Pathological Altruism presents a number of new, thought-provoking theses that explore a range of hurtful effects of altruism and empathy.

Books VI-X of Livy's history of Rome describe the beginnings of Rome's conquest of Italy in the fourth century BC and contain some of Livy's finest writing. This is the first full-scale, scholarly commentary to be written on this part of the history in modern times. The first of three volumes, this book contains an extensive introduction and the commentary to Book VI. The introduction provides a full analysis of the Roman annalistic tradition, of Livy's style and narrative technique, and (...) of the manuscript tradition; the commentary devotes equal attention to historical, literary, linguistic, and textual matters. The remaining two volumes, which are forthcoming, will deal with Books VII-VIII and IX-X respectively. An indispensable work of reference for anyone interested in Latin literature and early Roman history, as well as for scholars of Livy himself, these three volumes represent a major new contribution to Latin scholarship. (shrink)

In the social sciences and in everyday speech we often talk about groups as if they behaved in the same way as individuals, thinking and acting as a singular being. We say for example that "Google intends to develop an automated car", "the U.S. Government believes that Syria has used chemical weapons on its people", or that "the NRA wants to protect the rights of gun owners". We also often ascribe legal and moral responsibility to groups. But could groups literally (...) intend things? Is there such a thing as a collective mind? If so, should groups be held morally responsible? Such questions are of vital importance to our understanding of the social world. In this lively, engaging introduction Deborah Tollefsen offers a careful survey of contemporary philosophers? answers to these questions, and argues for the unorthodox view that certain groups should, indeed, be treated as agents and deserve to be held morally accountable. Tollefsen explores the nature of belief, action and intention, and shows the reader how a belief in group agency can be reconciled with our understanding of individual agency and accountability. _Groups as Agents_ will be a vital resource for scholars as well as for students of philosophy and the social sciences encountering the topic for the first time. (shrink)

The revival of virtue ethics over the last thirty‐five years has produced a bewildering diversity of theories, which on the face of it seem united only by their opposition to various features of more familiar Kantian and Utilitarian ethical theories. In this paper I present a systematic account of the main positive features of virtue ethics, by articulating the common ground shared by its different varieties. I do so not to offer a fresh defence of virtue ethics, but rather to (...) provide a conceptual map that locates its main claims and arguments in relation to those of rival theories, and identifies its distinctive contribution to contemporary ethics. I set out six specific claims which are made by all forms of virtue ethics, and I explain how these claims distinguish the theory from recent character‐based forms of Kantian ethics and Utilitarianism. I then use this framework to briefly survey two main strands of virtue ethics which have been developed in the literature.1. (shrink)

A skeptic will from time to time make such claims as ‘We know nothing.’ Call this the skeptical use of the word ‘know.’ In apparent contradiction of the skeptic's claims, almost all of us firmly ascribe knowledge to ourselves and others. We use the word ‘know’ and its cognates frequently and fluently in largely untroubled communication with our fellows. We make judgments ascribing knowledge to ourselves and others. Furthermore, faced with the same situation and needing to make a judgment about (...) whether to ascribe knowledge or not, we agree on the whole with each other's ascriptions. For the sake of a term, and being careful to neglect any stray connotations it may carry, let us call this the cognitivist use of ‘know.’. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of ten essays by Douglas Gasking (1911–1994), a significant figure in Australian philosophy. There are three previously published papers, “Mathematics and the World” (proposing a form of conventionalism), “Causation and Recipes” (expounding a manipulation account of causation), and “Clusters”, (an account of certain varieties of class-membership). The seven previously unpublished papers include further work on causation, some epistemological issues, subjective probability, a carefully worked out account of the sense in which observable behaviour can be criterial (...) for mental states, and the distinction between deductive and inductive arguments.The introduction to the volume describes Gasking’s life and work, and a bibliography lists Gasking’s publication, and also works of other philosophers who have engaged with Gasking’s ideas. (shrink)

