Early reactions to the publication of Harold Garfinkel's Studies in Ethnomethodology, which have persisted over the passing decades, was that ethnomethodology could not address what sociology deemed to be socially significant matters such as 'power' and 'the state'. This, however, is not the case. How such matters enter into the practical everyday affairs of members is of equal interest to ethnomethodology when compared to how any matter enters into members' everyday life, and how they display that. It just does not (...) have more importance. Egon Bittner spelt this out with regard to Weber's interest in bureaucracy when he reminds sociology that when Weber talked about efficiency he was not referring to an objective standard but as something that is attuned to practical interests as they emerge in the context of everyday life. This paper examines some of the actions and interactions that were encountered in a Governmental Department in one of the European countries. It makes visible how characterisations of bureaucracy such as 'rational', and 'efficient' are achieved in the actions and interactions of Department employees, and some of the practices involved in that achievement. Garfinkel, and ethnomethodology in general, are not, in principle, to be found wanting where matters of overarching, primordial interest to sociology are concerned. (shrink)

Psychiatry is rapidly adopting digital phenotyping and artificial intelligence/machine learning tools to study mental illness based on tracking participants’ locations, online activity, phone and text message usage, heart rate, sleep, physical activity, and more. Existing ethical frameworks for return of individual research results (IRRs) are inadequate to guide researchers for when, if, and how to return this unprecedented number of potentially sensitive results about each participant’s real-world behavior. To address this gap, we convened an interdisciplinary expert working group, supported by (...) a National Institute of Mental Health grant. Building on established guidelines and the emerging norm of returning results in participant-centered research, we present a novel framework specific to the ethical, legal, and social implications of returning IRRs in digital phenotyping research. Our framework offers researchers, clinicians, and Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) urgently needed guidance, and the principles developed here in the context of psychiatry will be readily adaptable to other therapeutic areas. (shrink)

La negativa a imaginar la "otra" sociedad más allá del capitalismo no está ajena a la prohibición judía de nombrar o describir a Dios. Cualquiera que sea la fuente del tabú, de las principales figuras relacionadas con la Escuela de Frankfurt, solo Mar- cuse se ha atrevido en los últimos años a romperlo. Solo Marcuse ha tratado de decir lo indecible en un esfuerzo cada vez más urgente por reintroducir un molde utópico a la teoría socialista.

Subjects and Simulations presents essays focused on suffering and sublimity, representation and subjectivity, and the relation of truth and appearance through engagement with the legacies of Jean Baudrillard and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe.

This book is a rich blend of analyses by leading experts from various cultures and disciplines. A compact introduction to a complex field, it illustrates biotechnology's profound impact upon the environment and society. Moreover, it underscores the vital relevance of cultural values. This book empowers readers to more critically assess biotechnology's value and effectiveness within both specific cultural and global contexts.

Introducing Applied Ethics Edited by Brenda Almond, Blackwell, 1995. Pp. 375. ISBN 0-631-19389-8. 45.00 (hbk), 14.99 (pbk). Environmental Ethics Edited by Robert Elliot, Oxford University Press, 1995. Pp. 255. ISBN 9-19-875144-3. 9.95 (pbk) Medicine and Moral Reasoning Edited by K.W.M. Fulford, Grant Gillett and Janet Martin Soskice Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. 207. ISBN 0-521-45325-9 37.50 (hbk), 12.95 (pbk). Enlightenment and Religion. Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-century Britain Edited by Knud Haakonssen, Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xii + 348. ISBN (...) 0-521-56060-8. 40.00. Dialettica, Arte e Societ : Saggio su Theodor W. Adorno By Giacomo Rinaldi, Quattroventi, Urbino, 1994. Pp. 205. L. 30,000. Relevance: Communication and Cognition, new revised edition, By Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, Blackwell, 1995. Pp. 326. ISBN 0-631-19878-4. 15.99. Autobiographical Reflections By Eric Voegelin (Edited, with Introduction, by Ellis Sandoz), Louisiana State University Press, 1996. Pp. 131. ISBN 0807120766 $10.95. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

In The Right to Higher Education, Christopher Martin develops a powerful, autonomy-based argument that there is a moral right to access to higher education. I raise three concerns about whether this argument succeeds. The first is a concern about the conception of autonomy at the heart of Martin’s argument; the second is a concern about possible overgeneralizations of the argument; and the third is a concern about whether Martin’s view is consonant with judgments about fairness.

