L'ouvrage s'articule autour de deux perspectives. La première consiste à analyser des processus factuels touchant la réalité, mais aussi les représentations, la hiérarchie des valeurs, le statut de la violence au sein des démocraties contemporaines. Il ne s'agit pas de donner une vision globale, mais de mettre en évidence des transformations singulières, obscures et inaperçues qui affectent pourtant profondément la politique et sont susceptibles de rendre compte des dérives de la démocratie aujourd'hui. Ainsi, le monstre ordinaire, le maître anonyme, la (...) nouvelle trinité sont des concepts qui permettent de comprendre les métamorphoses du rapport entre la norme et sa transgression, la mise en place de nouveaux dispositifs de domination ou encore l'hégémonie de valeurs purement instrumentales. La seconde est normative, elle entend dépasser les faits pour s'interroger sur notre capacité à repenser et à changer le cours des choses au plan politique. Il en va ainsi de la reconsidération de la notion de légitimité démocratique, de la distinction des différents modes de consultation des populations, de l'élucidation des modes d'identification collectifs, des réflexions sur les conditions d'une laïcité vivante. (shrink)

BackgroundThe experiences of UK ethnic minority healthcare workers are crucial to ameliorating the disproportionate COVID-19 infection rate and outcomes in the UKEM community. We conducted a qualitative study on UKEM healthcare workers’ perspectives on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the UKEM community.MethodsParticipants were 15 UKEM healthcare workers. Data were collected using individual and joint interviews, and a focus group, and analyzed using thematic analysis.ResultsWe generated three themes: heterogeneity, mistrust, and mitigating. Therein, participants distinguished CVH in the UKEM community in educational attainment (...) and ethnicity. They pointed to the role of mistrust in CVH in the UKEM community. They opined that the mistrust underlying CVH in the UKEM community is rooted in history and religion, conspiracy theories, the speedy development and novelty of the vaccines, post-vaccination complications/side effects, false positive test results, and social media and social support/influence. Participants recommended that interventions targeted at mitigating CVH in the UKEM community need to, in a non-judgmental way, tackle dis/misinformation and provide education, and incorporate UKEM healthcare worker endorsement. They also suggested such interventions be community-oriented, enhance the convenience of vaccination centers and the possibility of vaccine choice, and appreciate that overcoming CVH and accepting vaccination is a gradual process involving personal assessment of risks and benefits.ConclusionCVH in the UKEM community is a multifaceted phenomenon requiring multicomponent interventions. (shrink)

For most of the history of prejudice research, negativity has been treated as its emotional and cognitive signature, a conception that continues to dominate work on the topic. By this definition, prejudice occurs when we dislike or derogate members of other groups. Recent research, however, has highlighted the need for a more nuanced and “inclusive” (Eagly 2004) perspective on the role of intergroup emotions and beliefs in sustaining discrimination. On the one hand, several independent lines of research have shown that (...) unequal intergroup relations are often marked by attitudinal complexity, with positive responses such as affection and admiration mingling with negative responses such as contempt and resentment. Simple antipathy is the exception rather than the rule. On the other hand, there is mounting evidence that nurturing bonds of affection between the advantaged and the disadvantaged sometimes entrenches rather than disrupts wider patterns of discrimination. Notably, prejudice reduction interventions may have ironic effects on the political attitudes of the historically disadvantaged, decreasing their perceptions of injustice and willingness to engage in collective action to transform social inequalities.These developments raise a number of important questions. Has the time come to challenge the assumption that negative evaluations are inevitably the cognitive and affective hallmarks of discrimination? Is the orthodox concept of prejudice in danger of side-tracking, if not obstructing, progress towards social justice in a fuller sense? What are the prospects for reconciling a prejudice reduction model of change, designed to get people to like one another more, with a collective action model of change, designed to ignite struggles to achieve intergroup equality? (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume all explore the problem of the relation between moral philosophy and modernity. Charles Larmore addresses this problem by attempting to define the way distinctive forms of modern experience should orientate our moral thinking. Charles Larmore wonders whether the dominant forms of modern philosophy have not become blind to important dimensions of the moral life. The book argues against recent attempts to return to the virtue-centered perspective of ancient Greek ethics. As well as (...) exploring the differences between ancient and modern ethics, the author examines such topics as the roles of reason and history in our moral understanding, the inadequacy of philsophical naturalism, and the foundations of modern liberalism. There are also extended discussions of a number of leading contemporary philosophers: Rawls, Habermas, Williams and Rorty. (shrink)

[David Charles] Aristotle, it appears, sometimes identifies well-being with one activity, sometimes with several, including ethical virtue. I argue that this appearance is misleading. In the Nicomachean Ethics, intellectual contemplation is the central case of human well-being, but is not identical with it. Ethically virtuous activity is included in human well-being because it is an analogue of intellectual contemplation. This structure allows Aristotle to hold that while ethically virtuous activity is valuable in its own right, the best life available (...) for humans is centred around, but not wholly constituted by, intellectual contemplation. /// [Dominic Scott] In Nicomachean Ethics X 7-8, Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of eudaimonia, primary and secondary. The first corresponds to contemplation, the second to activity in accordance with moral virtue and practical reason. My task in this paper is to elucidate this distinction. Like Charles, I interpret it as one between paradigm and derivative cases; unlike him, I explain it in terms of similarity, not analogy. Furthermore, once the underlying nature of the distinction is understood, we can reconcile the claim that paradigm eudaimonia consists just in contemplation with a passage in the first book requiring eudaimonia to involve all intrinsic goods. (shrink)