The seventeenth century was a period of extraordinary invention, discovery and revolutions in scientific, social and political orders. It was a time of expansive automation, biological discovery, rapid advances in medical knowledge, of animal trials and a questioning of the boundaries between species, human and non-human, between social classes, and of the assumed naturalness of political inequality. This book gives a tour through those objects, ordinary and extraordinary, which captivated the philosophical imagination of the single most important French philosopher of (...) this period, Rene Descartes. Deborah J. Brown and Calvin G. Normore document Descartes' attempt to make sense of the complex, composite objects of human and divine invention, consistent with the fundamental tenets of his metaphysical system. Their central argument is that, far from reducing all the categories of ordinary experience to the two basic categories of substance, mind and body, Descartes' philosophy recognises irreducible composites that resist reduction, and require their own distinctive modes of explanation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Absolute and Ordained Power of God in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century TheologyFrancis Oakley[W]e must cautiously abandon [that more specious opinion of the Platonist and Stoick]... in this, that it... blasphemously invades the cardinal Prerogative of Divinity, Omnipotence, by denying him a reserved power, of infringing, or altering any one of those Laws which [He] Himself ordained, and enacted, and chaining up his armes in the adamantine fetters of (...) Destiny.Walter Charleton, The Darknes of Atheism Dispelled by the Light of Nature : A Physico-Theologicall Treatise (London, 1652)Of the various attributes characteristically ascribed to God in the Christian tradition—goodness, wisdom, omniscience, omnipotence, and the like—it is omnipotence which of recent years has most persistently been the object of focused attention among philosophers and historians alike. That that should be the case with philosophers working in the Anglo-American analytic tradition is not altogether surprising. While it is doubtless a development few would have predicted half a century ago, the years since then have seen something of a recrudescence of interest in a legislative or divine-command ethic. 1 Had that [End Page 437] not itself conspired to make omnipotence an obvious focus of philosophic attention, the deepening contemporaneous preoccupation with modal logic or the logic of possibility would surely have succeeded in so doing. Understood classically as affirming of God the ability to do all things and connoting a virtual capacity for action (as opposed to a power exercised in actuality), omnipotence has proven to be something of a troublesome notion, inviting unrestrained speculation about hypothetical divine action and generating a veritable cat’s cradle of philosophical conundrums concerning the relationship of God’s power to his will, wisdom, goodness, and justice.Medieval theologians and philosophers alike were forced to grapple with these taxing problems, 2 and philosophers of our own era have found them no less directly pertinent to their own logical and ethical concerns. 3 In 1955 Mackie inaugurated what was destined to become an ongoing discussion of omnipotence in the philosophical journals, 4 and such philosophers as Kenny and Keane, Cowan and Wolfe, Dummett, Plantinga, Swinburne, and Geach have been drawn into the fray. Since then, as a result, the pages of Mind, Philosophy, Philosophical Review, and even The Listener have been punctuated by their efforts to grapple with those venerable questions concerning the divine power that had exercised St. Peter Damiani in the mid-eleventh century, brought Abelard to grief a half-century later, and subsequently led Peter Lombard to devote to them a crucial and influential section of his Sentences—whether God of his omnipotence could undo the past, whether he could have made things other than he had, or created a world better than he did, and so on. 5 [End Page 438]While no medievalist can be expected to be anything but gratified by this unexpected testimony to the enduring significance and power of medieval scholastic concerns, those of us interested especially in the intellectual developments of the later-medieval centuries have particular reason to be energized by it. The years since Mackie launched this contemporary philosophical debate have also seen an intensification of interest on the part of historians in the ways in which, during these particular centuries, medieval thinkers themselves came to terms with the implications of the divine omnipotence and dealt with the theological and philosophical puzzles characteristically generated by that notion. Unlike the philosophers, whose concerns have been somewhat more broad-ranging, the historians have focused in particular on a quintessentially scholastic distinction that was developed, it has been said, “as a ‘yes and no’ answer to the question whether God is able to do or arrange things other than he did in creating the orders of nature and grace.” 6 The distinction in question is that between God’s power understood as absolute and as ordained (potentia dei absoluta et ordinata), which the theologians and philosophers of the period deployed as part of their great effort of accommodation between Greek philosophical and biblical notions of the divine, and the historical significance of which the scholarship of the past forty years has served increasingly to vindicate. 7 But while that distinction has been... (shrink)

This text provides a critique of the subjective Bayesian view of statistical inference, and proposes the author's own error-statistical approach as an alternative framework for the epistemology of experiment. It seeks to address the needs of researchers who work with statistical analysis.

