Neurotechnologies that promise to dampen (via pharmacologicals), disassociate (via electro-convulsive therapy), erase (via deep brain stimulation), and replace (via false memory creation) unsavory episodic memories are no longer the subject of science fiction. They have already arrived, and their funding suggests that they will not disappear anytime soon. In light of their emergence, this essay examines the neurostructure of normative morality to clarify that memory manipulation, which promises to take away that which is bad in human experience, also removes (...) that which enables human beings to be good. Concepts such as free will, moral responsibility, and the neurobiological basis of moral reasoning are explored to underscore the fundamental hubris inherent to the memory manipulation enterprise. (shrink)

Revisiting Dawkin’s proposal of memes – a piece of thought copied from person to person – raises the question: can narrative, and by extension narratology, be utilized to explore the ‘infecting’, or transferring agent of cultural ideas, identity and the creation of self? Intriguingly, and perhaps even more relevant to the role of emergent models and the shifting divide between engineered and organic constructions, what role does media play in the fabrication of self? This article proposes to examine various attempts (...) to define modes of being using the formative and delimiting lens of narrative. It will investigate the role of media as the carrier agent for memetic modes of being, and their application in creating and sustaining cultural individuation. Jung’s declarative of the collective unconscious and archetypes, as well as Hofstadter’s loops, a common, but neglected field of enquiry that interrogates how memetic transference begins with the stories we tell, will inform the exploration of narrative as a means to define, delineate and bound the self. (shrink)

Barnett and Block establish that not only are fractional reserve demand deposits fraudulent and create an Austrian Business Cycle , but that a certain type of mismatching between time deposits and the period for which the depository institution relends the deposited funds are also contrary to libertarian law. The question we address in the present paper is whether or not this type of disconnect between the period for which the ultimate lender committed funds and the ultimate borrower gained possession thereof (...) also necessarily start an Austrian Business Cycle. Even though this does not constitute an increase in the stock of money, we answer in the affirmative. (shrink)

There is an old but powerful argument for the claim that exhaustive divine foreknowledge is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. A crucial ingredient in this argument is the principle of the “Fixity of the Past”. A seemingly new response to this argument has emerged, the so-called “dependence response,” which involves, among other things, abandoning FP for an alternative principle, the principle of the “Fixity of the Independent”. This paper presents three arguments for the claim that FI ought to (...) be preferred to FP. (shrink)

The vast majority of Biblical historians believe there is evidence sufficient to place Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt. Many believe the New Testamentdocuments alone suffice firmly to establish Jesus as an actual, historical figure. I question these views. In particular, I argue (i) that the three most popular criteria by which various non-miraculous New Testament claims made about Jesus are supposedly corroborated are not sufficient, either singly or jointly, to place his existence beyond reasonable doubt, and (ii) that a prima (...) facie plausible principle concerning how evidence should be assessed—a principle I call the contamination principle—entails that, given the large proportion of uncorroborated miracle claims made about Jesus in the New Testament documents, we should, in the absence of good independent evidence for an historical Jesus, remain sceptical about his existence. (shrink)

Public health ethics is emerging as a new field of inquiry, distinct not only from public health law, but also from traditional medical ethics and research ethics. Public health professional and scholarly attention is focusing on ways that ethical analysis and a new public health code of ethics can be a resource for health professionals working in the field. This article provides a preliminary exploration of the ethical issues faced by public health professionals in day-to-day practice and of the type (...) of ethics education and support they believe may be helpful. (shrink)

Public health ethics is emerging as a new field of inquiry, distinct not only from public health law, but also from traditional medical ethics and research ethics. Public health professional and scholarly attention is focusing on ways that ethical analysis and a new public health code of ethics can be a resource for health professionals working in the field. This article provides a preliminary exploration of the ethical issues faced by public health professionals in day-to-day practice and of the type (...) of ethics education and support they believe may be helpful. (shrink)

Who is the 'I' that performs? The arts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have pushed us relentlessly to reconsider our notions of the self, expression, and communication: to ask ourselves, again and again, who we think we are and how we can speak meaningfully to one another. Although in other performing arts studies, especially of theatre, the performance of selfhood and identity continues to be a matter of lively debate in both practice and theory, the question of how a (...) sense of self is manifested through musical performance has been neglected. The authors of 'Voices, Bodies, Practices' are all musician-researchers: the book employs artistic research to explore how embodied performing "voices" can emerge from the interactions of individual performers and composers, musical materials, instruments, mediating technologies, and performance contexts. (shrink)

The issue of public health ethics has received much attention in recent years and is seen as a new field, distinct from medical ethics. Faculty from the University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Georgetown University, the University of Minnesota, and others received a grant from the Greenwall Foundation to examine this new field of public health ethics and identify the unique principles that distinguish it from the study of medical ethics. In the course of that study, which (...) included exploring the field with public health practitioners, a number of distinguishing ethical principles emerged. The moral principles appropriate for public health officials included producing benefits; avoiding, preventing and removing harms; producing a maximum balance of benefits over harms; and distributing benefits and burdens fairly. (shrink)

As the medical profession becomes more and more of a commercial enterprise, commentators are subjecting conflicts of interest in medicine to increasing scrutiny. However, one critical area of conflict has largely escaped discussion—the conflicts of interest raised by the advertising policies of medical journals. Moreover, when these conflicts are discussed, they are examined almost exclusively in terms of the concerns that they pose for journal editors. Yet, there is a second critical concern with journal advertising policies. The policies also create (...) serious conflicts of interest for the professional societies that own medical journals.In this article, we will discuss the conflicts of interest that are raised for journal editors and professional societies by journal advertising policies, and we will conclude that the policies are exactly backward. Currently, medical journals rely on advertisements from pharmaceutical companies and other health-related businesses and avoid—indeed exclude—advertisements from consumer-oriented companies, like producers of automobiles, golf equipment, or jewelry. We submit that the medical journals, the medical profession, and the public would be better served if consumeroriented advertisement were preferred over health-related advertising. (shrink)

