This chapter contains sections titled: The False Cause Fallacy Hasty Generalizations Failure to Take Context into Account Suppressing Relevant Evidence The Gambler's Fallacy Affirming the Consequent/Denying the Antecedent The Fallacies of Composition and Division Missing the Forest for the Trees.

The target article reviews evidence showing that technological reasoning is crucial to cumulative technological culture but it fails to discuss the implications for the emergence of cumulative cultural evolution in general. The target article supports the social view of CCE against the more ecological alternative and suggests that CCE appears when specialised individual-learning mechanisms evolve.

The present study was designed to investigate visually handicapped students' explanations for failure when the motive to maintain or enhance self-esteem was in conflict with the motive to present a favorable social image. Subjects experienced manipulated failure in a text comprehension task and were subsequently asked to give causal and responsibility attributions in the presence of either a visually handicapped or a non-handicapped experimenter. It was expected that visually disabled participants would claim a “handicap-bonus” from the non-handicapped experimenter (...) by explicitly presenting non-defensive attributions and accounts as well as handicap-related responses, while defensive explanations should be more pronounced when faced with a blind experimenter. The data provide support for the existence of presumed social expectations as determinants of individuals' verbal self-presentations. (shrink)

RESUMEN El artículo analiza el experimento de A. Pennycook et al., a fin de ampliar el alcance de sus hipótesis y las estrategias para contrastarlas, de modo que contemplen no solo factores cognitivos, sino también aspectos pragmáticos y contextuales implicados en la receptividad al bullshit. Se utiliza el experimento como ejemplo de las asunciones normativas implícitas en las investigaciones descriptivas de psicología y filosofía experimental, ya que, al contrastar hipótesis sobre las intuiciones filosóficas de sentido común, los investigadores parten de (...) supuestos axiológicos sobre la corrección de las respuestas y la fiabilidad de los procesos cognitivos implicados. ABSTRACT The article analyzes the experiment carried out by A. Pennycook et al., in order to expand the scope of its hypotheses and the strategies to contrast them, in such a way that, beyond cognitive contexts, they also take into account the pragmatic and contextual aspects involved in bullshit receptivity. The experiment is used as an example of the normative assumptions implicit in the descriptive research projects of experimental psychology and philosophy, given that when researchers contrast hypotheses regarding common sense philosophical intuitions, they start out from axiological assumptions with respect to the correction of answers and the reliability of the cognitive process involved. (shrink)

Context is a pivotal concept for social scientists in their attempt to weave singularities or universals to moral codes and political orders. However, in this, social scientists might be neglecting the ways in which individuals or groups who are excluded from the collective production of knowledge want to politicize their concerns also by claiming their uniqueness and singularity. In this article, drawing on the public controversy about access to dementia drugs on the U.K. National Health Service and on the (...) work of pioneering sociologist Helen McGill Hughes on “human interest stories,” the author argues that the “politics of singularities” can be articulated in two related ways within technical controversies. First, it expresses the unraveling of sociotechnical ties caused by institutional failure to take concerns into account. Second, it expresses the concrete uniqueness of persons caught by standardized, “universal” and impersonal implements and/or policies. Both these effects are underpinned by resourcing to allegorical expression, a literary form that while fostering political imagination in technological democracies might weaken Science and Technology Studies' ambitions to influence decision making. (shrink)

As the negative environmental impacts of transportation systems become more severe, governments and environmental groups are seeking more sustainable transportation options, such as replacing fuel-powered vehicles with electric vehicles and expanding public transportation systems to reduce the number of people driving on their own, in order to reduce the environmental impacts of transportation systems. At present, the rapid expansion of public transportation systems is not an easy task and requires a long period of time to plan for expansion and construction, (...) so people are increasingly looking to find means of transportation that meet sustainable conditions as solutions. In this context, electric bicycles are one of the solutions that people can choose, with benefits such as energy saving, carbon reduction, effective air pollution reduction, and simple and labor-saving riding. However, in Taiwan, despite the many benefits of electric bicycles, their popularity is not high. Therefore, this study focuses on the factors that affect the purchase of electric bicycles in Taiwan. The Influential Network Relation Map generated by the Z-based Decision-making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory technique is used to describe the influence relationships among the factors and to establish the key evaluation criteria of electric bicycle purchase intention. The results indicate that vehicle price, safety, motor performance, battery life, and battery durability are the most important factors in purchasing electric bicycles. Furthermore, the power of motor is considered as the factor that most significantly affects other criteria, while safety and price are most likely to be affected by other criteria. This study has contributed to academia and industry, for the dependency weights of these factors are set to provide a scientific and systematic way to show how consumers think in the decision-making process and to provide more reliable information and management implications for the electric bicycle industry. (shrink)

In this paper, we address the different ways in which dream research can contribute to interdisciplinary consciousness research. As a second global state of consciousness aside from wakefulness, dreaming is an important contrast condition for theories of waking consciousness. However, programmatic suggestions for integrating dreaming into broader theories of consciousness, for instance by regarding dreams as a model system of standard or pathological wake states, have not yielded straightforward results. We review existing proposals for using dreaming as a model (...) system, taking into account concerns about the concept of modeling and the adequacy and practical feasibility of dreaming as a model system. We conclude that existing modeling approaches are premature and rely on controversial background assumptions. Instead, we suggest that contrastive analysis of dreaming and wakefulness presents a more promising strategy for integrating dreaming into a broader research context and solving many of the problems involved in the modeling approach. (shrink)

This paper examines arguments that take counter- considerations into account, and it does so from a dialogical point of view. According to my account, a counterconsideration is part of a critical reaction from a real or imagined opponent, and an arguer may take it into account in his argument in at least six fully responsive ways. Conductive arguments will be characterized as one of these types. In this manner, the paper aims to show (...) how conducive, and related kinds of argument can be understood dialogically. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the prospects for an account of good argument that takes the character of the arguer into consideration. We conclude that although there is much to be gained by identifying the virtues of the good arguer and by considering the ways in which these virtues can be developed in ourselves and in others, virtue argumentation theory does not offer a plausible alternative definition of good argument.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001) 592-594 [Access article in PDF] John Earman. Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xi + 217. Cloth, $39.95. Paper, $21.95. As his uncompromising title announces, John Earman considers Hume's famous account of miracles in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding to be an "abject failure." More than this, the author judges (...) Hume's well-known arguments to have failed in multiple ways. As he states in the opening paragraph: "It is not simply that Hume's [End Page 592] essay does not achieve its goals, but that his goals are ambiguous and confused." Hume's deliberations on this topic, Earman further contends, are unoriginal, and where original, insubstantial. Further, the logic of the position expressed in the essay "reveals the weakness and poverty of Hume's own account of induction and probabilistic reasoning." Finally, "the essay represents the kind of overreaching that gives philosophy a bad name." While there are occasional hints in the book that the author is himself not completely immune to this latter tendency, for the most part these bluntly stated objections to the famous essay are well supported. This book is a comprehensive and persuasive demolition of Hume's much vaunted claims about the credibility of miracle reports, and it issues a serious challenge to standard readings.Hume's Abject Failure is divided into two parts, the first of which takes the form of an analysis and critique of Hume's arguments. This eighty-page section is followed by another hundred pages of primary materials, mostly eighteenth-century, which address issues related to Hume's essay. It is clear from the format of the book that Earman intends to take seriously the intellectual context in which Hume's arguments first appeared. This a most welcome development. Many treatments of Hume's "Of Miracles" tend to be profoundly ahistorical. What becomes immediately apparent from a consideration of this context is the startling unoriginality of Hume's chief argument. The principle that uniform experience overrides testimony to the occurrence of a miracle was aired long before Hume claimed it as his own, although it can be conceded that in Hume's hands it took on a particularly persuasive form.More importantly, however, this is an argument which does not work. Earman claims that Hume would have been aware of this had he availed himself of the developing science of probability, and in particular Thomas Bayes's pioneering attempts to quantify degrees of belief and credibility. Hume's probabilistic arguments, even on the most charitable interpretation, simply fail the test of a Bayesian analysis, and a number of Earman's chapters forcefully demonstrate this. Having exposed the dubious nature of the argument based on competing testimony, Earman goes on to makes good his claim about the inadequacy of Hume's view of induction, showing how it would rule out not merely miracle testimony, but many empirical claims of the kind typically made in the sciences.It is perhaps a little unfair to charge Hume with having articulated a flawed argument the limitations of which only become obvious with the application of a sophisticated calculus unavailable to him. There is no evidence that Hume ever read Bayes. Earman points out that Richard Price, in his 1767 critique of the argument, drew Hume's attention to the possibility of a Bayesian approach, but Hume was apparently reluctant to incorporate quantification into subsequent editions of the Essay. Whether this amounts to a major failing on Hume's part is debatable. It is also worth noting that at times Earman seems to blur the contemporary distinction between "internal" and "external evidences" (miracles were instances of the latter). This distinction is important for understanding why Hume did not adopt the subjective notions of "miracle" of Locke and the Newtonians, and also why in section two of the Essay he deploys the 'contrary miracles' argument. There is also the puzzle as to how so acute a philosophical mind as Hume's could in this instance have... (shrink)

