The dominant notions of consciousness in the West are anchored in a peculiar matrix of dissociated sensibility held in place by unthematized body practices. It is misleading to evaluate spiritual and philosophical notions of consciousness simply from the point of view of verbal, logical analysis, when they are expressions of these deeply rooted experiential sensibilities, deliberately cultivated over long years of habituation. There is a dramatic difference between how the West thinks of body practices as irrelevant to analyzing states of (...) consciousness and how other cultures make direct links between these practices and the shaping of consciousness. For at least the last 150 years in Europe and the United States a number of teachers have developed body practices in deliberate resistance to the dualistic structurings of mentalities and physicality. They constitute a cultural movement of resistance shaped by the recognition of the mistaken notions embodied in Western dualism. An example is given of the work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, the creator of the School of Body‐Mind Centering. Key Words: Embodiment, Somatics, Cultivation, Practices, Dualism. (shrink)

A cutting-edge anthology that opens the door for emergent voices from African American, Indigenous, Latin American, and Asian embodiment traditions to transform the field of somatics The notion of “body” that underlies most available writings about somatic theories and practices often assumes a universal normality of structure and function that has now come into question. In this collection, viewpoints grounded in neural, hormonal, gender, and physiological diversities challenge convention and open up a more inclusive world of somatics for psychotherapy and (...) many forms of bodywork. The authors embody these differences and have developed their particular somatic practices out of direct experience. Their narratives offer new approaches to the transformation of our social order’s bodily roots enabling a healing of the recurrent traumas of the past. Covering topics such as the autistic body-mind, how the human body is both shaped by and shapes contemporary society, and somatic psychotherapy as a trustworthy resource for healing within the African American community, these poignant essays will help students and practitioners of somatics broaden the scope and efficacy of their therapeutic practices. (shrink)

J. Willard Gibbs derived the following equation to quantify the maximum work possible for a chemical reaction$${\text{Maximum work }} = \, - \Delta {\text{G}}_{{{\text{rxn}}}} = \, - \left( {\Delta {\text{H}}_{{{\text{rxn}}}} {-}{\text{ T}}\Delta {\text{S}}_{{{\text{rxn}}}} } \right) {\text{ constant T}},{\text{P}}$$ Maximum work = - Δ G rxn = - Δ H rxn - T Δ S rxn constant T, P ∆Hrxn is the enthalpy change of reaction as measured in a reaction calorimeter and ∆Grxn the change in Gibbs energy as measured, if (...) feasible, in an electrochemical cell by the voltage across the two half-cells. To Gibbs, reaction spontaneity corresponds to negative values of ∆Grxn. But what is T∆Srxn, absolute temperature times the change in entropy? Gibbs stated that this term quantifies the heating/cooling required to maintain constant temperature in an electrochemical cell. Seeking a deeper explanation than this, one involving the behaviors of atoms and molecules that cause these thermodynamic phenomena, I employed an “atoms first” approach to decipher the physical underpinning of T∆Srxn and, in so doing, developed the hypothesis that this term quantifies the change in “structural energy” of the system during a chemical reaction. This hypothesis now challenges me to similarly explain the physical underpinning of the Gibbs–Helmholtz equation$${\text{d}}\left( {\Delta {\text{G}}_{{{\text{rxn}}}} } \right)/{\text{dT}} = - \Delta {\text{S}}_{{{\text{rxn}}}} \left( {\text{constant P}} \right)$$ d Δ G rxn / dT = - Δ S rxn constant P While this equation illustrates a relationship between ∆Grxn and ∆Srxn, I don’t understand how this is so, especially since orbital electron energies that I hypothesize are responsible for ∆Grxn are not directly involved in the entropy determination of atoms and molecules that are responsible for ∆Srxn. I write this paper to both share my progress and also to seek help from any who can clarify this for me. (shrink)

