John Macmurray (1891-1976) was born in Scotland and began his philosophical education in a Scottish university. As an academic philosopher, following in the footsteps of Caird’s Scottish idealism - a reaction against the debate between Hume’s scepticism and Reid’s ‘commonsense’ – Macmurray holds that a university education in moral philosophy is essential for producing virtuous citizens. Consequently, Macmurray’s philosophy of human nature includes a ‘thick’ description of the person, which is more holistic that Cartesianism and emphasizes the relation of persons. (...) Hence, Macmurray focuses on community, but, as this chapter reveals, he is not a communitarian in the contemporary sense; rather, he shares Caird’s focus on philosophy as the means to living well. Thus, he opposes increasing specialization in university education and highlights the limits of science, which, Davie notes, is representative of the Scottish metaphysic of Macmurray’s era. Macmuray is the last in this line of the Scottish philosophical tradition. (shrink)

In his recent article, “God and Horrendous Suffering,” John W. Loftus argues that what he calls horrendous suffering is incompatible with traditional theism. The extent of horrendous suffering in the world, he says, “means that either God does not care enough to eliminate it, or God is not smart enough to eliminate it, or God is not powerful enough to eliminate it.” For Loftus, however, the problem is not simply evil, but horrendous suffering, a particularly acute form of evil which (...) renders theism completely untenable. Here I will argue in reply, first, that because horrendous suffering is itself a form of evil, it cannot be easily reconciled with naturalism, since naturalism actually precludes the existence of evil. Then I will argue that horrendous suffering is not only compatible with theism, but is best explained in the context of Christian theism in particular. Finally I will suggest that because God’s work of creation is not yet complete, we have good reason for maintaining hope even in the face of horrendous evils. (shrink)

As formulated by atheist Jeffery Jay Lowder, the Evidential Argument from the History of Science, or AHS, is premised on the observation that over the course of modern history, naturalistic explanations have progressively overtaken supernaturalistic explanations. That history, says Lowder, constitutes evidence that metaphysical naturalism is true (hence that theism is false). But it’s possible that the historical pattern as described is not actually the result of any genuine explanatory virtues of naturalistic over supernaturalistic explanations. If there are good reasons (...) to suspect that naturalistic explanations fail to accurately or adequately explain the world around us, then we would not have sufficient grounds to follow Lowder’s argument to its conclusion. Here I will present three reasons to suspect that naturalistic explanations fail to accurately or adequately explain the world around us: (1) an alternative reading of the history of science according to pessimistic induction; (2) the arbitrary epistemic requirements of methodological naturalism; and (3) the ongoing resistance of certain phenomena (the origins of the universe and of life on earth) to any naturalistic explanations that are coherent and relatively simple. (shrink)

Julian Schlöder (2018) examines Timothy Williamson's proposal that knowledge is the norm of assertion within the context of deontic logic. He argues for two claims, one concerning the formalisation of the thesis that knowledge is a norm of assertion and another concerning the formalisation of the thesis that knowledge is the only norm of assertion. On the basis of these claims, Schlöder goes on to raise a series of problems for Williamson's proposal. In response, I argue that both of Schlöder's (...) claims can—and should—be rejected. (shrink)

The question I wish to explore is this: Does idealism conflict with common sense? Unfortunately, the answer I give may seem like a rather banal one: It depends. What do we mean by ‘idealism’ and ‘common sense?’ I distinguish three main varieties of idealism: absolute idealism, Berkeleyan idealism, and dualistic idealism. After clarifying what is meant by common sense, I consider whether our three idealisms run afoul of it. The first does, but the latter two don’t. I conclude that while (...) Moore’s famous common sense critique is sound against external world skepticism, against Berkeleyan idealism and dualist idealism it is unavailing. (shrink)

This article argues that Macmurray’s work on education is deserving of serious consideration, because it offers an account of the person that highlights the significance of the emotions and the arts. In particular, the article examines and teases out the areas of Macmurray’s concept of the person that are pertinent to the philosophy of education, which includes the contention that the emotions can and should be educated. Furthermore, on the basis of Macmurray’s work, this article argues that emotional competency is (...) bound up with an education in the creative arts. Consequently engagement with the arts, which is often considered to be a luxury and a hobby, becomes an essential component in the development of human nature and the ability to live well. Finally, by analysing Macmurray’s description of a work of art and bringing Macmurray into conversation with contemporary views regarding the arts and the education of the emotions, in both a critical and a supportive manner, this article concludes that education in the emotions and the arts are key aspects of human well-being. (shrink)

I defend Christopher Peacocke's and Robert Hopkins's experienced resemblance accounts of depiction against criticisms put forward by Gavin McIntosh in a recent article in this journal. I argue that, while there may be reasons for rejecting Peacocke's and Hopkins's accounts, McIntosh fails to provide any.