This book explores the relevance of virtue theory to law from a variety of perspectives. The concept of virtue is central in both contemporary ethics and epistemology. In contrast, in law, there has not been a comparable trend toward explaining normativity on the model of virtue theory. In the last few years, however, there has been an increasing interest in virtue theory among legal scholars. 'Virtue jurisprudence' has emerged as a serious candidate for a theory of law and adjudication. Advocates (...) of virtue jurisprudence put primary emphasis on aretaic concepts rather than on duties or consequences. Aretaic concepts are, on this view, crucial for explaining law and adjudication. This book is a collection of essays examining the role of virtue in general jurisprudence as well as in specific areas of the law. Part I puts together a number of papers discussing various philosophical aspects of an approach to law and adjudication based on the virtues. Part II discusses the relationship between law, virtue and character development, with some of the essays selected analysing this relationship by combining both eastern perspectives on virtue and character with western approaches. Parts III and IV examine problems of substantive areas of law, more specifically, criminal law and evidence law, from within a virtue-based framework. Last, Part V discusses the relevance of empathy to our understanding of justice and legal morality. (shrink)

Psychologists' emerging interest in spirituality and religion as well as the relevance of each phenomenon to issues of psychological importance requires an understanding of the fundamental characteristics of each construct. On the basis of both historical considerations and a limited but growing empirical literature, we caution against viewing spirituality and religiousness as incompatible and suggest that the common tendency to polarize the terms simply as individual vs. institutional or ′good′ vs. ′bad′ is not fruitful for future research. Also cautioning against (...) the use of restrictive, narrow definitions or overly broad definitions that can rob either construct of its distinctive characteristics, we propose a set of criteria that recognizes the constructs' conceptual similarities and dissimilarities. Rather than trying to force new and likely unsuccessful definitions, we offer these criteria as benchmarks for judging the value of existing definitions. (shrink)

Sexual and reproductive health is a challenge worldwide, and much progress is needed to reach the relevant UN Sustainable Development Goals. This paper presents cross-sectional data collected in Sierra Leone on sexual and gender-based violence, family planning, child, early and forced marriage, and female genital mutilation using an innovative method of measurement: situational judgment tests, as a subset of questions within a larger survey tool. For the SJTs, respondents saw hypothetical scenarios on these themes and had to indicate how they (...) would react. The objective is to give an impression of beliefs and norms on specific behaviors, which provide insights for social and behavior change interventions. Data was collected by enumerators traveling to villages randomly selected in six districts of the country. The sample is composed of 566 respondents. Results show that FGM in particular seem to be a priority topic, in comparison to the other topics for which the norms seem to be stronger against those practices. Age differences emerged and suggest priority groups to be targeted. In terms of validity of the measurement methods, situational judgment test answers correlated positively with other items in the survey, but the magnitude of the association is often small, and sometimes not significant. Thus, more studies are needed to further explore the validity of this measure by comparing against a reference value. Using SJTs could complement other data collection tools to perform community assessment, and orient the direction of the program in its planning phase. (shrink)

Law's Ethical, Global and Theoretical Contexts examines William Twining's principal contributions to law and jurisprudence in the context of three issues which will receive significant scholarly attention over the coming decades. Part I explores human rights, including torture, the role of evidence in human rights cases, the emerging discourse on 'traditional values', the relevance of 'Southern voices' to human rights debates, and the relationship between human rights and peace agreements. Part II assesses the impact of globalization through the lenses of (...) sociology and comparative constitutionalism, and features an analysis of the development of pluralistic ideas of law in the context of privatization. Finally, Part III addresses issues of legal theory, including whether global legal pluralism needs a concept of law, the importance of context in legal interpretation, the effect of increasing digitalization on legal theory, and the utility of feminist and postmodern approaches to globalization and legal theory. (shrink)

This study aimed to advance our understanding of 5-year-olds’ behavioral difficulties by modeling and testing both mediational protective and risk pathways simultaneously. Drawing on two national samples from different Western European countries—the United Kingdom and Germany, the proposed model considered observed sensitive parental interactive behaviors and tested child vocabulary as protective pathways connecting parental education with children’s behavioral outcomes; the risk pathways focused on negative parental disciplinary practices linking parental education, parental distress, and children’s difficult temperament to children’s behavioral difficulties. (...) Further, the tested model controlled for families’ income as well as children’s sex and formal child care attendance. Children with comparatively higher educated parents experienced more sensitive interactive behavior, had more advanced vocabulary, and exhibited fewer behavioral difficulties. Children with a comparatively higher level of difficult temperament or with parents who suffered from distress tended to experience more negative disciplinary behavior and exhibited more behavioral difficulties. Additionally, children’s vocabulary skills served as a mechanism mediating the association between parental education and children’s behavioral difficulties. Overall, we found similar patterns of results across the United Kingdom and Germany with both protective and risk pathways contributing simultaneously to children’s behavioral development. The findings suggest that promoting parents’ sensitive interactive behaviors, favorable disciplinary practices, and child’s vocabulary skills have potential for preventing early behavioral difficulties. (shrink)