Animal welfare and the ethical issues it raises have been discussed intensively for a couple of decades. The emphasis has been on the direct effects of housing and husbandry, but more attention is now being given to problems originating in selective breeding. European attempts to adjust animal welfare legislation to deal with these problems have been largely unsuccessful, but the fact that selective breeding can introduce welfare problems continues to place an ethical responsibility on the animal breeding industry. Since breeding (...) decisions are made centrally and, increasingly, internationally, strategic change is only likely to occur if it is embedded in an international agreement of some kind. The aim of this paper is to describe the key ethical issues facing animal breeding and assess the suggestion that the breeding industry itself can deal with ethical issues by means of an ethical code. Results from recent projects involving commercial breeding enterprises are presented. (shrink)

According to existing accounts of indicative conditionals, any argument of the following form is valid: ϕ → ψ, ( ϕ ∧ ψ ) → χ ∴ ϕ → χ. Here, I present a set of counterexamples to show that there exist invalid arguments of this form. I argue that this data poses serious problems to variably strict accounts of conditionals, as such accounts are structurally unable to accommodate it. Dynamic strict accounts, however, are a different story. While existing dynamic strict (...) accounts do not accommodate the data, they are in principle able to, and I propose a modified dynamic strict account, drawing from von Fintel, that does. The key modification is this: whereas existing dynamic strict accounts take into account only the effects of conditional antecedents in changing the semantic context, the data shows that we must also take into account the effects of conditional consequents in changing the semantic context. (shrink)

Sceptics of an Africanisation of education have often lambasted its proponents for re-inventing something that has very little, if any, role to play in contemporary African society. The contributors to this issue hold a different view and, through the papers included in this issue, arguments are proffered in defence of an Africanisation of education on the African continent, particularly through the notion of ubuntu.Since the 1960s, Africana philosophy as an instance of Africanisation has emerged as a ‘gathering’ notion for philosophical (...) endeavours practised by professional philosophers and intellectuals, either of African descent, including those living in the diaspora, or those of non-African descent but who are devoted to matters pertaining to African and African-descended individuals and communities (Outlaw, 2004, p. 90). These philosophical endeavours mostly relate to a ‘critical analysis and reflective evaluation of the evidence and reasoning’ that constitute the beliefs, customs, values, traditions, oral literature (parables, proverbs, poetry, songs and myth), languages and histories of African and African-descended peoples (Hallen, 2004, p. 105). The articles presented at this symposium analytically explore ideas and practices central to Africana philosophy, their underlying rationales, and how these forms of philosophical inquiry can potentially engender defensible educative relationships. (shrink)

How much injustice and oppression must be tolerated before a revolution is justified? In theory, the United States’ political structure, by design, makes the question of revolution obsolete: by putting political power into the hands of the people via democratic mechanisms such as voting, the division of power among separate branches of government, and representative influence and control, there should be no need for revolution because everything the government does either has the consent of the people or is (relatively (...) swiftly) checked by their dissent. In practice, the United States’ political structure has failed to bring about such democratic justice. Given structural, systemic failures of justice (which promise to be ongoing), it is worth asking when, if ever, a revolution in the United States would be justified. To begin answering this question, we first turn to three traditional theories of revolution prominent in Western political theory, all of which have serious theoretical and practical problems, many of which are exacerbated by the contemporary American context in which our discussion is situated. We conclude that, if the aim of revolution is to bring about justice more equally enjoyed by all, then classic Western justifications of revolution are deeply flawed and possibly untenable. We propose a Confucian-inspired account of revolution, which promises to provide criteria for engaging in revolution that are neither solely directly democratic nor completely rights-based. This relational, virtue-theoretic account of revolution enables us to take into consideration not only the role of government, the nature of the ruler, and the nature of the governed, but also the nature of the relationship between the ruler and the governed. We contend that our proposal provides more, and better, resources for thinking through when, and under what conditions, a revolution would be justified in the contemporary United States. (shrink)

