Under what conditions are people responsible for their choices and the outcomes of those choices? How could such conditions be fostered by liberal societies? Should what people are due as a matter of justice depend on what they are responsible for? For example, how far should healthcare provision depend on patients' past choices? What values would be realized and which hampered by making justice sensitive to responsibility? Would it give people what they deserve? Would it advance or hinder equality? The (...) explosion of philosophical interest in such questions has been fuelled by increased focus on individual responsibility in political debates. Political philosophers, especially egalitarians, have responded to such developments by attempting to map out the proper place for responsibility in theories of justice. This book both reflects on these recent developments in normative political theory and moves the debate forwards. (shrink)

Philosophical aesthetics emerges out of eighteenth-century discussions of taste that paid scant attention to the experience of tasting and ingesting food. Sarah Worth diagnoses this historical oversight and offers an unexpected remedy. She argues that we should start our analysis of aesthetic taste over again, this time beginning with the pleasures of the tongue and mouth, and work out from there to consider the kinds of experience, knowledge, and appreciation that belong to eating and savoring. As she argues, our ability (...) to make gustatory discriminations and to determine what tastes good and why is not as different from our aesthetic judgments as philosophers and other aesthetic theorists might have led us to believe. In this engaging and readable book, Worth persuasively argues that food and its many tastes deserve serious philosophical consideration.Worth explores a number of puzzles that arise when we try to make sense of the concept of taste. She disentangles the metaphorical sense of taste understood as a reasoned judgment expressing aesthetic preferences from the literal sense of taste which involves our sensory experiences when food is in our mouths. She discusses good and bad taste, food and pleasure, authentic and inauthentic food, “food porn”—those impossibly glamourized images of food that we find in advertising and magazines and cookbooks and social media—and the role of recipes in the practice of cooking. She places our everyday experiences of food in the context of wider relationships and activities including cultivation, harvesting, processing, shipping, and purchasing, as well as the preparation and cooking meals for family and friends. The book is punctuated by many of the usual philosophical suspects (Plato and Aristotle, Hume and Kant, Bullough and Sibley) as well as critical and feminist theorists, food sociologists, and a number of famous chefs including Fannie Farmer, Julie Child, and Nigella Lawson. If Worth endorses a particular metaphilosophy of food, it would be that of the Slow Food movement, which is the subject of Chapter Three. (shrink)

Widely adopted as a textbook, Issues and Alternatives in Educational Philosophy has been a classic in its field for more than a quarter of a century. As a survey of philosophic issues relevent to the educational profession, it highlights the relationship between philosophic starting points and educational outcomes - between theory and practice. -- from back cover.

Much of the debate about identity in recent decades has been about personal identity, and specifically about personal identity over time, but identity generally, and the identity of things of other kinds, have also attracted attention. Various interrelated problems have been at the centre of discussion, but it is fair to say that recent work has focussed particularly on the following areas: the notion of a criterion of identity; the correct analysis of identity over time, and, in particular, the disagreement (...) between advocates of perdurance and advocates of endurance as analyses of identity over time; the notion of identity across possible worlds and the question of its relevance to the correct analysis of de re modal discourse; the notion of contingent identity; the question of whether the identity relation is, or is similar to, the composition relation; and the notion of vague identity. A radical position, advocated by Peter Geach, is that these debates, as usually conducted, are void for lack of a subject matter: the notion of absolute identity they presuppose has no application; there is only relative identity. Another increasingly popular view is the one advocated by Lewis: although the debates make sense they cannot genuinely be debates about identity, since there are no philosophical problems about identity. Identity is an utterly unproblematic notion. What there are, are genuine problems which can be stated using the language of identity. But since these can be restated without the language of identity they are not problems about identity. (For example, it is a puzzle, an aspect of the so-called “problem of personal identity”, whether the same person can have different bodies at different times. But this is just the puzzle whether a person can have different bodies at different times. So since it can be stated without the language of personal “identity”, it is not a problem about identity, but about personhood.) This article provides an overview of the topics indicated above, some assessment of the debates and suggestions for further reading. (shrink)