This collection of contemporary essays by prominent contemporary thinkers on the topics of determinism and free agency concentrates primarily on two areas: the compatibility problem and the metaphysics of moral responsibility. There are also essays on the related fields of determinism and action theory. The book is unique in that it contains up-to-date summaries of the life-work of five influential philosophers: John Earman, Ted Honderich, Keith Lehrer, Robert Kane, and Peter van Inwagen. There are also contributions by other familiar and (...) distinguished authors, including Richard Feldman, John Martin Fischer, Carl Ginet, and John Perry, as well as important rising philosophers. While most of the articles are written from a Western, analytic perspective, the volume includes a paper that addresses Buddhist perspectives on freedom of the will. With an opening essay written by the editors -- "Freedom and Determinism: A Framework" -- that sets the terms of the discussion, the book provides a remarkably comprehensive set of articles that are of value to a wide audience, from students of philosophy to scholars. (shrink)

Let T be a second-order arithmetical theory, Λ a well-order, λ < Λ and X ⊆ ℕ. We use $[\lambda |X]_T^{\rm{\Lambda }}\varphi$ as a formalization of “φ is provable from T and an oracle for the set X, using ω-rules of nesting depth at most λ”.For a set of formulas Γ, define predicative oracle reflection for T over Γ ) to be the schema that asserts that, if X ⊆ ℕ, Λ is a well-order and φ ∈ Γ, then$$\forall \,\lambda (...) < {\rm{\Lambda }}\,.$$In particular, define predicative oracle consistency ) as Pred–O–RFN{0=1}.Our main result is as follows. Let ATR0 be the second-order theory of Arithmetical Transfinite Recursion, ${\rm{RCA}}_0^{\rm{*}}$ be Weakened Recursive Comprehension and ACA be Arithmetical Comprehension with Full Induction. Then,$${\rm{ATR}}_0 \equiv {\rm{RCA}}_0^{\rm{*}} + {\rm{Pred - O - Cons\ }}\left \equiv {\rm{RCA}}_0^{\rm{*}} + \,{\rm{Pred - O - Cons\ }}\left \equiv {\rm{RCA}}_0^{\rm{*}} + \,{\rm{Pred - O - RFN}}\,_{{\bf{\Pi }}_2^1 } \left.$$We may even replace ${\rm{RCA}}_0^{\rm{*}}$ by the weaker ECA0, the second-order analogue of Elementary Arithmetic.Thus we characterize ATR0, a theory often considered to embody Predicative Reductionism, in terms of strong reflection and consistency principles. (shrink)

We prove that a form of the $Erd\H{o}s$ property (consistent with $V = L\lbrack H_{\omega_2}\rbrack$ and strictly weaker than the Weak Chang's Conjecture at ω1), together with Bounded Martin's Maximum implies that Woodin's principle $\psi_{AC}$ holds, and therefore 2ℵ0 = ℵ2. We also prove that $\psi_{AC}$ implies that every function $f: \omega_1 \rightarrow \omega_1$ is bounded by some canonical function on a club and use this to produce a model of the Bounded Semiproper Forcing Axiom in which Bounded (...) class='Hi'>Martin's Maximum fails. (shrink)