Photo by Jonathan Ford on Unsplash ABSTRACT Since 2008, an average of twenty million people per year have been displaced by weather events. Climate migration creates a special setting for a duty to rescue. A duty to rescue is a moral rather than legal duty and imposes on a bystander to take an active role in preventing serious harm to someone else. This paper analyzes the idea of expanding a duty to rescue to climate migration. We address who should (...) have the duty and to whom the duty should extend. The paper discusses ways to define and apply the duty to rescue as well as its limitations, arguing that it may take the form of an ethical duty to prepare. INTRODUCTION Climate migration creates a special setting for a duty to rescue. A duty to rescue is a moral rather than legal duty and imposes on a bystander to take an active role in preventing serious harm to someone else. Examples of circumstances range from person-to-person intimate rescue to saving those in poverty, even in distant parts of the world.[1] Since 2008, an average of twenty million people per year have been displaced by weather events.[2] Circumstances like being thrust from homes under the threat of fire, mudslide, and flooding vary greatly from long-term changes like land becoming too arid for crops or temperatures increasing annually gradually pushing up the number of heat-related deaths, with the area slowly becoming uninhabitable. Imminence in fleeing affects resettling and need for rescue with important implications for how the duty to rescue might apply. This paper reevaluates the ethical framing of the duty to rescue and, while it is arguably a stretch, applies it to climate migration. Climate migration has become common and is expected to increase due to rises in sea level, increases in weather events that make areas uninhabitable, and changes to land that preclude farming or other necessary land uses. We argue that a duty to rescue may help highlight who has moral obligations to whom. Because the problem is so large in scope, we suggest a change in the ethical limits to humans' duty to rescue other humans who are in distress. We imagine an expansion or extension of the duty to rescue to meet some of the basic needs created by climate migration. Yet how it should expand, and how much depend on ethical framing and practical limitations. l. Expanding the Geographical Boundaries Two commonly recognized emergencies, Hurricane Katrina in the case of weather events and the current COVID-19 pandemic, provide a historical and current backdrop to evaluate ethical obligations as more disasters displace people. A significant reassessment of the ethical scope of an obligation to rescue in the case of weather events will be limited by the ability to render aid to those in distress in the case of a planet-wide weather catastrophe. The problems may overwhelm the ability to rescue or the reasonableness of attempting rescue. The extent of the moral obligation borne by humans to other humans in the case of a weather event has been largely defined by its locality and limited geographic influence. Whether we are imagining the scope of ethical obligation in the case of hurricane, flood, tornado, drought, or wildfire events, the perceived ethical obligation is significantly defined by the limited impact of these weather events on people outside the zone of the weather event's direct impact, yet close to that zone. A hurricane affecting New Orleans will not have immediate impact on the residents of California or even those on the northeast coast of the United States until a later time. Wildfires in the Pacific Northwest do not impair the ability of those in the rest of the country to come forward with assistance. But as climate migration crosses international borders, and climate events occur simultaneously in many regions, a more expansive duty to rescue may provide the ethical impulse to help those who live afar or migrate long distances. In this respect, the need for help in the event of widespread climate migration due to global warming is more like a pandemic than a weather event. Its broad impact area diminishes the capability of nearly the entire balance of the human population to help due to those populations' awareness that they will, in short order, have the same need for the same resources, from the same cause. Those living near current flood zones may find their historically safe havens are also a flood zone. Those previously best positioned to rescue may find themselves also needing to relocate. Thus, we may observe the need for new rescuers. ll. The Rule of Rescue The Rule of Rescue as defined by Al Jonsen describes the moral impetus or knee jerk reaction to save identifiable people facing death.[3] A duty to rescue has since been expanded beyond imminent death and beyond the near and identifiable. But there are limitations. For example, by most accounts, the ethical duty tends not to require extreme bodily risk or financial depletion. In comparing Good Samaritans to humanitarians, Scott M. James argues the duty to rescue arises from unique dependence, but the ethical obligation to help strangers through humanitarian aid is of a different nature.[4] The wrongness of failing to help is arguably more egregious when one is in a unique position to help. Like in the tragedy of the commons, where there is no unique positioning, when the global community is called upon to help, each individual in it may feel less obliged to do so. Climate migration falls in between—it requires helping strangers, yet it may move forward without anyone seeing themselves as uniquely positioned to help until those strangers become part of communities, at which time, there may be more moral justification to help a community member in need. Generally, arguments about Good Samaritans hinge on extraordinary acts, praiseworthy because they are acts of compassion, not obligation. Now all US states have Good Samaritan laws[5] which protect helpers from liability for help gone wrong or for a failure to succeed once engaged in an act of rescue. Extraordinary help as a moral good is thus somewhat encouraged through legal protection, but not imposed. Conversely, jobs like firefighting, search and rescue, and emergency medical care tend to oblige employees to take on risks that would be extraordinary if undertaken by the average bystander, yet they are rendered ordinary rescue as part of the job. Three states, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Vermont have a broad duty to rescue, adding legal considerations to an otherwise moral conundrum. The laws do not require bystanders to take on risk for the sake of rescuing strangers.[6] The moral duty will require looking beyond law, but it is unclear how the moral duty to rescue should be distributed in the case of climate migration. A bare minimum would prevent taking advantage of newcomers, paying sub-minimum wage, and discriminating against them. Yet such a minimum is hardly rescue. lll. An Ethical Rather than Legal Duty The difficulty in defining the duty to rescue as a legal obligation is that it is difficult to determine the extent of risk a rescuer ought to be required to take. The nature of this ethical duty is also arguably tied to the experiences of both the rescuer and the rescued. There are subjective aspects like what someone perceives as a danger that make it difficult to write enforceable laws requiring rescue. It is one thing to expect a rescuer to step into several inches of relatively warm water to lift a person lying face down in a pond and enable them to breathe. It is something altogether different to expect that rescuer to dive into frigid water and attempt to extricate someone trapped in a submerged automobile. As the legal philosopher H.L.A. Hart observed, it is always easier to define application of the core intention of any rule, whether law or ethical norm. It is more difficult to create legal certainty about how the law applies to what he described as “penumbra circumstances”. In the case of a hurricane, it is easier to define what surplus resources are available in areas geographically remote from the impact of the storm and demand, as a moral obligation, that those nearby but outside the area provide assistance. It is more difficult to obligate people, organizations, or governments to supply a quantity of medication or some number of ventilators to an adjacent community when they expect to imminently need them for their own community. In the early stages of climate migration, the ethics of extreme weather event assistance, a common application of the duty to rescue, will be useful and appropriate. The rising sea levels first experienced by island nations in the South Pacific[7] will not render those living in other coastal communities, those with greater available “high ground”, unable to supply resources to those in need. But when sea level rise and climate change affect more communities simultaneously, albeit in varying degree, the task of defining what response is ethically obligatory becomes increasingly complicated. Pinpointing the obligations of those communities which are resource rich to those communities which are resource deprived, and of those partly affected to those more severely affected may become necessary. The limitations of the traditional duty to rescue could expand to meet the needs. lV. Contribution to the Problem Many argue that the duty to rescue may depend on any appropriate claim of those needing rescue. One issue is whether preferential claims among those who can identify the source of the harm should call for a greater duty or whether everyone in need should be approached as like candidates for rescue, shaping the duty as equal across those on the receiving end. As climate change does have human-made causes, there are strong arguments to impose a greater ethical duty on any entity that caused the climate-related problems leading to the mass exodus. While the global north is often implicated in pollution that causes migration, industries like energy, transportation, and agriculture are tied to climate change and associated with significant greenhouse gas emissions.[8] Practices like directing agriculture to less sustainable single crop growth generally made land less farmable. Yet it is difficult to place blame and identify specific causal relationships as most migration is due to many factors. A movement toward greater accountability can be reframed as a greater duty to rescue, a duty to engage in the extraordinary. The fossil fuel industry, for example, should have a larger obligation than the average person. Similarly, some may argue anyone unjustly enriching themselves while contributing to climate change or people who over-consume have an elevated duty to rescue.[9] Climate change lawsuits demonstrate an eagerness to hold governments and corporations accountable, despite difficulty proving causation. V. The Most Vulnerable One ethical dimension of climate migration that remains unexplored is how a duty to rescue applies to vulnerable populations who stand to be left behind or unable to migrate without assistance. Researchers from the Global North working across the Global South are increasingly observing the phenomenon of ethics dumping, where the research ethics of some countries are imposed on research subjects in other countries.[10] In that vein, rescuers should be careful not to impose unwelcome cultural standards or exploit people who are in the process of migrating. There is a gap in discussions reflecting voices that have been left out. The duty to rescue is incomplete without an attempt to understand the ethical experiences of those being rescued. The actual people affected by climate migration who are the least likely to have the means to migrate, or to do so without extreme hardship, should have a voice informing the global community including those in a position to carry out rescue. People who have the means and are young and healthy may easily make decisions to avoid the catastrophic consequences that climate migration brings. However, what about those who are left behind? For example, especially recognizing cultural differences, the homeless community, disabled community, refugees, the elderly community, and women[11] and children may suffer differently and call for more attention. In some parts of the world, human rights are severely constrained. An ethical duty to rescue, with many considerations and variables, may be more justified in the case of those most in need. As climate migration continues and increases significantly, it may be reasonable to ask the local and global community to focus on those least well positioned to migrate successfully. In this context, the use of phenomenology to understand the lived experiences of those migrating, sometimes termed “ethical experiences”, may help flesh out how a duty to rescue takes shape. The discussion of duty and obligation requires an articulation of the ethical experiences (how the local community in need of rescue views the proposed rescue). Then, the obligation to interpret the duty as ‘one shall not’ or ‘one must’ can be focused on the migrants’ needs rather than the rescuers’ feelings of obligation.[12] A revised theory of the duty to rescue taking into account the asymmetrical experiences of communities involved could ensure that the needs of people whose living situations, gender, ethnicity, age, or race impact their ability to even begin the migration process are considered. In this discussion, the rescuing is directed toward communities /collectives of persons migrating, whether at once or across a period of time. Often, the climate migrant may not be in a state to articulate the nature of this event when it happens, given its subjective proximity. Yet, when communities are given the space and opportunity to articulate their shared values, the ethical action of rescue derives its meaningfulness from the community rather than the rescuers. In other words, allowing climate migrants to explain their feelings can add complexity to what some see as a binary receiver-giver (of rescue) dynamic. This is necessary because the concept of vulnerable populations is fraught with problematic assumptions. There have been various definitions and criteria to determine what would constitute vulnerable populations.[13] For example, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change[14] identifies and assesses vulnerable populations. These criteria may be helpful. However, they do not provide the full picture. Rather than identifying categorical criteria of vulnerable populations, engaging with people who are experiencing climate migration and listening to their current experiences and concerns helps determine need. Knowing what people need may prevent the kneejerk reaction to label people who are quite resilient yet have appropriate needs “vulnerable”. Proceeding with caution is important because the duty to rescue has hierarchical underpinnings of "us" and "them." Often when people swoop in to save, there are good and bad consequences of the intervention. We should proceed with caution because often the helper misses the actual needs of those in need. The only way to combat this would be to make sure that people are empowered to inform those agencies that are able to help. In addition to more practical approaches, large scale oral histories could allow those who have migrated already to share their experiences. It would be important to capture the lived experiences of people who are already experiencing the consequences of climate migration or of other migration like that due to political or economic extreme events. These experiences could shape our analysis of whether people in fact wish for rescue. If so, further conversations can determine best actions as well as give important insight into what resources might be necessary to empower people now and in the future. Vl. A Duty to Rescue as a Duty to Prepare If we view Good Samaritans as going above and beyond, then a duty to rescue, something ethically compelled, must bring rescue out of the framework of charity and place it in the context of humanity and obligations. Such a view would also support expanding the geographical reach of the otherwise more proximate duty. The duty may be stronger and take shape in a more workable way if it applies to preparing places expecting to see an influx of people due to climate migration and to helping those most in need. The duty may arise out of expectations of what type of community the place welcoming those migrating due to climate should be—does it want to offer good housing, schooling, and medical care as well as economic opportunity to new people? And if so, at what cost, or with which risks? If the newcomers are viewed as community members rather than strangers, a model of acceptance may lead to better preparation. Some considerations like whether the actions will reasonably help the persons in need of rescue[15] will shape the application of a duty to rescue in the context of climate migration. Similarly, ensuring that people have the chance to articulate their values may help communities support the newcomers. New relationships should not be defined as migrant and rescuer. Voluntariness in participation and not forcing any action deemed rescue would help ensure the human rights of those migrating. In the United States, President Biden issued an executive order addressing impending climate migration steeped in a duty to prepare by making plans for resettlement and to address the impact of climate migration.[16] Vll. At What Risk? As we investigate the ethical obligations to meet even basic needs, we must also ask what level of risk is ethically compelled. There is an extraordinary need to integrate newcomers successfully, but it is difficult to stretch an ethical duty to rescue to require all the prerequisites for successful climate migration. Even defining success would create deep ethical arguments. As observed in almost all migrations, extraordinary charitable acts may be the key to success, while an ethical duty to rescue must try to require the important government and community-based basics and ensuring respect for human rights. That is, the migrating people should be rescued from circumstances that contradict basic human rights. Rather than comparing communities to bystanders, mere places where people will arrive and need to hash out how to find housing, jobs, education, and opportunity, a duty of preparation may be the key to rescue those disenfranchised by migration. There are cultural, personal, physical, psycho-social, and geopolitical issues surrounding how to best help those needing to permanently relocate. Ethics arguments will certainly range from “do nothing”, which may fail people, to “do everything”, which could waste taxpayer money in futile over-preparation while failing to actually help. Communities must avoid planning exclusively for one scenario only to have it not take place. Striking the balance, a duty to rescue as it could apply to climate migration should set goals of societal integration, and providing the basics like education, housing, food, health care, and job opportunity, the precursors to flourishing. Recommending the extraordinary, morally preferred but perhaps not compulsory, when charitable actors are participating, or when wrongdoers are compensating, may be more workable than seeing the duty to rescue as compelling people or local governments to take on significant financial and personal risk for newcomers. While humanitarian ethics supports helping everyone, it is likely that people who resettle in advance of a need to flee will find themselves with more choices and opportunities. Help is warranted for those with more dire needs. Preparing for them may do just that. Vlll. Rescue Prior to Migration and Rescue in the Process of Resettlement The duty to enable the migration in the first-place hints to the inadequacy of a duty to prepare. The traditional duty to rescue perhaps steps in if rescue looks like those geographically just out of harm's way rescuing those in danger. That resembles the traditional moral requirement, or duty to rescue according to the Rule of Rescue. Humanitarian aid typically provided by many institutions makes sense and is in place, although financial support for additional humanitarian aid is always needed. Despite having moved to purportedly more capable communities, migrant communities may be able to develop more egalitarian orders of living. Rather than continually being identified as having been rescued, it is important to make sure people keep or make social ties during and after migration. Immigrants often face social isolation.[17] Small shifts in gestural language also have the potential to welcome people and show they are valued. For instance, some migrants may not like questions like “Where are you from?” and “What brings you here?” as they emphasize differences over fitting in. CONCLUSION The ethical duty to rescue should be expanded to better match those in need of relocation with a welcome environment and the resources needed to achieve success and fully integrate socially and culturally. Expanding a dialogue that includes the voices of people who have recently migrated whether due to violence, poverty, or climate, could properly frame the extent of the duty. If we are to apply the duty of rescue to climate migration, rescuers should avoid labeling people vulnerable, dependent, or needy, although there is reason to focus on those whose needs are the most dire. A soft duty to rescue people during the course of climate migration can come in the form of preparation. People will need help finding housing, education, access to food, and employment. Ultimately, to help them help themselves may be the best goal. While the obligations should be borne differently by people, whether due to a special responsibility, or a special relationship that creates a clearer duty, the global community must prepare for its role in rescuing those displaced by climate events. By helping those displaced at the start of the climate migration process according to a more commonly held notion of the duty to rescue, and by preparing to incorporate newcomers successfully according to an expanded duty to rescue, effectively a duty to prepare, countries that take on climate refugees may find themselves rewarded by the cultural diversity and workplace talents that people bring. A duty to those at a distance is a reasonable expansion of the duty to rescue. But what one ought to do in the global community varies somewhat from the traditional Rule of Rescue. - [1] Singer, P. (1972). Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1(3): 229-43. [2] Irfan, U. (2022, March 16). Why We Still Don’t Yet Know How Bad Climate Migration Will Get. Vox. https://www.vox.com/2022/3/16/22960468/ipcc-climate-change-migration-migrant-refugee, citing the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2022). Sixth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2022, Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/ [3] McKie, J., Richardson, J. (2003) The Rule of Rescue. Social Science & Medicine, 56(12): 2407-2419. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(02)00244-7. [4] James, S.M. (2007). Good Samaritans, Good Humanitarians. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 24(3):238-254. [5] Overview of Good Samaritan laws. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/good-samaritan-law-states [6] Fifield, J. (2017, Sept. 19). Why It’s Hard to Punish ‘Bad Samaritans’. Stateline Blog, Pew Charitable Trusts, https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2017/09/19/why-its-hard-to-punish -bad-samaritans [7] Cassella, C. (2019). There’s a Climate Threat Facing Pacific Islands That’s More Dire Than Losing Land, Science Alert, https://www.sciencealert.com/pacific-islanders-are-in-a-climate-crisis-as-rising-sea-levels-threaten -water; Hassan, H. R., and Cliff, V. (2019). For Small Island Nations, Climate Change is not a Threat. It’s Already Here, World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/09/island-nations-maldives-climate-change/ [8] For example, Lyons, K. (2019). Australia Coal use is Existential threat to Pacific Islanders, The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/12/australia-coal-use-is-existential-threat-to-pacific-is lands-says-fiji-pm [9] Cripps, E. (2013). Climate Change and the Moral Agent: Individual Duties in an Interdependent World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [10] Schroeder, D., Chatfield, K., Singh, M., Chennells, R., and Herissone-Kelly, P.. Ethics Dumping and the Need for a Global Code of Conduct. In Cham. (Ed.)(2019). Equitable Research Partnerships. SpringerBriefs in Research and Innovation Governance. Springer. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15745-6_1 [11] Giudice L.C., Llamas-Clark E.F., DeNicola N., Pandipati, S., Zlatnik, M.G., Decena, D.C.D., Woodruff, T.J., Conry, J.A. (2021). Climate Change, Women’s Health, and the Role of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Leadership, International J Gynecol Obstet, 155(3), 345-356. 10.1002/ijgo.13958 [12] See Ferrarello, S. and Zapien, N. (2020). Ethical Experience: A Phenomenology, Bloomsbury. (for understanding phenomenological determinants of ethical action). [13] McLeman, R.A., Hunter, L.M., (2010). Migration in the context of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change: insights from analogues. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Clim Change, 1(3): 450-461. [14] Least Developed Countries Expert Group. (2018). Considerations Regarding Vulnerable Groups, Communities and Ecosystems in the Context of the National Adaptation Plans: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. [15] Jecker, N.S. 2013. "The Problem with Rescue Medicine." J Med Philos, 38(1):64-81. [16] White House Report. (February 9, 2021), Executive Order (E.O.) 14013, “Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs to Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration.” (calls on the National Security Advisor to prepare a report on climate change and its impact on migration. “This report marks the first time the U.S. Government is officially reporting on the link between climate change and migration.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/27/executive-order-on-tackling -the-climate-crisis-at-home-and-abroad/ [17] Torres, J.M., Casey, J.A. (2017) The centrality of social ties to climate migration and mental health. BMC Public Health, 17: 600. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4508-0. (shrink)