In many recent discussions of the morality of actions where both good and bad consequences foreseeably ensue, the moral significance of the distinction between intended and foreseen consequences is rejected. This distinction is thought to bear on the moral status of actions by those who support the Doctrine of Double Effect. According to this doctrine, roughly speaking, to perform an action intending to bring about a particular bad effect as a means to some commensurate good end is impermissible, while performing (...) an action where one intends only this good end and merely foresees the bad as an unintended sideeffect may be permissible. Consequentialists argue that this is a distinction which makes no moral difference to the evaluation of the initial act in the two cases, given that the overall consequences are the same in each case. In this paper we aim to show that a standard consequentialist line of argument against the moral relevance of the intention/foresight distinction fails. Consequentialists commonly reject the moral relevance of this distinction on the grounds that there is no asymmetry in moral responsibility between intending and foreseeing evil. We argue that even if this claim about moral responsibility is correct, it does not entail, as many Consequentialists believe, that there is no moral asymmetry between acts of intended and foreseen evil. We go on to argue that those consequentialists who do concede the moral relevance of the intention/foresight distinction at the level of agent evaluations cannot consistently make such a concession, and that such a position is in any case untenable, because it entails a complete severance of important conceptual connections between act and agent evaluations. (shrink)

Argues that the central cognitive component of ethical virtue for Aristotle is awareness of the value of particulars.

Decades before the environmental movement emerged in the 1960s, Adorno condemned our destructive and self-destructive relationship to the natural world, warning of the catastrophe that may result if we continue to treat nature as an object that exists exclusively for our own benefit. "Adorno on Nature" presents the first detailed examination of the pivotal role of the idea of natural history in Adorno's work. A comparison of Adorno's concerns with those of key ecological theorists - social ecologist Murray Bookchin, ecofeminist (...) Carolyn Merchant, and deep ecologist Arne Naess - reveals how Adorno speaks directly to many of today's most pressing environmental issues. Ending with a discussion of the philosophical conundrum of unity in diversity, "Adorno on Nature" also explores how social solidarity can be promoted as a necessary means of confronting environmental problems. (shrink)

Economists and other social scientists in this century have often supported economic arguments by referring to positions taken by philosophers of science. This important new book looks at the reliability of this practice and, in the process, provides economists, social scientists, and historians with the necessary background to discuss methodological matters with authority. Redman first presents an accurate, critical, yet neutral survey of the modern philosophy of science from the Vienna Circle to the present, focusing particularly on logical positivism, sociological (...) explanations of science (Polanyi, Fleck, Kuhn), the Popper family, and the history of science. She then deals with economic methodology in the twentieth century, looking at a wide range of methodological positions, especially those supported by positions from the philosophy of science. She considers the myth of the feasibility of falsification in economics and, within the context of its significance for economics, discusses the interpretation of Kuhn's philosophy of science as consensus and the danger such a view represents to science. Appendices review the history of the is-ought dispute and list economists whose first works deal with methodological topics. Comprehensive, readable, and accessible to those with little background knowledge, Redman's book will appeal to a wide range of social scientists and philosophers of science. (shrink)