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo fazer uma breve aproximação acerca da investigação empreendida por David Hume sobre a ideia de “eu” ou de “pessoa” e de sua inerente identidade e simplicidade. Essa discussão é posta especificamente na seção “Da identidade pessoal”, no primeiro livro do seu Tratado da natureza humana. Entrementes, para acompanhá-la, é necessário considerar alguns dos pontos desenvolvidos nas seções iniciais, nas quais Hume se dedicou a mapear as principais características de sua teoria a respeito da (...) atividade da mente. Com efeito, buscaremos não apenas mostrar o lado cético de sua crítica à ideia de eu, mas também sua recolocação do problema com a seguinte questão: por que, afinal, ainda que se tenha provado que essa ideia é fictícia, continuamos mentalmente propensos a acreditar nela? (shrink)

Brink analyzes responsibility and its relations to desert, culpability, excuse, blame, and punishment. He argues that an agent is responsible for misconduct if and only if it is not excused, and that responsibility consists in agents having suitable cognitive and volitional capacities, and a fair opportunity to exercise these capacities.

O presente texto refere-se à trajetória de três homens. Eles nasceram na mesma época, mas viveram cada um em uma cidade distinta. Um morava em Fortaleza, no Ceará, outro em Lisboa e o terceiro no Rio de Janeiro. O que os unia? Livros. Os três tiveram suas vidas marcadas pela edição, impressão e comercialização de livros e relacionadas, particularmente, pela publicação de uma coleção de livros: a Biblioteca do Povo e das Escolas. É dessa coleção e de como ela se (...) associa à vida desses três homens que este texto trata. É urna história que liga Lisboa, Rio de Janeiro e Fortaleza e que mostra que ainda há muito a se descobrir e percorrer nos caminhos dos livros no século XIX. (shrink)

This essay explores a conception of responsibility at work in moral and criminal responsibility. Our conception draws on work in the compatibilist tradition that focuses on the choices of agents who are reasons-responsive and work in criminal jurisprudence that understands responsibility in terms of the choices of agents who have capacities for practical reason and whose situation affords them the fair opportunity to avoid wrongdoing. Our conception brings together the dimensions of normative competence and situational control, and we factor normative (...) competence into cognitive and volitional capacities, which we treat as equally important to normative competence and responsibility. Normative competence and situational control can and should be understood as expressing a common concern that blame and punishment presuppose that the agent had a fair opportunity to avoid wrongdoing. This fair opportunity is the umbrella concept in our understanding of responsibility, one that explains it distinctive architecture. (shrink)

Consequentialism is often criticized for failing to accommodate impersonal constraints and personal options. A common consequentialist response is to acknowledge the anticonsequentialist intuitions but to argue either that the consequentialist can, after all, accommodate the allegedly recalcitrant intuitions or that, where accommodation is impossible, the recalcitrant intuition can be dismissed for want of an adequate philosophical rationale. Whereas these consequentialist responses have some plausibility, associational duties represent a somewhat different challenge to consequentialism, inasmuch as they embody neither impersonal constraints nor (...) personal options, but rather personal constraints. Our intuitions about associational duties resist capture within the intellectual net of consequentialism, and such duties do admit of a philosophical rationale at least as plausible as anything the consequentialist has to offer. (shrink)

SOME THINK THAT MORAL REALISTS CANNOT RECOGNIZE THE PRACTICAL OR ACTION-GUIDING CHARACTER OF MORALITY AND SO REJECT MORAL REALISM. THIS FORM OF ANTI-REALISM DEPENDS UPON AN INTERNALIST MORAL PSYCHOLOGY. BUT AN EXTERNALIST MORAL PSYCHOLOGY IS MORE PLAUSIBLE AND ALLOWS THE REALIST A SENSIBLE EXPLANATION OF THE ACTION-GUIDING CHARACTER OF MORALITY. CONSIDERATION OF THE PRACTICAL CHARACTER OF MORALITY, THEREFORE, DOES NOT UNDERMINE AND, INDEED, SUPPORTS MORAL REALISM.

David O. Brink offers a reconstruction and assessment of John Stuart Mill's contributions to the utilitarian and liberal traditions. Brink defends interpretations of key elements in Mill's moral and political thought, and shows how a perfectionist reading of his conception of happiness has a significant impact on other aspects of his philosophy.