Discrimination, understood as differential treatment of individuals on the basis of their respective group memberships, is widely considered to be morally wrong. This moral judgment is backed in many jurisdictions with the passage of equality of opportunity legislation, which aims to ensure that racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, sexual-orientation, disability and other groups are not subjected to discrimination. This chapter explores the conceptual underpinnings of discrimination and equality of opportunity using the tools of analytical moral and political philosophy.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the recent debate about responsibility and distributive justice. It traces the recent philosophical focus on distributive justice to John Rawls and examines two arguments in his work which might be taken to contain the seeds of the focus on responsibility in later theories of distributive justice. It examines Ronald Dworkin's ‘equality of resources’, the ‘luck egalitarianism’ of Richard Arneson and G. A. Cohen, as well as the criticisms of their work put forward by (...) Elizabeth Anderson, Marc Fleurbaey, Susan Hurley, and Jonathan Wolff. Key concepts such as responsibility (individual and collective), luck (thin and thick; brute and option), control, desert, and equality of opportunity are delineated, and the implementation of responsibility-sensitive accounts of justice is considered. The chapters of this book are positioned in relation to the wider literature on responsibility and distributive justice, and a brief outline of the chapters is provided. (shrink)

Members of the Baha'i Faith have been subject to persecution in Iran since the mid‐nineteenth century. Our investigation considers how collective identity among a Pacific Northwest Community has been constructed through the contexts of continued persecution in Iran and the development of religious texts, which helped to define the religious community. The texts found within the Baha'i Faith utilize metaphors of the body to construct religious identity. Many anthropologists have theorized on the usefulness of the body as a unit of (...) study; in addition, recent attention by scholars has illustrated the intersection of the body and religion. A model is developed linking identity, consciousness, the body and experience that explains how collective identity is constructed. When considering the situation of the Baha'i community, this model has proven particularly useful in understanding how geographically disassociated people manage to construct social kinship within the context of religious persecution. In particular, American Baha'is describe the persecution of Baha'is in Iran as a collective experience, especially since the direct experience of persecution is far removed from their everyday living. Preliminary analysis of interviews with an American Baha'i, and an ex‐patriot Iranian Baha'i reveal differences in constructions of identity. (shrink)

This essay considers P. J. Ivanhoe's critical challenge to Slingerland's analysis of wuwei(‘effortless action’). While I agree with Ivanhoe that we should do more work to embody and understand the concept of wuwei, I will defend Slingerland's notion that wuwei involves paradox—particularly in the cases of Zhuangi and Laozi. The present essay is not a defense of the specifics of Slingerland's analysis. Nonetheless, this essay focuses on defending the notion of paradox. Ivanhoe offers an alternative view of wuwei, one that (...) sees the paradox as a riddle. I argue that this kind of formulation would frame the problem of wuwei in an unhelpful manner. I offer several novel ways of overcoming, or at least qualifying, the experience of paradox that seems to be at play in nondoing. (shrink)

This chapter identifies three contrasts between responsibility-sensitive justice and desert-sensitive justice. First, while responsibility may be appraised on prudential or moral grounds, it is argued that desert is necessarily moral. As moral appraisal is much more plausible, responsibility-sensitive justice is only attractive in one of its two formulations. Second, strict responsibility sensitivity does not compensate for all forms of bad brute luck, and forms of responsibility-sensitive justice like luck egalitarianism that provide such compensation do so by appealing to independent moral (...) concerns such as equality. Desert-sensitive justice can deliver the appropriate compensation without relying on external moral resources. Finally, while responsibility-sensitive justice harshly refuses to provide for those whose basic needs are unsatisfied due to their own negligent actions, this result can be averted by desert-sensitive justice as it can take into account responsibility-independent considerations. In sum, desert-sensitive justice appears to offer a tighter fit with considered judgments about justice. (shrink)

Until recently, experimental philosophy has been associated with the questionnaire-based study of intuitions; however, experimental philosophers now adapt a wide range of empirical methods for new philosophical purposes. New methods include paradigms for behavioural experiments from across the social sciences as well as computational methods from the digital humanities that can process large bodies of text and evidence. This book offers an accessible overview of these exciting innovations. The volume brings together established and emerging research leaders from several areas of (...) experimental philosophy to explore how new empirical methods can contribute to philosophical debates. Each chapter presents one or several methods new to experimental philosophy, demonstrating their application in a key area of philosophy and discussing their strengths and limitations. Methods covered include eye tracking, virtual reality technology, neuroimaging, statistical learning, and experimental economics as well as corpus linguistics, visualisation techniques and data and text mining. The volume explores their use in moral philosophy and moral psychology, epistemology, philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and the history of ideas. Methodological Advances in Experimental Philosophy is essential reading for undergraduates, graduate students and researchers working in experimental philosophy. (shrink)