It is no accident that white privilege designed to be both be invisible and weightless to white people. Alison Bailey’s “On White Privilege and Anesthesia: Why Does Peggy McIntosh’s Knapsack Feel Weightless?” extends a weighty invitation white readers to complete the unpacking task McIntosh (1988) began when she compared white privilege to an “invisible and weightless knapsack.” McIntosh focuses primarily making white privilege visible to white people. Bailey’s project continues the conversation by extending a ‘weighty invitation’ to (...) white readers to explore why the metaphorical knapsack, despite the weight of its contents, feels weightless. Here’s the short answer. The knapsack only feels weightless because white people have become anesthetized us to our own brokenness. We are more comfortable considering what white privilege does for us than what it does to us. People of color feel the weight of whiteness every day. The weighty invitation invites white readers to become sensitive to our own insensitivity. To do this Bailey (1) explores white resistance to unpacking the weight; (2) people of color’s testimonies to the daily impact of the weight on their bodies; and (3) how the anesthesia of white privilege distorts our humanity. The article concludes with a McIntosh style list of that the anesthesia of privilege distorts white people’s humanity. (shrink)

The Guggenheim’s spring retrospective of the seminal Swedish painter, Hilma Af Klint, has, naturally, evoked a multitude of art critics and visual culture scholars who laud her radical abstraction which, at the beginning of the 20th century, preceded Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian. Yet, where much attention has been given to the symbology and motifs riddling Klint’s work – bold, private, untethered and nonrepresentational as they are – there has been a modicum of nuanced thought on how, exactly, esotericism and theology fomented (...) Klint’s pedagogical projects. Jillian Steinhauer, for instance, has underscored Klint’s naturalistic watercolors; featuring flowers and lifelike drawings of women; Summer Landscape (1888) suggests Klint’s technical aptitude for rendering light. Jadranka Ryle, in a clever article titled “Reinventing the Yggdrasil,” invokes Klint’s motif of the Yggdrasil, or the holy tree of Norse mythology, as a political axle for Nordic romanticism. Ryle makes the claim that by redirecting the Yggdrasil towards androgynous abstraction, Klint’s engagement with Norse mythology subverts the nationalist and patriarchal romanticism that previously characterized the nineteenth century’s use of the Yggdrasil. Others have adroitly uncovered biographical fragments from Klint’s life, detailing how she and four friends formed De Fem (“the Five”), an exclusively female coven that met weekly, praying, meditating, and holding seances to commune with spiritual guides. Rather than poise the Swedish maverick within the cannon of abstraction qua a political praxis, feminist subject-being, or historiography – projects that have been exhaustively overwrought, to the point of rendering Klint’s work both mute and reductively technical– I would like to take this time to closely examine simply one of Klint’s paintings and foreground it as an axiomatic modernist injunction between metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

David Milner and Melvyn Goodale’s dissociation hypothesis is commonly taken to state that there are two functionally specialized cortical streams of visual processing originating in striate (V1) cortex: a dorsal, action-related “unconscious” stream and a ventral, perception-related “conscious” stream. As Milner and Goodale acknowledge, findings from blindsight studies suggest a more sophisticated picture that replaces the distinction between unconscious vision for action and conscious vision for perception with a tripartite division between unconscious vision for action, conscious vision for perception, and (...) unconscious vision for perception. The combination excluded by the tripartite division is the possibility of conscious vision for action. But are there good grounds for concluding that there is no conscious vision for action? There is now overwhelming evidence that illusions and perceived size can have a significant effect on action (Bruno & Franz, 2009; Dassonville & Bala, 2004; Franz & Gegenfurtner, 2008; McIntosh & Lashley, 2008). There is also suggestive evidence that any sophisticated visual behavior requires collaboration between the two visual streams at every stage of the process (Schenk & McIntosh, 2010). I nonetheless want to make a case for the tripartite division between unconscious vision for action, conscious vision for perception, and unconscious vision for perception. My aim here is not to refute the evidence showing that conscious vision can affect action but rather to argue (a) that we cannot gain cognitive access to action-guiding dorsal stream representations, and (b) that these representations do not correlate with phenomenal consciousness. This vindicates the semi-conservative view that the dissociation hypothesis is best understood as a tripartite division. (shrink)