My thesis is that moral ignorance does not imply a failure to care adequately about what is in fact morally significant. I offer three cases: one in which someone is ignorant of the precise nature of what she cares about; one in which someone does not reflect on the significance of what she cares about in a particular set of circumstances, and one in which someone cares deeply about two morally significant considerations while being mistaken about their relative significance. I (...) argue that these agents all clearly care at least “adequately” about everything morally significant, including the very considerations that in fact make their acts wrong. This creates theoretical room for a way of thinking about culpable moral ignorance that respects the key concerns of those in the voluntarist tradition who have held that moral ignorance is typically blameless, within an approach to thinking about moral responsibility according to which we are blameworthy for that which manifests poor quality of will; caring adequately does not require moral omniscience, but motivated moral ignorance and moral ignorance that reflects indifference to things that matter morally are still blameworthy. My thesis also suggests a fruitful change of direction for quality-of-will theorists: we should articulate the nature and structure of the standards for adequate caring, i.e. those that specify what it is to care “adequately”. I close by offering an initial proposal as to what these standards might look like and identifying four promising avenues for further research on this topic. (shrink)

Steven Higgins and Vivienne Baumfield have recently attempted to defend the much discussed idea of general thinking skills against attacks from three quarters: what they regard as a priori objections, which they liken to Zeno's paradox that Achilles will not catch the tortoise; domains theories of knowledge, which oppose the idea of thinking skills being general and transcending domains; and the claim that experts use subject specific knowledge, and don't use general thinking skills. We examine these defences and find them (...) flawed and worrying. We conclude that this is a domain in serious need of a priori approaches. (shrink)

Steven Higgins and Vivienne Baumfield have recently attempted to defend the much discussed idea of general thinking skills against attacks from three quarters: what they regard as a priori objections, which they liken to Zeno's paradox that Achilles will not catch the tortoise; domains theories of knowledge, which oppose the idea of thinking skills being general and transcending domains; and the claim that experts use subject specific knowledge, and don't use general thinking skills. We examine these defences and find them (...) flawed and worrying. We conclude that this is a domain in serious need of a priori approaches. (shrink)

Don’t Look Up is a 2021 Netflix original film about two astronomers who discover a 9-kilometer “planet killer” comet on a collision course with Earth. The way humanity responds to this threat – which is less than ideal, given that the movie ends with humanity’s destruction – is supposed to be an allegory for how humanity is dealing with the real-world threat of climate change. Consequently, we argue, the movie is an argument that presents the viewer with a moral imperative: (...) Do all that you can to prevent climate change. But does the argument work? To answer this question, we look at criticism of the movie, decipher its messages, examine the aptness of its analogy, and use the philosophy of Plato, Kant, and Peter Singer to explain exactly what kind of argument the film is. In the end, we conclude that, while most (although not all) criticisms of the film fall flat – it doesn’t really matter. Given that the moral imperative presented by the movie is undeniable, the only appropriate response to the film is an unrelenting effort to fulfill our duty to stop climate change. (shrink)

_Skepticism and Cognitivism_ addresses the fundamental question of epistemology: Is knowledge possible? It approaches this query with an evaluation of the skeptical tradition in Western philosophy, analyzing thinkers who have claimed that we can know nothing. After an introductory chapter lays out the central issues, chapter 2 focuses on the classical skeptics of the Academic and Pyrrhonistic schools and then on the skepticism of David Hume. Chapters 3 through 5 are devoted to contemporary defenders of skepticism—Keith Lehrer, Arne Næss, and (...) Peter Unger. In chapter 6, author Oliver A. Johnson dons the mantle of skeptic himself and develops and adds theories to the skeptical arsenal. He closes with an examination of the relationship between skepticism and cognitivism, reaching and defending conclusions on the nature and extent of possible human knowledge. (shrink)

The 2010 Quinnipiac cheerleading case raises interesting questions about the nature of both cheerleading and sport, as well as about the moral character of each. In this paper we explore some of those questions, and argue that no form of college cheerleading currently in existence deserves, from a moral point of view, to be recognized as a sport for Title IX purposes. To reach that conclusion, we evaluate cheerleading using a quasi-legal argument based on the NCAA’s definition of sport and (...) conclude that cheerleading fails to qualify as a legitimate sport. A philosophical argument leads to the same conclusion, primarily because of the essential entertainment-aspect of cheerleading. We then examine a consequentialist moral case for making cheerleading an intercollegiate sport and argue that the balance of moral reasons is against doing so. Finally, we look at cheerleading’s newest offspring – Acrobatics and Tumbling, and STUNT – and express our moral reservations about their current claims to be worthy of Title IX recognition. While we would not claim that any single one of our arguments is decisive, we are convinced that the cumulative weight of the arguments against granting intercollegiate sport status to any of the forms of cheerleading or its derivatives is, at present, irresistible. (shrink)

