W. B. Yeats’ poem “Politics” has as its epigraph Thomas Mann’s remark, “In our time the destiny of man presents its meaning in political terms.”1 Yeats chose the epigraph in 1938, just before World War II, for a poem proclaiming that sexuality holds his interest more than politics. This still may be true for poets, but by the looks of things, not for many contemporary critics, who, if they do not choose one over the other, subsume one under the other. (...) For them everything is political , which is to hold that everything is reduced to questions of power. So it is, in their eyes, with canons.The first canonization of note for western culture seems to have been that of the Hebrew Scriptures; and although there is much dispute about the whole matter of how that occurred, it is interesting to observe that in a 1971 book entitled The Shaping of Jewish History: A Radical New Interpretation Ellis Rivkin presents the development of that canon in political terms, arguing that production of the Hebrew Scriptures “was not primarily the work of scribes, scholars, or editors who sought out neglected traditions about wilderness experience, but of a class struggling to gain power.”2 In a very interesting article on this subject, Gerald L. Bruns observes that the lesson of this is that the concept of canon is not literary but a “category of power” . Rivkin himself decides, as Bruns remarks, to treat “the promulgation of canonical texts of the Scriptures, not according to literary criteria but according to power criteria” . Presumably it is this program that warrants Rivkin’s subtitle Radical New Interpretation. But what would the literary criteria that are opposed to power criteria here be? Are there any longer believers in the more than trivial existence of such criteria? Does the destiny of literature now present its meaning political terms? If there are no longer thought to be such things as literary criteria, is there, can there be, literature? We have heard answers in the negative to the last question; and the notion of canon has recently been addressed almost always in terms of politics and power, most notably, of course, but certainly not exclusively, by feminist and minority critics. The destiny of women’s writing has certainly presented its meaning in political terms. Hazard Adams is professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Washington. He has recently completed The Book of Yeats’ Poems and a collection of critical essays. (shrink)

Background The world is urbanizing rapidly; more than half the world’s population now lives in urban areas, leading to significant transition in lifestyles and social behaviours globally. While offering many advantages, urban environments also concentrate health risks and introduce health hazards for the poor. In Bangladesh, although many public policies are directed towards equity and protecting people’s rights, these are not comprehensively and inclusively applied in ways that prioritize the health rights of citizens. The country is thus facing many issues (...) that raise moral and ethical concerns. Methods A narrative literature review was conducted between October 2016 and November 2017 on issues related to social justice, health, and human rights in urban Bangladesh. The key questions discussed here are: i) ethical dilemmas and inclusion of the urban poor to pursue social justice; and ii) the ethical obligations and moral responsibilities of the state and non-state sectors in serving Bangladesh’s urban poor. Using a Rawlsian theory of equality of opportunity to ensure social justice, we identified key health-related ethical issues in the country’s rapidly changing urban landscape, especially among the poor. Results We examined ethical dilemmas in Bangladesh’s health system through the rural–urban divide and the lack of coordination among implementing agencies. The unregulated profusion of the private sector and immoral practices of service providers result in high out-of-pocket expenditures for urban poor, leading to debt and further impoverishment. We also highlight policy and programmatic gaps, as well as entry points for safeguarding the right to health for Bangladeshi citizens. Conclusions The urban health system in Bangladesh needs a reform in which state and non-state actors should work together, understanding and acknowledging their moral responsibilities for improving the health of the urban poor by engaging multiple sectors. The social determinants of health should be taken into account when formulating policies and programs to achieve universal health coverage and ensure social justice for the urban poor in Bangladesh. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIs offering hazard pay ethically permissible when the pay premium is the only reason that a dangerous job is accepted? Robert C. Hughes argues that it is not. Central to his argument is the claim that in such cases, workers intend the foreseeable risks of harm as a means to the pay premium. Herein I question the plausibility of this claim and then develop a conception of the concept of means sufficient to make it plausible. By so doing, I (...) provide support for Hughes’s stringent position. (shrink)