According to Milner and Goodale’s dual visual systems (DVS) theory, a division obtains between visual consciousness and motor action, in that the visual system producing conscious vision (the ventral stream) is distinct from the one guiding action (the dorsal stream). That there would be this division is often taken (by Andy Clark and others) to undermine the folk view on how consciousness and action relate. However, even if this division obtains, this leaves open the possibility that con- scious ventral information (...) is often transmitted to the uncon- scious dorsal stream and then used to guide action, a possibility seeming to preserve a significant role for consciousness in action. This article assesses this possibility. In course of doing so, we will review those arguments recently having been made against the DVS view on how visual consciousness and action relate (ones due to, e.g., Briscoe and Schwenkler, or Schenk and McIntosh). What we will find is that, if we properly analyze the data upon which these arguments are based, we are still left with the impression that the DVS view is largely correct; i.e., it is only rarely that visual experience guides action. (shrink)

A crucial question in relation to support designed to enable the legal capacity of people with mental disabilities concerns when support constitutes undue influence. This article addresses this question in order to facilitate the development of law and policy in England and Wales, by providing a normative analysis of the different approaches to undue influence across decisions about property, contracts, health, finances, and accommodation. These are all potential contexts for supporting legal capacity, and, in doing so, the article compares approaches (...) to undue influence that are rarely considered together. -/- Drawing on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, third sector and public body documents, and law in England and Wales, the analysis identifies six models that conceptualise undue influence in terms of: modes of influence; an overborne will; an inference from the situation; an overborne will understood as a mental incapacity; an overborne will in connection with vulnerability; and impaired discursive control. This final approach is a novel proposal for understanding undue influence. The analysis highlights key policy-relevant issues that distinguish the models, and generates a deliberative framework for navigating them, with the ‘overborne will’, ‘inference-based’, and ‘discursive control’ models identified as potentially fitting for the support context. (shrink)

I argue that Social Trinitarians can and should conceive of God as a group person. They can by drawing on recent theories of group agency realism that show how groups can be not just agents but persons distinct from their members – albeit, I argue, persons of a different kind. They should because the resultant novel view of the Trinity – that God is three ‘intrinsicist’ persons in one ‘functional’ person – is theologically sound, effectively counters the most trenchant criticisms (...) of Social Trinitarianism, and enjoys independent theological support from the biblical notion of ‘corporate personality’. (shrink)

In this chapter, our focus is the role played by notions of rationality in the diagnosis of mental disorders, and in the practice of overriding patient autonomy in psychiatry. We describe and evaluate different hypotheses concerning the relationship between rationality and diagnosis, raising questions about what features underpin psychiatric categories. These questions reinforce widely held concerns about the use of diagnosis as a justification for overriding autonomy, which have motivated a shift to mental incapacity as an alternative justification. However, this (...) approach too has recently been criticized from a mental disability rights perspective. Our analysis of the relationship between mental capacity and rationality is used to illuminate these concerns, and to investigate further the relationship between rationality and psychiatric diagnosis. (shrink)

I explore the view that the imago Dei is essential to us as humans but accidental to us as persons. To image God is to resemble God, and resemblance comes in degrees. This has the straightforward—and perhaps disturbing—implication that we can be more or less human, and possibly cease to be human entirely. Hence, I call it the spectrum view. I argue that the spectrum view is complementary to the Biblical data, helps explain the empirical reality of horrendous evil, and (...) offers an elegant rapprochement between the traditional view of hell and its rivals. (shrink)

