This important book examines Spinoza's moral and political philosophy. Specifically it considers Spinoza's engagement with the themes of Stoicism and his significant contribution to the origins of the European Enlightenment. Firmin DeBrabander explores the problematic view of the relationship between ethics and politics that Spinoza apparently inherited from the Stoics and in so doing asks some important questions that contribute to a crucial contemporary debate. Does ethics provide any foundation for political theory and if so in what way? (...) Likewise, does politics contribute anything essential to the life of virtue? And what is the political place and public role of the philosopher as a practitioner of ethics? In examining Spinoza's Ethics, his most important and widely-read work, and exploring the ways in which this work echoes Stoic themes regarding the public behaviour of the philosopher, the author seeks to answer these key questions and thus makes a fascinating contribution to the study of moral and political philosophy. (shrink)

Privacy is gravely endangered in the digital age, and we, the digital citizens, are its principal threat, willingly surrendering it to avail ourselves of new technology, and granting the government and corporations immense power over us. In this highly original work, Firmin DeBrabander begins with this premise and asks how we can ensure and protect our freedom in the absence of privacy. Can—and should—we rally anew to support this institution? Is privacy so important to political liberty after all? (...) DeBrabander makes the case that privacy is a poor foundation for democracy, that it is a relatively new value that has been rarely enjoyed throughout history—but constantly persecuted—and politically and philosophically suspect. The vitality of the public realm, he argues, is far more significant to the health of our democracy, but is equally endangered—and often overlooked—in the digital age. (shrink)

Spinoza’s philosophy has bequeathed longstanding query and dispute regarding the meaning of several doctrines and elements of his system as well as the influences of his innovative, controversial project. Prominent among those debated aspects of Spinoza’s Ethics are its presentation in more geometrico and the goal toward which it purportedly directs us, a scientia intuitiva that will make us blessed, free, and eternal in some sense. In his book Meaning in Spinoza’s Method, Aaron Garrett maintains that the method and the (...) goal of Spinoza’s Ethics are mutually informative: we can only properly understand Spinoza’s method by viewing it in light of its ethical goal, Spinoza’s aim to “transform readers”. In turn, in elucidating Spinoza’s method, we can gain greater insight into what he means by our eternity. (shrink)

Many critics of American gun culture and policy argue that the public health benefits of stricter regulations compensate for the associated loss of freedom: a bit less freedom is an acceptable cost for the expected gains in public safety. By contrast, gun advocates sometimes claim that freedom to own guns underlies all other important freedoms and therefore deserves priority over considerations of public health. In this volume, philosopher Firmin DeBrabander takes a distinct critical approach, denying any significant loss (...) of freedom associated with gun control. Widespread gun ownership in the context of lax regulation makes Americans—and anyone else similarly situated—less free. In developing his... (shrink)

It is commonplace that care should be patient-centered. Nevertheless, no universally agreed-upon definition of patient-centered care exists. By consequence, the relation between patient-centered care as such and ethical principles cannot be investigated. However, some research has been performed on the relation between specific models of patient-centered care and ethical principles such as respect for autonomy and beneficence. In this article, I offer a detailed case study on the relationship between specific measures of patient-centered care and the ethical principle of respect (...) for autonomy. Decision Quality Instruments (DQIs) are patient-centered care measures that were developed by Karen Sepucha and colleagues. The model of patient-centered care that guided the development of these DQIs pays special attention to the ethical principle of respect for autonomy. Using Jonathan Pugh’s theory of rational autonomy, I will investigate how the DQIs relate to patient autonomy. After outlining Pugh’s theory of rational autonomy and framing the DQIs accordingly (Part I), I will investigate whether the methodological choices made while developing these DQIs align with respect for autonomy (Part II). My analysis will indicate several tensions between DQIs and patient autonomy that could result in what I call “structural paternalism.” These tensions offer us sufficient reasons, especially given the importance of the ethical principle of respect for autonomy, to initiate a more encompassing debate on the normative validity of Decision Quality Instruments. The aim of the present paper is to highlight the need for, and to offer a roadmap to, this debate. (shrink)

