary philosophy of forgiveness. I conclude by enjoining philosophers to further consider psychological contexts in which forgiveness may be seen primarily as a commitment rather than primarily as an emotional state. (shrink)

Marine and coastal ecosystems are crucial in maintaining human livelihood, facilitating social development, and reducing climate change impacts. Studies have examined how the benefit perception of aquatic ecosystems, knowledge, and emotion about climate change affect peoples’ support for marine protection. However, their interaction effects remain understudied. The current study explores the intricate interaction effect of the benefit perception of aquatic ecosystems, knowledge, and worry about climate change on marine protection support. Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was employed on a dataset (...) of 709 stakeholders from 42 countries generated by MaCoBioS—a research project funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020. The statistical analysis shows that the impacts of benefit perception of ocean ecosystems, knowledge, and worry about climate change on marine protection support vary due to their interactions. Specifically, when stakeholders perceive ocean ecosystems to have little utility in mitigating climate change, greater climate change knowledge and concern are associated with a higher level of marine protection support. Nevertheless, in the scenarios where stakeholders perceive the benefits of ocean ecosystems, the effect of climate change knowledge becomes conditional on the worry level. If stakeholders are concerned about climate change, those with a greater level of climate change knowledge will associate with a higher level of marine protection support. Otherwise, greater climate change knowledge will result in lower support. These findings highlight emotion’s importance in directing climate change knowledge’s effect on marine protection support. Linking people’s “objects of care” to the consequences of climate change can help improve climate change communication effectiveness. (shrink)

Mexico, with the commissioning of the "National Crusade Against Hunger Program" in 2013, aimed at serving the population that presents both extreme poverty and food deprivation. The article aims to analyze whether the criterion of the selection of the municipalities of the State of Veracruz incorporated in the National Crusade Against Hunger Program (PNCH) show complementarity with the efforts in the fight against poverty in the social expenditure strategy applied in the Priority Attention Zones Program (ZAP) and the Priority Areas (...) Development Program (PDZP) and, particularly, the indigenous municipalities that have a greater degree of social exclusion. The adjustment of a binary logistic regression model is presented, in order to assess the incidence of contextual factors to interpret the scope of the strategy adopted by the federal government in the fight against poverty and hunger. As a result, it is evident that there is no continuity in the fight against poverty, since the municipalities included in the strategy Priority Areas of Attention and Program of Development of Priority Zones are not considered in the selection of municipalities incorporated in the National Program of Crusade Against Hunger, a situation that identifies the relationship between programs is not complementary. (shrink)

My paper was commissioned by Journal of Philosophy to provide a piece adequately explaining the significance of the Lacanian Mirror stage within Lacan's larger work. -/- I focus on the transition from the mirror stage to the incorporation of the subject into the symbolic order. I argue that the mirror stage is transitional and that its significance lies in what of it is incorporated into and transformed within the more complex structures of the subject and the unconscious. -/- Implicit in (...) my claim is that "lacanian" theories which hypostatize the mirror stage into a determinate structure of adult consciousness are misinterpreting Lacan. I use Seminars 1 and 2 to make fuller sense the mirror stage as presented in his Ecrits. (shrink)

A central passage in Cusset’s essay states: “God, for Sade, is fiction that ‘took hold of the minds of men’. What makes God’s weakness, the impossibility of rationally proving his existence, is precisely what constitutes his strength as fiction. Negated as authority, eliminated as the figure of the almighty father, God is nonetheless everywhere in the Sadean novel: he exists as the fiction principle. Libertines are never done with God because his name represents the power, not of the law, but (...) of the imagination. In showing their contempt for God, libertines reveal their anger against fiction, which does not have the power to prove its own truth: fiction — and Sade chose to write novels, not philosophical essays — is based on the desire for illusion” (119). Sade’s L’Histoire de Juliette, argues Cusset, breaks from his earlier writings in that Juliette has an agency missing from Sade’s previous female characters, and she, unlike earlier characters, breaks through the central Sadean impasse: “her ‘story’ represents the solution through which Sade paradoxically resolves the aporia of libertinage” (120). She is perfectly aware of scientific explanations for phenomena, but, “for the sake of play, Juliette chooses metaphor, and does not try to ‘unveil truth’ entirely. Juliette distinguishes herself from her teachers and masters through her relation to imagination. […] The end of the novel confirms Juliette’s choice of a playful imagination” (123). In short, Juliette is the libertine who breaks the very rules of the libertines by means of resurrecting the sense of play, imagination, and romantic delicacy which her fellow criminals forbid. Cusset concludes: “Sade invites us to read his texts as fictive and humorous texts, and not, as suggested the French feminist Elisabeth Badinter who wanted to censor Sade’s novel, as rational demonstrations inviting readers to commit murder. Juliette’s transformation through the novel allows us to understand why Sade entitled his last long novel L 'Histoire de Juliette. Juliette chooses fiction, without trying to prove its truth; she chooses pleasure, without trying to annihilate every belief, since imaginary belief is a component of pleasure. What Sade tells us with the invention of Juliette is that freedom is the very choice of limit. […] L’Histoire de Juliette is Sade’s critique of pure fiction” (129). (shrink)