Research on linguistic interaction suggests that two or more individuals can sometimes form adaptive and cohesive systems. We describe an “alignment system” as a loosely interconnected set of cognitive processes that facilitate social interactions. As a dynamic, multi-component system, it is responsive to higher-level cognitive states such as shared beliefs and intentions (those involving collective intentionality) but can also give rise to such shared cognitive states via bottom-up processes. As an example of putative group cognition we turn to transactive memory (...) and suggest how further research on alignment in these cases might reveal how such systems can be genuinely described as cognitive. Finally, we address a prominent critique of collective cognitive systems, arguing that there is much empirical and explanatory benefit to be gained from considering the possibility of group cognitive systems, especially in the context of small-group human interaction. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Absolute and Ordained Power of God and King in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Philosophy, Science, Politics, and LawFrancis OakleyThe quintessentially scholastic distinction between God’s power understood as absolute and ordained (potentia dei absoluta et ordinata) has been described “as a ‘yes and no’ answer to the question whether God is able to do or arrange things other than he did in creating the orders of nature and (...) grace.” 1 The importance of that distinction the historical scholarship of the past forty years has served increasingly to indicate. 2 The idea that it expressed had emerged already in the twelfth century, and in the standard form familiar to us from later years we now know it to have surfaced among the theologians of Paris in the opening years of the thirteenth. We also know that long before the end of the thirteenth century it had come to be understood in the two distinct ways that were to persist on through the late medieval and early modern centuries and to be acknowledged in the neo-scholastic manuals of the late nineteenth century.According to the first of these understandings, embedded in the classical formulations given to the distinction by Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, and many other later thinkers, the term potentia absoluta was used simply to denote God’s power in itself, taken in abstracto and without reference to the orders of nature and grace he has actually willed de potentia ordinata to establish. There was no question, that is, of the absolute power’s [End Page 669] being understood as a presently-active power by means of which God intervenes in the world to act apart from or set aside the order established by the ordained power. It refers instead to God’s ability to do many things he does not choose to do. Or put in the temporal terms that William Courtenay favors, it refers to “the total possibilities initially open to God, some of which were realized by creating the established order,” the “unrealized possibilities” being “now only hypothetically possible.” 3Side by side with this “classical” usage, however, there had emerged already in the thirteenth century what has been called a “juristic” or “opera-tionalized” understanding of the potentia dei absoluta as a presently-active power of potential interposition in the established order. Thus Duns Scotus, who gave a most influential expression to this alternative understanding, drawing an analogy not only with kings but with any free agent within whose power the law falls, distinguished between the ordained power by which God acts de jure in accordance with the rightful law he has established and the absolute power whereby de facto he can act apart from or against the law. In such a formulation the absolute power clearly exceeds the ordained. Rather than referring simply to the realm of logical possibility prior to God’s ordination of things, that absolute power is now construed as a presently-active and extraordinary power capable of acting apart from the order established de potentia ordinata and prevailing in the ordinary course of things. This “juristic” understanding of the distinction was clearly affiliated closely with the cognate distinction that medieval canonists invoked as early as the thirteenth century in an attempt to elucidate what the pope, in the absoluteness of his plenitudo potestatis, or absolute power, could do that was not open for him to do when acting in accordance with his merely ordained or “ordinary” power.Philosophy and ScienceIn an earlier and complementary article, I traced the career of the power distinction, as well as the persistence of the two distinct ways of understanding it, across the fifteenth century and on into the thinking of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theologians, Lutheran and Reformed as well as Catholic. 4 It remains now to go on to demonstrate that the currency of the distinction in these later centuries was no more confined to strictly theological circles or settings than it had been during the Middle Ages. The Coimbran commentators and Suárez certainly deployed it for more generally philosophical purposes, 5 [End Page 670] and in the seventeenth century they were by no means... (shrink)