Many ethical concerns have been voiced about Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSSs). Special attention has been paid to the effect of CDSSs on autonomy, responsibility, fairness and transparency. This journal has featured a discussion between Rosalind McDougall and Ezio Di Nucci that focused on the impact of IBM’s Watson for Oncology (Watson) on autonomy. The present article elaborates on this discussion in three ways. First, using Jonathan Pugh’s account of rational autonomy we show that how Watson presents its results might (...) impact decisional autonomy, while how Watson produces knowledge might affect practical autonomy. Second, by drawing an analogy with patient decision aids we identify an empirical way of estimating Watson’s impact on autonomy (ie, value-congruence). Lastly, McDougall introduced the notion of value-flexible design as a way to account for the diverging preferences patients hold. We will clarify its relation with the established domain of value-sensitive design. In terms of the tripartite methodology of value-sensitive design, we offer aconceptualclarification using Pugh’s account of rational autonomy, anempiricaltool to evaluate Watson’s impact on autonomy and situate a group oftechnicaloptions to incorporate autonomy in Watson’s design. (shrink)

Makins1 formulates a deference principle which states that patients’ attitudes towards the health outcomes associated with different treatment options should drive decision-making and not physicians’ attitudes towards these health outcomes. Although this deference principle is widely agreed on, it is less obvious which role patients’ risk attitudes should play. Makins takes patients’ attitudes towards health outcomes to be sufficiently analogous to patients’ risk attitudes in order to extend his deference principle. His extended deference principle states that patients’ attitudes towards the (...) health outcomes and risks associated with different treatment options should drive decision-making and not physicians’ attitudes towards these health outcomes and risks. This extension is not only taken to be ethically preferable, but also practically realisable as one can reliably trace patients’ (risk) attitudes. Problematic situations arise when patients exhibit risk attitudes they do not reflexively endorse. For instance, patients might systematically make more risky choices than they think they should make. In response to these kinds of situations, Makins proposes to revise his deference …. (shrink)

Social cognition, social skill, and social motivation have been extensively researched and characterized as atypical in autistic people, with the assumption that each mechanistically contributes to the broader social interaction difficulties that diagnostically define the condition. Despite this assumption, research has not directly assessed whether or how these three social domains contribute to actual real-world social interaction outcomes for autistic people. The current study administered standardized measures of social cognition, social skill, and social motivation to 67 autistic and 58 non-autistic (...) adults and assessed whether performance on these measures, both individually and relationally between dyadic partners, predicted outcomes for autistic and NA adults interacting with unfamiliar autistic and NA partners in a 5 minute unstructured “get to know you” conversation. Consistent with previous research, autistic adults scored lower than NA adults on the three social domains and were evaluated less favorably by their conversation partners. However, links between autistic adults' performance on the three social domains and their social interaction outcomes were minimal and, contrary to prediction, only the social abilities of NA adults predicted some interaction outcomes within mixed diagnostic dyads. Collectively, results suggest that reduced performance by autistic adults on standardized measures of social cognition, social skill, and social motivation do not correspond in clear and predictable ways with their real-world social interaction outcomes. They also highlight the need for the development and validation of more ecological assessments of autistic social abilities and the consideration of relational dynamics, not just individual characteristics, when assessing social disability in autism. (shrink)

In times of person-centered care, it is all the more important to support patients in making good decisions about their care. One way to offer such support to patients is by way of Patient Decision Aids (PDAs). Ranging from patient brochures to web-based tools, PDAs explicitly state the decisions patients face, inform them about their medical options, help them to clarify and discuss their values, and ultimately make a decision. However, lingering discussions surround effectiveness research on PDAs. In this article, (...) I focus on two subjective measures of decision quality that are widely used as outcome measures in effectiveness research on PDAs (i.e., the Decisional Conflict Scale (DCS) and measures of regret). Although these measurement instruments have attracted critical attention in the scientific literature, bioethicists have hardly engaged with them. Therefore, I set myself to analyze the relationship between (the different subscales of) the DCS and measures of regret, on the one hand, and ethical principles such as beneficence and autonomy, on the other hand. In light of that analysis, I will clarify some discussions regarding the use of these measures of decision quality in effectiveness research on PDAs. This should help us to align the way we evaluate PDAs with ethical principles and avoid that our attempts to support patients in making good decisions about their care that is so central to person-centered care point in unethical directions. (shrink)