A number of studies have tested the relationship between a corporation's social and ethical performance and its financial performance. In contrast, this is the first study to demonstrate a link between overall financial performance and an emphasis on ethics as an aspect of corporate governance. It identifies the 26.8 percent of the 500 largest U.S. public corporations that, in their annual report to shareholders, commit to ethical behavior toward their stakeholders or emphasize compliance with their code of conduct. The financial (...) performance of these corporations ranks higher than that of those who do not at a significance level of p = < 0.005, using the 1997 Business Week ranking which averages eight publicly-reported measures of historical financial performance. These findings should motivate more corporations to utilize the principles of Social and Ethical Accounting, Auditing and Reporting (SEAAR). (shrink)

Most scholars think of David Hilbert's program as the most demanding and ideologically motivated attempt to provide a foundation for mathematics, and because they see technical obstacles in the way of realizing the program's goals, they regard it as a failure. Against this view, Curtis Franks argues that Hilbert's deepest and most central insight was that mathematical techniques and practices do not need grounding in any philosophical principles. He weaves together an original historical account, philosophical analysis, and his own (...) development of the meta-mathematics of weak systems of arithmetic to show that the true philosophical significance of Hilbert's program is that it makes the autonomy of mathematics evident. The result is a vision of the early history of modern logic that highlights the rich interaction between its conceptual problems and technical development. (shrink)

Li Da (1890–1966) was one of China’s most important Marxist intellectuals and a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party. He played a major role in the introduction of Marxist philosophy and theory to China and in its dissemination among Chinese revolutionaries. His works are now regarded in China as classics of Marxist philosophy, and he is numbered among the ten most influential Chinese intellectuals of this century. Yet, almost nothing has been written about Li Da in English.In this seminal (...) study, Knight analyzes Li Da’s contribution to the flowering of Marxist philosophy and theory in China, examining Li’s writings and placing them in the context of the Marxist tradition. Knight also explores Li Da’s philosophical relationship with Mao Zedong, who was heavily influenced by Li’s works. Through the lens of Li’s life and thought, this book provides a detailed assessment of the introduction and dissemination of Marxist philosophy and social theory in China. (shrink)

Human interaction and communication involve space in multiple ways. This paper examines the spatial and interactional order of a covertly video-taped police interrogation. When the participants enter the interrogation room and become engaged in the interrogation process, the room itself is a constraint and a resource for interaction. While interacting within a built environment, the participants appropriate their material surroundings in ways that constitute a spatial order and make possible certain arguments. This paper examines how the physical structure of the (...) interrogation room is differentially appropriated, used, and filled in by the participants''; territorial and postural manoeuvers over the course of their interaction; and how the spatial structures thus created by the bodily appropriation of the physical locale are subsequently formulated by talk and thereby used as a metaphorical resource to frame the participants'' situated experience. Through this embedded process, the interrogators move the suspect toward confession. (shrink)

The 2010 Nagoya Protocol is an international framework for access and benefit sharing (ABS) of the use of genetic and biological resources, with particular focus on indigenous communities. This is especially important in Africa, where local communities have a close reliance on environmental resources and ecosystems. However, national legislation and policies commonly lag behind international agreements, and this poses challenges for legal compliance as well as practical applications. This study reviews the academic literature on the Nagoya Protocol and ABS applications, (...) and then considers the implications of this analysis for research in Africa. Results show that there is uneven engagement with the principles of the Nagoya Protocol across different academic disciplines; local communities are sometimes sidelined in these studies; and only 8% of researchers in the literature analysed are located in Africa. Future developments should focus on ensuring national compliance with the Nagoya Protocol, and that researchers and industry work in partnership with local African communities on ABS issues. (shrink)

Given that many people with disabilities have been excluded from political deliberation and subjected to infantilizing and degrading treatment from others, many members of the disability rights movement are understandably critical of policies and practices that speak on behalf of people with disabilities and presume to know what is really in their best interest. Yet, this analysis argues that a general principle of anti-paternalism is not desirable for disability politics. In particular, people with cognitive disabilities are sometimes unable to make (...) important decisions by themselves, and may require assistance from family members or more cognitively able and verbally fluent citizens to make their political voices and choices heard. Drawing from John Locke and Alasdair MacIntyre, this article reconsiders the relationship between paternalism and autonomy, suggesting that autonomous decisionmaking and expression are best thought of as collaborative processes undertaken between people with a range of capacities. (shrink)

Attempts to articulate the real meaning or ultimate significance of a famous theorem comprise a major vein of philosophical writing about mathematics. The subfield of mathematical logic has supplie...