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is being used to argue for wider recognition of the legal capacity of people with mental disabilities. This raises a question about the implications of the Convention for attributions of criminal responsibility. The present paper works towards an answer by analysing the relationship between legal capacity in relation to personal decisions and criminal acts. Its central argument is that because moral and political considerations play an essential role in (...) setting the relevant standards, legal capacity in the context of personal decisions and criminal acts should not be thought of as two sides of the same coin. The implications of particular moral or political norms are likely to be different in these two legal contexts, and this may justify asymmetries in the relevant standards for legal capacity. However, the analysis highlights a fundamental question about how much weight moral or political considerations should be given in setting these standards, and this is used to frame a challenge to those calling for significantly wider recognition of the legal capacity of people with mental disabilities on the basis of the Convention. (shrink)

This article investigates the ability of mental incapacity tests to account for problems of control, through a study of the approach to alcohol dependence and a comparison with the approach to anorexia nervosa, in England and Wales. The focus is on two areas of law where questions of legal and mental capacity arise for people who are alcohol dependent: decisions about treatment for alcohol dependence and diminished responsibility for a killing. The mental incapacity tests used in these legal contexts are (...) importantly different—one involves a ‘cognitive’ test, while the other includes an explicit impaired-control limb—and the comparison provides insight into a longstanding debate about the virtues of one type of test over the other. It is shown that both kinds of test can take control problems into account, but also that both can be interpreted in narrow and wide ways that significantly influence the outcome of the assessment. It is therefore argued that to a large extent, it is not the kind of mental incapacity test that matters, but how the test is interpreted. It is further proposed that value judgements are playing an unrecognised and inappropriate role in shaping this interpretation. This raises concerns about the current approach to assessing the impact of alcohol dependency on the capacity to make decisions about alcohol use or treatment, as well as broader concerns about flexibility within incapacity tests. (shrink)

Many philosophers have appealed to the PSR in arguments for a being that exists a se, a being whose explanation is in itself. But what does it mean, exactly, for something to have its explanation ‘in itself’? Contemporary philosophers have said next to nothing about this, relying instead on phrases plucked from the accounts of various historical figures. In this article, I analyse five such accounts – those of Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz – and argue that none are (...) satisfactory. Should we abandon or restrict the PSR, then? I think that would be hasty, for many reasons. I therefore consider the prospects of explaining everything, including God, given the constraints of certain features of good explanations, and conclude with several observations about future approaches. (shrink)

Would the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life conflict in any way with Christian belief? We identify six areas of potential conflict. If there be no conflict in any of these areas—and we argue ultimately there is not—we are confident in declaring that there is no conflict, period. This conclusion underwrites the integrity of theological explorations into the existence of ETI, which has become a topic of increasing interest among theologians in recent years.

Although social scientists have identified diverse behavioral patterns among children from dissimilarly structured families, marketing scholars have progressed little in relating family structure to consumption-related decisions. In particular, the roles played by members of single-mother families—which may include live-in grandparents, mother’s unmarried partner, and step-father with or without step-sibling(s)—may affect children’s influence on consumption-related decisions. For example, to offset a parental authority dynamic introduced by a new stepfather, the work-related constraints imposed on a breadwinning mother, or the imposition of adult-level (...) household responsibilities on children, single-mother families may attend more to their children’s product preferences. -/- Without a profile that includes socio-economic, behavioral, and psychological aspects, efficient and socially responsible marketing to single-mother households is compromised. Relative to dual-parent families, single-mother families tend to have fewer resources and less buying power, children who consume more materialistic and compulsively, and children who more strongly influence decision making for both own-use and family-use products. Timely research would ensure that these and other tendencies now differentiate single-mother from dual-parent families in ways that marketers should address. Hence, our threefold goal is (1) to consolidate and highlight gaps in existing theory applied to studying children’s influence on consumption-related decision making in single-mother families, and (2) to propose a hybrid framework that merges two theories conducive to such research, and (3) to identify promising research propositions for future research. (shrink)

Persons think. Bodies, time-slices of persons, and brains might also think. They have the necessary neural equipment. Thus, there seems to be more than one thinker in your chair. Critics assert that this is too many thinkers and that we should reject ontologies that allow more than one thinker in your chair. I argue that cases of multiple thinkers are innocuous and that there is not too much thinking. Rather, the thinking shared between, for example, persons and their bodies is (...) exactly what we should expect at the intersection of part sharing and the supervenience of the mental on the physical. I end by responding to the overcrowding objection, the personhood objection, the personal-pronoun reference problem and the epistemic objection. (shrink)