It is common to regard love, friendship, and other associational ties to others as an important part of a happy or flourishing life. This would be easy enough to understand if we focused on friendships based on pleasure, or associations, such as business partnerships, predicated on mutual advantage. For then we could understand in a straightforward way how these interpersonal relationships would be valuable for someone involved in such relationships just insofar as they caused her pleasure or causally promoted her (...) own independent interests. But many who regard love, friendship, and other associational ties as an important part of a happy or flourishing life suppose that in many sorts of associations—especially intimate associations—the proper attitude among associates is concern for the other for the other's own sake, not just for the pleasure or benefits one can extract from one's associates. It is fairly clear how having friends of this sort is beneficial. What is less clear is how being a friend of this sort might contribute to one's own happiness or well-being. Even if we can explain this, it looks as if the contribution that friendship makes to one's happiness could not be the reason one has to care for friends, for that would seem to make one's concern for others instrumental, not a concern for the other for her own sake. (shrink)

Of recent time, there has been a proliferation of concerns with ethical leadership within corporate business not least because of the numerous scandals at Enron, Worldcom, Parmalat, and two major Irish banks – Allied Irish Bank (AIB) and National Irish Bank (NIB). These have not only threatened the position of many senior corporate managers but also the financial survival of some of the companies over which they preside. Some authors have attributed these scandals to the pre-eminence of a focus on (...) increasing shareholder value in Western business schools and/or to their failure to inculcate ethical standards. In this paper, we challenge these accounts and the aetiological view of knowledge from which they derive but are grateful for the consensus that they convey regarding the importance of business ethics. The paper focuses on different approaches to ethical leadership concluding with a view that some hybrid of MacIntyre’s virtue ethics and Levinas’s ethics of responsibility may serve as an inspiration for both educators and practitioners. (shrink)

The prospects for moral realism and ethical naturalism have been important parts of recent debates within metaethics. As a first approximation, moral realism is the claim that there are facts or truths about moral matters that are objective in the sense that they obtain independently of the moral beliefs or attitudes of appraisers. Ethical naturalism is the claim that moral properties of people, actions, and institutions are natural, rather than occult or supernatural, features of the world. Though these metaethical debates (...) remain unsettled, several people, myself included, have tried to defend the plausibility of both moral realism and ethical naturalism. I, among others, have appealed to recent work in the philosophy of language—in particular, to so-called theories of “direct reference” —to defend ethical naturalism against a variety of semantic worries, including G. E. Moore's “open question argument.” In response to these arguments, critics have expressed doubts about the compatibility of moral realism and direct reference. In this essay, I explain these doubts, and then sketch the beginnings of an answer—but understanding both the doubts and my answer requires some intellectual background. (shrink)

Perfectionism is an underexplored tradition, perhaps because of doubts about the grounds, content, and implications of perfectionist ideals. Aristotle, J.S. Mill, and T.H. Green are normative perfectionists, grounding perfectionist ideals in a normative conception of human nature involving personality or agency. This essay explores the prospects of normative perfectionism by examining Kant’s criticisms of the perfectionist tradition. First, Kant claims that the perfectionist can generate only hypothetical, not categorical, imperatives. But insofar as the normative perfectionist appeals to the normative category (...) of personality or agency, rather than a biological category of humanity, it can represent perfectionist demands as categorical imperatives. Second, Kant accepts a moral asymmetry in which we aim at our own perfection but at the happiness, rather than the perfection, of others. However, the importance of autonomy in normative perfection explains why the perfectionist should recognize a self/other asymmetry. Indeed, when we see how the normative perfectionist can answer Kant’s criticisms while respecting Kant’s own claims about the connection between rational nature and moral requirements, we can see the basis for a normative perfectionist interpretation of Kant’s own ethical theory. Insofar as Kantians and normative perfectionists both base ethical demands on an appeal to rational nature, they face a common worry that the appeal to rational nature is empty or incomplete. Normative perfectionists have more and less concessive responses to this worry, providing perfectionist explanations of various apparently non-perfectionist goods. Even if we end up being pluralists about the good, perfectionist elements play an important role. Finally, because the normative perfectionist, like the Kantian, grounds its ideals and requirements in a conception of persons as rational agents, it provides a promising account of the rational authority of perfectionist demands. This comparison of normative perfectionist and Kantian essentials gives us reason to take the normative perfectionist tradition seriously. (shrink)