Over time, according to popular and academic accounts, alternative trade initiatives [such as fair trade, organics, forest certification, and socially responsible investing ] almost invariably lose their oppositional stance and go mainstream. That is, they lose their alternative, usually peripheral, and often contrarian character. In this paper, I argue that this is not always the case and that the path to going mainstream is not always an unproblematic one. I observe that while scholars have documented various aspects of specific alternative (...) trade initiatives, little comparative work has been done to theorize their different trajectories. To advance the scholarship, I compare two alternative trade movements, fair trade and SRI, and develop three hypotheses—the relation motivations hypothesis, the material interests hypothesis, and the organization of credibility hypothesis—that explain why going mainstream has been so hotly contested in the fair trade movement but not the SRI movement. I articulate these hypotheses and evaluate their merits. (shrink)

Heidegger and East-Asian thought have traditionally been strongly correlated. However, although still largely unrecognized, significant differences between the political and metaphysical stance of Heidegger and his perceived counterparts in East-Asia most certainly exist. One of the most dramatic discontinuities between East-Asian thought and Heidegger is revealed through an investigation of Kitarō Nishida’s own vigorous criticism of Heidegger. Ironically, more than one study of Heidegger and East-Asian thought has submitted that Nishida is that representative of East-Asian thought whose philosophy most closely (...) resembles Heideggerian thought. In words that then and now resound discordantly within the enshrined, established view of Heidegger’s relationship to East-Asian thought, Nishida stated uninhibitedly his own view of Heidegger in the noteworthy statement: “Heidegger is not worth your time… He…does not recognize that which is indispensible and decisive, namely, God.” This present study lays out for the first time in English, the significant differences between the metaphysical and political stances of Nishida and Heidegger, Nishida’s own critique of Heidegger, and Heidegger’s own rather dismal assessment of non-Western philosophy, all of which demonstrate a remarkable, hitherto unrecognized discontinuity between Heidegger and East-Asian thought. (shrink)

The confounding effects of heterogeneity in biological psychiatry and psychiatric genetics have been widely discussed in the literature. We suggest an approach in which heterogeneity may be put to use in hypothesis testing, and may find application in evaluation of the Crespi & Badcock (C&B) imprinting hypothesis. Here we consider three potential sources of etiologic subtypes for analysis.

The target article by Charney on behavior genetics/genomics discusses how numerous molecular factors can inform heritability estimations and genetic association studies. These factors find application in the search for genes for behavioral phenotypes, including neuropsychiatric disorders. We elaborate upon how single causal factors can generate multiple phenotypes, and discuss how multiple causal factors may converge on common neurodevelopmental mechanisms.

The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) has recently issued a revised "Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants" (IFAC Code). As a requirement for membership in IFAC, a national accounting organization must either adopt the IFAC Code or adopt a code of conduct that is not "less stringent" than the IFAC Code. In this paper, we examine the extent to which 158 national accounting organizations have adopted the revised IFAC Code as their own. Our results indicate that 80 of our sample (...) organizations have adopted the IFAC Code (sometimes with minor modifications), while the remaining 78 opted not to utilize the model IFAC Code. We then test the hypothesis that national accounting organizations in lower income economies would be less likely to adopt the IFAC Code than those in high income economies. Our results do not support the hypothesis. We argue that one potential reason for such a finding is that adopting the IFAC Code may be a cost effective means of adopting a code of ethics for organizations in lower income economies. (shrink)

It has become apparent that the debate between scientific realists and constructive empiricists has come to a stalemate. Neither view can reasonably claim to be the most rational philosophy of science, exclusively capable of making sense of all scientific activities. On one prominent analysis of the situation, whether we accept a realist or an anti-realist account of science actually seems to depend on which values we antecedently accept, rather than our commitment to “rationality” per se. Accordingly, several philosophers have attempted (...) to argue in favour of scientific realism or constructive empiricism by showing that one set of values is exclusively best, for anyone and everyone, and that the downstream choice of the philosophy of science which best serves those values is therefore best, for anyone and everyone. These efforts, however, seem to have failed. In response, I suggest that philosophers of science should suspend the effort to determine which philosophy of science is best for everyone, and instead begin investigating which philosophy of science is best for specific people, with specific values, in specific contexts. I illustrate how this might be done by briefly sketching a single case study from the history of science, which seems to show that different philosophies of science are better at motivating different forms of scientific practice. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the most controversial philosophers and social theorists of our time. He opposes liberalism and postmodernism with the teleological arguments of an updated Thomistic Aristotelianism. It is this tradition, he claims, which presents the best theory so far about the nature of rationality, morality, and politics. This is the first reader of MacIntyre's groundbreaking work. It includes extracts from and his own synopses of two famous books from the 1980s, After Virtue and Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (...) as well as the whole of several shorter works and two interviews. Together, these pieces constitute not only a representative collection of his work but also the most powerful and accessible presentation of his arguments yet available. The MacIntyre Reader concludes with Kelvin Knight 's clear, concise, and insightful overview of the development of MacIntyre's central ideas and how they have developed in his writings. Students will find this book a powerful and accessible introduction to one of the great thinkers of our time. "The publication of the new MacIntyre Reader--a fascinating anthology of his work from his Marxist beginnings to his Thomistic conclusions--provides an interesting opportunity for reconsidering the man's thought." --The Weekly Standard Kelvin Knight is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of North London. (shrink)