This paper motivates using explicit methods in linguistics by attempting to estimate the size of a linguistic data set. Such estimations are difficult because redundant data can easily pad the data set. To address this, I offer some explicit operationalizations of the data and their features. But for linguistic data, negative associations don’t indicate true redundancy, and yet for many measures they can be mathematically impossible to ignore. It is proven that this troublesome phenomenon has positive Lebesgue measure, is monotonically (...) increasing, and that these two features hold robustly in four different ways. (shrink)

The first topic of concern is anonymity, specifically the anonymity that is available in communications on the Internet. An earlier paper argues that anonymity in electronic communication is problematic because: it makes law enforcement difficult ; it frees individuals to behave in socially undesirable and harmful ways ; it diminishes the integrity of information since one can't be sure who information is coming from, whether it has been altered on the way, etc.; and all three of the above contribute to (...) an environment of diminished trust which is not conducive to certain uses of computer communication. Counterbalancing these problems are some important benefits. Anonymity can facilitate some socially desirable and beneficial behavior. For example, it can eliminate the fear of repercussions for behavior in contexts in which repercussions would diminish the availability or reliability of information, e.g., voting, personal relationships between consenting adults, and the like. Furthermore, anonymity can be used constructively to reduce the effect of prejudices on communications. Negative aspects of anonymity all seem to point to a tension between accountability and anonymity. They suggest that accountability and anonymity are not compatible, and they even seem to suggest that since accountability is a good thing, it would be good to eliminate anonymity. In other words, the problems with anonymity suggest that individuals are more likely to behave in socially desirable ways when they are held accountable for their behavior, and they are more likely to engage in socially undesirable behavior when they are not held accountable. I am not going to take issue with the correlation between accountability and anonymity, but rather with the claim that accountability is good. To examine this problem, let's look at a continuum that stretches from total anonymity at one end, and no anonymity at all at the other end. At the opposite extreme of anonymity is a panopticon society. The panopticon is the prison environment described by Foucault in which prison cells are arranged in a large circle with the side facing the inside of the circle open to view. The guard tower is placed in the middle of the circle so that guards can see everything that goes on in every cell. In a recent article on privacy, Jeffrey Reiman, reflecting on the new intelligent highway systems, suggests that we are moving closer and closer to a panopticon society. When we contemplate all the electronic data that is now gathered about each one of us as we move through our everyday lives- intelligent highway systems, consumer transactions, traffic patterns on the internet, medical records, financial records, and so on- we see the trend that Reiman identifies. Electronic behavior is recorded and the information is retained. While actions/transactions in separate domains are not necessarily combined, it seems obvious that the potential exists for combining data into a complete portfolio of an individual's day to day life. So it would seem that as more and more activities and domains are moved into a IT-based medium, the closer we will come to a panopticon society. A panopticon society gives us the ultimate in accountability. Everything an individual does is observable and therefore available to those to whom we are accountable. Of course, in doing this, it puts us, in effect, in prison. The prison parallel is appropriate here because what anonymity allows us is freedom; prison is the ultimate in lack of freedom. In this way the arguments for a free society become arguments for anonymity. Only when individuals are free will they experiment, try new ideas, take risks, and learn by doing so. Only in an environment that tolerates making mistakes will individuals develop the active habits that are so essential for democracy. In a world without information technology, individuals have levels or degrees and various kinds of anonymity and consequently different levels and kinds of freedom. Degrees and kinds of anonymity vary with the domain: small town social life versus urban social life, voting, commercial exchanges, banking, automobile travel, airplane travel, telephone communication, education, and so on. Drawing from our experience before IT-based institutions, we might believe that what we need is varying levels or degrees and kinds of anonymity. This seems a good starting place because it suggests an attempt to re-create the mixture that we have in the physical, non-IT-based world. Nevertheless, there is a danger. If we think in terms of levels and degrees of anonymity, we may not see the forest from the trees. We may not acknowledge that in an electronic medium, levels and kinds of anonymity mean, in an important sense, no anonymity. If there are domains in which we can be anonymous but those domains are part of a global communication infrastructure in which there is no anonymity at the entry point, then it will always be possible to trace someone's identity. We delude ourselves when we think we have anonymity on-line or off-line. Rather, what we have both places is situations in which it is more and less difficult to identify individuals. We have a continuum of situations in which it is easy and difficult to link behavior to other behavior and histories of behaviors. In the physical world, we can go places and do things where others don't know us by name and have no history with us, though they see our bodies, clothes, and behavior. If we do nothing unusual, we may be forgotten. On the other hand, if we do something illegal, authorities may attempt to track us down and figure out who we are. For example, law enforcement officials, collection agencies, those who want to sue us may take an active interest in removing our anonymity, ex post facto. Think of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols-the men who apparently bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City. Much of what they did, they did anonymously, but then law enforcement officials set out to find out who had done various things, e.g., rented a car, bought explosives, etc. The shrouds of anonymity under which McVeigh and Nichols had acted were slowly removed. Is this any different than behavior on the internet? Is there a significant difference in the kind or degree of anonymity we have in the physical world versus what we have in an IT-based world? The character of the trail we leave is different; in the one case, its an electronic trail; while in the other it involves human memories, photographs, and paper and ink. What law enforcement officials had to do to track down McVeigh is quite different from tracking down an electronic law breaker. Also, the cost of electronic information gathering, both in time and money, can be dramatically lower than the cost of talking to people, gathering physical evidence, and the other minutia required by traditional detective work. We should acknowledge that we do not and are never likely to have anonymity on the Internet. We would do better to think of different levels or kinds of identity. There are important moral and social issues arising as a result of these varying degrees and kinds of identity. Perhaps the most important matter is assuring that individuals are informed about the conditions in which they are interacting. Perhaps, even more important is that individuals have a choice about the conditions under which they are communicating. In the rest of this paper we explore a few examples of levels and kinds of identity that are practical on the Internet. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages that we see for these "styles" of identity for individuals, and we examine the costs and benefits of these styles for society as a whole. (shrink)