Society has historically not taken a benign view of genetic disease. The laws permitting sterilization of the mentally re tarded~ and those proscribing consanguineous marriages are but two examples. Indeed as far back as the 5th-10th centuries, B.C.E., consanguineous unions were outlawed (Leviticus XVIII, 6). Case law has traditionally tended toward the conservative. It is reactive rather than directive, exerting its influence only after an individual or group has sustained injury and brought suit. In contrast, state legislatures have not (...) been inhibited in enacting statutes. Many of their products can be characterized as hasty, unnecessary, ill-conceived, and based on the heart rather than the head. Moreover the lack of expert consultation sought has also been remarkable. One state legislature, for example, has advocated immunization for sickle cell anemia! Many others have enacted laws for the screening of inborn errors of metabolism, e.g., phenylketon uria, but have poorly defined the lines of responsibility to secure compliance. A spate of specific disease-related bills has emerged in the u.S. Congress, each seeking recognition and appropriations. Sickle cell anemia, hemophilia, Cooley's anemia and Tay-Sachs disease have been among the front-runners for support. Finally, in 1975, Congress has begun to examine an omnibus bill concerning all forms of genetic disease. The bill, termed the National Genetic Diseases Act is, however, still far from being enacted. (shrink)

Many computational tools for the simulation and design of emergency evacuation and egress are now available. However, due to the scarcity of human and social behavioral data, these computational tools rely on assumptions that have been found inconsistent or unrealistic. This paper presents a multi-agent based framework for simulating human and social behavior during emergency evacuation. A prototype system has been developed, which is able to demonstrate some emergent behaviors, such as competitive, queuing, and herding behaviors. For illustration, an example (...) application of the system for safe egress design is provided. (shrink)

The concubines, with whom the sultans lived a family life, were classified according to a certain hierarchy in the Harem. The first wives of the sultan and those who gave birth were called Kadınefendi. The other wives with a lower status than the Kadınefendi wives were called Ikbal Hanımefendi. According to Islamic law, marriage with a concubine is not like a marriage with a free woman. If a marriage is desired, the concubine must be freed. Until the 19th century, sultans (...) did not marry their concubines for a few exceptions. In the 19th century, the legal status of concubines in the Ottoman Empire became controversial. The countries of origine changed when the Ottoman Empire was unable to conquer new territory. Consequently, the enslavement procedure of prisoners of war disappeared. Instead, Caucasian immigrants, who had to leave their homeland mainly due to the Russian attacks, gave their daughters to the Ottoman palace so that they would not suffer misery and could reach important positions in the future. Among these were orphans from poor families as well as those from noble Caucasian dynasties. Even though the young women in the palace were called concubines, at least some of them were free/Muslim persons. This meant, that they could not be enslaved according to Islamic law. Although there was no problem for those who served in the palace, a remarkable situation emerged for the would-be spouses of the sultan. Could a woman from a free and Muslim family be the sultan's wife without a marriage bond? Was the limitation of the Kadınefendi numbers to four (in times of Sultan Abdülaziz) due to the Islamic law principle, that a man could marry maximum four wives? Was there a marriage ceremony (nikāh) for Kadınefendi wives? What was the situation of the Ikbal? Satisfactory answers to these questions have not been given yet. However, there are no official records it was claimed that lately sultans married especially their concubines who were Abkhaz descendants and included them among their wives in this way, because they were free and Muslims. Thus, the matter whether Sultan Abdülhamid II's wives were concubines or wedded became the subject of some research today. Memoires claim that almost all of Sultan Abdülhamid's wives were free and of Muslim origin. According to this, it was said that the wives of Sultan Abdülhamid could not have the status of the concubine and that their relationship should have been by marriage. On the other hand, considering that a maximum of four women can be married according to Islamic law, the marriage of the Sultan, who had thirteen wives, raised juristic questions. This problem was most clearly seen in the inheritance case filed by his heirs after the death of Sultan Abdülhamid. In this case, where it was claimed that Sultan Abdülhamid was married to nine wives, no objection was made to that claim. In this study, information about the wives of Sultan Abdülhamid and their legal status was tried to be determined through the documents related to their salaries during the 2nd Constitutional Era. Besides, the issue of nine wedded women, which emerged in the case of Sultan Abdülhamid's inheritance, was evaluated in terms of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence). Sultan Abdülhamid was never accused of marriages contrary to Islamic law by his opponents during and after his reign. From this point of view, it can be said that there was no situation contrary to Islamic law regarding the Sultan's harem at that time. This might be due to three possibilities: Firstly, some wives have concealed the truth in the court, which is the weakest possibility according to the data obtained. Secondly, the talaq (divorcement) was hidden by Sultan Abdülhamid and his wives were not aware of it. This possibility has been found to be problematic when evaluated in terms of Hanafi fiqh. Thirdly, the practice of al-nikāh al-tanazzuhī (marriage performed in order to avoid from fornication). Considering the correspondence between the state departments in the period starting with the 2nd Constitutional Monarchy and until the Republic, it is clear that the Kadınefendis were regarded as married wives (their number was limited to four), while the Ikbals were regarded as concubines. From this point of view, it is thought that the most plausible possibility is that the Ikbals were regarded as concubines and their marriages were al-nikāh al-tanazzuhī. (shrink)

The concept of weak emergence is a refinement or specification of the intuitive, general notion of emergence. Basically, a fact about a system is said to be weakly emergent if its holding both (i) is derivable from the fundamental laws of the system together with some set of basic (non-emergent) facts about it, and yet (ii) is only derivable in a particular manner, called “simulation.” This essay analyzes the application of this notion Conway’s Game of Life, and (...) concludes that a modification of the notion would provide a better refinement of the general notion of emergence. It is proposed that emergence be taken as a matter of degree, defined in terms of the amount of simulation required to derive a fact. (shrink)

