David Hume is widely regarded as the greatest English thinker in the history of philosophy. His contributions to a huge range of philosophical debates are as important and influential now as they were in the eighteenth century. This book provides an introduction to the ideas of this hugely significant thinker.

Sentience is the capacity to have feelings, such as feelings of pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement. It is not simply the capacity to feel pain, but feelings of pain, distress or harm, broadly understood, have a special significance for animal welfare law. Drawing on over 300 scientific studies, we evaluate the evidence of sentience in two groups of invertebrate animals: the cephalopod molluscs or, for short, cephalopods (including octopods, squid and cuttlefish) and the decapod crustaceans or, (...) for short, decapods (including crabs, lobsters and crayfish). We also evaluate the potential welfare implications of current commercial practices involving these animals. (shrink)

Hume is committed, By one of his criticisms of reason as the route to moral knowledge, To an internalist position. In the argument from motivation, Hume starts by observing that morality is practical--That morals excite passions and produce or prevent actions. But, Hume argues, Rationalist moral theories cannot explain how moral considerations motivate. This is because reason alone is incapable of motivating us. The premise that morality is practical, However, May be interpreted in two ways--Either in an externalist or internalist (...) manner. Charity requires us to adopt the internalist reading because only then is the argument valid. An internalist reading of the argument, However, Commits hume, In his constructive phase, To construing the moral sentiments of approval and disapproval as possessing motivational influence by themselves. But an examination of what hume has to say about the motives that prompt us to do what is right shows that he fails to provide such an account himself. This points to an inconsistency in hume's moral theory. (shrink)

Wood, Kressel, Joshi, and Louie thoroughly evaluate the evidence for menstrual cycle shifts in ratings of several male characteristics and conclude that their analyses fail to provide supportive evidence for consistent cycle effects. The topic of menstrual cycle shifts in mate preferences has been strongly debated, with disagreements over both scientific content and practice. Here, we attempt to take a step back from these acrimonious exchanges and focus instead on how to interpret menstrual cycle shifts in mate preference tasks, independently (...) from the question of when, or if, task performance varies with cycle stage. A greater consideration of domain-general mechanisms could provide an opportunity for investigating how evolved predispositions interact with socially transmitted information in biasing women’s responses on mate preference tasks. (shrink)

Applied Christian Ethics addresses selected themes in Christian social ethics. Part one shows the roots of contributors in the realist school; part two focuses on different levels of the significance of economics for social justice; and part three deals with both existential experience and government policy in war and peace issues.

I focus on Garrett’s account of Hume’s theory of moral evaluation, which Garrett calls “a cognitive history.” Before turning to his account, however, I briefly outline my own alternative reading of Hume’s theory of moral evaluation. One way in which my account differs from Garrett’s is that I follow Árdal, among others, in thinking that Hume takes the moral sentiments to be calm forms of love and hatred. Thus Hume says that approval and disapproval are “nothing but a fainter and (...) more imperceptible love or hatred.” Morality, for Hume, is about what we love or hate, praise or blame, in people. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Philosophical Background Arguments against Moral Rationalism The Moral Sentiments and Sympathy References Further Reading.

I focus on Garrett’s account of Hume’s theory of moral evaluation, which Garrett calls “a cognitive history.” Before turning to his account, however, I briefly outline my own alternative reading of Hume’s theory of moral evaluation. One way in which my account differs from Garrett’s is that I follow Árdal, among others, in thinking that Hume takes the moral sentiments to be calm forms of love and hatred. Thus Hume says that approval and disapproval are “nothing but a fainter and (...) more imperceptible love or hatred.” Morality, for Hume, is about what we love or hate, praise or blame, in people. (shrink)

Tamara Browne proposes a provocative idea: She argues that philosophers, sociologists, and bioethicists should act as an independent editorial panel for future editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Her paper depends on some well-versed claims in philosophy of psychiatry: She argues that psychiatric classifications are inherently value laden and philosophers, sociologists, and ethicists are best placed to discern the values are that embedded within scientific descriptions of mental disorders, and to speculate on the effects of any (...) such classifications on individuals and the populace at large as a result of these classifications.I agree with Browne that the DSM (and... (shrink)

A long essay, in a collection of essays, about the relationship between rock music and philosophy. Philosophers include Plato, Kant, Vico, Whitehead, Sartre, Cassirer, Langer, Machiavelli, and so forth. Musicians include the Rollings Stones, David Bowie, The Who, Bruce Springsteen, The Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Paul Simon, Jackson Browne, Jimmy Buffett, Led Zeppelin and Rush.

Through network diagrams and sustained narrative, sociologist Randall Collins traces the development of philosophical thought from ancient Greece to modern ...