Effective stakeholder engagement and inclusive governance are essential for effective and equitable ocean management. However, few cross-national studies have been conducted to examine how stakeholders’ economic and cultural benefit perceptions influence their support level for policies focused on ocean preservation. The current study aims to fill this gap by employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 709 stakeholders from 42 countries, a part of the MaCoBioS project funded by the European Commission H2020. We found that (...) economic and cultural benefit perceptions are generally negatively associated with the policy support level. Regarding economic aspects, stakeholders considering transportation and shipping, renewable energy generation, and oil and gas provision as the most crucial benefits their countries’ oceans provide tend to obtain less support for policies focusing on ocean preservation. Meanwhile, for cultural aspects, perceiving recreation and tourism, aesthetic pleasure, mental health and well-being support, and sense of identity provision as the most important benefits provided by the country’s ocean are negatively associated with the policy support level. The perceived economic, cultural, and environmental tradeoffs when supporting policies focused on ocean preservation were discussed. Recommendations for improving the effective management of multi-use marine space are also provided to reduce the perceived competing interests among stakeholders. (shrink)

This collection of newly commissioned essays, edited by NYU philosophers Paul Boghossian and Christopher Peacocke, resumes the current surge of interest in the proper explication of the notion of a priori. The authors discuss the relations of the a priori to the notions of definition, meaning, justification, and ontology, explore how the concept figured historically in the philosophies of Leibniz, Kant, Frege, and Wittgenstein, and address its role in the contemporary philosophies of logic, mathematics, mind, and science. The editors’ Introduction (...) familiarizes the reader with the issues that are to be explored in detail in later parts of the anthology. (shrink)

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2022 | The Moral Psychology of Hate provides the first systematic introduction to the moral psychology of hate, compiling specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars with a wide range of disciplinary orientations. In light of the recent revival of interest in emotions in academic philosophy and the current social and political interest in hate, this volume provides arguments for and against the value of hate through a combination of empirical and philosophical methods. (...) The authors examine hate not merely as a destructive feeling but as an emotion of great moral significance that illuminates how we understand each other and ourselves. The book will be of major interest to anyone concerned with the dynamics and the moral and political implications of this most powerful of human emotions. (shrink)

This book reports on theoretical and practical analyses of the ethical challenges connected to driving automation. It also aims at discussing issues that have arisen from the European Commission 2020 report “Ethics of Connected and Automated Vehicles. Recommendations on Road Safety, Privacy, Fairness, Explainability and Responsibility”. Gathering contributions by philosophers, social scientists, mechanical engineers, and UI designers, the book discusses key ethical concerns relating to responsibility and personal autonomy, privacy, safety, and cybersecurity, as well as explainability and human-machine interaction. (...) On the one hand, it examines these issues from a theoretical, normative point of view. On the other hand, it proposes practical strategies to face the most urgent ethical problems, showing how the integration of ethics and technology can be achieved through design practices. All in all, this book fosters a multidisciplinary approach where philosophy, ethics, and engineering are integrated, rather than just juxtaposed. It is meant to inform and inspire an audience of philosophers of technology, ethicists, engineers, developers, manufacturers, and regulators, among other interested readers. (shrink)

This essential reference text on the life, thought and writings of Plato uses over 160 short, accessible articles to cover a complete range of topics for both the first-time student and seasoned scholar of Plato and ancient philosophy. It is organized into five parts illuminating Plato’s life, the whole of the Dialogues attributed to him, the Dialogues’ literary features, the concepts and themes explored within them and Plato’s reception via his influence on subsequent philosophers and the various interpretations of his (...) work. This fully updated 2nd edition includes 19 newly commissioned entries on topics ranging across comedy, tragedy, Xenophon, metatheatre, gender, musical theory, animals, Orphism, political theory, religion, time, Hellenistic philosophy and post-Platonic ancient commentaries. It also features revisions to the majority of articles from the 1st edition, including 8 which have been completely re-written, and 12 which have had the references substantially revised. Reflecting the growing diversity of Plato scholarship across the world, this edition includes contributions from a wide range of scholars who enrich the field and provide students and scholars with a vital resource for study and reference. (shrink)

On 21 April 2021, the European Commission published the proposal of the new EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) — one of the most influential steps taken so far to regulate AI internationally. This article highlights some foundational aspects of the Act and analyses the philosophy behind its proposal.