Cet article traite de l’histoire du law french, un idiome dont les débuts ont émergé durant le règne de Henri II d’Angleterre et qui a dominé le monde juridique du common law anglais jusqu’au début du XVIIIe siècle. L’anglo-français a joué un rôle essentiel lors de la fondation du common law. Il s’agissait de la construction d’un double édifice interdépendant : le droit et ses concepts en plein développement, d’un côté, et une langue s’enrichissant d’un vocabulaire de plus en plus (...) technique et spécialisé, de l’autre. L’utilisation continue du law french dans les rangs des juristes, combinée au déclin général de l’usage de l’anglo-normand dans le reste de la société, a contribué à la formation d’une langue qui n’a bientôt été plus compréhensible que pour les spécialistes de droit. Ainsi toutes personnes non instruites dans les sciences du droit se sont trouvées exclues de ce domaine, non seulement par une terminologie en raison de l’objet des textes, mais par l’usage d’une langue de plus en plus étrangère. (shrink)

Cet article traite de l’histoire du _law french_, un idiome dont les débuts ont émergé durant le règne de Henri II d’Angleterre et qui a dominé le monde juridique du _common law_ anglais jusqu’au début du XVIII e siècle. L’anglo-français a joué un rôle essentiel lors de la fondation du _common law_. Il s’agissait de la construction d’un double édifice interdépendant : le droit et ses concepts en plein développement, d’un côté, et une langue s’enrichissant d’un vocabulaire de plus en (...) plus technique et spécialisé, de l’autre. L’utilisation continue du _law french_ dans les rangs des juristes, combinée au déclin général de l’usage de l’anglo-normand dans le reste de la société, a contribué à la formation d’une langue qui n’a bientôt été plus compréhensible que pour les spécialistes de droit. Ainsi toutes personnes non instruites dans les sciences du droit se sont trouvées exclues de ce domaine, non seulement par une terminologie en raison de l’objet des textes, mais par l’usage d’un... (shrink)

Policymakers, legislators, scientists, thinkers, military strategists, academics, and all those interested in understanding the future want to know how twenty-first century scientific advance should be regulated in war and peace. This book tries to provide some of the answers. Part I summarises some important elements of the relevant law. In Part II, individual chapters are devoted to cyber capabilities, highly automated and autonomous systems, human enhancement technologies, human degradation techniques, the regulation of nanomaterials, novel naval technologies, outer space, synthetic brain (...) technologies beyond artificial intelligence, and biometrics. The final part of the book notes important synergies that emerge between the different technologies and legal provisions, existing and proposed, assesses notions of convergence and of composition in international law, and provides some concluding remarks. The new technologies, their uses, and their regulation in war and peace are presented to the reader who is invited to draw conclusions. (shrink)

The essays in this volume offer a reassessment of Jeremy Bentham's strikingly original legal philosophy. Early on, Bentham discovered his 'genius for legislation' - 'legislation' included not only lawmaking and code writing, but also political and social institution building and engineering of public spaces for effective control of the exercise of political power. In his general philosophical work, Bentham sought to articulate a public philosophy to guide and direct all of his 'legislative' efforts. 0Part I explores the philosophical foundations of (...) his public philosophy: his theory of meaning and framework for analysis and definition of key concepts, his theory of human affections and motivations, and his utilitarian theory of value. It is argued that, while concepts of pleasure and happiness play nominal roles in his theory of value, concepts of publicity, equality, and interests emerge as the dominant concepts of his public philosophy. Part II explores several dimensions of Bentham's jurisprudence, including his radically revised command model of law, his early reflections on justice and law in adjudication, his theories of judicial evidence, constitutional rights, the rule of law, and international law. The concluding essay demonstrates the centrality of the notion of publicity in his moral, legal and political thought. Emerging from this study is a positivist legal theory and a utilitarian moral-political philosophy that challenge in fundamental ways contemporary understandings of those doctrines. (shrink)

This book is the second collection of essays on reproductive ethics from Drs. Campo-Engelstein and Burcher. This volume is unique in that it is both timely and includes several essays on new technologies, while also being a comprehensive review of most of the major questions in the field, from racial disparities in reproductive healthcare to gene editing and the possibility of the creation of a transhuman species. The scholars writing these essays are pre-eminent in their fields, and their backgrounds are (...) quite varied, including philosophers, anthropologists, physicians, and professors of law. Reproductive ethics remains an underdeveloped area of bioethics despite the recent technological breakthroughs that carry both great promise and potential threats. Building on the first volume of work from a conference held just over one year ago, this new collection of essays from a conference held April 2017 continues this discussion as well as provides ethical insights and reviews of these emerging technologies. The ethical questions swirling around human reproduction are both old and new, but the conference presentations, and the essays derived from them, focus on new ways of appreciating old arguments such as the ethics of abortion, as well as new ways of seeing new technologies such as CRISPR and mitochondrial transfer. (shrink)