The most advanced life‐forms in the Star Trek universe are portrayed as incorporeal beings: creatures who either don not have bodies or at least are not bound to any physical forms they might assume. Any dynamic network of experience is an organism. The concept of organism applies to more than just biological entities, crystals and planets are also structured societies. The broadest possible background for all activity in the universe is the extensive continuum, more expansive even than the Q Continuum. (...) Q is capable of manipulating matter and energy, and of traveling throughout time and space, without any obvious limits. The Organians bear some resemblance to the Q. One of their characteristic features is a self‐professed aversion to violence and the experience of pain. Like the Q, they structure their society to minimize interaction with, and thus contamination by, the physical and emotional influences of embodied species. (shrink)

The existence of the Language Familiarity Effect (LFE), where talkers of a familiar language are easier to identify than talkers of an unfamiliar language, is well‐documented and uncontroversial. However, a closely related phenomenon known as the Other Accent Effect (OAE), where accented talkers are more difficult to recognize, is less well understood. There are several possible explanations for why the OAE exists, but to date, little data exist to adjudicate differences between them. Here, we begin to address this issue by (...) directly comparing listeners’ recognition of talkers who speak in different types of accents, and by examining both the LFE and OAE in the same set of listeners. Specifically, Canadian English listeners were tested on their ability to recognize talkers within four types of voice line‐ups: Canadian English talkers, Australian English talkers, Mandarin‐accented English talkers, and Mandarin talkers. We predicted that the OAE would be present for talkers of Mandarin‐accented English but not for talkers of Australian English—which is precisely what we observed. We also observed a disconnect between listeners’ confidence and performance across different types of accents; that is, listeners performed equally poorly with Mandarin and Mandarin‐accented talkers, but they were more confident with their performance with the latter group of talkers. The present findings set the stage for further investigation into the nature of the OAE by exploring a range of potential explanations for the effect, and introducing important implications for forensic scientists’ evaluation of ear witness testimony. (shrink)

Suppose I make an utterance, intending it to be a command. You don’t take it to be one. Must one of us be wrong? In other words, must each utterance have, at most, one illocutionary force? Current debates over the constitutive norm of assertion and over illocutionary silencing, tend to assume that the answer is yes—that each utterance must be either an assertion, or a command, or a question, but not more than one of these. While I think that this (...) assumption is intuitive, I will argue in this paper that it is not sustainable. I’ll argue that this assumption makes it hard to explain what determines illocutionary force in a consistent and non-ad hoc way. I will demonstrate this is not fatal for the notion of illocutionary force writ large by offering some alternatives. (shrink)