Autonomy is a vital principle in medical law and ethics. It occupies a prominent place in all medico-legal and ethical debate. But there is a dangerous presumption that it should have the only vote, or at least the casting vote. This book is an assault on that presumption, and an audit of autonomy's extraordinary status. This book surveys the main issues in medical law, noting in relation to each issue the power wielded by autonomy, asking whether that power can be (...) justified, and suggesting how other principles can and should contribute to the law. It concludes that autonomy's status cannot be intellectually or ethically justified, and that positive discrimination in favour of the other balancing principles is urgently needed in order to avoid some sinister results. 'This book is a sustained attack on the hegemony of the idea of autonomy in medical ethics and law. Charles Foster is no respecter of authority, whether of university professors or of law Lords. He grabs his readers by their lapels and shakes sense into them through a combination of no-nonsense rhetoric and subtle argument that is difficult to resist.' Tony Hope, Professor of Medical Ethics, Oxford University 'This book is unlikely to be in pristine state by the time you have finished reading it. Whether that is because you have thrown it in the air in celebration or thrown it across the room in frustration will depend on your perspective. But this book cannot leave you cold. It is a powerful polemic on the dominance of autonomy in medical law, which demands a reaction. Charles Foster sets out a powerful case that academic medical lawyers have elevated autonomy to a status it does not deserve in either ethical or legal terms. In a highly engaging, accessible account, he challenges many of the views which have become orthodox within the academic community. This will be a book which demands and will attract considerable debate.' Jonathan Herring, Exeter College, Oxford University 'This is a learned, lively and thought-provoking discussion of problems central to the courts' approach to ethical issues in medical law. What principles are involved? More significantly, which really underlie and inform the process of seeking justice in difficult cases? Charles Foster persuasively argues, and demonstrates, that respect for autonomy is but one of a number of ethical principles which interact and may conflict. He also addresses the sensitive issue of the extent to which thoughts and factors which go to influence legal decisions may not appear in the judgments.' Adrian Whitfield QC. 'Introducing the Jake La Motta of medical ethics. Foster is an academic street-fighter who has bloodied his hands in the court room. He provides a stinging, relentless, ground attack on the Goliath of medical ethics: the central place of autonomy in liberal medical ethics. This is now the first port of call for those who feel that medical ethics has become autonomized.' Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, University of Oxford. "This important book offers a robust challenge to anyone, whether lawyer or 'ethicist', who sees respect for autonomy as the only game in town. It argues eloquently and effectively that, on the one hand, despite the reverence paid to it by judges, in practice the law, even in the context of consent, weaves together a number of moral threads of which autonomy is merely one, in the pursuit of a good decision. It argues on the other hand, that were the day-to-day practice of law to be guided primarily by respect for autonomy, this would be wrong. Foster concludes that whilst, 'any society that does not have laws robustly protecting autonomy is an unsafe and unhappy one', so too would be a society in which too much emphasis was placed on respect for autonomy at the expense of other important moral principles. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the role of autonomy and indeed of medical ethics, in the law." Michael Parker, Professor of Bioethics, University of Oxford. (shrink)

[David Charles] Aristotle, it appears, sometimes identifies well-being with one activity, sometimes with several, including ethical virtue. I argue that this appearance is misleading. In the Nicomachean Ethics, intellectual contemplation is the central case of human well-being, but is not identical with it. Ethically virtuous activity is included in human well-being because it is an analogue of intellectual contemplation. This structure allows Aristotle to hold that while ethically virtuous activity is valuable in its own right, the best life available (...) for humans is centred around, but not wholly constituted by, intellectual contemplation. /// [Dominic Scott] In Nicomachean Ethics X 7-8, Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of eudaimonia, primary and secondary. The first corresponds to contemplation, the second to activity in accordance with moral virtue and practical reason. My task in this paper is to elucidate this distinction. Like Charles, I interpret it as one between paradigm and derivative cases; unlike him, I explain it in terms of similarity, not analogy. Furthermore, once the underlying nature of the distinction is understood, we can reconcile the claim that paradigm eudaimonia consists just in contemplation with a passage in the first book requiring eudaimonia to involve all intrinsic goods. (shrink)

The recent retrieval of Christian humanism by Charles Taylor and Nicholas Boyle invites further theological elaboration; in particular, to clarify the relationship between their humanist concern for the common good and their Christian desire for religious transcendence. Jacques Maritain provides some such elaboration by grounding Christian humanism on the doctrine of the Incarnation. This article complements that foundation through a consideration of the Thomistic doctrine of hope, which describes how the believer approaches God under the aspect of the human (...) good. Hope therefore includes, in a single virtue, the two potentially disparate elements of contemporary Christian humanism. Concluding reflections on recent interpretations of Vatican II and on religious fundamentalism give some historical substance to this theoretical claim. (shrink)