This doctoral dissertation investigates the notion of physical necessity. Specifically, it studies whether it is possible to account for non-accidental regularities without the standard assumption of a pre-existent set of governing laws. Thus, it takes side with the so called deflationist accounts of laws of nature, like the humean or the antirealist. The specific aim is to complement such accounts by providing a missing explanation of the appearance of physical necessity. In order to provide an explanation, I recur (...) to fields that have not been appealed to so far in discussions about the metaphysics of laws. Namely, I recur to complex systems’ theory, and to the foundations of statistical mechanics. The explanation proposed is inspired by how complex systems’ theory has elucidated the way patterns emerge, and by the probabilistic explanations of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. More specifically, this thesis studies how some constraints that make no direct reference to the dynamics can be a sufficient condition for obtaining in the long run, with high probability, stable regular behavior. I hope to show how certain metaphysical accounts of laws might benefit from the insights achieved in these other fields. According to the proposal studied in this thesis, some regularities are not accidental not in virtue of an underlying physical necessity. The non-accidental character of certain regular behavior is only due to its overwhelming stability. Thus, from this point of view the goal becomes to explain the stability of temporal patterns without assuming a set of pre-existent guiding laws. It is argued that the stability can be the result of a process of convergence to simpler and stable regularities from a more complex lower level. According to this project, if successful, there would be no need to postulate a (mysterious) intermediate category between logical necessity and pure contingency. Similarly, there would be no need to postulate a (mysterious) set of pre-existent governing laws. Part I of the thesis motivates part II, mostly by arguing why further explanation of the notions of physical necessity and governing laws should be welcomed (chapter 1), and by studying the plausibility of a lawless fundamental level (chapters 2 and 3). Given so, part II develops the explanation of formation of simpler and stable behavior from a more complex underlying level. (shrink)

I physicalism1 and the weak identity theory deny, while physicalism2 and the radical identity theory assert, that raw feels can be accomodated in a purely physicalistic framework. II A way of interpreting the claim of physicalism1 is that raw feels are emergents. III The doctrine of emergence asserts that: (i) there are different levels of existence, (ii) these levels of existence are distinguishable on the basis of the behaviour of entities of that level, and (iii) an adequate scientific explanation (...) of a lower level is inadequate for a higher level. IV The criteria of emergence are novelty and a priori unpredictability. V Either qualities or laws or both may be regarded as emergents. VI If the alleged impossibility of explaining higher level phenomena on the basis of explanation adequate for lower level phenomena is logical, then the impossibility is either trivial or it implies indeterminism. Consideration of theories of emergence: VII Semantic emergence. On this view emergence is theory-bound, analogous to indefinability or indemonstrability. VIII Methodological emergence. On this view what we regard as emergents depends on the theory we construct. IX Nomological emergence. On this view emergence is an empirical problem. Conclusion: if there are emergents, physicalism2 and the radical identity theory probably have to be abandoned. However, unless actual examples of emergents are produced both theories hold. The logical possibility of falsification is not an objection against physicalism2 and the radical identity theory; it is one of their merits. (shrink)

SARS and monkeypox have given the public health community a unique opportunity to examine the use of quarantine measures. Until recently, the word “quarantine”was not used in polite conversation, and evoked unsavory images. The recent SARS epidemic illustrated the important role of quarantine and isolation as a public health response to communicable disease.As public health officials in Toronto began to take control of the SARS epidemic, a second wave of the disease emerged. In the first SARS epidemic, approximately 8,200 individuals (...) were isolated. There were approximately 82 probable cases, 66 suspect cases, and 24 deaths. On May 22, 2003, SARS II emerged. In total, approximately 13,000 people were quarantined. SARS II saw the onset of difficult questions being asked about the control and spread of SARS.The province of Ontario establishes the public health policies and legislative framework for the entire province. (shrink)

SARS and monkeypox have given the public health community a unique opportunity to examine the use of quarantine measures. Until recently, the word “quarantine”was not used in polite conversation, and evoked unsavory images. The recent SARS epidemic illustrated the important role of quarantine and isolation as a public health response to communicable disease.As public health officials in Toronto began to take control of the SARS epidemic, a second wave of the disease emerged. In the first SARS epidemic, approximately 8,200 individuals (...) were isolated. There were approximately 82 probable cases, 66 suspect cases, and 24 deaths. On May 22, 2003, SARS II emerged. In total, approximately 13,000 people were quarantined. SARS II saw the onset of difficult questions being asked about the control and spread of SARS.The province of Ontario establishes the public health policies and legislative framework for the entire province. (shrink)

This chapter begins with an empirical analysis of attitudes towards the law, which, in turn, inspires a philosophical re-examination of the moral status of the rule of law. In Section 2, we empirically analyse relevant survey data from the US. Although the survey, and the completion of our study, preceded the recent anti-police brutality protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd, the relevance of our observations extends to this recent development and its likely reverberations. Consistently with prior studies, we (...) find that people’s ascriptions of legitimacy to the legal system are predicted strongly by their perceptions of the procedural justice and lawfulness of police and court officials’ action. Two factors emerge as significant predictors of people’s compliance with the law: (i) their belief that they have a (content-independent, moral) duty to obey the law (which is one element of legitimacy, as defined here); and (ii) their moral assessment of the content of specific legal requirements (‘perceived moral content of laws’). We also observe an interactive relationship between these two factors. At higher levels of perceived moral content of laws, felt duty to obey is a better predictor of compliance. And, similarly, perceived moral content of laws is a better predictor of compliance at higher levels of felt duty to obey. This suggests that the moral content incorporated in specific laws interacts with the normative force people ascribe to legal authorities by virtue of other qualities, specifically here procedural justice and lawfulness. In Section 3, the focus shifts to a philosophical analysis, whereby we identify a parallel (similarly interactive) modality in the way that form and content mutually affect the value of the rule of law. We advocate a distinctive alternative to two rival approaches in jurisprudential discourse, the first of which claims that Lon Fuller’s eight precepts of legality embody moral qualities not contingent on the law’s content, while the second denies any independent moral value in these eight precepts, viewing them as entirely subservient to the law’s substantive goals. In contrast, on the view put forward here, Fuller’s principles possess (inter alia) an expressive moral quality, but their expressive effect does not materialise in isolation from other, contextual factors. In particular, the extent to which it materialises is partly sensitive to the moral quality of the law’s content. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of, and thematic justification for, the special issue of the journal of Artificial Intelligence and Law entitled “E-Discovery”. In attempting to define a characteristic “AI & Law” approach to e-discovery, and since a central theme of AI & Law involves computationally modeling legal knowledge, reasoning and decision making, we focus on the theme of representing and reasoning with litigators’ theories or hypotheses about document relevance through a variety of techniques including machine learning. We also identify (...) two emerging techniques for enabling users’ document queries to better express the theories of relevance and connect them to documents: social network analysis and a hypothesis ontology. (shrink)