Despite the widespread use of key concepts of the Neyman–Pearson (N–P) statistical paradigm—type I and II errors, significance levels, power, confidence levels—they have been the subject of philosophical controversy and debate for over 60 years. Both current and long-standing problems of N–P tests stem from unclarity and confusion, even among N–P adherents, as to how a test's (pre-data) error probabilities are to be used for (post-data) inductive inference as opposed to inductive behavior. We argue that the relevance of error probabilities (...) is to ensure that only statistical hypotheses that have passed severe or probative tests are inferred from the data. The severity criterion supplies a meta-statistical principle for evaluating proposed statistical inferences, avoiding classic fallacies from tests that are overly sensitive, as well as those not sensitive enough to particular errors and discrepancies. Introduction and overview 1.1 Behavioristic and inferential rationales for Neyman–Pearson (N–P) tests 1.2 Severity rationale: induction as severe testing 1.3 Severity as a meta-statistical concept: three required restrictions on the N–P paradigm Error statistical tests from the severity perspective 2.1 N–P test T(): type I, II error probabilities and power 2.2 Specifying test T() using p-values Neyman's post-data use of power 3.1 Neyman: does failure to reject H warrant confirming H? Severe testing as a basic concept for an adequate post-data inference 4.1 The severity interpretation of acceptance (SIA) for test T() 4.2 The fallacy of acceptance (i.e., an insignificant difference): Ms Rosy 4.3 Severity and power Fallacy of rejection: statistical vs. substantive significance 5.1 Taking a rejection of H0 as evidence for a substantive claim or theory 5.2 A statistically significant difference from H0 may fail to indicate a substantively important magnitude 5.3 Principle for the severity interpretation of a rejection (SIR) 5.4 Comparing significant results with different sample sizes in T(): large n problem 5.5 General testing rules for T(), using the severe testing concept The severe testing concept and confidence intervals 6.1 Dualities between one and two-sided intervals and tests 6.2 Avoiding shortcomings of confidence intervals Beyond the N–P paradigm: pure significance, and misspecification tests Concluding comments: have we shown severity to be a basic concept in a N–P philosophy of induction? (shrink)

Autism is one of the most compelling, controversial, and heartbreaking cognitive disorders. It presents unique philosophical challenges as well, raising intriguing questions in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and philosophy of language that need to be explored if the autistic population is to be responsibly served. Starting from the "theory of mind" thesis that a fundamental deficit in autism is the inability to recognize that other persons have minds, Deborah R. Barnbaum considers its implications for the nature of consciousness, (...) our understanding of the consciousness of others, meaning theories in philosophy of language, and the modality of mind. This discussion lays the groundwork for consideration of the value of an autistic life, as well as the moral theories available to persons with autism. The book also explores questions about genetic decision making, research into the nature of autism, and the controversial quest for a cure. This is a timely and wide-ranging book on a disorder that commends itself to serious ethical examination. (shrink)

This paper examines how unethical behavior in the workplace occurs when management places inordinately strong emphasis on goalattainment without a corresponding emphasis on following legitimate procedures. Robert Merton's theory of sodal structure and anomie provides a foundation to discuss this argument. Key factors affecting ethical climates in work organizations are also addressed. Based on this analysis, the paper proposes strategies for developing and changing aspects of organizational culture to reduce anomie, thereby creating work climates which discourage unethical practices and provide (...) employees with mechanisms to resolve ethical conflicts in a constructive way. (shrink)

Descartes is often accused of having fragmented the human being into two independent substances, mind and body, with no clear strategy for explaining the apparent unity of human experience. Deborah Brown argues that, contrary to this view, Descartes did in fact have a conception of a single, integrated human being, and that in his view this conception is crucial to the success of human beings as rational and moral agents and as practitioners of science. The passions are pivotal in (...) this, and in a rich and wide-ranging discussion she examines Descartes' place in the tradition of thought about the passions, the metaphysics of actions and passions, sensory representation, and Descartes' account of self-mastery and virtue. Her study is an important and original reading not only of Descartes' account of mind-body unity but also of his theory of mind. (shrink)

This paper examines how unethical behavior in the workplace occurs when management places inordinately strong emphasis on goalattainment without a corresponding emphasis on following legitimate procedures. Robert Merton's theory of sodal structure and anomie provides a foundation to discuss this argument. Key factors affecting ethical climates in work organizations are also addressed. Based on this analysis, the paper proposes strategies for developing and changing aspects of organizational culture to reduce anomie, thereby creating work climates which discourage unethical practices and provide (...) employees with mechanisms to resolve ethical conflicts in a constructive way. (shrink)

Essays cover historical, sociological, psychological and anthropological approaches, ethics and politics, and the policy implications of the real and perceived differences between the sexes.