Jesper Ahlin Marceta published an article in this journal in which he formulated his “argument from testability”, stating that it is impossible, at least practically, to operationalize procedural authenticity. That is, using procedural accounts of authenticity, one cannot reliably differentiate between authentic and inauthentic desires. There are roughly two ways to respond to the argument from testability: top-down and bottom-up. Several authors have endeavored the top-down approach by trying to show that some conceptions of authenticity might be operationalizable after all. (...) At present, however, the bottom-up approach has not been put to the test. That is, no attempt has been made to use a currently existing assessment tool to guide the development of an account of authenticity. In this paper, I will investigate what it means to develop an account of authenticity bottom-up based on measures of concordance. More specifically, I will investigate the following three research questions. First, how do concordance and authenticity relate at a conceptual level? As crucial similarities exist between these concepts, concordance measures seem to offer a good starting point for the bottom-up approach. Second, how do judgements of concordance differ from judgements of authenticity? Both their scope and the way they are justified will turn out to be different. This suggests novel ways to react to Marceta’s argument from testability. Third, should we develop a theory of concordance? The positive answer to this question will point towards a central limitation of the bottom-up approach. (shrink)

Thanks to its doctrines of natural right and moral egalitarianism and to its prominent historical role in defying totalitarian government, Stoicism is often cited as a touchstone for liberal democracy. Less well known, however, is an alternate lineage, culminating in a Stoic Realpolitik that emerges in Justus Lipsius’s political writings. The foundation of this Realpolitik becomes increasingly clear in the progression of Stoic thought through Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Tracing this lineage reveals that the subject of politics isfundamentally problematic (...) for Stoicism, especially since the denigration of politics is central to Stoic ethics. The Stoics ultimately arrive at a surprising moral pessimism, evidenced most prominently in Marcus’s Meditations. In Lipsius’s version of Stoic Realpolitik, the populace is characterized as being of inconstant behavior, and Stoicism is viewed as a resource for steeling the prince’s character against the masses, whose moral emendation is hopeless. (shrink)

Malgré l’usage peu fréquent qu’il fait des termes epistrophè, epistrepheïn, metanoïa et metanoeïn, Paul n’accorde pas moins d’importance à la conversion dans ses écrits. À partir de la distinction qu’il établit entre la conversion- epistrophè et la conversion- metanoïa et du double mouvement qui les caractérise, il appelle ses auditeurs à la conversion au moyen d’un langage nouveau, notamment de nouvelles métaphores.

As the capabilities of artificial intelligence systems improve, it becomes important to constrain their actions to ensure their behaviour remains beneficial to humanity. A variety of ethical, legal and safety-based frameworks have been proposed as a basis for designing these constraints. Despite their variations, these frameworks share the common characteristic that decision-making must consider multiple potentially conflicting factors. We demonstrate that these alignment frameworks can be represented as utility functions, but that the widely used Maximum Expected Utility paradigm provides insufficient (...) support for such multiobjective decision-making. We show that a Multiobjective Maximum Expected Utility paradigm based on the combination of vector utilities and non-linear action–selection can overcome many of the issues which limit MEU’s effectiveness in implementing aligned AI. We examine existing approaches to multiobjective AI, and identify how these can contribute to the development of human-aligned intelligent agents. (shrink)

For most of its career philosophy of religion has been a controversial dis cipline: it has usually ended up becoming a substitute for what it set out to explain. Born out of the religious scepticism of the late seventeenth century it remained for many years what it was to Hume and Lessing: an instrument for criticizing rather than for interpreting faith. Gradually the hostility subsided, but not the tendency to reduce. Nearly each one of the great names in this area (...) represents a theory that goes "beyond" faith. Phenomenology changed that situation. Conceived for accurate under standing of acts and meanings rather than for the building of vast synthe ses, its method was more apt to yield understanding than criticism. Moreover, by distinguishing the ideal meanings from the psychic realities of the act, it chased its followers from the quagmire of psychic genesis, causal justification and rational "proof" of the religious object, and forced them to concentrate on the intentional terminus of the experience. (shrink)