Since the last several years of the life of King Hassan II, Morocco slowly moved from authoritarian rule to a managed democracy. As a result of this gradual political liberalization, religious groups as well as secular ones formed political parties. Islamists have already won seats in the parliament and they are expected to gain nearly half the number of seats in the coming elections. Equally significant is the increased presence of human rights and non-government organizations and the emergence of (...) independent and party-affiliated newspapers and other media outlets. In this article, I focus on the prospects of seeing a free press emerging in Morocco given the pressures exerted by official and non-official authorities. I argue that government interventions stifle freedom of expression and weaken civil society. This study focuses exclusively on Moroccan Arabic and French language print media. (shrink)

This article focuses on cases of restitution within contract, investigating the normative desirability of enabling a promise to pursue the profits derived by the promisor through a breach of contract as an alternative pecuniary remedy of wide applicability. Situated at the frontier of both contractual and restitutionary liability, the question of whether restitutionary damages for breach of contract should be available has received a considerable amount of attention. This article makes a critical examination of the normative groundings that have been (...) proposed for and against awarding this pecuniary remedy. This article arrives at two significant conclusions. The first is deconstructive. Parts I and II critique two conventional arguments often raised in the debate over restitutionary damages. These Parts raise doubts as to the ability of these arguments to substantiate the doctrinal conclusions they purport to support. I claim that both promise-keeping and unjust enrichment are neutral between rules offering restitutionary damages and denying such awards. The significance of the results of this analysis extends beyond the specific questions at hand, since these arguments dominate many of the debates surrounding private law theory. The second conclusion reached is reconstructive. Parts III, IV and V present three normative considerations that are more helpful: protection of proprietary rights, enhancement of efficiency, and good faith. Here an attempt is made to reconceptualize the conventional arguments for the derivation of legal rules from these normative prescriptions. From this reconceptualization, we realize that in order to settle the debate over restitutionary damages for breach of contract, a choice must be made between the instrumental conception of contract and its more cooperative alternative. Thus, it emerges that here, too, just as in the case of many other legal issues, the persistent need to choose between two conflicting social visions cannot be avoided. (shrink)

This article draws on the ‘visual turn’ in legal studies to argue for the centrality of visibility in the analysis of the regulation of gay and lesbian identities, with a specific focus on Hong Kong. Part I gives an overview of the ways in which gay visibility operates within the cityscape of Hong Kong. Parts II and III then focus on the case of Cho Man Kit v. Broadcasting Authority to examine the ways in which questions of visibility emerge in (...) the courtroom. (shrink)

I physicalism 1 and the weak identity theory deny, while physicalism 2 and the radical identity theory assert, that raw feels can be accomodated in a purely physicalistic framework. II A way of interpreting the claim of physicalism 1 is that raw feels are emergents. III The doctrine of emergence asserts that: there are different levels of existence, these levels of existence are distinguishable on the basis of the behaviour of entities of that level, and an adequate scientific explanation (...) of a lower level is inadequate for a higher level. IV The criteria of emergence are novelty and a priori unpredictability. V Either qualities or laws or both may be regarded as emergents. VI If the alleged impossibility of explaining higher level phenomena on the basis of explanation adequate for lower level phenomena is logical, then the impossibility is either trivial or it implies indeterminism. Consideration of theories of emergence: VII Semantic emergence. On this view emergence is theory-bound, analogous to indefinability or indemonstrability. VIII Methodological emergence. On this view what we regard as emergents depends on the theory we construct. IX Nomological emergence. On this view emergence is an empirical problem. Conclusion: if there are emergents, physicalism 2 and the radical identity theory probably have to be abandoned. However, unless actual examples of emergents are produced both theories hold. The logical possibility of falsification is not an objection against physicalism 2 and the radical identity theory; it is one of their merits. (shrink)

Drawing on philosophy, history, and critical theory, Unconditional Life introduces a new perspective on the significance of post-war international law developments. The book examines the public discourse regarding technological risk in World War II texts of unconditional surrender, in the World Trade Organisation's EC-Biotech dispute, and in the International Court of Justices' Nuclear Weapons Advisory Opinion. The volume describes international law in terms of its management of, and relation to, the risks associated with technological innovation in war and in trade. (...) It proposes that international law, too, is itself a kind of technology: one intended to manage the material and existential risks inherent in the creation of a new international, postcolonial, political community emerging out of the Second World War. Members of this community are imagined to possess a universal quality: humanness, which itself is underscored by a power of invention. Yoriko Otomo demonstrates how international lawyers' inability to adjudicate questions of large-scale technological risk is due to the competing and intractable claims of international law.Offering a feminist analysis of the political economy that has created this crisis of governance, the book provides a way of understanding the structural inequities that will need to be addressed if international law is to remain a relevant forum for the adjudication of war and trade into the 21st century. (shrink)