The collapse of historicism was not merely the demise of an academic tradition but signified a shift in the understanding of hermeneutics and metaphysics. Whereas earlier books have explored the rise and dominance of historicism within academic history, this is the first to trace its collapse and to show how it was shaped by larger philosophical and scientific concerns. Charles R. Bambach's lucid account of the demise of historicism within the context of German metaphysics provides a rich new perspective (...) on the development of the young Heidegger's concept of "historicity" and on the origins of postmodern thought. Bambach reconstructs the methodological debates arising from a pervasive sense of crisis among German philosophers in the late nineteenth century. He details the divergent attempts by the Neo-Kantians, Nietzsche, and Dilthey to overcome the limitations of historical relativism. Heidegger's view of "historicity," Bambach shows, radically transforms the problematic of historicism into a discourse concerning the crisis of philosophical modernity. (shrink)

This book is about the liberation of the concept of life from the bondage fashioned by the interpreters of life ever since biology began, and about the liberation of the life of humans and non-humans alike from the bondage of social structures and behaviour, which now threatens the fullness of life's possibilities if not survival itself. It falls into a tradition of writings about human problems from a perspective informed by biology. It rejects the mechanistic model of life dominant in (...) the Western world and develops an alternative 'ecological model' which is applicable to the life of the cell and the life of the human community. For the first time it brings together in one work the insights of modern biology with those of a modern holistic philosophy and a liberal theology in a way which challenges conventional approaches to science, agriculture, sociology, politics, economics, development and liberation movements. (shrink)

In a recent paper “Safety, Sensitivity, and Differential Support” (Synthese, December 2017), Jose Zalabardo argues that (contra Sosa in Philos Perspect 33(13):141–153,1999) sensitivity can be differentially supported as the correct requirement for propositional knowledge. Zalabardo argues that safety fails to dominate sensitivity; specifically: some cases of knowledge failure can only be explained by sensitivity. In this paper, I resist Zalabardo’s conclusion that domination failure confers differential support for sensitivity. Specifically, I argue that counterexamples to sensitivity undermine differential support for sensitivity. (...) Using Zalabardo’s modal framework, I consider a less demanding modal condition, what I call weak sensitivity, and I explain how weak sensitivity avoids an influential counterexample to sensitivity. However, I argue that we can subvert that counterexample only by abandoning Zalabardo’s case for domination failure. So either way, we cannot differentially support sensitivity. (shrink)

The “Occupy Wall Street!” movement has stimulated a long listing of other candidates for radical “occupation.” In this paper, I suggest the occupation of liberalism itself. I argue for a constructive engagement of radicals with liberalism in order to retrieve it for a radical egalitarian agenda. My premise is that the foundational values of liberalism have a radical potential that has not historically been realized, given the way the dominant varieties of liberalism have developed. Ten reasons standardly given as to (...) why such a retrieval cannot be carried out are examined and shown to be fallacious. (shrink)

The “Occupy Wall Street!” movement has stimulated a long listing of other candidates for radical “occupation.” In this paper, I suggest the occupation of liberalism itself. I argue for a constructive engagement of radicals with liberalism in order to retrieve it for a radical egalitarian agenda. My premise is that the foundational values of liberalism have a radical potential that has not historically been realized, given the way the dominant varieties of liberalism have developed. Ten reasons standardly given as to (...) why such a retrieval cannot be carried out are examined and shown to be fallacious. (shrink)

I argue that verbal models should be included in a philosophical account of the scientific practice of modelling. Weisberg (2013) has directly opposed this thesis on the grounds that verbal structures, if they are used in science, only merely describe models. I look at examples from Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) of verbally constructed narratives that I claim model the general phenomenon of evolution by natural selection. In each of the cases I look at, a particular scenario is (...) described that involves at least some fictitious elements but represents the salient causal components of natural selection. I pronounce the importance of prioritising observation of scientific practice for the philosophy of modelling and I suggest that there are other likely model types that are excluded from philosophical accounts. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

We are living in a time of polarization. Cultural and educational institutions are confronted with the responsibility to provide tools and spaces for critical reflection, for engagement, and, more fundamentally, for meeting and recognizing each other in our differences. In this decolonial essay Rolando Vázquez introduces his critique which offers an option for thinking and doing beyond the dominant paradigms. It provides a critical analysis of modernity understood broadly as the western project of civilization, while it seeks to overcome the (...) dominion of western epistemology and aesthetics and their embedded eurocentrism and anthropocentrism. Importantly for decolonial thought we are all located in relation to the colonial difference that structures our modern/colonial order. It is only from an awareness of our positioned realities that we can enter in relation with each-other, that we can listen to each-other and learn each-other. 'Vistas of Modernity' is a new title in a series of essays commissioned by the Mondriaan Fund, concerning actual topics about visual arts and cultural heritage. Eelco van der Lingen (director Mondriaan Fund): Rolando Vázquez is cautious in presenting his analysis. He does not look for quick conclusions, but slowly guides the reader through the context of our history and the contemporary labyrinth of text, language, symbols and images which (often without being properly noticed) give great meaning to our existence. His decolonial aesthesis lifts us above the labyrinth and offers us a new panorama. (shrink)