The EAT-Lancet Commission, consisting of 37 nutritionists, ecologists, and other experts from 16 countries, proposed safe operating space for food systems. This space helps to set ranges of food intake to ensure universal human health and a stable Earth system (not passing the planetary boundaries). Eventually, the Commission developed a 2,500-calorie-per-day eating plan for keeping the food systems in a safe operating space.

Capital punishment—the legally authorized killing of a criminal offender by an agent of the state for the commission of a crime—stands in special need of moral justification. This is because execution is a particularly severe punishment. Execution is different in kind from monetary and custodial penalties in an obvious way: execution causes the death of an offender. While fines and incarceration set back some of one’s interests, death eliminates the possibility of setting and pursuing ends. While fines and incarceration (...) narrow one’s routes to happiness, death eliminates its possibility. Not surprisingly, there is much debate about the moral permissibility of capital punishment. This entry maps the terrain of this debate. The first section discusses justifications of the death penalty as they appear in major theories of punishment. The second section surveys moral objections to execution that apply to most justifications. The third addresses procedural criticisms, which do not target the morality of execution so much as the justice of its implementation. (shrink)

A traditional idea is that moral judgment involves more than calculating the consequences of actions; it also requires an assessment of the agent's intentions, the act's nature, and whether the agent uses another person as a means to her ends. I survey experimental developments suggesting that ordinary people often tacitly reason in terms of such deontological rules. It's now unclear whether we should posit a traditional form of the doctrine of double effect. However, further research suggests that a range of (...) non-consequentialist factors influence moral judgment, including intentions, commissions, personal harm, and agent-centered commitments. Many, if not all, such factors appear to affect how involved the agent is in bringing about an outcome. (shrink)

This is a commissioned review of Copan, P. and Craig, W. The Kalām Cosmological Argument Volume Two: Scientific Evidence for the Beginning of the Universe New York: Bloomsbury, US$172.50, ISBN 978-1-50-133587-7.

To stimulate research and innovation (R&I), to contribute to the solution of societal challenges and to align R&I with societal values, the European Commission has launched the governance framework of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). RRI figures in many high-level EU policies as a means to promote smart growth, and a growing community of R&I practitioners from both the public and private sectors appears committed to it. Although debates on what RRI precisely entails have not reached closure yet, RRI (...) provides an interesting avenue to explore ways of making R&I more societally germane. While recognizing the usefulness of keeping critical reflection on RRI’s meaning alive, we suggest that to make the step from theorizing to implementation, RRI could benefit from a clearer conceptualization. This chapter presents the iterative trajectory in conceptualizing RRI followed as part of RRI Tools, one of a number of EC-funded research projects and support acts aimed at fleshing out what RRI can and should be, and the conceptualization of RRI that this led to. It suggests that RRI is best captured if in R&I governance attention is paid to the five p’s of Purpose, Products, Processes, Preconditions and People, and that further elaborations on the meaning of RRI should happen in dialogue with attempts at practicing RRI. (shrink)

This paper gives an outline of truthmaker semantics for natural language against the background of standard possible-worlds semantics. It develops a truthmaker semantics for attitude reports and deontic modals based on an ontology of attitudinal and modal objects and on a semantic function of clauses as predicates of such objects. It also présents new motivations for 'object-based truthmaker semantics' from intensional transitive verbs such as ‘need’, ‘look for’, ‘own’, and ‘buy’ and gives an outline of their semantics. This paper is (...) a commissioned 'target' article, with commentaries by W. Davis, B. Arsenijevic, K. Moulton, K. Liefke, M. Kaufmann, R. Matthews, P. Portner and A. Rubinstein, P. Elliott, G. Ramchand and my reply. (shrink)