So numerous are the aspects of Dōgen’s writings that reflect the structures of vision that we might consider his philosophy “ocularcentric”. While recent scholarship scrutinizes both Greek and Mahāyāna forms of ocularcentrism, I argue that the hazards reside not in the prioritization of sight to the neglect of other senses, but in the latent positivism visual metaphor tends to, but need not, reinforce. I cast Dōgen as a “negative ocularcentrist” for his construing vision according to the Mahāyāna notion of emptiness (...) (śūnyatā). Rather than positivist ontology, epistemology or soteriology structured metaphorically as progressing from darkness into light, Dōgen inflects seeing with the visually negative, incorporating darkness, blindness, delusion, invisibility, and what he calls “dim sightedness” (gen’ei 眼翳), which are “obstructions” (keige 罣礙), but not the sort that can or must be overcome; For Dōgen, darkness is essential for illumination, delusion part of enlightenment, obstruction not an impediment for realization, but one of its conditions. I claim that implicit to Dōgen’s notion of “obstruction obstructing obstruction” (礙は礙を罜礙する なり、これ時なり) is a form of reflexivity, which if extended from language to vision distances his thought from both the positivism of ocularcentrism and challenges the ascription of realism to his mysticism. (shrink)

We explore new connections between the epistemologies of mental rehearsal and suppositional reasoning to offer a novel perspective on skilled behavior and its relationship to practical knowledge. We argue that practical knowledge is "easy" in the sense that, by manifesting one's skills, one has a priori propositional justification for certain beliefs about what one is doing as one does it. This proposal has wider consequences for debates about intentional action and knowledge: first, because agents sometimes act intentionally in epistemically hazardous (...) environments, these justified beliefs do not always rise to the level of (practical) knowledge. Second, practical knowledge is more intimately related to basic knowledge than has been appreciated. Third, an attractive "middle way" opens between the Anscombian tradition of defending a necessary connection between intentional action and practical knowledge and the more recent tradition of explaining away substantive epistemic conditions on intentional action. (shrink)

Climatologists have a unique role in providing various stakeholders and public data users with weather and climate information. In the north central region of the United States, farmers, the agricultural sector, and policy makers are important audiences for climate science. As local and global climate conditions continue to shift and affect agricultural productivity, it is useful to understand how climatologists view their role as scientists, and how this influences their communication of climate science to agricultural stakeholders. In this study, data (...) from interviews and surveys of state and extension climatologists in the NCR are analyzed to identify perceived roles and responsibilities as scientists and communicators. Pielke’s framework of the idealized roles of scientists and their communication patterns are used to develop a typology of climate science communication. Findings reveal that more than half of climatologists perceive their role to provide information as pure scientists, while some engage in an arbiter role when requested. Fewer climatologists view their role as not only producing new knowledge, but also relating it to society and providing an expanded variety of alternative applications. Climatologists who perceive their role as simply providing information and letting data users interpret its application are missing an opportunity to reduce the gap between what scientists know and farmers believe. This suggests that if climatologists would frame their climate science message in terms of agricultural impacts, hazard mitigation and risk management alternatives they could help the agricultural sector adapt to and mitigate environmental risks from a changing climate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:How Old Are Modern Rights? On the Lockean Roots of Contemporary Human Rights DiscourseS. Adam SeagraveArguing for the proper placement of John Locke’s natural rights theory within intellectual history is a particularly high-stakes enterprise for historians of political thought and political theorists alike. This is due in large part to the fact that, as Brian Tierney notes in his recent study, it is “widely agreed that Locke’s work was (...) an important influence in the formation of modern liberal ideas, including ideas concerning rights.”1 Our understanding of Locke thus contributes to our reflective self-understanding as “modern liberals” (of one stripe or another) to an extent perhaps unequaled by any other thinker so far removed from our own time.As a result of the rare promise of studying Locke’s natural rights theory, there has been no shortage of scholarly attempts to determine its place in intellectual history on the basis of Locke’s own writings and their relation both to preceding and subsequent traditions and modes of thought. Although John Dunn had argued in his influential study that Locke’s political thought was too thoroughly steeped in theology to remain relevant in the contemporary context, this thesis has since been persuasively challenged (albeit in very different ways) by Simmons, Zuckert and Waldron, among others.2 Each of these scholars has contributed to an emerging agreement [End Page 305] that the thread of Locke’s natural rights theory may indeed be carried all the way up to current political and moral debates in some form or another. The precise length of this thread as it extends in the other historical direction has, however, remained a point of heated controversy. The scholarly literature on this issue may be broadly described in terms of a spectrum determined by two opposing emphases in understanding the relation of Locke’s natural rights theory to its medieval predecessors: a continuity emphasis and a discontinuity emphasis.On the discontinuity end of the spectrum stand those such as Michel Villey, Leo Strauss, C. B. Macpherson and, more recently, Michael Zuckert who argue for the existence of some sort of “Copernican moment” separating medieval natural rights theories from their modern counterparts.3 Whether this moment is identified with William of Ockham in the fourteenth century or Hobbes in the seventeenth century, these scholars tend to emphasize the distinctively “modern” character of Lockean natural rights theory and its significant departures from medieval modes of thought. According to many of the advocates of discontinuity, Lockean natural rights are not only “modern” in their political applications but also in their more profound meaning as foundations for morality, and particularly in their newly conceived relation to the concept of natural law.4The continuity end of the spectrum is, perhaps, more variegated, including scholars such as Tuck, Tierney, Tully, Oakley, Nederman, Coleman, and Swanson, among others.5 Despite their many important differences, [End Page 306] these scholars each focus upon the similarities between various elements or strains of medieval thought and modern natural rights theories rather than the differences between them. Insofar as the scholars on this end of the spectrum explicitly consider Locke’s natural rights theory, they tend to emphasize Locke’s intellectual debt to various preceding traditions and thinkers rather than his innovations upon them. Building explicitly upon the work of Tuck, Tierney and Tully, Janet Coleman finds “some extraordinarily Lockean moments” in the medieval thinkers John of Paris and Godefroid of Fontaines, and argues that Locke ought to be understood as contributing to this medieval tradition of thought rather than departing from it.6 Scott Swanson, in turn, builds upon Coleman’s scholarship in carefully connecting medieval understandings of the rights of subsistence and the principle of extreme necessity to Locke’s natural rights theory. Swanson initially goes even further than Coleman in asserting that “all of Locke’s celebrated doctrine is here [in John of Paris’s writings] offered in a nutshell” before concluding on the more moderate note, echoed by Cary Nederman, that Locke’s “application of natural rights of subsistence to politics” may indeed have been something “new under the sun.”7Brian Tierney, who has long been a prominent... (shrink)