The ethics of domination—that “might makes right”—involves essentially two components: first, the judgment that one group, the dominate group, is superior to another group, the subordinate group; and second, the moral principle that the superior group has the right to dominate—to control, exploit, subjugate, exterminate, even devour—the inferior group. Together these two claims provide a moral justification for domination— the domination of one culture by another, one gender by another, one socio-economic class by another, one species by another. My aim (...) in this article is to explore how religion, language, education, and industry have shaped our moral consciousness of oppressed groups—particularly animals—and rationalized their exploitation. (shrink)

White supremacy is the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today. You will not find this term in introductory, or even advanced, texts in political theory. A standard undergraduate philosophy course will start off with plato and Aristotle, perhaps say something about Augustine, Aquinas, and Machiavelli, move on to Hobbes, Locke, Mill, and Marx, and then wind up with Rawls and Nozick. It will introduce you to notions of aristocracy, democracy, absolutism, liberalism, representative government, (...) socialism, welfare capitalism, andlibertarianism. But though it covers more than two thousand years of Western political thought and runs the ostensible gamut of political systems, there will be no mention of the basic political system that has shaped the world for the past several hundred years. And this omission is not accidental. Rather, it reflects the fact that standard textbooks and courses have for the most part been written and designed by whites, who take their racial privilege so much for granted that they do not even see it as political, as a form of domination. Ironically, the most important political system of recent global history-the system of domination by which white people have historically ruled over and, in certain important ways, continue to rule over nonwhite people-is not seen as a political system at all. It is just taken for granted; it is the background against which other systems, which we are to see as political are highlighted. This book is an attempt to redirect your vision, to make you see what, in a sense, has been there all along. (shrink)

It is perhaps most useful to approach the Doctor-Patient relationship (DPR) by admitting that it’s complicated. We review some of the strategies that have been employed to mitigate this complexity, zeroing in on one that promises to capture the main features of the DPR without eliminating some of its more important, existential components; pieces of the puzzle that must be retained if we are to avoid oversimplification and the errors that can arise by ignoring important foundational properties. We believe that (...) a useful way to look at the DPR and to capture essential features that must be balanced in the process is provided by Partnership Theory and its definition in terms of the so-called domination and partnership systems. We apply this theory to the DPR and investigate the implications of this application to health care. We see that in the absence of mitigating circumstances, adoption of the patient-as-partner model serves healthcare well and is flexible enough to accommodate circumstances that dictate modifications. (shrink)

The category of ‘organism’ has an ambiguous status: is it scientific or is it philosophical? Or, if one looks at it from within the relatively recent field or sub-field of philosophy of biology, is it a central, or at least legitimate category therein, or should it be dispensed with? In any case, it has long served as a kind of scientific “bolstering” for a philosophical train of argument which seeks to refute the “mechanistic” or “reductionist” trend, which has been perceived (...) as dominant since the 17th century, whether in the case of Stahlian animism, Leibnizian monadology, the neo-vitalism of Hans Driesch, or, lastly, of the “phenomenology of organic life” in the 20th century, with authors such as Kurt Goldstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Georges Canguilhem. In this paper I try to reconstruct some of the main interpretive ‘stages’ or ‘layers’ of the concept of organism in order to critically evaluate it. How might ‘organism’ be a useful concept if one rules out the excesses of ‘organismic’ biology and metaphysics? Varieties of instrumentalism and what I call the ‘projective’ concept of organism are appealing, but perhaps ultimately unsatisfying. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

The purpose of this paper is to review the rising influence of commercialism in American medicine and to examine some of the consequences of this trend. Increased competition subverts physician collegiality, draws hospitals into for-profit ownership and behavior, and leads clinical investigators into secrecy and possibly into bias and abuse. Medicine faces a deprofessionalization evidenced in loss of control over the clinical setting and over self-regulation. Health care becomes a commodity relying on cultivation of desires instead of satisfaction of needs, (...) even as many basic needs go unmet. Patients become consumers empowered with lawsuits and the connection of medicine to the relief of suffering is attenuated. Medical encounters are increasingly impersonal, dominated by specialization, technology, and bureaucracy. Patients are losing their physician-advocates to new conflicts of interests, physicians are losing their impulse to charity, and trust in the doctor-patient relationship and in medicine generally is eroding. (shrink)

This paper explores the incongruence between white South Africans’ pre- and post-apartheid experiences of home and identity, of which a wave of emigration is arguably a result. Among the commonest reasons given for emigrating are crime and affirmative action; however, this paper uncovers a deeper motivation for emigration using Charles Taylor’s concept of the social imaginary and Martin Heidegger’s concept of dwelling. The skewed social imaginary maintained by apartheid created an unrealistic sense of dwelling for most white South Africans. (...) After 1994, the conditions supporting this imaginary disintegrated. Many white South Africans feel so strong a sense of unease they can no longer dwell in the country. Many try to escape through emigration, but carry unresolved questions of identity and belonging to their new “homes.”. (shrink)