Historically, republicans were of different minds about markets: some, such as Rousseau, reviled them, while others, like Adam Smith, praised them. The recent republican resurgence has revived this issue. Classical liberals such as Gerald Gaus contend that neo-republicanism is inherently hostile to markets, while neo-republicans like Richard Dagger and Philip Pettit reject this characterization—though with less enthusiasm than one might expect. I argue here that the right republican attitude toward competitive markets is celebratory rather than acquiescent and that republicanism demands (...) such markets for the same reason it requires the rule of law: because both are essential institutions for protecting individuals from arbitrary interference. I reveal how competition restrains—and in the limit, even eradicates—market power and thereby helps us realize “market freedom,” i.e., freedom as non-domination in the context of economic exchange. Finally, I show that such freedom necessitates “Anglo-Nordic” economic policies. (shrink)

The article concerns the interpretation of Aquinas' philosophy in the thougt of the swiss theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar.

Abstract. Intelligent Tutoring System Builder (ITSB) is an authoring tool designed and developed to aid teachers in constructing intelligent tutoring systems in a multidisciplinary fields. The teacher is needed to create a set of pedagogical fundamentals, which, in line, are inured to automatically build up a broad tutor framework and construct an intelligent tutoring system. In this paper an explanation of the theory and the architecture of the tool is outlined. A presentation of several system components, the requirements of the (...) different components, integration of these components in ITSB tool are shown. Furthermore, implanting of requirements, cognitive principle, and common design fundamentals in the tool to ease the use of teachers. A variety of design matters, an example of building an intelligent tutoring system for teaching Java language using ITSB tool and an evaluation are presented. (shrink)

Contemporary republicans have adopted a less-than-charitable attitude toward private beneficence, especially when it is directed to the poor, worrying that rich patrons may be in a position to exercise arbitrary power over their impoverished clients. These concerns have led them to support impartial public provision by way of state welfare programs, including an unconditional basic income (UBI). In contrast to this administrative model of public welfare, I will propose a competitive model in which the state regulates and subsidizes a decentralized (...) and nonstatist provision of support for the poor. This model will fix the historically objectionable features of private provision by having the state prevent collusion among private charities, deliver information to recipients about alternative sources of assistance, and give substantial grants to charities as well as tax incentives and vouchers to donors. I will contend that such an approach would do a better job of minimizing domination of the poor than traditional welfare states and may prove more politically feasible than a UBI, at least in the near term in certain national contexts. (shrink)

In the longstanding debate between liberals and libertarians over the morality of redistributive labor taxation, liberals such as John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin have consistently taken the position that such taxation is perfectly compatible with individual liberty, whereas libertarians such as Robert Nozick and Murray Rothbard have adopted the (very) contrary position that such taxation is tantamount to slavery. In this paper, I argue that the debate over redistributive labor taxation can be usefully reconstituted as a debate over the incidents (...) (or components) of self-ownership, with liberals arguing for a narrow definition of the concept and libertarians arguing for a broad one. By using what Alan Ryan has called the “language of proprietorship,” I pinpoint precisely the source of the disagreement between liberals and libertarians and assess the relative strengths of their arguments. I also show that the respective definitions of self-ownership used by liberals and libertarians are deeply problematic—though for strikingly different reasons. (shrink)

Define teleology as the view that requirements hold in virtue of facts about value or goodness. Teleological views are quite popular, and in fact some philosophers (e.g. Dreier, Smith) argue that all (plausible) moral theories can be understood teleologically. I argue, however, that certain well-known cases show that the teleologist must at minimum assume that there are certain facts that an agent ought to know, and that this means that requirements can't, in general, hold in virtue of facts about value (...) or goodness. I then show that even if we grant those 'ought's teleology still runs into problems. A positive justification of teleology looks like it will require an argument of this form: O(X); if X, then O(Y); therefore O(Y). But this form of argument isn't in general valid. I conclude by offering two positive suggestions for those attracted to a teleological outlook. (shrink)

This article criticizes radical labor republicanism on republican grounds. I show that its demand for universal workplace democracy via workers’ cooperatives conflicts with republican freedom along three different dimensions: first, freedom to choose an occupation…and not to choose one; second, freedom within the very cooperatives that workers are to democratically govern; and third, freedom within the newly proletarian state. In the conclusion, I ask whether these criticisms apply, at least in part, to the more modest, incrementalist strand of labor republicanism. (...) To the extent that they do, delaboring republicanism might be the best response. (shrink)