As controversial as Lockean interpretation relating to the ideas of the law of nature and natural rights has always been, few would dispute the inextricable connection between them in the context of John Locke's thought. The historical development of natural rights language out of the natural law tradition is mirrored to a certain extent in the order within and between Locke's own writings. Locke intimates a persuasive account of the concurrent univocal property of God and the human being in the (...) particular human being herself. The particular human being is the property of God and herself in the very same sense of the word "property", i.e. the product of workmanship or labor. Both slavery and suicide fall foul of Locke's doctrine of the law of nature and natural rights: slavery is a violation of self‐ownership, and suicide is as direct a violation of divine ownership as one can imagine. (shrink)

This paper contends that the natural law theory of Saint Thomas Aquinas has been inappropriately removed from its foundation in the classical philosophical traditions of Cicero and Aristotle. Critics charge that because it refers to the eternal law, and hence divine revelation, St. Thomas’s natural law theory is not “natural.” The author in reply demonstrates the Ciceronian and Aristotelian—and therefore pagan, naturalist—roots of the Thomistic theory. St. Thomas’s discussion of natural law in the Summa mirrors Cicero’s attempted derivation of natural (...) law from “a rational encounter with objective reality.” Further, St. Thomas’s Summa includes demonstrations that God is the Cause of all objective reality. This truth does not however deny the “naturalness” of human rational consideration of reality, but rather shows that humans internally apprehend an external order which owes its reality to the First Cause of all being. Human reason and natural law thereby necessarily involve a participation in the eternal law. The author concludes that attempts to dissociate Thomistic natural law theory from its Ciceronian and Aristotelian roots lessen the force and persuasive power of the former. The proper approach involves, not an abandonment of the traditional theory, but its further development and its application to present issues. (shrink)

Locke on natural rights and the natural law -- Self-consciousness, self-ownership, and natural rights -- From natural rights to the natural law -- Natural morality -- Practical applications.