Alternative proteins, including plant-based and cell-based meat and dairy analogues, are discursively positioned as a new form of meat and dairy and as a solution to the myriad of issues associated with conventional animal agriculture. Animal agricultural industries across various nations have resisted this positioning in regulatory spaces by advocating for laws that restrict the use of meat and dairy terms on the labels of alternative proteins products. Underlying this contestation are differing understandings of, and vested interests in, desirable futures (...) for animal agriculture. In Australia, this broader contestation led to a national-level inquiry by a Senate parliamentary committee entitled _Definitions of meat and other animal products_ (the Inquiry). This paper reports findings from a study of the problematizations developed through the Inquiry using a framework for policy discourse analysis referred to as Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be’ methodology. It shows how the dominant discourse throughout the Inquiry moved away from the initial problematization of alternative proteins as a threat to animal agriculture. Instead, both industries were ultimately positioned as not in competition and only labelling laws were problematized with the solution being amendments to ensure ‘consumer clarity’. This outcome ignored a range of alternative problematizations related to the ethical, environmental, health, social and economic issues raised by animal agriculture and by alternative proteins. This lack of scrutiny benefits both industries, by closing off the policy discourse to consideration of a range of alternative interests, voices, and potential solutions, such as stricter health and welfare regulation. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that gossip is both an epistemic evil—it can restrict access to information—and an epistemic good—it can be a key resource for knowers. These two faces of gossip can be illustrated when we consider the effects of participating in and being excluded from gossiping groups. Social psychology has begun to study these effects and their results are useful here. Because of these two aspects, I argue, gossip holds a peculiar place in our epistemic economy. It is (...) vicious, and employed to restrict agents in their capacities as knowers, and it is also a valuable epistemic commodity, employed to enable agents in their epistemic capacities. To see these sides clearly, I employ some machinery from Miranda Fricker’s work on epistemic injustice. The tools from Fricker will help demonstrate that gossip can be both the means of unjustly restricting an epistemic agent, and the epistemically valuable ends from which she is restricted. Finally, I draw some conclusions for epistemology more generally. (shrink)

Disagreements about abortion are often assumed to reduce to disagreements about fetal personhood (and mindedness). If one believes a fetus is a person (or has a mind), then they are “pro-life.” If one believes a fetus is not a person (or is not minded), they are “pro-choice.” The issue, however, is much more complicated. Not only is it not dichotomous—most everyone believes that abortion is permissible in some circumstances (e.g. to save the mother’s life) and not others (e.g. at nine (...) months of a planned pregnancy)—but scholars on both sides of the issue (e.g. Don Marquis and Judith Thomson) have convincingly argued that fetal personhood (and mindedness) are irrelevant to the debate. To determine the extent to which they are right, this article will define “personhood,” its relationship to mindedness, and explore what science has revealed about the mind before exploring the relevance of both to questions of abortion’s morality and legality. In general, this article does not endorse a particular answer to these questions, but the article should enhance the reader’s ability to develop their own answers in a much more informed way. (shrink)

This article examines the intrinsic and instrumental value of higher education, in relation to jobs that do not exist anymore and jobs that do not exist yet.

_An engaging, accessible survey of the ethical issues faced by engineers, designed for students_ The first engineering ethics textbook to use debates as the framework for presenting engineering ethics topics, this engaging, accessible survey explores the most difficult and controversial issues that engineers face in daily practice. Written by a leading scholar in the field of engineering and computer ethics, Deborah Johnson approaches engineering ethics with three premises: that engineering is both a technical and a social endeavor; that engineers (...) don’t just build things, they build society; and that engineering is an inherently ethical enterprise. (shrink)

Revealing Male Bodies is the first scholarly collection to directly confront male lived experience. There has been an explosion of work in men's studies, masculinity issues, and male sexuality, in addition to a growing literature exploring female embodiment. Missing from the current literature, however, is a sustained analysis of the phenomenology of male-gendered bodies. Revealing Male Bodies addresses this omission by examining how male bodies are physically and experientially constituted by the economic, theoretical, and social practices in which men are (...) immersed. Contributors include Susan Bordo, William Cowling, Terry Goldie, Maurice Hamington, Don Ihde, Greg Johnson, Björn Krondorfer, Alphonso Lingis, Patrick McGann, Paul McIlvenny, Terrance MacMullan, Jim Perkinson, Steven P. Schacht, Richard Schmitt, Nancy Tuana, Craig L. Wilkins, and John Zuern. (shrink)