A liberal antinomy of parenting exists: strong liberal intuitions militate in favor of both denying special resources to parenting projects (on grounds of project-neutrality) and granting them (on grounds of respect for personhood). I show that we can reconcile these two claims by rejecting a premise common to both--viz. that liberalism is necessarily committed to extensive procreative liberties--and limiting procreation and subsequent parenting to adults who meet certain psychological and especially financial criteria. I also defend this argument, which provides a (...) Kantian complement to utilitarian arguments for restricting procreation, against a variety of objections. (shrink)

Researchers and practitioners are increasingly using machine‐generated synthetic data as a tool for advancing health science and practice, by expanding access to health data while—potentially—mitigating privacy and related ethical concerns around data sharing. While using synthetic data in this way holds promise, we argue that it also raises significant ethical, legal, and policy concerns, including persistent privacy and security problems, accuracy and reliability issues, worries about fairness and bias, and new regulatory challenges. The virtue of synthetic data is often understood (...) to be its detachment from the data subjects whose measurement data is used to generate it. However, we argue that addressing the ethical issues synthetic data raises might require bringing data subjects back into the picture, finding ways that researchers and data subjects can be more meaningfully engaged in the construction and evaluation of datasets and in the creation of institutional safeguards that promote responsible use. (shrink)

This paper traces two contradicting beliefs about death and immortality in the writings of Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn, and examines these opposing beliefs in his Halakhic ruling, in the case of Autopsies. The paper opens by conceptualizing two possible attitudes regarding the relation between this-world and the ʽother-world’, and by analyzing two main beliefs regarding death and immortality in their relation to the body-spirit distinction (the naturalistic and the spiritualistic approach). It demonstrates how Hirschensohn was holding these two different views. The (...) paper then moves to examine whether his halakhic ruling may help us in understanding which approach was Hirschensohn’s favorable belief, by investigating his halakhic ruling regarding autopsies. Hirschensohn permits to perform such surgeries, however subject to some halakhic limitations. The paper concludes that the naturalistic belief regarding death appears to be the more dominant one in his thought. Finally, I point out a few consequences of this paper, for addressing some contemporary ethical dilemmas regarding human corpses. (shrink)

This article examines A.J. Heschel’s “Theology of pathos” in light of the critique Eliezer Berkovits raised against it. Heschel’s theology of pathos is the notion of God as the “most moved mover”, who cares deeply for humans, and thus highly influencing their prophetic motivation for human-social improvement. Berkovits, expressing the negative-transcendent theology of Maimonides, assessed that Heschel’s theology of pathos is not systematic, is anthropomorphic, and reflects a foreign Christian influence. However, when checking Berkovits’s own views as a thinker, it (...) turns out that he formulated some immanent theological notions that were overlapping those of Heschel, for example in attributing God the personal trait of caring. Surprisingly, most Heschel’s scholars did not consider this point. This riddle addressed here in two ways: (1) Psychological and Social, on which I understand Berkovits’s critique as a way of coping with his own religious perplexities, and in a wider sense, it is asserted that trans-denominational critique may be a discursive opportunity for mutual corrigibility. (2) Theological, since Heschel and Berkovits indeed faced a similar theological challenge, of rejecting any description of God as anthropomorphism. I thus offer a constructive theological argument for providing a justification to the immanent theologies of both Heschel and Berkovits. (shrink)

Phenomenology gives rise to certain ontological considerations that have far-reaching implications for standard conceptions of patient autonomy in medical ethics, and, as a result, the obligations of and to patients in clinical decision-making contexts. One such consideration is the phenomenological reduction in classical phenomenology, a core feature of which is the characterisation of our primary experiences as immediately and inherently meaningful. This paper builds on and extends the analyses of the phenomenological reduction in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty (...) in order to identify and explain its implications for our current understanding of the principle of respect for patient autonomy and the norms of clinical decision making. (shrink)