Some epistemic agents will not change their position on a claim. These are dogmatists, common creatures in our epistemic communities. This paper discusses the population-level epistemic effects of increasing numbers of dogmatists. All agents in the model are assigned a degree of belief (using a Likert-type scale) and adopt the beliefs of others in interactions. Subsets of agents are dogmatists. Analysis of model results suggests that even a modest increase in a group's dogmatists can have substantial effects on belief spread. (...) I conclude by arguing that the model (a) helps identify two kinds of dogmatists and (b) suggests another way epistemic bubbles can form. (shrink)

Molly Anderson’s 2020 Presidential Address for the Agriculture and Human Values Society, is a bold call to action that considers the scope and depth of the challenges facing global food systems. This call has particular relevance to scholars who are closely aligned with struggles for food justice and food sovereignty. In this discussion piece, I suggest additional nuance that builds and expands on Anderson’s three opportunities for “pushing beyond the boundaries”. First, collaborations for social and ecological change must be willing (...) to expand predominant ideas to the varied ways that people engage with food systems. Second, interactions with global social movements demands grounding our work in the hearts and minds of individuals and communities while also addressing structural concerns at the levels of governance that enable and constrain food system functions. Third, food systems thinking and action must begin with our relationships to the land and its original inhabitants. The settler colonial project is integrally connected to the dominant food system that is premised on exploitation and control of land, water and people. As scholar allies, “pushing the boundaries” demands acknowledging ways that we are complicit in unjust systems and ways that we benefit from them; doing the personal work required for unlearning and relearning; being prepared to take actions that move towards more equitable and sustainable food systems; and, accepting the potential risks and material consequences that equity demands. (shrink)

This article concerns the prescriptive function of decision analysis. Consider an agent who must choose an action yielding welfare that varies with an unknown state of nature. It is often asserted that such an agent should adhere to consistency axioms which imply that behavior can be represented as maximization of expected utility. However, our agent is not concerned the consistency of his behavior across hypothetical choice sets. He only wants to make a reasonable choice from the choice set that he (...) actually faces. Hence, I reason that prescriptions for decision making should respect actuality. That is, they should promote welfare maximization in the choice problem the agent actually faces. Any choice respecting weak and stochastic dominance is rational from the actualist perspective. (shrink)

The first book to investigate the relevance of Theodor W. Adorno's work for theorizing the age of neoliberal capitalism. Through an engagement with Adorno's critical theory of society, Charles Prusik advances a novel approach to understanding the origins and development of neoliberalism. Offering a corrective to critics who define neoliberalism as an economic or political doctrine, Prusik argues that Adorno's dialectical theory of society can provide the basis for explaining the illusions and forms of domination that structure contemporary life. (...) Prusik explains the importance of Marx's critique of commodity fetishism in shaping Adorno's work and focuses on the related concepts of exchange, ideology, and natural history as powerful tools for grasping the present. Through an engagement with the ideas of neoliberal economic theory, Adorno and Neoliberalism criticizes the naturalization of capitalist institutions, social relations, ideology, and cultural forms. Revealing its origins in the crises of the Fordist period, Prusik develops Adorno's analyses of class, exploitation, monopoly, and reification to situate neoliberal policies as belonging to the fundamental antagonisms of capitalist society. (shrink)

In this article the author responds to the mini-symposium on his work provided by Kathryn Gines and Shannon Sullivan, both of whom focus on the issue of intersectionality. Gines's article looks at the treatment of race and gender in one of the chapters in Mills's book with Carole Pateman, Contract and Domination. Her major criticism centers on what she sees as Mills's failure to recognize nonwhite men's patriarchal domination of nonwhite women. However, the present article claims that this criticism is (...) simply a misreading of what Mills says in the chapter. Sullivan's article reviews the various stages in Mills's career path, with special attention to race and class. Her major criticism is that while nominally conceding intersectionality, Mills still holds on to the assumption that different variables can be discretely singled out. In reply, this article argues that a recognition of intersectionality need not commit one to rejecting claims about the possible differential causal and explanatory significance of the intersecting variables. (shrink)

Are there some newborn infants whose short- and long-term care costs are so great that treatment should not be provided and they should be allowed to die? Public discourse and academic debate about the ethics of newborn intensive care has often shied away from this question. There has been enough ink spilt over whether or when for the infant's sake it might be better not to provide life-saving treatment. The further question of not saving infants because of inadequate resources has (...) seemed too difficult, too controversial, or perhaps too outrageous to even consider. However, Roman Catholic ethicist Charles Camosy has recently challenged this, arguing that costs should be a primary consideration in decision-making in neonatal intensive care. In the first part of this paper I will outline and critique Camosy's central argument, which he calls the ‘social quality of life (sQOL)’ model. Although there are some conceptual problems with the way the argument is presented, even those who do not share Camosy's Catholic background have good reason to accept his key point that resources should be considered in intensive care treatment decisions for all patients. In the second part of the paper, I explore the ways in which we might identify which infants are too expensive to treat. I argue that both traditional personal ‘quality of life’ and Camosy's ‘sQOL’ should factor into these decisions, and I outline two practical proposals. (shrink)