Research is increasingly highlighting the influence of school contexts on school processes and student achievement. This article reviews a range of social justice rationales for taking school contexts into better account, and highlights the challenges contextualisation currently poses for practice and for policy. It notes important constraints on contextualised practice and limited developments in contextualising policy. There is now increasing concern to recognise and understand context in school effectiveness and school improvement research but such research needs to (...) consider school context much more, in order to provide a stronger underpinning for contextualised policy and practice. School composition research is potentially most insightful because it addresses the issue most directly. Nevertheless future large-scale studies in this area need to overcome a number of limitations within the existing literature. (shrink)

Justice for human rights violations involves taking into account psychological harm caused to individuals and communities. Justice for psychological harm is specifically grounded in four considerations: (1) that harm to human persons can be both physical and psychological (2) that even in the absence of physical injuries, psychological harm can constitute a human rights violation (3) that those causing psychological harm ought to be accountable, and (4) that claims for justice for harm are supported by human rights principles. (...) One finds that across legal systems, laws align and support these considerations while making justice for psychological harms a matter of rights, well-being, and state responsibility. Human rights practice, literature, and studies highlight the contribution of law and psychology toward justice for psychological harms. Questions of interest to both are whether there is a universal theory on psychological harms to inform matters of justice; whether psychological harm can have a cultural context; whether psychological suffering can have an empirical measure; and whether newer threats like climate anxiety and technology-based harm are being addressed. (shrink)