First paragraph: In the 1980s I went through a phase of writing limericks during idle moments when I lacked something to read. The result was a set of 27 limericks about cybernetics (Umpleby 1992). I occasionally use the limericks in class to restate a theoretical point. Limericks bring a smile and demonstrate that cybernetics can be approached in a variety of ways. Below are three limericks from this collection. The last was written by Ernst von Glasersfeld. It seems Ernst believed (...) that I was overly concerned with "reality" as opposed to perception, or at least that I had not captured the point that he was trying to make. (shrink)

This essay attempts to render intelligible (you will pardon the pun) Kant's peculiar claims about the intelligible at A 539/B 567 – A 541/B 569 in the first Critique, in which he asserts that (1) ... [t]his acting subject would now, in conformity with his intelligible character, stand under no temporal conditions, because time is only a condition of appearances, but not of things in themselves. In him no action would begin or cease. Consequently it would not be subjected to (...) the law of all determination of everything alterable in time: everything which happens finds its causes in the appearances (of the previous state). In a word, his causality, in so far as it is intellectual, would not stand in the series of empirical conditions which the event in the world of sense makes necessary. (A 539/B 567 - A 540/B 568) ... in so far as it is noumenon, nothing happens in him, no alteration which requires dynamical determination in time .... One would quite rightly say of him, that it of itself begins his effects in the world of sense, without the action's beginning in him himself ... (A 541/B 569)2 What does Kant mean by claiming that intellectual causality is such that in one's intelligible character as noumenal agent, actions neither begin nor end, nor does anything happen in one? Do these claims have meaning merely by contrast to the familiar experience of empirical causality, in which actions have discrete durations and events occur? Is he merely inferring from this familiar sensible experience an ontologically and metaphysically independent, epistemically inaccessible "world," which can be conceptualized only through the negation of those terms and propositions that characterize this one? Or is he offering a.. (shrink)

States restrict immigration on a massive scale. Governments fortify their borders with walls and fences, authorize border patrols, imprison migrants in detention centers, and deport large numbers of foreigners. Unjust Borders: Individuals and the Ethics of Immigration argues that immigration restrictions are systematically unjust and examines how individual actors should respond to this injustice. Javier Hidalgo maintains that individuals can rightfully resist immigration restrictions and often have strong moral reasons to subvert these laws. This book makes the case that unauthorized (...) migrants can permissibly evade, deceive, and use defensive force against immigration agents, that smugglers can aid migrants in crossing borders, and that citizens should disobey laws that compel them to harm immigrants. Unjust Borders is a meditation on how individuals should act in the midst of pervasive injustice. (shrink)

Rawls offers three arguments for the priority of liberty in Theory, two of which share a common error: the belief that once we have shown the instrumental value of the basic liberties for some essential purpose (e.g., securing self-respect), we have automatically shown the reason for their lexical priority. The third argument, however, does not share this error and can be reconstructed along Kantian lines: beginning with the Kantian conception of autonomy endorsed by Rawls in section 40 of Theory, we (...) can explain our highest-order interest in rationality, justify the lexical priority of all basic liberties, and reinterpret Rawls’ threshold condition for the application of the priority of liberty. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this Kantian reconstruction will not work within the radically different framework of Political Liberalism. (shrink)

Intelligent neurotechnology is an emerging field that combines neurotechnologies like brain-computer interface (BCI) with artificial intelligence. This paper introduces a capability framework to assess the responsible use of intelligent BCI systems and provide practical ethical guidance. It proposes two tests, the threshold and flourishing tests, that BCI applications must meet, and illustrates them in a series of cases. After a brief introduction (Section 1), Section 2 sets forth the capability view and the two tests. It illustrates the threshold test using (...) examples from clinical medicine of BCI applications that enable patients with profound disabilities to function at a threshold level through computer mediation. Section 3 illustrates the flourishing test by exploring possible future applications of BCI involving neuroenhancements for healthy people, using examples adapted from research currently underway in the US military. Section 3 applies a capability lens to a complex case involving dual effects, both therapeutic and non-therapeutic, showing how the threshold and flourishing tests resolve the case. Section 4 replies to three objections: neurorights are the best tool for assessing BCI; the two tests are moving targets; and the analysis utilizes a capability view to do work it is not designed for. The paper concludes that a capability view offers unique advantages and gives practical guidance for evaluating the responsible use of present and future BCI applications. Extrapolating from our analysis may help guide other emerging technologies, such as germline gene editing, expected to impact central human capabilities. (shrink)

I suspect the answer to the question in the title of this paper is no. But the scope of my paper will be considerably more limited: I will be concerned with whether certain types of considerations that are commonly cited in favor of dynamic semantics do in fact push us towards a dynamic semantics. Ultimately, I will argue that the evidence points to a dynamics of discourse that is best treated pragmatically, rather than as part of the semantics.