For most of its career philosophy of religion has been a controversial dis cipline: it has usually ended up becoming a substitute for what it set out to explain. Born out of the religious scepticism of the late seventeenth century it remained for many years what it was to Hume and Lessing: an instrument for criticizing rather than for interpreting faith. Gradually the hostility subsided, but not the tendency to reduce. Nearly each one of the great names in this area (...) represents a theory that goes "beyond" faith. Phenomenology changed that situation. Conceived for accurate under standing of acts and meanings rather than for the building of vast synthe ses, its method was more apt to yield understanding than criticism. Moreover, by distinguishing the ideal meanings from the psychic realities of the act, it chased its followers from the quagmire of psychic genesis, causal justification and rational "proof" of the religious object, and forced them to concentrate on the intentional terminus of the experience. (shrink)

Bi-directional differences in social communication and behavior can contribute to poor interactions between autistic and non-autistic people, which in turn may reduce social opportunities for autistic adults and contribute to poor outcomes. Historically, interventions to improve social interaction in autism have focused on altering the behaviors of autistic people and have ignored the role of NA people. Recent efforts to improve autism understanding among NA adults via training have resulted in more favorable views toward autistic people, yet it remains unknown (...) whether these benefits extend to real-world interactions between autistic and NA people. The current study explores whether a brief autism acceptance training program can improve social interactions between autistic and NA adults. Thirty-nine NA males were randomly assigned to complete AAT or a no-training control condition, then participated in a 5-min unstructured conversation with an unfamiliar autistic male. Following the conversation, participants rated their perceptions of interaction quality, first impressions of their partner, and their interest in future interactions with their partner. In dyads where the NA individual completed AAT, both the autistic and NA person endorsed greater future interest in hanging out with their partner relative to dyads in which the NA adult did not complete AAT. However, other social interaction outcomes, including ratings of interaction quality and first impressions of autistic partners, largely did not differ between training and no-training conditions, and assessments of the interaction were largely unrelated for autistic and NA partners within dyads. Results also indicated that NA participants, but not autistic participants, demonstrated substantial correspondence between evaluations of their partner and the interaction, suggesting that autistic adults may place less weight on trait judgments when assessing the quality of an interaction. These findings suggest that the brief AAT for NA adults used in this study may increase mutual social interest in real-world interactions between NA and autistic adults, but more systematic changes are likely needed to bridge divides between these individuals. Future work with larger, more diverse samples is recommended to further explore whether interventions targeting NA adults are beneficial for improving autistic experiences within NA social environments. (shrink)

In “Life After Privacy: Reclaiming Democracy in a Surveillance Society,” Firmin DeBrabander proposes that the stakes associated with the loss of personal privacy are even higher than is generally acknowledged. Personal privacy is a compelling issue, and his review of it is engaging and accessible. He is successful in demonstrating that powerful forces—corporations, governments, and partisan activists—have many ways of intruding on our private lives and thoughts. DeBrabander’s largest contribution to the ongoing dialogue about privacy, however, is (...) an assertion that the loss of privacy threatens democracy itself. Disturbingly, he may be right—although maybe not for all the reasons he claims.DeBrabander’s focus is on... (shrink)