The practice of law is an occupation that has historically been dominated by white men. In recent decades, however, a small but growing number of Chicanas have entered this field. Their entry raises a number of questions regarding their occupational incorporation and mobility. This article analyzes the findings from qualitative interviews with 15 Chicana attorneys. These women identify organizational practices embedded in law firms that reinforce racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. These structural and interactional dynamics often limit opportunities for professional (...) advancement of Chicana attorneys who “cross the border” into this white, male-dominated occupation. This research also illuminates innovative tactics employed by Chicanas to achieve their own definitions of professional “success.” My analysis reveals key mechanisms in workplace structure and interaction that reinforce racially gendered “borders” created by co-workers and supervisors who “nunca toman en cuenta ” the presence of successful Chicanas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Prophecy without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square by Cathleen KavenyKyle LambeletProphecy without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square Cathleen Kaveny CAMBRIDGE, MA: HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2016. 464 PP. $49.95"The American public square is not a seminar room" (419). This being the case, Cathleen Kaveny's Prophecy without Contempt challenges ethicists, among others, to reconsider the rhetoric of moral address. Rather than a narrow focus on deliberation, (...) Kaveny commends attention to the genre of indictment, and particularly the American jeremiad, as a significant mode of moral address that deserves normative analysis. Kaveny is no partisan of prophecy. But she offers moral and rhetorical criteria of prophetic speech that allow the genre to do its indispensable work.Kaveny's book proceeds in four parts. In the first part she sets the stage for her argument by surveying three prominent accounts of the status of public moral discourse, critiquing each yet drafting them all into a more global [End Page 195] critique of the failure to take into account the central significance of the rhetoric of prophetic indictment. Correcting this neglect in the second part, Kaveny executes a historical retrieval of the American jeremiad, beginning with early Puritan preachers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The point of her at times plodding historical reconstruction is that the jeremiad was not originally socially divisive but rather served to build up the community by calling listeners back to a commonly agreed-on covenant. This uniting function of the jeremiad fails in later generations. Some readers will worry that Kaveny's retrieval risks nostalgia insofar as it conforms to a MacIntyrian declension narrative in which golden origins were irreplaceably fractured.This risk, however, is mitigated by the third and fourth parts of the book, in which Kaveny turns to constructive ethics. She argues that the forensic rhetoric of prophetic indictment should be understood as a chemotherapy. It should not be confused with deliberation, the normal form of moral address. Yet, like chemotherapy, used in the right amount it can restore an ailing patient to health. As we have come to expect, Kaveny is especially adept at taking the moral frameworks developed in one sphere and applying them to another. Trading medical analogies for military, Kaveny argues that best practices of ius bellum verborum can be developed from just war criteria. She adds to these rhetorical constraints that prophetic critique be offered against one's own people with whom one identifies through lamentation and hope. Kaveny concludes with advocacy of prophetic humility and irony as necessary elements of prophetic speech in our pluralistic contemporary context.Although written in accessible prose, Kaveny's book deserves rigorous scholarly engagement. She constructs her argument with the gracious interdisciplinarity of a leading scholar of law and theology at the height of her powers. She is methodologically promiscuous but never shallow, drawing on scholarly fields of moral philosophy, biblical studies, American religious history, in-depth case analysis of contemporary arguments about abortion and torture, and historical paradigms of prophetic virtue (and vice). While scholars in each of these fields will find claims worth engaging in Kaveny's text, ethicists will be particularly interested in her argument for a constrained, continuing need for prophetic indictment.My one critique is that her account of prophetic rhetoric is too conservative. Based on her historical retrieval, Kaveny argues that indictment should serve only to call listeners back to an already agreed-on covenant. It is undoubtedly the case, however, that Kaveny's exemplars of indictment such as Jonah, Lincoln, and King innovated and developed the covenant, even as they invoked it. This complaint aside, Kaveny's book is a major contribution to contemporary conceptualizations of the public square, and stands poised to open new directions for moral analysis of religious actors in pluralistic publics. [End Page 196]Kyle LambeletNotre Dame UniversityCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume and the Lockean Background: Induction and the Uniformity Principle David Owen Introduction What has come to be called Hume's problem of induction is special in many ways. It is arguably his most important and influential argument, especially when seen in its overall context of the more general argument about causaUty. It has come to be one of the great "standard problems" ofphilosophyandyetis,by most accounts, almost unique in (...) having no ancient precursor. Interestingly, the argument is frequently presented in terms that the author never used. Itis difficult for us not to think of the problem in terms of the contrast between deductive vs. inductive reasoning (or logic, or whatever). But this is a contrast nowhere to be found in Hume: he talks of demonstrative vs. probable (or moral) reasoning. Hume uses the word "induction" only twice in the Treatise1 and in neither case is it clear that the word is used toreportapieceofprobablereasoning.2One ofthefewoccurrences of"deduce" or "deducing" occurs in the second Enquiry, where he talks about "following the experimental method, and deducing general maximsfrom acomparisonofparticularinstances,"3hardlyaparadigm of what we would call deductive reasoning.4 Many modern studies of Hume that make a real attempt to understand what Hume meant by demonstration and probability, in the context of his argument about induction, tend towards the ahistorical,6 treating Hume's writings as contemporary texts. But failure to take into account some of the background concerning the nature of demonstrative and probable reason makes it unlikely, I think, that we can understand Hume's argument. Part ofthe problem is the failure to identify Hume's targets in that famous negative argument about induction (vague reference is sometimes made to the "rationalists") and part of the problem is identifying the role the uniformity principle plays in Hume's famous argumentand thelightitsheds on the conception ofprobablereasoning Hume was attacking. In this paper I want to argue that a careful look at Locke solves some ofthese problems: he has a well developed view ofdemonstrative and probable reasoning, his confidence in conformity as a ground of probability is a Ukely target of Hume's attack and his Volume XVIII Number 2 179 DAVID OWEN accountshedsmuchlightonwhatrole the principleofuniformitymight play in Hume's account.6 Of course, at a certain level of philosophical abstraction it is irrelevant whether we have understood what Hume "really meant." Theproblemofinductionhas emergedas a central onein epistemology, philosophical logic, and philosophy of science. It would be an interesting question in philosophical historiography to trace the development ofthe "problem" from Hume's time to our own but that is not my task here. I trust one needs no justification for taking an historical look at a famous problem rather than tackling the problem head-on in one's own terms. But if one is needed, here is mine: sometimes, by looking at a problem from a different, historical perspective, one sees a different problem or afamiliar problem in a new light. One's philosophical horizons are broadened. Furthermore, one may make an interesting historical discovery, or at least draw some interesting historical connections. I take it as uncontroversial that Locke, following Descartes, rejected a formal, logical account of demonstrative reasoning. Instead ofusing a formal, syllogistic account ofhow two propositions can entail a third, Locke concentrated on the relation two ideas bear one to another.7 Thus a demonstration, for Locke, getsits force, notfrom what we would call a deductive relation between one set of propositions (.the premises) and anotherproposition (the conclusion), butrather from the relation one idea bears to another, either directly, or via a chain of intermediate ideas. It is true that Locke frequently talks of inferring one proposition from another, but this is always cashed out in terms of relations ofideas via a chain ofintermediate ideas.8 It is also true that Locke occasionally uses the terms "deduce" and "deduction." But these are never used in our sense that has to do with formal deductive validity. Rather, they are simply used loosely in the informal sense of "argue" or "infer," and "argument" or "inference."9 In the rest of this paper, all uses ofthe word"deduction" andits cognates shouldbe taken as having the modern sense, unless flagged as having "Locke... (shrink)

Decentralized clinical trials (DCTs) have the potential to advance the conduct of clinical trials, but raise several ethical issues, including obtaining valid informed consent. The debate on the ethical issues resulting from digitalization is predominantly focused on direct risks relating to for example data protection, safety, and data quality. We submit however, that a broader view on ethical aspects of DCTs is needed to touch upon the new challenges that come with the DCT practice. Digitalization has impacts that go beyond (...) its direct purposes, by shaping behaviors, experiences, social relations, and values. We examine four elements of the informed consent procedure that are affected by DCTs, while taking these soft impacts of technologies into account: (i) informing participants and testing understanding, (ii) freedoms in relation to responsibilities and burdens, (iii) trust in participant-researcher relations, and (iv) impacts on the concept of privacy. Our analysis reveals that a broad view is key for optimal conduct of DCTs. In addition, it provides insight into the ethical impacts of DCTs on informed consent. Technologies such as DCTs potentially have profound impacts which are not immediately addressed by the existing regulatory frameworks, but nonetheless important to recognize. These findings can guide future practices of DCTs to foster the important values of clinical research in this novel approach for conducting clinical trials. (shrink)