Despite advances in palliative care, some patients still suffer significantly at the end of life. Terminal Sedation (TS) refers to the use of sedatives in dying patients until the point of death. The following limits are commonly applied: (1) symptoms should be refractory, (2) sedatives should be administered proportionally to symptoms and (3) the patient should be imminently dying. The term ‘Expanded TS’ (ETS) can be used to describe the use of sedation at the end of life outside one or (...) more of these limits.In this paper, we explore and defend ETS, focusing on jurisdictions where assisted dying is lawful. We argue that ETS is morally permissible: (1) in cases of non-refractory suffering where earlier treatments are likely to fail, (2) where gradual sedation is likely to be ineffective or where unconsciousness is a clinically desirable outcome, (3) where the patient meets all criteria for assisted dying or (4) where the patient has greater than 2 weeks to live, is suffering intolerably, and sedation is considered to be the next best treatment option for their suffering.While remaining two distinct practices, there is scope for some convergence between the criteria for assisted dying and the criteria for ETS. Dying patients who are currently ineligible for TS, or even assisted dying, should not be left to suffer. ETS provides one means to bridge this gap. (shrink)

Australia has one of the harshest regimes for the processing of asylum seekers, people who have applied for refugee status but are still awaiting an answer. It has received sharp rebuke for its policies from international human rights bodies but continues to exercise its resolve to protect its borders from those seeking protection. One means of doing so is the detention of asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat. Health care providers who care for asylum seekers in these conditions (...) experience a conflict of “dual loyalty,” whereby their role in preserving and maintaining the health of patients can run counter to their employment in detention facilities. Many psychiatrists who have worked in the detention setting engage in forms of political activism in order to change the process of seeking refuge. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno and Jürgen Habermas both champion the goal of a rational society. However, they differ significantly about what this society should look like and how best to achieve it. Exploring the premises shared by both critical theorists, along with their profound disagreements about social conditions today, this book defends Adorno against Habermas' influential criticisms of his account of Western society and prospects for achieving reasonable conditions of human life. The book begins with an overview of these critical theories (...) of Western society. Both Adorno and Habermas follow Georg Lukács when they argue that domination consists in the reifying extension of a calculating, rationalizing form of thought to all areas of human life. Their views about reification are discussed in the second chapter. In chapter three the author explores their conflicting accounts of the historical emergence and development of the type of rationality now prevalent in the West. Since Adorno and Habermas claim to have a critical purchase on reified social life, the critical leverage of their theories is assessed in chapter four. The final chapter deals with their opposing views about what a rational society would look like, as well as their claims about the prospects for establishing such a society. Adorno, Habermas and the Search for a Rational Society will be essential reading for students and researchers of critical theory, political theory and the work of Adorno and Habermas. (shrink)

In 1241/4 the theology masters at the university at Paris with their chancellor, Odo of Chateauroux, mandated by their bishop, William of Auvergne, met to condemn ten propositions against theological truth. This book represents the first comprehensive examination of what hitherto has been a largely ignored instrument in a crucial period of the university's early maturation. However, the book's ambition goes wider than this. The condemnation provides a window through which to view the wider doctrinal, intellectual, institutional and historical developments (...) within the emerging university. These include the advent of the Dominicans and Franciscans at the university; and the developing focus of Paris theologians on using their learning for preaching at a time of a rapid and sometimes divergent development of doctrine and concerns over the newly-translated Aristotelian and associated Arab and Jewish works, heresy, the Greek Church and the Jews. The book compares the condemnation's ten articles with the major statement of Catholic principles in the first canon of the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, and assesses what conclusions can be drawn from their apparent correlation. (shrink)