Robert Nozick, in chapter two of the nature of rationality, proposes two famous problems in decision theory (i.e., Newcomb's problem and Prisoner Dilemma) and two main strategies toward these problems i.e. dominant strategy and dominated or cooperative one. He will try to give a formal principles to calculate the decision values in these situations. In this calculation he goes beyond the standard principle of maximizing expected utility and would try to put forth less ideal and more realistic principles that fit (...) the decision situation in the real world. (shrink)

The majority of studies on absorptive capacity (AC) underscore the importance of absorbing technological knowledge from other firms to create economic value. However, to preserve moral legitimacy and create social value, firms must also discern and adapt to (shifts in) societal values. A comparative case study of eight firms in the food industry reveals how organizations prioritize and operationalize the societal value health in product innovation while navigating inter- and intravalue conflicts. The value-sensitive framework induced in this article extends AC (...) by explaining how technically savvy, economic value–creating firms diverge in their receptivity, articulation, and reflexivity of societal values. (shrink)

It has long been thought that observing distinctive traces of quantum gravity in a laboratory setting is effectively impossible, since gravity is so much weaker than all the other familiar forces in particle physics. But the quantum gravity phenomenology community today seeks to do the (effectively) impossible, using a challenging novel class of `tabletop' Gravitationally Induced Entanglement (GIE) experiments, surveyed here. The hypothesized outcomes of the GIE experiments are claimed by some (but disputed by others) to provide a `witness' of (...) the underlying quantum nature of gravity in the non-relativistic limit, using superpositions of Planck-mass bodies. We inspect what sort of achievement it would possibly be to perform GIE experiments, as proposed, ultimately arguing that the positive claim of witness is equivocal. Despite various sweeping arguments to the contrary in the vicinity of quantum information theory or given low-energy quantum gravity, whether or not one can claim to witness the quantum nature of the gravitational field in these experiments decisively depends on which out of two legitimate modelling paradigms one finds oneself in. However, by situating GIE experiments in a tradition of existing experiments aimed at making gravity interestingly quantum in the laboratory, we argue that, independently of witnessing or paradigms, there are powerful reasons to perform the experiments, and that their successful undertaking would indeed be a major advance in physics. (shrink)

Ecotage, or the destruction of property for the sake of promoting environmental ends, is beginning to (re)establish itself both as a topic of public discussion and as a radical activist tactic. In response to these developments, a small but growing academic literature questions whether, and if so under what conditions, ecotage can be morally justified. This paper contributes to the literature by arguing that instances of ecotage are pro tanto justified insofar as they are instances of effective and proportionate self- (...) and/or other-defense. Having elucidated and defended its central claim, this paper concludes by briefly considering some other morally relevant features of ecotage that might tell for or against its overall justification in particular cases. (shrink)

Background: A bean is the seed of one of several genera of the flowering plant family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes throughout the world. Beans are one of the longest-cultivated plants. Broad beans, also called fava beans, in their wild state the size of a small fingernail, were gathered in Afghanistan and the Himalayan foothills. (...) In a form improved from naturally occurring types, Beans were an important source of protein throughout old and new world history, and still are today. Objectives: The main goal of this expert system is to get the appropriate diagnosis of disease and the correct treatment. Methods: In this paper, the design of the proposed Expert System was produced to help farmers and those interested in agriculture in diagnosing many of the Bean diseases such as Fusarium wilt, Charcoal rot or ashy stem blight, Bacterial leaf spot and blight, Mung bean yellow mosaic virus, Cercospora leaf spot. The proposed expert system presents an overview of Bean diseases are given, the cause of diseases outlined and the treatment of disease whenever possible is given out. CLIPS Expert System language was used for designing and implementing the proposed expert system. Results: The proposed Bean diseases diagnosis expert system was evaluated by Agricultural experts and some friends interested in agriculture and they were satisfied with its performance. Conclusions: The proposed expert system is very useful for Farmers and those interested in agriculture. (shrink)