The category of« organism » has an ambiguous status: scientific or philosophical? In any case, it has long served as a kind of scientific « bolstering » for a philosophical train of argument which seeks to refute the « mechanistic » or « reductionist » trend, which is seen as dominant since the 17th century, whether in the case of Stahlian animism, Leibnizian monadology, the neo-vitalism of Hans Driesch, or, lastly, of the « phenomenology of organic life » in the (...) 20th century, with authors such as Goldstein, Straws, and Weizsäcker, whose influence on Merleau-Ponty but also Canguilhem is obvious. The aim of this article is both to bring to light the sedimentation of this category and to give a critical evaluation of it, in other words, to sec in what way it might still be useful once one has eliminated the possibility of any « organicist » excesses. I suggest a notion of organism as an instrumental fiction. (shrink)

From one of our most outspoken feminist critics, this collection explores various ways in which the body can be rethought of as a site of knowledge rather than as a medium to move beyond or dominate.

This work is a translation of the first chapter from Charles Taylor's book “Modern Social Imaginaries”. The author focuses on the hypothesis that we will be able to shed the light on both initial and contemporary contradictions in the understanding of modernity, if we take into account that modernity is inextricably linked with a certain kind of social imaginary. Distinctions between multiple modernities should be as well understood in terms of social imaginaries involved. Central to Western modernity is a (...) new conception of the social moral order. Initially formed in the minds of several influential intellectuals, this concept later started to shape social imagination of different social groups, and then of societies. Nowadays the modern moral order has become so self-evident to us that it is difficult to consider it as just one of the possible concepts. One of the results of this order dominating over other conceptions in our social imaginary was the emergence of certain social forms that characterize the essence of Western modernity: a market economy, the public sphere, self-government, etc. (shrink)

The Meaning of Evil is one of the most profound yet accessible books written on this immensely important, (and never more timely) topic. Deeply immersed in the highest traditions of realist philosophy and theology, Journet addresses the truly important issues surrouding the nature of evil and the burning questions demanded of us by its existence and (on occasion) seeming dominance in our world. Topics addressed include: definitions of evil throughout history; the actual forms of evil?including the two forms of evil (...) in man; and the inescapeable questions: ?Does evil come from God?? ?Is God responsible for Sin?? and ?What is God bound to do in his infinit goodness? as a consequence? Journet also discusses the temptation to suicide and the right attitude toward evil; and, finally, why the existence of evil actually proves, not disproves, the existence of an all-good God.This republication of "The Meaning of Evil" (first published in English in 1963) also contains, as an extended introduction, a major re-assessment of Journet and his impressive corpus of work, as well as a theoretical treatment of Journet?s concept of evil in the universe and as an ever-present element in the human condition. (shrink)

Until very recently the received wisdom on Russell’s moral philosophy was that it is uninspired and derivative, from Moore in its first phase and from Hume and the emotivists in its second. In my view this is a consensus of error. In the latter part of this essay I contend: 1) that Russell’s ‘work in moral philosophy’ had at least three, and (depending how you look at it) up to six ‘main phases’; 2) that in some of those phases, it (...) was not derivative, but on the contrary, highly original; 3) that Russell was a pioneer of two of the chief forms of ethical anti-realism that have dominated debate in this century, emotivism and the error theory (so that if the theory of Human Society was derived from emotivism, it was derived from a family of theories that Russell himself helped to create); 4) that the revolt against Hegelianism, which led to the birth of Analytic Philosophy, had an ethical dimension to it; and 5) that Russell played an important part in the debates that led up to Moore’s Principia Ethica, so that the view form which his own opinions were derived is one that he helped to develop. -/- I also argue that Russell himself pioneered a rather puritanical conception of philosophy which tended to extrude his own writings on politics and practical ethics as not really philosophical. Since this conception has been largely abandoned, it is time to let them back into the fold. I argue that this views of practical affairs are often backed by interesting philosophical arguments, illustrating this thesis with a reconstruction and critique of Russell’s Hobbesian argument for world government. (shrink)

[David Charles] Aristotle, it appears, sometimes identifies well-being with one activity, sometimes with several, including ethical virtue. I argue that this appearance is misleading. In the Nicomachean Ethics, intellectual contemplation is the central case of human well-being, but is not identical with it. Ethically virtuous activity is included in human well-being because it is an analogue of intellectual contemplation. This structure allows Aristotle to hold that while ethically virtuous activity is valuable in its own right, the best life available (...) for humans is centred around, but not wholly constituted by, intellectual contemplation. /// [Dominic Scott] In Nicomachean Ethics X 7-8, Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of eudaimonia, primary and secondary. The first corresponds to contemplation, the second to activity in accordance with moral virtue and practical reason. My task in this paper is to elucidate this distinction. Like Charles, I interpret it as one between paradigm and derivative cases; unlike him, I explain it in terms of similarity, not analogy. Furthermore, once the underlying nature of the distinction is understood, we can reconcile the claim that paradigm eudaimonia consists just in contemplation with a passage in the first book requiring eudaimonia to involve all intrinsic goods. (shrink)