Numerous philosophical theories of joint agency and its intentional structure have been developed in the past few decades. These theories have offered accounts of joint agency that appeal to higher-level states that are?shared? in some way. These accounts have enhanced our understanding of joint agency, yet there are a number of lower-level cognitive phenomena involved in joint action that philosophers rarely acknowledge. In particular, empirical research in cognitive science has revealed that when individuals engage in a joint activity such as (...) conversation or joint problem solving, they become aligned at multiple levels. We argue that this phenomenon of alignment is crucial to understanding joint actions and should be integrated with philosophical approaches. In this paper, we sketch a possible integration, and draw out its implications for understanding of joint agency and collective intentionality. The result is a process-based, dynamic account of joint action that integrates both low-level and high-level states, and seeks to capture the separate processes of how a joint action is initiated and sustained. (shrink)

Could it ever be ethically justifiable to remove a dead man’s sperm to enable his partner to bear a child to him? If he had clearly indicated his agreement to this in advance, then the posthumous removal of his sperm for this purpose can be ethically justified, particularly in circumstances where the interests of the resulting child can be adequately met. Few dead men would have addressed such a possibility while alive, however, unless they had a specific reason to consider (...) such an issue, perhaps because of a terminal illness. Without a prior indication that removal of his sperm for this purpose would be in accordance with his wishes in such circumstances, the posthumous use of a man’s sperm for procreation is unethical.Posthumously removing organs and tissue from those who have given prior consent to this is commonly thought ethically acceptable. Indeed, some argue that cadaveric organ donation can be ethically …. (shrink)

The Roman Catholic Church in Australia has lobbied politicians to prohibit embryonic stem cell research, on the grounds that such research violates the sanctity and inherent dignity of human life. I suggest, however, that reasoned reflection does not uniquely support such conclusions about the morality of stem cell research. A recent parliamentary standing committee report recommended that embryonic stem cell research be allowed to proceed in certain circumstances, and there appears to be widespread support in the Australian community for this (...) position. I argue that the moral value of democracy requires parliamentarians to acknowledge the informed views of the wider community here, and to resist lobbying by church leaders on this issue. (shrink)

Over the last decade or so, there has been a renewed interest in a view about properties known as quidditism. However, a review of the literature reveals that ‘quidditism’ is used to cover a range of distinct views. In this paper I explore the logical space of distinct types of quidditism. The first distinction noted is between quidditism as a thesis explicitly about property individuation and quidditism as a principle of unrestricted property recombination. The distinction recently drawn by Dustin Locke (...) between extravagant quidditism and austere quidditism is a distinction between quidditisms of the first type. It is then argued that austere quidditism may itself be further sub-divided into what I call ‘extremely austere quidditism’ and ‘moderately austere quidditism’. Moderately austere quidditism is argued to be preferable to extremely austere quidditism and further to be able to address many of the arguments leveled against quidditism in general. (shrink)

Humans have become increasingly datafied with the use of digital technologies that generate information with and about their bodies and everyday lives. The onto-epistemological dimensions of human–data assemblages and their relationship to bodies and selves have yet to be thoroughly theorised. In this essay, I draw on key perspectives espoused in feminist materialism, vital materialism and the anthropology of material culture to examine the ways in which these assemblages operate as part of knowing, perceiving and sensing human bodies. I draw (...) particularly on scholarship that employs organic metaphors and concepts of vitality, growth, making, articulation, composition and decomposition. I show how these metaphors and concepts relate to and build on each other, and how they can be applied to think through humans’ encounters with their digital data. I argue that these theoretical perspectives work to highlight the material and embodied dimensions of human–data assemblages as they grow and are enacted, articulated and incorporated into everyday lives. (shrink)