The situationist literature in psychology claims that conduct is not determined by character and reflects the operation of the agent’s situation or environment. For instance, due to situational factors, compassionate behavior is much less common than we might have expected from people we believe to be compassionate. This article focuses on whether situationism should revise our beliefs about moral responsibility. It assesses situationism’s implications against the backdrop of a conception of responsibility that is grounded in norms about the fair opportunity (...) to avoid wrongdoing that require that agents be normatively competent and possess situational control. Despite the low incidence of compassionate behavior revealed in situationist studies, situationism threatens neither situational control nor normative competence. Nonetheless situationism may force revision in our views about responsibility in particular contexts, such as wartime wrongdoing. Whereas a good case can be made that the heat of battle can create situational pressures that significantly impair normative competence and thus sometimes provide a full or partial excuse, there is reason to be skeptical of attempts to generalize this excuse to other contexts of wartime wrongdoing. If so, moral responsibility can take situationism on board without capsizing the boat. (shrink)

The situationist literature in psychology claims that conduct is not determined by character and reflects the operation of the agent's situation or environment. For instance, due to situational factors, compassionate behavior is much less common than we might have expected from people we believe to be compassionate. This article focuses on whether situationism should revise our beliefs about moral responsibility. It assesses the implications of situationism against the backdrop of a conception of responsibility that is grounded in norms about the (...) fair opportunity to avoid wrongdoing that require that agents to be normatively competent and possess situational control. Despite the low incidence of compassionate behavior revealed in situationist studies, situationism threatens neither situational control nor normative competence. Nonetheless situationism may force revision of our views about responsibility in particular contexts, such as wartime wrongdoing. Whereas a good case can be made that the heat of battle can create situational pressures that significantly impair normative competence and thus sometimes provide a full or partial excuse, there is reason to be skeptical of attempts to generalize this excuse to other contexts of wartime wrongdoing. If so, moral responsibility can take situationism on board without capsizing the boat. (shrink)

Consideration of the objection from the personal point of view reveals the resources of utilitarianism. The utilitarian can offer a partial rebuttal by distinguishing between criteria of rightness and decision procedures and claiming that, because his theory is a criterion of rightness and not a decision procedure, he can justify agents' differential concern for their own welfare and the welfare of those close to them. The flexibility in utilitarianism's theory of value allows further rebuttal of this objection; objective versions of (...) utilitarianism can treat self-determination or autonomy as a dominant good which trumps even large magnitudes of lesser goods such as pleasure. After the resources of utilitarianism are exhausted, though, there remains a worry, generated by the personal point of view, about utilitarianism's impartiality. But this worry is correctly viewed, not as a moral worry about the merits of utilitarianism as a moral theory, but as a worry about morality concerning the rationality or supremacy of impartial moral demands. Whether or not this worry can be answered, the fact that it arises supports rather than undermines a utilitarian account of morality. (shrink)

Culpability is not a unitary concept within the criminal law, and it is important to distinguish different culpability concepts and the work they do. Narrow culpability is an ingredient in wrongdoing itself, describing the agent’s elemental mens rea. Broad culpability is the responsibility condition that makes wrongdoing blameworthy and without which wrongdoing is excused. Inclusive culpability is the combination of wrongdoing and responsibility or broad culpability that functions as the retributivist desert basis for punishment. Each of these kinds of culpability (...) plays an important role in a unified retributive framework for the criminal law. Moreover, the distinction between narrow and broad culpability has significance for understanding and assessing the distinction between attributability and accountability and the nature and permissibility of strict liability crimes. (shrink)