Contrasting accounts of physicalism and strong emergentism face two problems. According to the neutrality problem, contrasting supervenience-based formulations of these positions cannot be neutral with respect to certain unrelated metaphysical commitments. According to the collapse problem, emergent properties can be accounted for using an appropriately expansive physical ontology, rendering strong emergentism metaphysically suspect. I argue that both these problems can be solved with a principled distinction between emergent causal laws and physical laws. I propose such a distinction based (...) on a finite discontinuity in the behavior of fundamental physical constituents as a function of complexity. (shrink)

In recent years rule-scepticism has been dominant among experts concerning Aristotle’s ethics. The present paper addresses three points that speak for this sceptical attitude: (i) Aristotle’s caveat against precision in ethics; (ii) the emphasis on the particular conditions of actions and on experience; (iii) the fact that moral education relies on habituation rather than teaching. At a closer look it emerges that all these considerations presuppose universal rules, laws, and institutions rather than exclude them, for they concern the adjustment (...) of universal principles to particular cases. Knowledge of these principles may not be necessary in routine cases, but the emphasis on a master-science that provides the laws necessary for every well-functioning community and the appropriate education of the citizens shows that these principles are the indispensable foundation of both ethics and politics. It is Aristotle’s aim to provide the groundwork of such a master science that is the common concern of his ethics and politics. (shrink)

In Part I of our joint paper [WuB13], we outlined our respective theories, The Basic Theory of the Philosophy of Information and Logic in Reality and showed their synergy for the understanding of complex informational processes. In this part, we develop Wu’s fundamental philosophical insight of the origin of the values of information in the interactions of complex information processing. A key concept in our work is that of a logical isomorphism between human individual and social value and the natural (...) laws of the physical world. On the basis of Wu’s concept of Informational Thinking, we propose an Informational Stance, a philosophical stance that is most appropriate for, and not separated nor isolated from, the emerging unified theory of information. We propose our metaphilosophy and metalogic of information as further support for the ethical development of the Information Society. (shrink)

During the imperial period, French colonial law developed regimes of exception for indigenous peoples in contravention of the principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. These were justified by the need to secure order and by the claim that ‘natives’ were too ‘backward’ for the juridical principles upheld by the Declaration to apply to them. Introduced as temporary measures in Algeria in the 1840s, these measures, which discriminated between the French settler ‘citizens’ and the native (...) ‘subjects’, became firmly entrenched by the Third Republic, supported by the emergence of the ‘colonial sciences’ and the International Colonial Institute in the late 19th century. The exception became the rule. The colonial juridical regimes were derogatory of principle in two major ways: they subsumed universality to territoriality and defined the personhood of indigenous peoples according to racial, cultural or religious affiliations rather than as part of a shared humanity. Two particularly exorbitant measures of wide application were administrative internment without right of review and collective responsibility of a group for individual actions. Such regimes of exception persisted in French colonies until after World War II. (shrink)

During the imperial period, French colonial law developed regimes of exception for indigenous peoples in contravention of the principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. These were justified by the need to secure order and by the claim that ‘natives’ were too ‘backward’ for the juridical principles upheld by the Declaration to apply to them. Introduced as temporary measures in Algeria in the 1840s, these measures, which discriminated between the French settler ‘citizens’ and the native (...) ‘subjects’, became firmly entrenched by the Third Republic, supported by the emergence of the ‘colonial sciences’ and the International Colonial Institute in the late 19th century. The exception became the rule. The colonial juridical regimes were derogatory of principle in two major ways: they subsumed universality to territoriality and defined the personhood of indigenous peoples according to racial, cultural or religious affiliations rather than as part of a shared humanity. Two particularly exorbitant measures of wide application were administrative internment without right of review and collective responsibility of a group for individual actions. Such regimes of exception persisted in French colonies until after World War II. (shrink)