The paper examines the meanings of representations of Serbia, the Balkans and Europe at the time of encounter between Enlightenment and Romanticist traditions. The analysis starts from the assumption that the emergence of negative representations of South Eastern Europe cannot be discussed without placing it within the broader context of 18th and 19th century philosophy and literature and the consequences of new philosophical and literary ideas. Underlying the substantial change of the previously dominant paradigms that is expressed in the (...) symbolic division into 'West' and "East', there was a factual rather than symbolic division into an industrial and an agricultural Europe, whose boundaries coincided with the reference points of the symbolic distinction. Insisting on the importance of both analytic levels - the 'symbolic' and the 'factual' - the first section of the paper briefly outlines the development of symbolic geography in the context of 'Balkan' studies in the 1990s, as well as the failure of this genre and the constructivist paradigm in Serbian social theory. The second section is devoted to the discourses of conceptualizing broader communities in symbolic, linguistic, imagological, cultural, political, economic etc. terms, focusing on the beginnings of ideological and linguistic unification of South Slavs and their inclusion into the "enlightened Europe". By analyzing Vuk Stefanovia: Karadzix's writings, as well as correspondence, articles and commentaries referring to Vuk's work in the first half of the 19th century, the author takes the perspective of the past in order to identify the reasons for the failure of imagological and constructivist approach today. U ovom tekstu autorka istrazuje znacenja predstava o Srbiji, Balkanu i Evropi u vremenu susreta prosvetiteljske i romanticarske tradicije. Polaziste je u pretpostavci da se o pocecima negativnih predstava o jugoistocnom delu Evrope ne moze govoriti izvan sireg konteksta filozofije i knjizevnosti XVIII i XIX veka i posledica novih filozofskih i knjizevnih ideja. Sustinska pramena do tada vladajucih paradigmi, izrazena simbolickom podelom na 'Zapad'i 'Istok', u osnovi je imala manje simbolicku a vise fakticku podelu na industrijsku i zemljoradnicku Evropu, cije su se granice uglavnom poklapale sa referentnim tockama simbolicke distinkcije. Potencirajuci vaznost obaju nivoa u analizi, 'simbolickog 'i 'faktickog', prvi deo teksta odnosi se na sazeto predstavljanje razvoja simbolicke geografije u kontekstu studija o Balkanu devedesetih godina proslog veka, kao i na neuspeh ovog zanra i konstruktivisticke paradigme u srpskoj drustvenoj teoriji. Drugi deo teksta posvecenje diskursima osmisljavanja vecih zajednica na simbolickim, jezickim, imagoloskim, kulturnim, politickim, ekonomskim i dr. osnovama, sa fokusom na pocetke idejnog i jezickog ujedinjenja Juznih Slavena, kao i njihovog ukljucenja u prosvecenu Evropu. Analizom tekstova Vuka Stefanovica Karadzica, kao i prepiskama, clancima i komentarima koji su se odnosili na Vukov rad u prvoj polovini XIX veka, autorka iz perspektive proslosti pokusava da ukaze na razloge neuspeha imagoloskog i konstruktivistickog pristupa u savremenosti. (shrink)

Even good lawyers get a bad rap. One explanation for this is that the professional rules governing lawyers permit and even require behavior that strikes many as immoral. The standard accounts of legal ethics that seek to defend these professional rules do little to dispel this air of immorality. The revisionary accounts of legal ethics that criticize the professional rules inject a hearty dose of morality, but at the cost of leaving lawyers unrecognizable as lawyers. This article suggests that the (...) problem with both the professional rules and the extant accounts of legal ethics is that they treat the role of lawyer as largely uniform, whereas lawyers actually serve several importantly different roles in different contexts. The central insight of the article is that legal ethics must be fundamentally context-sensitive: what lawyers are morally permitted or required to do depends on the background context in which they are working. Additionally, by taking context into account, this article is the first to present a theory of legal ethics as appropriately shaped and constrained by normative political philosophy and norms of political legitimacy. -/- Specifically, the article argues that people act as lawyers in three different contexts: State v. Individual (situations in which the State seeks to apply some general law to a particular individual), Individual v. Individual (situations in which private individuals are engaged in a dispute), and Individual v. State (situations in which individuals object to State conduct on constitutional or other grounds unrelated to the question of whether a general law applies to their particular case); that the value of lawyers, qua lawyers, stems from a different source in each of these contexts; and that a theory of legal ethics must take into account both of these first two claims. This article develops one such theory - the Multi-Context View. To demonstrate how the theory applies in practice, the article applies the Multi-Context View to two significant issues in legal ethics: the ethical issues involved in deciding whether to represent a client and the moral permissibility of the use of tactical delay. (shrink)

All articles in May 2019’s special issue of Bioethics offer profound insights into the issue of “being a burden to others” in relation to wishes to die, which are highly relevant for ethical debates about end‐of‐life care and physician‐assisted dying. In this reply, we wish to stress the importance of acknowledging and analyzing the sociopolitical context of the phenomenon “being a burden” in relation to wishes to die and we will show how this analysis could benefit from a (...) care ethical approach. As discussions in care ethics have made clear, caring practices are both social and political practices. An empirical and ethical analysis of “being a burden” therefore needs to take institutional and societal norms and structures into account, in addition to first‐person experiences and concepts such as caring needs, relational autonomy, and interdependency. Besides the relevance of the sociopolitical context for the phenomenon “being a burden” as such, the sociopolitical context also seems relevant for the investigation of the phenomenon, which we will illustrate by reflecting on “being a burden” in relation to the practice of physician‐assisted dying in the Netherlands. (shrink)

In this paper I will present Arendt’s concept of judging as related to imagination. Her concept of judging is rooted in Kant’s philosophy, yet bears the potential for the political account of the particular. Inserted in the ongoing debate in intercultural philosophy, as of how to take into account particular circumstances, this paper offers an insight into moral judgment as a possible corrective to normative politics. Reflecting on lived politics through moral judgment in particular situations, (...) this paper highlights the importance of imagination and experience for individual decisions. Bearing as a horizon the intercultural debates it refers only to the question as of how particulars can be taken into account in a political intercultural debate. (shrink)

This paper offers the concept of “justice failure,” as a counterpart to the familiar idea of market failure, in order to better understand managers’ ethical obligations. This paper takes the “market failures approach” to business ethics as its point of departure. The success of the MFA, I argue, lies in its close proximity with economic theory, particularly in the idea that, within a larger scheme of social cooperation, markets ought to pursue efficiency and leave the pursuit of equality (...) to the welfare state. As a result, the core ethical responsibility of business actors is to avoid profiting off of market failure. After reviewing this approach I challenge its emphasis on efficiency. I argue that just as we note the suboptimal efficiency of actual markets, we should also take seriously the suboptimal equality of actual welfare states. Taking this idea seriously results in a whole other set of ethical responsibilities for businesses to take into account; in addition to market imperfections and regulatory lacunae, managers should also avoid profiting from, and exacerbating, structural inequalities and injustices. I offer an outline of the kinds of injustices and inequalities that would have bearing on business ethics, and the kinds of ethical responsibilities that this approach suggests that business actors should take into account. (shrink)