Aristotle's defense of Dunamis -- Power and potentiality -- Rational and nonrational powers -- The priority of actuality -- Ontological hierarchy, normativity, and gender.

Patients in around 20 countries worldwide are now offered online access to at least some of their medical records. Access includes test results, medication lists, referral information, and/or the very words written by clinicians (so-called ‘open notes’). In this paper, I discuss the possibility of one unintended negative consequence of patient access to their clinical notes—the potential to increase ‘nocebo effects’. A growing body of research shows that nocebo effects arise by engaging perceptual and cognitive processes that influence negative expectancies, (...) and as a consequence, adverse health effects. Studies show that increased awareness about the side effects of medications, the framing of information and the socioemotional context of care can increase the risk of nocebo effects. Connecting research into the nocebo effect with open notes provides preliminary support for the hypothesis that patient access to clinical notes might be a forum for facilitating unwanted nocebo effects. Furthermore, current findings indicate that we might expect to see systematic differences in how nocebo effects are experienced among different patient populations. The ethical implications of the tension between transparency and the potential for harm are discussed, with an emphasis on what open notes might mean for justice and equity in clinical care for a range of already marginalised patient populations. I argue that to resolve these challenges does not thereby justify ‘closed notes’, and conclude with suggestions for how health systems and clinicians might adapt to this innovation to reduce the risk of potential nocebo effects arising via this novel route. (shrink)

It is a genuine pleasure to engage with the insightful and generous comments of my colleagues. I have learned a lot from them, and I hope to continue our conversations in the future. The range of c...

In the popular misconception fostered by blockbuster action movies and best-selling thrillers--not to mention conventional explanations by social scientists--violence is easy under certain conditions, like poverty, racial or ideological hatreds, or family pathologies. Randall Collins challenges this view in Violence, arguing that violent confrontation goes against human physiological hardwiring. It is the exception, not the rule--regardless of the underlying conditions or motivations. -/- Collins gives a comprehensive explanation of violence and its dynamics, drawing upon video footage, cutting-edge forensics, and (...) ethnography to examine violent situations up close as they actually happen--and his conclusions will surprise you. Violence comes neither easily nor automatically. Antagonists are by nature tense and fearful, and their confrontational anxieties put up a powerful emotional barrier against violence. Collins guides readers into the very real and disturbing worlds of human discord--from domestic abuse and schoolyard bullying to muggings, violent sports, and armed conflicts. He reveals how the fog of war pervades all violent encounters, limiting people mostly to bluster and bluff, and making violence, when it does occur, largely incompetent, often injuring someone other than its intended target. Collins shows how violence can be triggered only when pathways around this emotional barrier are presented. He explains why violence typically comes in the form of atrocities against the weak, ritualized exhibitions before audiences, or clandestine acts of terrorism and murder--and why a small number of individuals are competent at violence. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that from a feminist perspective well-being is most productively defined in relation to freedom, and it is with regard to questions of freedom that well-being should be pursued. Pursuing well-being from a starting point of oppression and working towards an ideal of freedom, involves two things: a reconception of the self as fundamentally relational and an emphasis on the importance of self-understanding for well-being. The former is something that has been widely acknowledged in the feminist (...) literature, where relational conceptions of the self figure centrally, and the notion of a socially situated self has been identified as one of the key contributions to living well from a feminist perspective. Self-understanding, however, has been largely ignored in feminist accounts of well-being, where the social aspects of well-being are often emphasised to the detriment of individual considerations. I argue that this can cause problems for well-being as the pursuit of freedom, but that such problems can be overcome by supplementing the relational account of the self with an emphasis on self-understanding and highlighting the interrelation between them in the pursuit of well-being qua freedom from oppression. (shrink)

This paper argues that close personal relationships play an important role in our judgments about what is fair. I start with an explanation of leading theories of fairness, highlighting the potential for further work on the grounds of fairness. Next, I offer an account of close personal relationships as having the ability to generate legitimate and reasonable expectations of one or other party to a judgment about fairness, or both. I show how and when close personal relationships can ground fairness.

This article focuses on three themes concerning determinism and indeterminism. The first theme is observational equivalence between deterministic and indeterministic models. Here I discuss several results about observational equivalence and present an argument on how to choose between deterministic and indeterministic models involving indirect evidence. The second theme is whether Newtonian physics is indeterministic. I argue that the answer depends on what one takes Newtonian mechanics to be, and I highlight how contemporary debates on this issue differ from those in (...) the nineteenth century. The third major theme is how the method of arbitrary functions can be used to make sense of deterministic probabilities. I discuss various ways of interpreting the initial probability distributions and argue that they are best understood as physical, biological etc. quantities characterising the particular situation at hand. Also, I emphasise that the method of arbitrary functions deserves more attention than it has received so far. (shrink)