My reflections on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial were provoked some time ago in a quite natural way, by a visit to the memorial itself. I happened upon it almost by accident, a fact that is due at least in part to the design of the Memorial itself . I found myself reduced to awed silence, and I resolved to attend the dedication ceremony on November 13, 1982. It was an extraordinary event, without question the most moving public ceremony I have (...) ever attended. But my own experience of the Memorial on that and other occasions is far from unique. It is almost commonplace among the many visitors to the VVM—now the most visited of all the memorials in Washington—a fact so striking as to have compelled journalists, art historians, and architects to write countless articles about the monument. And although philosophers traditionally have had little to say about architecture in general or about that of memorials in particular, there is much in the VVM and its iconography worthy of philosophical reflection. Self-knowledge includes, I hazard to say, knowledge of ourselves as members of the larger social and political context, and so includes knowledge of that context.Architecture need not memorialize or symbolize anything; or it may symbolize, but not in a memorializing way, let alone in a way that is tied to a nation’s history. The structures on the Washington Mall belong to a particular species of recollective architecture, a species whose symbolic and normative content is prominent. After all, war memorials by their very nature recall struggles to the death over values. Still further, the architecture by which a people memorializes itself is a species of pedagogy. It therefore seeks to instruct posterity about the past and, in so doing, necessarily reaches a decision about what is worth recovering. It would thus be a mistake to try to view such memorials merely “aesthetically,” in abstraction from all judgments about the noble and the base. To reflect philosophically on specific monuments, as I propose to do here, necessarily requires something more than a simply technical discussion of the theory of architecture or of the history of a given species of architecture. We must also understand the monument’s symbolism, social context, and the effects its architecture works on those who participate in it. That is, we must understand the political iconography which shapes and is shaped y the public structure in question. To do less than this—if I may state a complex argument in hopelessly few words—is to fall short of the demands of true objectivity, of an understanding of the whole which the object is. To understand the meaning of the VVM requires that we understand, among other things, what the memorial means to those who visit it. This is why my observations about the dedication of the VVM and about the Memorial’s continuing power over people play an important role in this essay. Charles L. Griswold, associate professor of philosophy at Howard University, is the author of Self-Knowledge in Plat’s “Phaedrus” and has published widely in the areas of Greek philosophy, German Idealism, hermeneutics, and political philosophy. He is an editor of the Independent Journal of Philosophy and a recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. Currently he is working on a project which centers on Adam Smith’s notion of the “self” and Smith’s relationship to Stoicism and to the American Founding. (shrink)

We present a comprehension‐based computational model of UNIX user skill acquisition and performance in a training context (UNICOM). The work extends a comprehension‐based theory of planning to account for skill acquisition and learning. Individual models of 22 UNIX users were constructed and used to simulate user performance on successive command production problems in a training context. Comparisons of model and the human empirical data result in a high degree of agreement, validating the ability of UNICOM to predict user response to (...) training. (shrink)

Moral distress has been widely reviewed across many care contexts and among a range of disciplines. Interest in this area has produced a plethora of studies, commentary and critique. An overview of the literature around moral distress reveals a commonality about factors contributing to moral distress, the attendant outcomes of this distress and a core set of interventions recommended to address these. Interventions at both personal and organizational levels have been proposed. The relevance of this overview resides in the implications (...) moral distress has on the nurse and the nursing workforce: particularly in regard to quality of care, diminished workplace satisfaction and physical health of staff and increased problems with staff retention. (shrink)

The appeal to expert opinion is an argument form that uses the verdict of an expert to support a position or hypothesis. A previous scheme-based treatment of the argument form is formalized within a Bayesian network that is able to capture the critical aspects of the argument form, including the central considerations of the expert's expertise and trustworthiness. We propose this as an appropriate normative framework for the argument form, enabling the development and testing of quantitative predictions as to how (...) people evaluate this argument, suggesting that such an approach might be beneficial to argumentation research generally. We subsequently present two experiments as an example of the potential for future research in this vein, demonstrating that participants' quantitative ratings of the convincingness of a proposition that has been supported with an appeal to expert opinion were broadly consistent with the predictions of the Bayesian model. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

This study investigated effects of codes of ethics on perceptions of ethical behavior. Respondents from companies with codes of ethics (n = 465) rated role set members (top management, supervisors, peers, subordinates, self) as more ethical and felt more encouraged and supported for ethical behavior than respondents from companies without codes (n = 301). Key aspects of the organizational climate, such as supportiveness for ethical behavior, freedom to act ethically, and satisfaction with the outcome of ethical problems were impacted by (...) the presence of an ethics code. The mere presence of a code of ethics appears to have a positive impact on perceptions of ethical behavior in organizations, even when respondents cannot recall specific content of the code. (shrink)