This paper uses argumentation tools such as argument diagrams and argumentation schemes to analyze four examples of argument from analogy, and argues that to proceed from there to evaluating these arguments, features of the context of dialogue need to be taken into account. The evidence drawn from these examples is taken to support a pragmatic approach to studying argument from analogy, meaning that identifying the logical form of the argument by building an argument diagram of the premises (...) and conclusion is not by itself sufficient for argument evaluation. To get further, it is argued, the argument evaluator needs to take into account how this particular argument was used in context to support a conversational goal.Cet article utilise des outils d'argumentation tels que des diagrammes d'argument et des schèmes d'argumentation pour analyser trois exemples d'argument par analogie, et soutient que pour évaluer ces arguments de manière adéquate, il est nécessaire de tenir compte du contexte d'utilisation de l'argument. Ces exemples suggèrent que l’étude des arguments par analogie à partir de seulement l’identification de leur forme logique n'est pas adéquate. Pour aller plus loin, on avance que l'analyste d'argument doit prendre en compte comment un argument particulier a été utilisé dans un contexte pour soutenir un but conversationnel. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “A Cybernetic Computational Model for Learning and Skill Acquisition” by Bernard Scott & Abhinav Bansal. Upshot: The Computational Theory of Mind suffers from an inherent weakness owing to its difficulty in taking semantics and embodiment properly into account. It is suggested that these difficulties could be alleviated if it were recognized that the fact that the model presented here employs a computer as a tool, to highlight certain key features of its dynamics, (...) does not necessarily involve assuming that the underlying processes that are modelled are themselves strictly computational in nature. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the study of causal mechanisms in the social sciences. I argue that unless one adopts a clear notion of causation, such as Woodward's manipulability theory of causation, one does not find evidence for causal claims. I show that adopting Woodward’s theory entails that a researcher must take into account both the observable implications of the mechanisms, and possible interventions on those mechanisms. In a backlash against the pervasiveness of statistical methods, in the (...) last decade or so social scientists have become more focused on finding the causal mechanisms behind observed correlations. To provide evidence for such causal claims, researchers often rely on process-tracing, a method which involves contrasting the observable implications of several alternative mechanisms. Although process-tracing has gained prominence as a technique, researchers do not share a fundamental framework of what causation is. I will show what process-tracers’ reasoning would look like if they were to commit to Woodward’s manipulability theory. This theory tells us that any successful explanation of an effect must refer to causal factors that could be manipulated to change the phenomenon under study. Specifically, a variable X is a cause of another variable Y if there exists some ‘intervention variable’ I. I is an intervention variable if we can use I to change X, which will then in turn change Y without any interference of other variables linked to Y. In other words, using I we will be able to ascertain that it was X that made the change in Y happen. I will argue that if a process-tracing researcher were to adopt the manipulability notion of causation, she would not only have to find observable implications of the alternative mechanisms under study, but also information regarding an intervention variable for each link of the causal chain. (shrink)

Failure is a central notion both in ethics of engineering and in engineering practice. Engineers devote considerable resources to assure their products will not fail and considerable progress has been made in the development of tools and methods for understanding and avoiding failure. Engineering ethics, on the other hand, is concerned with the moral and social aspects related to the causes and consequences of technological failures. But what is meant by failure, and what does it mean that (...) a failure has occurred? The subject of this paper is how engineers use and define this notion. Although a traditional definition of failure can be identified that is shared by a large part of the engineering community, the literature shows that engineers are willing to consider as failures also events and circumstance that are at odds with this traditional definition. These cases violate one or more of three assumptions made by the traditional approach to failure. An alternative approach, inspired by the notion of product life cycle, is proposed which dispenses with these assumptions. Besides being able to address the traditional cases of failure, it can deal successfully with the problematic cases. The adoption of a life cycle perspective allows the introduction of a clearer notion of failure and allows a classification of failure phenomena that takes into account the roles of stakeholders involved in the various stages of a product life cycle. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:148 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:1 JANUARY 199o David D. Roberts. BenedettoCroceand the Usesof Historicism. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, a987. Pp. xii + 449- NP. This book is a remarkably good survey of Croce's enormous output on the general topics of philosophy, politics, and history. Roberts shows an outstanding mastery not only of Croce's voluminous writings, but of the whole secondary literature about (...) him since the first rebellion of his Italian "followers" in the early years of this century. Roberts's aim is to restore Croce to his proper place in the continuing dialogues and debates about historicism and hermeneutics. So far as one writer can achieve such a goal with one book, he has achieved it; if there are reasons to fear (nevertheless) that his achievement may not have the full effect that he hopes for, they are rooted in Croce's own personality and background, not in any failure on the part of Roberts. "[I]f we are to grasp the dominant concerns of Croce's intellectual life, we must approach him primarily as a Western intellectual who was seeking to address the central challenges facing our culture, not confine him to... his particular Italian, or Neapolitan context.... [O]n the deepest level he would have faced the same challenges had he been reared in The Hague or Philadelphia" (24). The final rhetorical flourish here is one of Roberts's rare tumbles into outright absurdity, for what is (perhaps) true in 1987 was not true in 1887. So we should be glad that the Italian background is never really lost sight of. Roberts's treatment of Croce's intellectual formation is rather impressionistic, but we do always have a vivid image of the mature Don Benedetto, the bourgeois Neapolitan worthy who was made a Senator of the Realm in 191o (a biographical fact that is not mentioned). The one serious fault in Roberts's account of Croce's formation--which is excellent on the influence of Vico and Marx--is his failure to take a properly European view of Hegel. He remains a prisoner of Croce's critique of Hegel, so that he is never able to see clearly how deeply Hegelian Croce was. He sees only the differences, and, as far as "historicism" is concerned, they are largely differences from a straw man. Having said that, almost nothing remains but praise. Croce maintained that philosophy was only the tool-bag of the historian. Roberts, who is an intellectual historian rather than a philosopher, takes Croce at his word, with the results that his book is the first (in English at least) to present Croce's thought in the way that Croce himself saw it. He gives us an insightful review of the "philosophy of the spirit" in about sixty pages, including the development of the concept of"utility" into "vitality" in Croce's last years. Then he embarks on a study of how Croce used his philosophical instruments in the theory and practice of historical and political interpretation. The theory of "absolute historicism" (and of how it can be "absolutely" true) is followed by "the religion of history." This was a kind of historicized Buddhism, in my view, until Croce startled everyone, in a942, by announcing that "we cannot but call ourselves Christians"; but it is only the comparison of Croce's historicism with Buddhism that enables us to see it as a "religion" at all. Roberts does not say this, but he does show clearly how far removed from any faith-religion Croce was. After this comes a long chapter on "Historicist Politics." I think this is the best thing in the book, because Roberts not only clearly displays the near-bankruptcy of Croce's BOOK REVIEWS ~49 actual politics as President of the Italian Liberal Party from 1944 to i947, but demonstrates through a study of Piero Gobetti that neither Croce's own conservatism nor his doctrinal rigidity was a necessary corollary of "absolute historicism" in politics. As the main intellectual beacon of opposition to Fascism during its twenty years of power, Croce enjoyed enormous prestige in 1944; but as Don Benedetto, with his great family estates... (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present a philosophically inspired list of minimal requirements for social agency that may serve as a guideline for social robotics. Such a list does not aim at detailing the cognitive processes behind sociality but at providing an implementation-free characterization of the capacities and skills associated with sociality. We employ the notion of intentional stance as a methodological ground to study intentional agency and extend it into a social stance that takes into (...) account social features of behavior. We discuss the basic requirements of sociality and different ways to understand them, and suggest some potential benefits of understanding them in an instrumentalist way in the context of social robotics. (shrink)

In the following we will apply the manipulability theory of causation of Woodward 2003 to physical systems, and show that, in the latter context, the theory can be simplified. Elaborating on an argument by Cartwright, we will argue that the notions of ‘modularity’ and ‘intervention’ of the cited work should be adapted for typical physical systems, in order to take coupling of system equations into account. We will show that this allows to reduce all cause types (...) discussed in Woodward 2003 to only one, namely that of ‘total cause’. (shrink)

In the following we will apply the manipulability theory of causation of Woodward (2004) to physical systems, and show that, in the context of physical systems, the theory can be simplified. Elaborating on an argument by Cartwright, we will argue that the notions of ‘modularity’ and ‘intervention’ of the cited work should be adapted for typical physical systems, in order to take into account the coupling of system equations. We will show that this allows the reduction (...) of all cause types discussed in Woodward (2004) to only one, namely that of ‘total cause’. We therefore claim that the manipulability account can be drastically simplified when applied to coupled physical systems. (shrink)

Currently, although the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and its incorporation into business strategies is emphasised widely in developed countries as a key to sustainable growth and economic profitability, this term is still new to the Vietnamese market because of the low awareness of the importance of CSR practices, which leads to the failure of many firms. Since Vietnamese firms do not prioritise CSR implementation, Vietnam is experiencing an increasing shortage of skilled employees owing to a (...) lack of motivation. Therefore, this study examines the relationship between the corporate strategic objective (CSO), CSR practices and employee commitment, to provide recommendations to enhance motivation. This study used a quantitative approach and data from a questionnaire delivered to 869 enterprises in 2019 in Vietnam. Results suggest that the CSO had direct and indirect effects on employee commitment through the mediation of CSR practices. (shrink)