This biography of Hypatia, the female philosopher and mathematician in Christian Egypt, provides background on her work and her life as an elite woman at this time. There are many myths about Hypatia, including her research, inventions and the impact of her murder, all based on a handful of contemporary resources. Through presenting the different theories and myths alongside the available evidence, this book will enable the reader to make their own interpretations about her life. Whilst the evidence does leave (...) many questions unanswered, this book provides the evidence as it stands, separating the myth from reality. There is very little published on Hypatia and she forms quite a niche market in the history of ancient Egypt. However, she is an interesting example of how multicultural Alexandria functioned at such an unstable political time, and provides anecdotal evidence of the atrocities that occurred. This book will appeal to scholars, lay people and political and religious researchers, and will show that the history of Egypt does not end at Cleopatra. (shrink)

With Hegel’s metaphysics attracting renewed attention, it is time to address a long-standing criticism: Scholars from Marx to Popper and Habermas have worried that Hegel’s metaphysics has anti-individualist and authoritarian implications, which are particularly pronounced in his Philosophy of History, since Hegel identifies historical progress with reason imposing itself on individuals. Rather than proposing an alternative non-metaphysical conception of reason, as Pippin or Brandom have done, this article argues that critics are broadly right in their metaphysical reading of Hegel’s central (...) concepts. However, they are mistaken about what Hegel’s approach entails, when one examines the specific types of states discussed by the philosopher in his Philosophy of History. Even on a traditional metaphysical reading, Hegel is not only non-authoritarian; he also makes a powerful argument concerning freedom, whereupon the freest society involves collective oversight and the shaping of social structures so as to ensure that they benefit everybody. (shrink)

Palliative care is a recent branch of health care. The doctors, nurses, and other professionals involved in it took their inspiration from the medieval idea of the hospice, but have now extended their expertise to every area of health care: surgeries, nursing homes, acute wards, and the community. This has happened during a period when patients wish to take more control over their own lives and deaths, resources have become scarce, and technology has created controversial life-prolonging treatments. Palliative care is (...) therefore faced with more ethical problems that other areas of health care. This book, by a clinician, teacher, and writer on health care ethics, has been written to provide all those who care for the terminally ill--doctors, nurses, social workers, clergymen, physiotherapists--with the concepts and principles which will assist them with difficult decisions. It challenges many received doctrines of palliative care, but its well-illustrated central theme is that technical expertise must be controlled by humane, non-technical judgments. (shrink)

Previous research has suggested that in cultural production fields the concatenation of eminence explains success, defined as influence and innovation. We propose that individuals in fields as diverse as philosophy, literature, mathematics, painting, or architecture gain visibility by cumulating the eminence of others connected to them across and within generations. We draw on interaction ritual chain and social movement theories, and use evidence from the field of modernist architecture, to formulate a model of how networks of very strong ties generate (...) motivations and emotional enthusiasm, change reputations, and form collective movements that over time transform the structure of cultural fields. Because major aesthetic innovations break sharply with older styles, they need very strong group solidarity over a long period of time to propagate a new standard of practice. We propose mutual halo effects, i.e., the reciprocal reinforcement of upstream and downstream prestige on a given individual node, as the key factor accounting for success in a cultural production field. We discuss the relevance of these results for building a model of influence and innovation in cultural production fields in which networks—reshaped by shifting technological, political, and economic conditions—trigger new styles. (shrink)

This article discusses an interpretation of Kant's conception of transcendental subjectivity, which manages to avoid many of the concerns that have been raised by analytic interpreters over this doctrine. It is an interpretation put forward by selected C19 and early C20 neo-Kantian writers. The article starts out by offering a neo-Kantian interpretation of the object as something that is constituted by the categories and that serves as a standard of truth within a theory of judgment. The second part explicates transcendental (...) subjectivity as the system of categories, which is self-referential and constitutes objects, in order to then evaluate this conception by means of a comparison with Hegel's absolute subject. Rather than delineating the differences between neo-Kantian writers, the article systematically expounds a shared project, which consists in providing the ultimate foundation for judgments by means of an anti-psychologist and non-metaphysical interpretation of transcendental subjectivity. (shrink)

The neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen is famously anti-empiricist in that he denies that sensations can make a definable contribution to knowledge. However, in the second edition of Kant’s Theory of Experience (1885), Cohen considers a proposition that contrasts with both his other work and that of his followers: a Kantian who studies scientific claims to truth—and the grounds on which they are made—cannot limit himself to studying mathematics and logical principles, but needs to also investigate underlying presuppositions about the empirical element (...) of science. Due to his subjectivist approach, Cohen argues, Kant not only failed to explain how scientific observation and experiments are possible, but also misconceived the role of the ideas, particularly the idea of a system of nature. (shrink)