This article makes six points, using evidence from the Iranian Revolution of 1979: (1) Causal mechanisms, indeed all explanations, imply certain inner states on the part of individuals. (2) The experience of revolution is dominated by confusion. (3) People involved in revolutions act largely in response to their best guesses about how others are going to act. (4) These guesses and responses can shift swiftly and dramatically, in ways that participants and observers cannot predict. (5) Explanation involves retroactive prediction: it (...) implies that if we had recognized causal factors A, B, or C at the time, we would have expected some ensuing development. (6) To the extent that revolutionary experience is characterized by confusion, then understanding this experience may disconfirm all explanation. Key Words: understanding • Verstehen • explanation • revolution. (shrink)

Is blue food desirable or disgusting? The answer, it would seem, is both, but it really depends on the food in which the color happens to be present. It turns out that the oft-cited aversive response to blue meat may not even have been scientifically validated, despite the fact that blue food coloring is often added to discombobulate diners. In the case of drinks, however, there has been a recent growth of successful new blue product launches in everything from beer (...) to tea, and from wine to gin, arguing that coloring food products blue is more than simply a contemporary fad. In fact, the current interest in blue food coloring builds on the color's earlier appearance in everything from blue curacao to blue-raspberry candyfloss, and thereafter a number of soft drinks. Over the years, the combination of blue coloring with raspberry flavoring has also appeared in everything from bubble-gum to patriotic pop rocks. Ultimately, it is the rarity of naturally-blue foods that is likely what makes this color so special. As such, blue food coloring can both work effectively to attract the visual attention of the shopper while, at the same time, being linked to a range of different flavors depending on the food format in which it happens to appear. Note also that the basic descriptor “blue” covers a wide range of hues having a range of different associations, hence eliciting different reactions. While blue was once associated with artificiality, a growing number of natural blue food colorings have come onto the market in recent years thus perhaps changing the dominant associations that many consumers may have with this most unusual of food colors. (shrink)

Addressing the three dominant contemporary attitudes towards sovereignty - Sovereignty Renewed; Sovereignty Rethought; Sovereignty Rejected - After Sovereignty ...

I mean by the phrase "taking differences seriously" freeing differences from the conceptual and linguistic formations that promote recognitions based on categorical grouping and what we might call domination by images of familiar normalcy and global similarities. 1 I have in mind a discipline of turning out of those ways of speaking and thinking that intend to bring unity and essential harmony to highly diverse events and entities. Those are ways of thinking and speaking that assume that original identities define (...) basic resemblances among classes of things. I understand this claim to mean that many current and established ways of thinking are dangerous for this country's diverse culture and for our .. (shrink)

A 27000 word survey of Russell’s ethics for the SEP. I argue that Russell was a meta-ethicist of some significance. In the course of his long philosophical career, he canvassed most of the meta-ethical options that have dominated debate in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries — naturalism, non-naturalism, emotivism and the error-theory (anticipating Stevenson and Ayer on the one hand and Mackie on the other), and even, to some extent, subjectivism and relativism. And though none of his theories quite worked (...) out, there is much to be learned from his mistakes. Nor is this all. His ARGUMENTS as well as his THEORIES are often interesting and instructive. The ethical corollary to the argument of ‘Seems Madam? Nay, It Is,’ puts the kybosh on any attempt to resolve Sidgwick's Dualism of Practical Reason by arguing that although we are distinct beings with different interests in the world of Appearance, we are, in Reality, all one (§3). Russell's arguments against objectivism are often quite powerful, and one anticipates Gilbert Harman's influential argument that objective values can be safely dismissed since they lack explanatory power (§9.3-9.4). Russell's damning critique of Moore's analytic consequentialism led Moore to abandon the view and perhaps to give up his ‘unduly anti-reforming’ moral conservatism. Moreover Russell's INDIRECT influence on meta-ethics may have been profound since the Open Question Argument, was probably invented to deal with Russell's ideas. Finally, in the realm of normative ethics, Russell developed a sensible and humane version of consequentialism, which (despite its shaky meta-ethical foundations) is resistant, if not immune, to many of the standard criticisms, especially if combined — as Russell thought it should be combined — with a healthy dose of political skepticism. It provides a powerful tool for social and political criticism, a tool which Russell vigorously employed on a vast range of topics in his writings on practical ethics. (shrink)