Jonathan Kvanvig has argued that what he terms “doxastic” theories of epistemic justification fail to account for certain epistemic features having to do with evidence. I’m going to give an argument roughly along these lines, but I’m going to focus specifically on proper function theories of justification or warrant. In particular, I’ll focus on Michael Bergmann’s recent proper function account of justification, though the argument applies also to Alvin Plantinga’s proper function account of warrant. The epistemic features I’m concerned about (...) are experiences that should generate a believed defeater but don’t. I’ll argue that proper functionalism as it stands cannot account for the epistemic effects of these defeating experiences—or, at least, that it can only do so by embracing a deeply implausible view of our cognitive faculties. I’ll conclude by arguing that the only plausible option Bergmann has for modifying his theory undercuts the consideration that motivates proper functionalism in the first place. (shrink)

ACCORDING to one of the weirder interpretations of quantum theory, electrons and the other subatomic particles that make up creation don't really come into existence -- taking on definite positions in time and space -- until they are beheld by a conscious observer. Extending this notion to a cosmic scale, the most radical proponents of what has come to be called the anthropic cosmological principle argue for a dizzying symbiosis in which the universe gives rise to conscious beings who in (...) turn give rise to the universe through the act of observation. (shrink)

“Towards the end of a sultry afternoon early in July a young man came out of his little room in Stolyarny Lane and turned and in the direction of Kameny Bridge in central St. Petersburg.”[1] Right then, this young man, a former law student named Rodion Raskolnikov, is caught in an agonizing conversation with himself over whether or not to commit the ultimate crime: to murder an innocent person. Exasperated, wondering what to do with such a weighty decision, he cried (...) aloud, “that’s why I don’t act, because I am always talking. Or perhaps I talk so much just because I can’t act.”[2] On this occasion, he decided not to actualize his thoughts, and so kept on pondering. A little later, as he wandered through the dusty streets of the lively St. Petersburg public market, the young man again relapses into contemplation of the character of his existence, its worth, and its meaning. If he ever did decide to commit such evil, the act would determine what kind of man he is. It is a question of the movement from thought to action... (shrink)

A year before, at Trinity, Cambridge, Wittgenstein had been involved in a row with Karl Popper, and had reputedly threatened him with a poker. On this evening, too, Wittgenstein's behavior let [sic] to a row, with an elderly philosophy don. No poker was flourished. But the don dropped dead a few days later.

The daddy longlegs clinging vertically to my bathroom wall is a marvel of airy symmetry, its tiny head perched delicately at the center of eight arching limbs. A moment later, struck by the back of my hand, it lies crumpled on the floor. I’m sorry, but I don’t like spiders in the house.

ACCORDING to one of the weirder interpretations of quantum theory, electrons and the other subatomic particles that make up creation don't really come into existence -- taking on definite positions in time and space -- until they are beheld by a conscious observer. Extending this notion to a cosmic scale, the most radical proponents of what has come to be called the anthropic cosmological principle argue for a dizzying symbiosis in which the universe gives rise to conscious beings who in (...) turn give rise to the universe through the act of observation. (shrink)

Knowledge of mechanisms is critical for causal reasoning. We contrasted two possible organizations of causal knowledge—an interconnected causal network, where events are causally connected without any boundaries delineating discrete mechanisms; or a set of disparate mechanisms—causal islands—such that events in different mechanisms are not thought to be related even when they belong to the same causal chain. To distinguish these possibilities, we tested whether people make transitive judgments about causal chains by inferring, given A causes B and B causes C, (...) that A causes C. Specifically, causal chains schematized as one chunk or mechanism in semantic memory led to transitive causal judgments. On the other hand, chains schematized as multiple chunks led to intransitive judgments despite strong intermediate links. Normative accounts of causal intransitivity could not explain these intransitive judgments. (shrink)