This article considers the war against terror in relation to classical tragedy. It uses Heidegger's analysis of Sophocles's play Antigone to argue that human beings are essentially `homeless' and yet our destiny lies in the continual attempt to overcome this homelessness by establishing foundational principles that might bring our journeying to an end. The tragedy of this situation is that the search for foundations and a search for a home invariably bring differing worlds in conflict with each other as their (...) paths to truth collide. Lucien Goldmann's analysis of the tragedy of refusal is also considered in relation to a non-foundational politics that may permit us not only to endure, but actually to affirm our homelessness as an attempt to resist the terror and anabolic militarism that marks the current age. (shrink)

Interviewers routinely orient to applicant files as they produce first pair parts that forward the business of the interview. As they do so, they make clear what they know, whether they already know it or are discovering it in the moment, whether it comes from the file in hand, and whether the applicant holds primary rights to confirm or amend that information. In these moments, participants work out issues of epistemic authority through an orchestration of multimodal behaviors, including talk, gesture, (...) gaze, and touch. Our analysis focuses specifically on two discourse slots: when interviewers confirm specific information in side sequences; and when they gloss and assess general information while calling for an account. In the former, interviewers display minimal knowledge and secondary epistemic authority; in the latter, they show strong knowledge and assert primary epistemic authority. This article demonstrates how epistemic authority, negotiated through embodied talk-in-interaction, contributes to how interviews unfold. (shrink)

In this paper, I shed light on Kant’s notion of Erkenntnis or cognition by focusing on texts pertaining to Kant’s thoughts on logic. Although a passage from Kant’s Logik is widely referred to for understanding Kant’s conception of Erkenntnis, this work was not penned by Kant himself but rather compiled by Benjamin Jäsche. So, it is imperative to determine its fidelity to Kant’s thought. I compare the passage with other sources, including Reflexionen and students’ lecture notes. I argue that several (...) of the text’s peculiarities stem from Jäsche rather than Kant, but that nevertheless Jäsche largely got Kant's view right, with two major exceptions. First, Jäsche’s text fails to reproduce Kant’s key thesis that kennen and verstehen are jointly sufficient for Erkenntnis. Second, Jäsche’s text gives the false impression that Kant holds that animals have consciousness. (shrink)

The loss of life that resulted from the sinking of the fisheries training vessel EhimeMaru by the nuclear submarine USSGreeneville off Hawaii in February 2001 exemplifies the risks to United States–Japan alliance relations posed by US global military deployments. Following a pattern of incidents involving the US military in Japan itself, the collision violated Japanese expectations of benevolence from its stronger partner and put considerable pressure on the government to seek public apology and reassurance. This article examines the interplay of (...) culture, national security interests and domestic politics in framing both perceptions and diplomacy during the crisis. While differences at both the cultural and security levels complicated diplomacy, asymmetry in the respective domestic political stakes, combined with overriding and largely congruent security interests, helped the United States to provide Japan with the requisite reassurance. After a decade of alliance drift, both Japan and the United States were determined to forestall defection by their alliance partner. (shrink)

There are over 2,500 Landcare groups with 65,000 members operating across Australia. With considerable evidence of program impact, Landcare is an important example of state sponsored community participation in natural resource management. However, the authors suggest excessive emphasis has been placed upon attitudinal change – the development of landholder stewardship, as the lever for effecting major changes in land management. Analysis of data from a landholder survey failed to establish predicted stewardship differences between Landcare and nonLandcare respondents or between those (...) who joined early/late, or participated more/less in group activities. And there was no relationship between stewardship and adoption for most of the sustainable agriculture practices surveyed. Further analysis clearly linked Landcare participation and concern about the environmental and economic impacts of land degradation. Whilst respondents were significantly more concerned about economic impacts, research findings were consistent with earlier work indicating that most land managers have a strong stewardship ethic. The authors also suggest that concerns that Landcare is not addressing biodiversity conservation are largely unjustified and reflect urealistic expectations of these voluntary groups. (shrink)