Savant aux intérêts multiples--historiques, scientifiques et religieux, connu et estimé dans l'Europe du XVIIIe siècle, bien qu'ayant très peu publié de son vivant, Firmin Abauzit reste à beaucoup d'égards un mystère. Comment ce réfugié huguenot, arrivé à Genève encore enfant après la révocation de l'édit de Nantes, a-t-il pu bénéficier d'une réputation flatteuse dans la ville d'accueil alors que ses opinions hétérodoxes sur la trinité ou la christologie ou les prophéties bibliques étaient notoires? Au-delà des étiquettes faciles, quelle était (...) la nature exacte de son hétérodoxie? Comment sa légendaire 'modestie', qui lui a fait refuser honneurs et charges publiques, se concilie-t-elle avec le fait de laisser copier et circuler abondamment en Europe ses manuscrits? Quel rapport existe-t-il entre une telle circulation et son refus obstiné d'autoriser la publication de ses travaux? Comment interpréter, dans son cas, la tension entre réputation et publication? À ces questions, souvent escamotées ou abordées dans une visée hagiographique, le volume répond par une réflexion large qui croise l'histoire des religions, de la littérature, de la philosophie et du fait religieux. Une approche qui intègre des aspects peu ou pas du tout étudiés de la vaste production de l'auteur, tels que le rapport entre idolâtrie et religion, ou sa lecture de textes déistes anglais, ou encore ses écrits de controverse confessionnelle, mais qui reprend aussi, en les renouvelant, des thèmes plus classiques, comme la célèbre note de Rousseau sur Abauzit philosophe ou les éditions concurrentes qui ont été publiées peu après la mort du savant"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Le XVIIIe siècle, siècle des Lumières, évoque immanquablement dans nos esprits les noms de Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, D'Alembert. Né à Uzès (Gard) en 1679, mort en 1767, Firmin Abauzit, réfugié à Genève après la révocation de l'édit de Nantes en 1685, marqua cependant de son empreinte cette époque si riche, et ce, malgré l'ignorance que notre siècle paraît en avoir ; adulé, recherché par ses contemporains pour sa science infinie et sa tolérance inflexible, il fut le père spirituel de (...) Jean-Jacques Rousseau, et le maître à penser des plus éminents scientifiques (Newton, Leibniz), philosophes (Voltaire, Rousseau), et souverains de son temps (Guillaume III d'Angleterre), illuminant de sa clarté cet aréopage. Même l'intransigeant Sainte-Beuve condescendit à faire son éloge au XIXe siècle. Malheureusement oublié par son excès de modestie, son refus de publier, il mérite par la modernité de ses idées et la profondeur de son esprit, de ressurgir aujourd'hui du passé et de retrouver sa place au sommet, comme Rousseau l'a si bien clamé dans la Nouvelle Héloïse : " Non ce siècle de la philosophie ne passera point sans avoir connu un vrai philosophe et un seul! Sage et savant Abauzit... " Que notre siècle lui rende cet honneur. (shrink)

The fifteen essays collected here set out to demonstrate why the critical philosophy of race needs to take a historical turn. Genealogies of the concepts of both race and racism are deployed to clarify why some of the dominant strategies for combatting racism tend either miss the target altogether or give it only a glancing blow. For example, relying on biology to reject the concept of race as a way of disarming racism misses the fact that racism precedes the biology (...) of race. It also ignores the prevalence of forms of racism, such as cultural racism that do not take their starting point in biology. Drawing on the work of Frantz Fanon, the late Sartre, and Michel Foucault, Robert Bernasconi argues for a holistic approach that integrates the concrete experience of racism faced by individuals into the study of institutional, structural, and systemic racism. Studying the interventions of such Black philosophers as Ottobah Cugoano, Anténor Firmin, and W. E. B. Du Bois, shows the value of allowing them to set the terms of the debate, instead of trying to fit them into debates shaped by other areas of philosophy. If race is indeed a social construct, then it is necessary to uncover the different forces, material as well as intellectual, that at different times shaped the various forms the concept of race has taken and the value then placed on preserving racial purity. Critical philosophy of race has a role to play in rendering both the material and psychological effects of slavery and segregation more intelligible as forms of systemic racism. When critical philosophers of race ignore the history of racism, they are in danger of being complicit with that part of society that seeks to erase that history. (shrink)

This article explores Carter G. Woodson’s The Mis‐Education of the Negro in terms of its political philosophical content. It examines how Woodson’s account of the miseducation of Black people and the accordant miseducation of whites is involved in the production and reproduction of an unjust basic structure, with reference to John Rawls and Frantz Fanon. It then turns to Woodson’s critique of leadership and its relationship to miseducation, drawing on E. Franklin Frazier’s study of the Black bourgeoisie and the political (...) philosophy of Enrique Dussel. Finally, it examines miseducation as a site for the reproduction of racist knowledge production in light of the work of Anténor Firmin and examines how, for Woodson, rigor in the human sciences was essential for counteracting miseducation and serving the greater cause of liberation. (shrink)