This study investigated effects of codes of ethics on perceptions of ethical behavior. Respondents from companies with codes of ethics (n = 465) rated role set members (top management, supervisors, peers, subordinates, self) as more ethical and felt more encouraged and supported for ethical behavior than respondents from companies without codes (n = 301). Key aspects of the organizational climate, such as supportiveness for ethical behavior, freedom to act ethically, and satisfaction with the outcome of ethical problems were impacted by (...) the presence of an ethics code. The mere presence of a code of ethics appears to have a positive impact on perceptions of ethical behavior in organizations, even when respondents cannot recall specific content of the code. (shrink)

C.H. Waddington is today remembered chiefly as a Drosophila developmental geneticist who developed the concepts of “canalization” and “the epigenetic landscape.” In his lifetime, however, he was widely perceived primarily as a critic of Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. His criticisms of Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory were focused on what he saw as unrealistic, “atomistic” models of both gene selection and trait evolution. In particular, he felt that the Neo-Darwinians badly neglected the phenomenon of extensive gene interactions and that the “randomness” of mutational (...) effects, posited in the theory, was a false postulate. This last criticism dealt with the phenomenon known today as “developmental constraints.” Although population genetics itself has evolved considerably from its form at mid-20th century, much of Waddington’s critique, it is argued here, retains cogency. Yet, he did not attempt to develop a full-fledged alternative theory himself. Perhaps most surprisingly, in retrospect, is that he did not try to marry his work on gene interactions in development with his evolutionary interests, to create a theory of “genetic networks” and their evolution. Whether evolutionary genetics today will incorporate “network thinking” as a central element or whether there will be a general retreat to the more atomistic approach offered by genomics, remains an open question. (shrink)

What are human rights? According to one longstanding account, the Naturalistic Conception of human rights, human rights are those that we have simply in virtue of being human. In recent years, however, a new and purportedly alternative conception of human rights has become increasingly popular. This is the so-called Political Conception of human rights, the proponents of which include John Rawls, Charles Beitz, and Joseph Raz. In this paper we argue for three claims. First, we demonstrate that Naturalistic Conceptions of (...) human rights can accommodate two of the most salient concerns that proponents of the Political Conception have raised about them. Second, we argue that the theoretical distance between Naturalistic and Political Conceptions is not as great as it has been made out to be. Finally, we argue that a Political Conception of human rights, on its own, lacks the resources necessary to determine the substantive content of human rights. If we are right, not only should the Naturalistic Conception not be rejected, the Political Conception is in fact incomplete without the theoretical resources that a Naturalistic Conception characteristically provides. These three claims, in tandem, provide a fresh and largely conciliatory perspective on the ongoing debate between proponents of Political and Naturalistic Conceptions of human rights. (shrink)

This paper proposes a philosophically informed decision-making methodology, inspired by Aristotle, that encourages constructive discussions amongst employers and employees; is directed towards shared higher-level goals; is consistent with planning frameworks already in place in many businesses; can be amended over time without disruptive disputes; and accounts for the particularities of each industry, enterprise, workplace, and job. It seeks to establish a more fundamental basis for discussions about remote vs. in-person office work: specifically, the purpose and nature of the work of (...) those affected. If these matters can be decided, then subsequent discussions might be focused more upon the shared outcomes to which stakeholders are committed and less upon individual preferences and ‘hunches.’. (shrink)

Bayesian probability has recently been proposed as a normative theory of argumentation. In this article, we provide a Bayesian formalisation of the ad Hitlerum argument, as a special case of the ad hominem argument. Across three experiments, we demonstrate that people's evaluation of the argument is sensitive to probabilistic factors deemed relevant on a Bayesian formalisation. Moreover, we provide the first parameter-free quantitative evidence in favour of the Bayesian approach to argumentation. Quantitative Bayesian prescriptions were derived from participants' stated subjective (...) probabilities (Experiments 1 and 2), as well as from frequency information explicitly provided in the experiment (Experiment 3). Participants' stated evaluations of the convincingness of the argument were well matched to these prescriptions. (shrink)