In the past years, many students had problems with their finances, especially their expenses for education. Many of the students are affected by the crisis financially, emotionally, and by their wellbeing. That is why the government provides programs that will help the students with their problems with school expenses, and that is through the Tertiary Education Subsidy (TES) of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED). Further, the primary goal of this study is to explore the TES Grantees' lived experiences, (...) challenges, and coping mechanisms. Furthermore, these are the study's findings: (1) The grantees find the TES very helpful regarding finances that will tackle their academic needs, such as tuition fees and school learning materials. (2) Many students value government assistance that motivates them to maintain their grades. (shrink)

The distinction between clinical research and clinical practice directs how we partition medicine and biomedical science. Reasons for a sharp distinction date historically to the work of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, especially to its analysis of the “boundaries” between research and practice in the Belmont Report (1978). Belmont presents a segregation model of the research-practice distinction, according to which research and practice form conceptually exclusive sets of activities and interventions. (...) This model is still the standard in federal regulations today. However, the Commission’s deliberations and conclusions about the boundaries are more complicated, nuanced, and instructive than has generally been appreciated. The National Commission did not conclude that practice needs no oversight comparable to the regulation of research. It debated the matter and inclined to the view that the oversight of practice needed to be upgraded, though the Commission stopped short of proposing new regulations for its oversight, largely for prudential political reasons. (shrink)

Recently, it has been argued that the use of Big Data transforms the sciences, making data-driven research possible and studying causality redundant. In this paper, I focus on the claim on causal knowledge by examining the Big Data project EXPOsOMICS, whose research is funded by the European Commission and considered capable of improving our understanding of the relation between exposure and disease. While EXPOsOMICS may seem the perfect exemplification of the data-driven view, I show how causal knowledge is necessary (...) for the project, both as a source for handling complexity and as an output for meeting the project’s goals. Consequently, I argue that data-driven claims about causality are fundamentally flawed and causal knowledge should be considered a necessary aspect of Big Data science. In addition, I present the consequences of this result on other data-driven claims, concerning the role of theoretical considerations. I argue that the importance of causal knowledge and other kinds of theoretical engagement in EXPOsOMICS undermine theory-free accounts and suggest alternative ways of framing science based on Big Data. (shrink)

Over fifteen years have passed since Cora Diamond and James Conant turned Wittgenstein scholarship upside down with the program of “resolute” reading, and ten years since this reading was crystallized in the major collection _The New Wittgenstein_. This approach remains at the center of the debate about Wittgenstein and his philosophy, and this book draws together the latest thinking of the world’s leading Tractatarian scholars and promising newcomers. Showcasing one piece alternately from each “camp”, _Beyond the Tractatus Wars_ pairs newly (...) commissioned pieces addressing differing views on how to understand early Wittgenstein, providing for the first time an arena in which the debate between “strong” resolutists, “mild” resolutists and “elucidatory” readers of the book can really take place. The collection includes famous “samizdat” essays by Warren Goldfarb and Roger White that are finally seeing the light of day. (shrink)

Seeing Wittgenstein Anew is the first collection to examine Ludwig Wittgenstein’s remarks on the concept of aspect-seeing. These essays show that aspect-seeing was not simply one more topic of investigation in Wittgenstein’s later writings, but, rather, that it was a pervasive and guiding concept in his efforts to turn philosophy’s attention to the actual conditions of our common life in language. Arranged in sections that highlight the pertinence of the aspect-seeing remarks to aesthetic and moral perception, self-knowledge, mind and consciousness, (...) linguistic agreement, philosophical therapy, and “seeing connections,” the sixteen essays, which were specially commissioned for this volume, demonstrate the unity of not only Philosophical Investigations but also Wittgenstein’s later thought as a whole. They open up novel paths across familiar fields of thought: the objectivity of interpretation, the fixity of the past, the acquisition of language, and the nature of human consciousness. Significantly, they exemplify how continuing consideration of the interrelated phenomena and concepts surrounding aspect-seeing might produce a fruitful way of doing philosophy. The volume includes a concordance for the unnumbered remarks in the various editions of Philosophical Investigations, including the latest (4th) edition. (The front matter is posted here. The introduction - "Seeing Aspects in Wittgenstein" - appears below under "Published articles."). (shrink)

We reflect on a decade of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) as a discourse emerging from the European Commission (EC) 10 years ago. We discuss the foundations for RRI, its emergence during the Seventh Framework programme and its subsequent evolution during Horizon 2020. We discuss how an original vision for RRI became framed around five so-called ‘keys’: gender, open access, science communication, ethics and public engagement. We consider the prospects for RRI within the context of the EC’s Open Science (...) agenda and Horizon Europe programme, before closing with some reflections on the contribution RRI has made to debates concerning the relationship between science, innovation and society over the last decade. (shrink)