You might think a simple “No” would suffice as an answer. But there are features of Kant’s ethics that appear to be strikingly similar to virtue oriented views, so striking that some Kantians themselves have argued that Kant’s ethics in fact shares these features with virtue ethics. In what follows, I will argue against this view, though along the way I will acknowledge the features of Kant’s view that make it appear more like a kind of virtue ethics than it (...) really is. My plan is to first set out the distinctive features of what is nowadays called “virtue ethics”, those features that make it a genuine alternative to other normative theories. I then consider the features Kant’s view might share in common with virtue ethics and the case for saying that it is, therefore, fundamentally the same sort of theory. I follow these two sections with an argument against this position. I want to warn you at the outset, however, that my argument itself will be quite unsurprising, since it is an argument that has been central to the way in which most philosophers have understood Kant’s ethics. Any novelty I can claim here is in my account of what makes virtue ethics a genuine alternative to other normative theories, and my defense of this argument against those, in particular Barbara Herman, who have apparently found the argument unpersuasive. (shrink)

Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation. Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors (...) We Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to extend Miranda Fricker’s conception of testimonial injustice to what I call “argumentative injustice”: those cases where an arguer’s social identity brings listeners to place too little or too much credibility in an argument. My recommendation is to put in place a type of indirect “affirmative action” plan for argument evaluation. I also situate my proposal in Johnson ’s framework of argumentation as an exercise in manifest rationality. -/- *Note: this is an unpublished (...) manuscript delivered at the 2009 conference of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation. A copy of the manuscript is hosted on the OSSA conference archive, linked above. A significantly revised version of this paper appears as "Argumentative Injustice," in Informal Logic (2010). (shrink)

Objectives— To explore British community pharmacists' views on PAS , including professional responsibility, personal beliefs, changes in law and ethical guidance.Design— Postal questionnaireSetting— Great BritainSubjects— A random sample of 320 registered full-time community pharmacistsResults— The survey yielded a response rate of 56%. The results showed that 70% of pharmacists agreed that it was a patient's right to choose to die, with 57% and 45% agreeing that it was the patient's right to involve his/her doctor in the process and to use (...) prescription medicines, respectively. Forty-nine per cent said that they would knowingly dispense a prescription for use in PAS were it to be legalised and 54% believed it correct to refuse to dispense such a prescription. Although 53% believed it to be their right to know when they were being involved in PAS, 28% did not. Most pharmacists said that they would wish to see the inclusion of a practice protocol for PAS in the code of ethics of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in the event of a change in the law on PAS. In addition, 89% would wish to see PAS included in the Conscience Clause of the CE-RPSGB. Males were found to be significantly less likely to favour PAS than females , as were those declaring an ethnic/religious background of consideration when dealing with ethical issues in practice compared with their counterparts .Conclusion— Pharmacists view their professional responsibility in PAS to be more obligatory than a physician's, in having to provide the means for PAS. It is worrying that a proportion of the respondents prefer to remain in ignorance of the true purpose of a prescription for PAS; a finding at odds with current developments within the pharmaceutical profession. A practice protocol for PAS and an extension of the conscience clause should be considered in the event of PAS becoming legal. Such measures would allow the efficient provision of the pharmaceutical service whilst at the same respecting the personal beliefs of those who object to cooperating in the ending of a life. (shrink)

Two problems are considered here. One relates to who has moral status, and the other relates to who has moral responsibility. The criteria for mattering morally have long been disputed, and many humans and nonhuman animals have been considered “marginal cases,” on the contested edges of moral considerability and concern. The marginalization of humans and other species is frequently the pretext for denying their rights, including the rights to health care, to reproductive freedom, and to bodily autonomy. There is broad (...) agreement across cultural and philosophical traditions about the capacities and responsibilities of moral agents. I propose an inclusive and expansive way of thinking about moral status, situating it not in the characteristics or capacities of individuals, but in the responsibilities and obligations of moral agents. Moral agents, under this view, are not privileged or entitled to special treatment but rather have responsibilities. I approach this by considering some African communitarian conceptions of moral status and moral agency. I propose that moral agency can also be more expansive and include not just individual moral agents but collective entities that have some of the traits of moral agents: power, freedom, and the capacity to recognize and act on the demands of morality and acknowledge and respect the rights of others. Expanding who and what is a moral agent correspondingly extends moral responsibility for respecting rights and fostering the conditions for the health and well-being of humans and animals onto the collective entities who uniquely have the capacity to attend to global-scale health threats such as pandemics and human-caused climate change. (shrink)