We invoke the ideal of tolerance in response to conflict, but what does it mean to answer conflict with a call for tolerance? Is tolerance a way of resolving conflicts or a means of sustaining them? Does it transform conflicts into productive tensions, or does it perpetuate underlying power relations? To what extent does tolerance hide its involvement with power and act as a form of depoliticization? Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst debate the uses and misuses of tolerance, an (...) exchange that highlights the fundamental differences in their critical practice despite a number of political similarities. Both scholars address the normative premises, limits, and political implications of various conceptions of tolerance. Brown offers a genealogical critique of contemporary discourses on tolerance in Western liberal societies, focusing on their inherent ties to colonialism and imperialism, and Forst reconstructs an intellectual history of tolerance that attempts to redeem its political virtue in democratic societies. Brown and Forst work from different perspectives and traditions, yet they each remain wary of the subjection and abnegation embodied in toleration discourses, among other issues. The result is a dialogue rich in critical and conceptual reflections on power, justice, discourse, rationality, and identity. (shrink)

Professor Brown describes and criticises the major classical model of rationality and offers a new model of this central concept in the history of philosophy and of science.

Scepticism about ought simpliciter is the view that there is no such thing as what one ought simpliciter to do. Instead, practical deliberation is governed by a plurality of normative standpoints, each authoritative from their own perspective but none authoritative simpliciter. This paper aims to resist such scepticism. After setting out the challenge in general terms, I argue that scepticism can be resisted by rejecting a key assumption in the sceptic’s argument. This is the assumption that standpoint-relative ought judgments bring (...) with them a commitment to act in accordance with those judgments. Instead, I propose an alternative account of our normative concepts according to which only ought simpliciter judgments commit one to acting in accordance with those judgments. In addition to answering the sceptical challenge, the proposal offers an independently motivated account of what makes a concept normatively authoritative. (shrink)

Charlotte Witt extracts from this text a coherent and provocative view about sensible substance by focusing on Aristotle's account of form or essence.

In Minding Spirituality, Randall Sorenson, a clinical psychoanalyst, "invites us to take an interest in our patients' spirituality that is respectful but not diffident, curious but not reductionistic, welcoming but not indoctrinating." Out of this.

Many interpreters argue that irrational acts of exchange can count as rational and civic-minded for Hegel—even though, admittedly, the persons who are exchanging their property are usually unaware of this fact. While I do not want to deny that property exchange can count as rational in terms of ‘mutual recognition’ as interpreters claim, this proposition raises an important question: What about the irrationality and arbitrariness that individuals as property owners and persons consciously enjoy? Are they mere vestiges of nature in (...) Hegel’s system, or do they constitute a simple yet valid form of freedom that is not only a part of Hegel’s rational system of right, but its necessary starting point? I will argue the latter: The arbitrary, purely egoist self-definition of property owners is the simplest possible type of freedom for Hegel, which he dissects in order to show how the very arbitrary self-definition implicitly relies on an identity between persons, and hence foreshadows the more social forms of freedom Hegel will discuss later in his book. I make this argument by highlighting Hegel’s references to his discussion of atoms and freedom in his Logic of Being. (shrink)

This book aims to develop a sophisticated understanding of propaganda. It begins with a brief history of early Western propaganda, including Ancient Greek classical theories of rhetoric and the art of persuasion, and traces its development through the Christian era, the rise of the nation-state, World War I, Nazism, and Communism. The core of the book examines the ethical implications of various forms of persuasion, not only hate propaganda but also insidious elements of more generally acceptable communication such as advertising, (...) public relations, and government information, setting these in the context of freedom of expression. Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion examines the art of persuasion but it also hopes to establish a "self-defense" resistance to propaganda. As Jacques Ellul warned in 1980, any new technology enters into an already existing class system and can be expected to develop in a way favourable to the dominant interests of that system. The merger of AOL and Time-Warner confirms the likelihood of corporate interests dominating the future of the Internet, but the Internet has also opened up new possibilities for a politically effective counter-culture, as was demonstrated at the meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in late 1999 and numerous similar gatherings since. (shrink)

Garrett Cullity contends that fairness is appropriate impartiality (See Cullity (2004) Chapters 8 and 10 and Cullity (2008)). Cullity deploys his account of fairness as a means of limiting the extreme moral demand to make sacrifices in order to aid others that was posed by Peter Singer in his seminal article ‘Famine, Affluence and Morality’. My paper is founded upon the combination of (1) the observation that the idea that fairness consists in appropriate impartiality is very vague and (2) the (...) fact that psychological studies show the self-serving bias is especially likely to infect one’s judgements when the ideas involved are vague. I argue that Cullity’s solution to extreme moral demandingness is threatened by these findings. I then comment on whether some other theories of fairness are vulnerable to the same objection. (shrink)