_Contract and Domination_ offers a bold challenge to contemporary contract theory, arguing that it should either be fundamentally rethought or abandoned altogether. Since the publication of John Rawls's _A Theory of Justice_, contract theory has once again become central to the Western political tradition. But gender justice is neglected and racial justice almost completely ignored. Carole Pateman and Charles Mills's earlier books, _The Sexual Contract_ and _The Racial Contract_, offered devastating critiques of gender and racial domination and the contemporary (...) contract tradition's silence on them. Both books have become classics of revisionist radical democratic political theory. Now Pateman and Mills are collaborating for the first time in an interdisciplinary volume, drawing on their insights from political science and philosophy. They are building on but going beyond their earlier work to bring the sexual and racial contracts together. In _Contract and Domination_, Pateman and Mills discuss their differences about contract theory and whether it has a useful future, excavate the settler contract that created new civil societies in North America and Australia, argue via a non-ideal contract for reparations to black Americans, confront the evasions of contemporary contract theorists, explore the intersections of gender and race and the global sexual-racial contract, and reply to their critics. This iconoclastic book throws the gauntlet down to mainstream white male contract theory. It is vital reading for anyone with an interest in political theory and political philosophy, and the systems of male and racial domination. (shrink)

For the History of Religions as a discipline, Mircea Eliade’s Patterns in Comparative Religion represents a fundamental paper. By carefully analyzing each chapter, we try to catch the accuracy proved by Mircea Eliade in building his arguments and to decipher the meaning of the archetypes dominating the human existence and the way in which the sacred forms are perceived.

By pointing to deep philosophical confusions endemic to cognitive science, Wittgenstein might seem an enemy of computational approaches. We agree that while Wittgenstein would reject the classicist’s symbols and rules approach, his observations align well with connectionist or neural network approaches. While many connectionisms that dominated the later twentieth century could fall prey to criticisms of biological, pedagogical, and linguistic implausibility, current connectionist approaches can resolve those problems in a Wittgenstein-friendly manner. We present the basics of a Vector Symbolic Architecture (...) formalism, inspired by Smolensky, and indicate how high-dimensional vectors can operate in a context-sensitive and object-independent manner in biologically plausible time scales, reflecting Wittgenstein’s notions of language-games and family resemblance; we show how “soft” symbols for such a formalism can be formed with plausible learning cycles using Sparse Distributed Memory, resolving disputes surrounding Wittgenstein’s private language argument; and show how connectionist networks can extrapolate meaningful patterns to solve problems, providing “ways to go on” without explicit rules, which indicates linguistic plausibility. Connectionism thus provides a systematicity and productivity that is more than a mere implementation of a classical approach, and provides Wittgenstein-friendly and Wittgenstein-illuminating models of mind and language for cognitive science. (shrink)

Earlier in the pages of this journal (p 481), Wendler and Miller offered the "net risks test" as an alternative approach to the ethical analysis of benefits and harms in research. They have been vocal critics of the dominant view of benefit-harm analysis in research ethics, which encompasses core concepts of duty of care, clinical equipoise and component analysis. They had been challenged to come up with a viable alternative to component analysis which meets five criteria. The alternative must (1) (...) protect research subjects; (2) allow clinical research to proceed; (3) explain how physicians may offer trial enrolment to their patients; (4) address the challenges posed by research containing a mixture of interventions and (5) define ethical standards according to which the risks and potential benefits of research may be consistently evaluated. This response argues that the net risks test meets none of these criteria and concludes that it is not a viable alternative to component analysis. (shrink)

As several historical examples are adduced to show, different theories of self-knowledge take shape in response to different conceptions of the sort of beings we are. This leads to the question of what underlying notion of the self motivates, in particular, the dominant modern idea that self-knowledge consists primarily in grasping whatever beliefs, desires, thoughts, and feelings make up our mental life. The answer is that the self-constitutive relation to itself has been conceived as one of an intimate, pre-reflective acquaintance (...) with our own minds and that only so can we be understood as being responsible for whatever we think or do. Against this view it is then argued that all our self-knowledge really rests on reflection of an essentially third-person kind, since the self's constitutive relation to itself consists instead in our guiding ourselves by what we take to be reasons in all that we think and do and in thereby counting as responsible for our thought and action, whatever may be the extent of our knowledge of our own minds. This alternative account implies, contrary to the modern view and in company with certain ancient views, that self-knowledge can prove to be the most difficult kind of knowledge to acquire. (shrink)

In his article “Storied Bodies, or Nana at Last Unveil’d” , Peter Brooks makes the claim that, for a certain dominant mode of nineteenth-century narrative, the female sexual organ is the occult source of the narrative dynamic. On a superficial reading, Brooks’s piece might appear to empower women by putting their sexuality at the generative origin of the story. But the opposite is the case: his argument reflects rather than critiques the misogynist strategies of the texts he discusses. I will (...) begin my analysis of his article with a brief return to the story by Barbey d’Aurevilly whose climactic scene Brooks offers as “a kind of allegory of the cultural story [he has] been delineating” . Charles Bernheimer is professor of romance languages and chair of the program in comparative literature and literary theory at the University of Pennsylvania. The author of Flaubert and Kafka and Figures of Ill Repute , he is currently working on a study of fin-de-siècle literature and art, The Decadent Subject. (shrink)