C. L. Hardin has argued that the colour opponency of the vision system leads to chromatic subjectivism: chromatic sensory states reduce to neurophysiological states. Much of the force of Hardin's argument derives from a critique of chromatic objectivism. On this view chromatic sensory states are held to reduce to an external property. While I agree with Hardin's critique of objectivism it is far from clear that the problems which beset objectivism do not apply to the subjectivist position as well. I (...) develop a critique of subjectivism that parallels Hardin's antiobjectivist argument. (shrink)

Las ideas filosóficas del ámbito de la actividad física suelen estar sustentadas en concepciones que trascienden la propia disciplina de estudio aludida, de modo que es importante estudiarlas en profundidad. Este ensayo tiene por objetivo comprender la interpretación de los términos movimiento humano y motricidad humana desde la mirada de tres corrientes filosóficas que han sido utilizadas por referentes de la actividad física, el deporte y la Educación Física. La primera corriente filosófica analizada es la de corte idealista, que entiende (...) el movimiento humano como un acto esencialmente mecánico y biológico. La segunda perspectiva filosófica es la materialista, que entiende el movimiento humano como una manifestación de la motricidad, la cual sería inmanente a la esencia del ser humano. Es decir, estaría dotada de intencionalidad. La tercera corriente sería una mirada ecléctica de las dos anteriores, asemejando el concepto de movimiento humano con el de las contemporáneas interpretaciones de motricidad. En otras palabras, el movimiento humano sería parte de la potencia y el acto. Se concluye que, según diferentes perspectivas filosóficas, es posible utilizar el concepto de movimiento y/o motricidad para trascender la mirada idealista o moderna del movimiento humano. (shrink)

Anyone who has ever found herself or himself at odds with a boss, a board, a committee, a pastor, family member - or with any other institutional setting of which she or he my be a part - will find this book full of help and insight and wisdom. Conflicting Agendas is an invaluable guide to sorting out the complexities of individual moral existence in an increasingly complex and complicated world.

abstract: I provide a novel interpretation of Aristotle's account of the unity of soul, treating it as resolving the apparent incompatibility of the existence of psychic parts and the soul's status as a unifying form. This incompatibility, I contend, rests on a problematic assumption: mereological actualism, or the claim that parts are actually distinct and prior to the whole. Aristotle successfully undermines actualism and formulates an alternative conception of parthood within De Anima 's figure-soul analogy. As triangles are only potentially (...) present within quadrilaterals, so lower psychic parts are potential parts of higher souls. This picture treats a soul not as a mere aggregate of capacities, but as essentially unified and prior to its parts. Finally, I argue that this picture can be illuminated and must be read against the background of his hylomorphic account of the unity of form given in Metaphysics H.6. (shrink)

Why me? -- Sticks and stones -- Hammer of God -- God is great -- The problem of atheists -- Guardian angels -- Nations under God -- God knows.

The purpose of this article is to advance a new understanding of gender as a routine accomplishment embedded in everyday interaction. To do so entails a critical assessment of existing perspectives on sex and gender and the introduction of important distinctions among sex, sex category, and gender. We argue that recognition of the analytical independence of these concepts is essential for understanding the interactional work involved in being a gendered person in society. The thrust of our remarks is toward theoretical (...) reconceptualization, but we consider fruitful directions for empirical research that are indicated by our formulation. (shrink)

Provided we agree about the thing, it is needless to dispute about the terms. —David Hume, A treatise of human nature, Book 1, section VIIMap-like representations are frequently invoked as an alternative type of representational vehicle to a language of thought. This view presupposes that map-systems and languages form legitimate natural kinds of cognitive representational systems. I argue that they do not, because the collections of features that might be taken as characteristic of maps or languages do not themselves provide (...) scientifically useful information above and beyond what the individual features provide. To bring this out, I sketch several allegedly distinctive features of maps, and show how they can easily be grafted onto a simple logical language, resulting in a hybrid “manguage.” The ease with which these linguistic and map-like properties can be integrated into a single representational system raises the question of what work broader categories like language and map are doing. I maintain that, as an empirical matter of fact, they serve no particular purpose in cognitive science, and thus do not characterize distinct kinds of cognitive architectures. (shrink)