What is the trouble with schools and why should we want to make ‘school trouble’? Schooling is implicated in the making of educational and social exclusions and inequalities as well as the making of particular sorts of students and teachers. For this reason schools are important sites of counter- or radical- politics. In this book, Deborah Youdell brings together theories of counter-politics and radical traditions in education to make sense of the politics of daily life inside schools and explores (...) a range of resources for thinking about and enacting political practices that make ‘school trouble’. The book offers a solid introduction to the much-debated issues of ‘intersectionality’ and the limits of identity politics and the relationship between schooling and the wider policy and political context. It pieces together a series of tools and tactics that might destabilize educational inequalities by unsettling the knowledges, meanings, practices, subjectivities and feelings that are normalized and privileged in the ‘business as usual’ of school life. Engaging with curriculum materials, teachers’ lesson plans and accounts of their pedagogy, and ethnographic observations of school practices, the book investigates a range of empirical examples of critical action in school, from overt political action pursued by educators to day-to-day pedagogic encounters between teachers and students. The book draws on the work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Chantel Mouffe, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to make sense of these practices and identify the political possibilities for educators who refuse to accept the everyday injustices and wide-reaching social inequalities that face us. _School Trouble_ appears at a moment of political and economic flux and uncertainty, and when the policy moves that have promoted markets and private sector involvement in education around the globe have been subject to intense scrutiny and critique. Against this backdrop, renewed attention is being paid to the questions of how politics might be rejuvenated, how societies might be made fair, and what role education might have in pursing this. This book makes an important intervention into this terrain. By exploring a politics of discourse, an anti-identity politics, a politics of feeling, and a politics of becoming, it shows how the education assemblage can be unsettled and education can be re-imagined. The book will be of interest to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and scholars in the fields of education, sociology, cultural studies, and social and political science as well as to critical educators looking for new tools for thinking about their practice. (shrink)

The Well-Ordered Universe argues that Cavendish's natural philosophy, social and political philosophy, and medical theory share an underlying concern with order. This reveals interesting connections among Cavendish's natural philosophy and her views on gender, animals and the environment, and human health, and explains her commitment to monarchy and social hierarchy.

This is a book about Aristotle's philosophy of language, interpreted in a framework that provides a comprehensive interpretation of Aristotle's metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology and science. The aim of the book is to explicate the description of meaning contained in De Interpretatione and to show the relevance of that theory of meaning to much of the rest of Aristotle's philosophy. In the process Deborah Modrak reveals how that theory of meaning has been much maligned. This is a major (...) reassessment of an underestimated aspect of Aristotle that will be of particular interest to classical philosophers, classicists and historians of psychology and cognitive science. (shrink)

Research has found that children possess a broad bias in favor of teleological - or purpose-based - explanations of natural phenomena. The current two experiments explored whether adults implicitly possess a similar bias. In Study 1, undergraduates judged a series of statements as "good" or "bad" explanations for why different phenomena occur. Judgments occurred in one of three conditions: fast speeded, moderately speeded, or unspeeded. Participants in speeded conditions judged significantly more scientifically unwarranted teleological explanations as correct, but were not (...) more error-prone on control items. Study 2 extended these findings by examining the relationship between different aspects of adults’ "promiscuous teleology" and other variables such as scientific knowledge, religious beliefs, and inhibitory control. Implications of these findings for scientific literacy are discussed. (shrink)

Philosophers of language are increasingly engaging with derogatory terms or slurs. Only few theorists take such language as a starting point for addressing puzzles in philosophy of language with little connection to our real-world problems. This paper aims to show that the political nature of derogatory language use calls for non-ideal theorising as we find it in the work of feminist and critical race scholars. Most contemporary theories of slurs, so I argue, fall short on some desiderata associated with a (...) non-ideal approach. They neglect crucial linguistic or political aspects of morally and politically significant meaning. I argue that a two-stage project is necessary to understand the perniciousness of slurs: accounting for the derogatory content of derogatory terms in general and, additionally, explaining the communicative function of slurs more specifically. I end by showing how inferentialism is well-suited to account for the content of derogatory terms whilst allowing for further explanations of the communicative functions of slurs. (shrink)

Australia's policy of mandatory indefinite detention of those seeking asylum and arriving without valid documents has led to terrible human rights abuses and cumulative deterioration in health for those incarcerated. We argue that there is an imperative to research and document the plight of those who have suffered at the hands of the Australian government and its agents. However, the normal tools available to those engaged in health research may further erode the rights and well being of this population, requiring (...) a rethink of existing research ethics paradigms to approaches that foster advocacy research and drawing on the voices of those directly affected, including those bestowed with duty of care for this population. (shrink)