Integrating RDF datasets has become a relevant problem for both researchers and practitioners. In the literature, there are many genetic proposals that learn rules that allow to link the resources that refer to the same real-world entities, which is paramount to integrating the datasets. Unfortunately, they are context-unaware because they focus on the resources and their attributes but forget about their neighbours. This implies that they fall short in cases in which different resources have similar attributes but refer to (...) different real-world entities or cases in which they have dissimilar attributes but refer to the same real-world entities. In this article, we present a proposal that learns context-aware rules that take into account both the attributes of the resources and their neighbours. We have conducted an extensive experimentation that proves that it outperforms the most advanced genetic proposal. Our conclusions were checked using statistically sound methods. (shrink)

Public funding institutions are able to influence what aspects researchers take into account when they consider the future impacts of their research. On the basis of a description of the evaluation systems that public research funding institutes in the Netherlands (STW and SenterNovem) use to estimate the quality of engineering science, this article shows that researchers are now predominantly required to reflect on the intellectual merit of their research and on the usability and marketability of the technology (...) it contributes to. In addition, SenterNovem also mandates reflection on sustainability. Here it is argued that these requirements do not suffice. Funding institutions should also do more to enhance reflection during the research process on the “soft impacts” of technologies, which refer to the alterations that technologies may bring about in the quality of human life. To do this it is suggested that it is helpful to engage a specifically trained ethicist to monitor the research process and create a feedback loop from the ethicist to the funding institution. (shrink)

Some apparently valid arguments crucially rely on context change. To take a kind of example first discussed by Frege, ‘Tomorrow, it’ll be sunny’ taken on a day seems to entail ‘Today, it’s sunny’ taken on the next day, but the first sentence taken on a day sadly does not seem to entail the second sentence taken on the second next day. Mid-argument context change has not been accounted for by the tradition that has extensively studied the distinctive (...) logical properties of context-dependent languages, for that tradition has focussed on arguments whose premises and conclusions are taken at the same context. I first argue for the desiderability of having a logic that accounts for mid-argument context change and I explain how one can informally understand such context change in a standard framework in which the relation of logical consequence holds among sentences. I then propose a family of simple temporal “intercontextual” logics that adequately model the validity of certain arguments in which the context changes. In particular, such logics validate the apparently valid argument in the Fregean example. The logics lack many traditional structural properties (reflexivity, contraction, commutativity etc.) as a consequence of the logical significance acquired by the sequence structure of premises and conclusions. The logics are however strong enough to capture in the form of logical truths all the valid arguments of both classical logic and Kaplan-style “intracontextual” logic. Finally, I extend the framework by introducing new operations into the object language, such as intercontextual conjunction, disjunction and implication, which, contrary to intracontextual conjunction, disjunction and implication, perfectly match the metalinguistic, intercontextual notions of premise combination, conclusion combination and logical consequence by representing their respective two operands as taken at different contexts. (shrink)

The definitions and conceptualizations of health, and the management of healthcare have been challenged by the current global scenarios (e.g., new diseases, new geographical distribution of diseases, effects of climate change on health, etc.) and by the ongoing scholarship in humanities and science. In this paper we question the mainstream definition of health adopted by the WHO—‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’ (WHO in Preamble to the constitution of (...) the World Health Organization as adopted by the international health conference, The World Health Organization, 1948)—and its role in providing tools to understand what health is in the contemporary context. More specifically, we argue that this context requires to take into account the role of the environment both in medical theory and in the healthcare practice. To do so, we analyse WHO documents dated 1984 and 1986 which define health as ‘coping with the environment’. We develop the idea of ‘coping with the environment’, by focusing on two cardinal concepts: adaptation in public health and adaptivity in philosophy of biology. We argue that the notions of adaptation and adaptivity can be of major benefit for the characterization of health, and have practical implications. We explore some of these implications by discussing two recent case studies of adaptivity in public health, which can be valuable to further develop adaptive strategies in the current pandemic scenario: community-centred care and microbiologically healthier buildings. (shrink)

Emotions are complex processes that are constrained by biology, but not fully explained without taking into account the social context in which they develop. Mapping these contexts, and understanding how and under which conditions they shape emotions, is an essential task for the science of emotions; a task that—at least in psychology—has been neglected. The three commentaries each offer some interesting reflections on exactly this task.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Recognizing Wounds and Giving Uptake The Undoing of Dominant Collective MemoriesEmily Walsh*, PhD (bio)I want to begin this response by thanking Dr. Kirmayer and Dr. Potter for taking the time to craft insightful and intellectually stimulating responses to my article. Both commentaries enabled me to clarify the complexity of the question of how best to commence the undoing of dominant collective memories (DCMs) in psychiatry. In this response, I (...) will clarify what I intend to capture by the term DCMs, tackle two problems identified with my account, and end by remarking on the solutions proposed by the authors, defending that a hybrid combination of both positions leaves us with the most robust solution to the problems created by DCMs.I briefly outline in the article that DCMs are singular and exclusionary collective memories underpinned by colonialism. Potter expresses concern about being left with uncertainty regarding what sorts of DCMs serve to deny the violence faced by the colonized given this definition. This concern is important as it shows that there is some conceptual confusion about how to distinguish ordinary collective memories from DCMs, which I propose ought to be rejected. Addressing this concern would also be useful for the reason Potter makes; to help better motivate why change is required in psychiatry regarding DCMs. In response to Potter's definitional concern, I will now posit a thicker explanation of DCMs, which outlines how they are distinct from ordinary collective memories on three grounds.DCMs are unique from other kinds of collective memory insofar as they deny that there could be various perspectives of the same event. This denial occurs in multiple ways, such as silencing, scapegoating, attacking, and undermining others' perspectives, painting certain actors as all good and others as all bad. Therein lies the danger of DCMs as I have defended that people are neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but they are at the mercy of their social situation. Good examples of cases of the kind of DCMs I have in mind are how colonial nations defend their reasons for engaging in colonialism and failing to acknowledge sectors of history entirely (such as failing to recognize horror crimes against certain social and ethnic minorities). Such a failure to integrate both positive and negative parts of a nation's history is not [End Page 249] present in all contexts. For instance, Germany has integrated teaching about the horrors endured during Nazi Germany into their historical narrative of the past to avoid reproducing similar atrocities in the future. Places like the UK and Canada are slower to follow suit and admit that there are horrors present in the nation's past too.DCMs are also unique in legitimizing and reproducing negative and positive stereotypes, ideals, and cultural myths. Such stereotypes tend to be harmful such as "I expect X group always to steal," but they can also be positive "I expect X to be the most intelligent person I've ever met." As Fanon instructed us (Fanon 1964, 1967), these stereotypes are entrenched in the content of DCMs. Similarly, they are reproduced with the intent of controlling specific populations of persons. If, after all, I have 'evidence' that you are a thief by 'nature,' I will seek to protect my belongings from you. The problem is that the 'evidence' is not evidence—it is a form of DCM. The evidence fails to see processes of racialization and colonialism and thereby, advertently or inadvertently, reproduces them.As reiterated by Kirmayer in his commentary, DCMs are not primarily concerned about individual and discrete events, but they aim to produce narratives of events. According to Kirmayer, these narratives are imbued with explanations and rationalizations that drive the plot forward in time. My primary concern in the article was to show that DCMs can work to move the plot backward in time as a means of controlling specific populations—back to a time the world does not recognize as a time but forces racialized persons to keep perpetually enduring the aftereffects of (Al-Saji, 2013, 2021). Thus, there are deep contradictions in DCMs which are not present in all collective memories. On the one hand, DCMs deny the violence inflicted on the... (shrink)

Similarity is central for the definition of concepts in several theories in cognitive psychology. However, similarity encounters several problems which were emphasized by Goodman in 1972. At the end of his article, Goodman banishes similarity from any serious philosophical or scientific investigations. If Goodman is right, theories of concepts based on similarity encounter a huge problem and should be revised entirely. In this paper, we would like to analyze the notion of similarity with some insight from psychological works on analogical (...) cognition. Analogical cognition compares two situations or objects in order to find similarities between them. In doing so, the analogical process sorts the different features of the two situations or objects and determines the most important ones. The analogical process is also highly sensitive to context. Context-sensitivity is desirable at some level, but it is also problematic as it leads to a computational explosion. To answer this problem, we would like to consider salience as a possible heuristic in the analogical process. We will distinguish three forms of salience: Sensory, categorical, and operational. By taking salience into account, we can introduce a shortcut into the computation of similarity and circumvent computational explosion. (shrink)