Whether morality has rational authority is an open question insofar as we can seriously entertain conceptions of morality and practical reason according to which it need not be contrary to reason to fail to conform to moral requirements. Doubts about the authority of morality are especially likely to arise for those who hold a broadly prudential view of rationality. It is common to think of morality as including various other-regarding duties of cooperation, forbearance, and aid. Most of us also regard (...) moral obligations as authoritative practical considerations. But heeding these obligations appears sometimes to constrain the agent's pursuit of his own interests or aims. If we think of rationality in prudential terms–as what would promote the agent's own interests–we may wonder whether moral conduct is always rationally justifiable. Indeed, we do not need to think of rationality in exclusively prudential terms to raise this worry. The worry can arise even if there are impartial reasons–that is, nonderivative reasons to promote the welfare of others. (shrink)

Prudence and authenticity are sometimes seen as rival virtues. Prudence,as traditionally conceived, is temporally neutral. It attaches no intrinsic significance to the temporal location of benefits or harms within the agent’s life; the prudent agent should be equally concerned about all parts of her life. But people’s values and ideals often change over time, sometimes in predictable ways, as when middle age and parenthood often temporize youthful radicalism or spontaneity with concerns for comfort,security, and predictability. In situations involving diachronic, intrapersonal (...) conflicts of value, prudence—in particular,temporal neutrality—appears to require the agent to subordinate her current ideals to her future ones or at least to moderate pursuit of current ideals in light of future ones. But this demand may seem to sacrifice authenticity, if we suppose that authenticity requires acting on the ideals that the agent reflectively and sincerely accepts at the time of action. This tension between prudence and authenticity raises interesting questions about temporal neutrality, the structure of intrapersonal conflicts of value, the nature of ideals, and the demands of authenticity. After examining various aspects of this puzzle, I defend the commitments of prudence in situations involving intrapersonal value conflict and argue that authenticity—understood as being true to oneself— actually supports temporal neutrality. I conclude by suggesting how this defense of prudence lends credibility to the more general demand of temporal neutrality. (shrink)

This essay situates some recent empirical research on the origin, nature, role, and reliability of moral intuitions against the background of nineteenth-century debates between ethical naturalism and rational intuitionism. The legitimate heir to Millian naturalism is the contemporary method of reflective equilibrium and its defeasible reliance on moral intuitions. Recent doubts about moral intuitions—worries that they reflect the operation of imperfect cognitive heuristics, are resistant to undermining evidence, are subject to framing effects, and are variable—are best addressed by ethical naturalism (...) as part of a broad dialectical equilibrium. (shrink)

Hate speech employs discriminatory epithets to insult and stigmatize others on the basis of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or other forms of group membership. The regulation of hate speech is deservedly controversial, in part because debates over hate speech seem to have teased apart libertarian and egalitarian strands within the liberal tradition. In the civil rights movements of the 1960s, libertarian concerns with freedom of movement and association and equal opportunity pointed in the same direction as egalitarian concerns with (...) eradicating racial discrimination and the social and economic inequalities that this discrimination maintained. But debates over hate speech regulation seem to force one to give priority to equality or to liberty. On the one hand, egalitarian concerns may seem to require restricting freedom of expression. Hate speech is an expression of discriminatory attitudes that have a long, ugly, and sometimes violent history. As such, hate speech is deeply offensive to its victims and socially divisive. Though one might well be reluctant to restrict speech, it might seem that the correct response to hate speech, as with other forms of discrimination, is regulation. On the other hand, libertarian concerns may seem to constrain the pursuit of equality. Though one may abhor hate speech and its effects, the cure might seem at least as bad as the disease. Freedoms of expression are among our most fundamental liberties. Offensive ideas are part of the price one must pay to protect these constitutional rights. (shrink)