During the last quarter of the twentieth century, the humanities and social sciences have turned toward history, something that culminated in the 1990s, and this phenomenon was evident in law as well. However, until recently, law and economics, the most influential post-World War II jurisprudential movement, was a-historical in its methodology and research agenda. The first objective of this article is to call attention to this neglected characteristic of law and economics and to explain its causes by analyzing its intellectual (...) origins, its methodological causes, and the nature of its interaction with other sub-fields of law and of economics. The second objective of the article is to identify a change-in-the-making and its characteristics. Law and economics scholars have turned to history more often and for new purposes in recent years. The article identifies the set of factors that brought about this turn to history. These factors include: a growing willingness to conduct empirical research; the integration of public choice analysis into mainstream law and economics; preliminary comparative law and economics studies; a growing interaction between law and economics and new institutional economics; and the importation of the concept of path dependency and of greater awareness of past burdens from other quarters of economic theory. Finally, the article examines the concrete ways in which these developments are being realized, by pointing out the various uses of history evident in specific law and economics studies conducted in recent years. It suggests a classification of this growing literature into six distinct uses of history, four of them emerging only in recent years. The general aim of this article is to enhance awareness among law and economics scholars of the actual and potential uses of history. The article further seeks to connect law-and-economics historical studies to other relevant historical works so that the law and economics inquiry will not be conducted in a disciplinary vacuum. It thus calls to the attention of legal historians and economic historians the new literature published in the field of law and economics. Finally it is also directed at scholars interested in the intellectual history of jurisprudence and in the methodological turn to history in the social sciences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Witness Against the Beast, William Blake and the Moral LawDan LatimerWitness Against the Beast, William Blake and the Moral Law, by E. P. Thompson; xxi & 324 pp. New York: The New Press, 1993, $30.00.The social context from which William Blake arose was fundamentally hostile to the grandiose projects of Court and official Church. So modest were the ambitions of Blake’s working-class forebears that their historical oblivion would (...) be assured, had they not professed theological views irksome to those whose job it was to enforce uniformity. The eccentric theology of this nonconformist class earned them the name antinomian, from “anti-nomos,” “against the law,” a term which carried the sense of both “heretic” and “terrorist.”Antinomians emerged from the Puritan Interregnum of the 1650s. They went quiet during the Restoration of Charles II, then were given a second life in the 1790s when the energies of Jacobinism refocused working-class frustrations on the hegemonic alliance of Court and Church. Eventually, sedition laws drove the antinomians underground to stay. Abhorring all official places of worship, they met over pints of beer in public houses, singing songs composed by themselves out of their home-made hymnals set to such unthreatening melodies as “God Save the King” to delude the casual passer-by.One such sect was the Muggletonians, whose very name ensured groans of genteel ridicule from the educated and powerful. They never numbered more than two hundred members in all of England. Taking their name from a seventeenth-century sectary, Ludowick Muggleton, they kept largely to themselves, did not evangelize, and did not pray, since they considered prayer servile. They met for fellowship, song, and hours of intricate theological discussion. For three hundred years, the faithful preserved the manuscripts of their prophets, records of discussion and debate, song books and membership lists, until Thompson tracked it all down in 1975 to a furniture depository in Tunbridge Wells. What Thompson wanted to show was some empirical connection between Muggletonian theology and the eccentric mythos of William Blake, since the two systems had so many already obvious antinomian similarities. It must have been discouraging for him to get no closer than “Hermitage,” the name of Blake’s mother’s first husband, a hosier named Thomas. In the Muggletonian song books are compositions from the 1750s by a George Hermitage, who in Thompson’s working hypothesis is a possible uncle of Blake. Thompson admits, however, that the image of Blake’s mother singing nonconformist family songs over the cradle of her infant son will have to remain a pretty fiction.Why does Thompson specifically want the Muggletonians in the Blakean picture? There are four pertinent articles of Muggletonian belief. The first is that they repudiate moral law, that is, the notion of religion as a system of discipline and punishment for sin. They substitute love and generosity as [End Page 412] characteristic of the divine principle. The second is that Reason is explicitly identified as a Satanic item, binding, constraining, and inhibiting the imaginative vision of God. The third article is the doctrine of the Two Seeds, according to which Satan, in the form of the serpent, had carnal relations with Eve, who subsequently gave birth to Cain, the serpent’s child and half-brother to Abel and Seth, the legitimate offspring of Adam. Henceforth, though, the Satanic and divine seeds are mixed in all human beings. The persistent Satanic element, the humanum maternum, gives our worshippers occasion, not only for an indictment of the rich and powerful, serpent-spawn all, but for a gnostic hostility for all material creation, including the body, implying, one need hardly say, a robust sense of woman’s addiction to the secret and forbidden, the worm that flies in the night.The fourth article deals with the divine influx of God into man on the occasion of Christ’s birth. For the Muggletonians, this incarnation (and eventual extinction) was entire. There weren’t any other parts of God left over somewhere else. Thompson sees here elements of a radical humanism which may have motivated such notions as “the human form divine” in Blake. On the other hand, the doctrine of the... (shrink)

The contribution focuses on philosophical issues of justice of positive law in the light of the social teaching of John Paul II. The analyses start with consideration of anthropological foundations of justice as virtue, develop with the reflexion upon justice of actions realizing justice and finally arrive at examination of the criteria of justice of law. -/- It is argued that relations between a human being and goods (ends of actions) form ontological basis of natural law and justice of actions (...) – orders and prohibitions are secondary in respect to these relations. An aim of just law (and natural law) is not preservation or restoration of abstractly understood moral order based on norms – orders and prohibitions) but integral development (good) of a person – a being possessing dignity. John Paul’s II philosophy of law takes advantage primarily of Thomas Aquinas’ approach to law and combines it with constructions which are typical for modern human rights protection. John Paul’s II conception of natural law is anthropocentric and bases on subjective rights thinking. Human dignity and human rights which derive from it provide basic criteria for the justice of law. Human rights as subjective rights disclose natural law which is understood as a set of goods for a human person. These goods are ends of actions and as such they determine actions and their forms. This point of view is compatible with Aquinas’ definition: “law is nothing but a rational plan of operation, and … the rational plan of any kind of work is derived from the end” (Summa contra gentiles, lib. 3, cap. 114, n. 5). -/- Positive (human) law which is not just has no normative power in this sense that it does not in itself provide reasons for concrete actions of a concrete actor. Sometimes there are moral reasons for following unjust law, however if its norm prescribes actions which are wrong in themselves (internally wrong) there is moral obligation to act contrary to such a legal norm. -/- Zasadniczym przedmiotem opracowania jest filozoficzna refleksja Jana Pawła II nad sprawiedliwością prawa stanowionego. Analizy przebiegają od zagadnienia antropologicznych podstaw sprawiedliwości poprzez problematykę działań realizujących sprawiedliwość do zagadnienia sprawiedliwości prawa stanowionego. Opracowanie zamykają uwagi wskazujące na kontekst teologiczny istotny dla problematyki sprawiedliwości, którego analiza wykracza jednak poza podjęte zamierzenie koncentrujące się na problematyce filozoficznoprawnej. Argumentuje się, że u podstaw tej refleksji leży namysł nad relacją człowieka do dobra, która stanowi ontologiczną podstawę prawa naturalnego i sprawiedliwości – nakazy i zakazy są wtórne wobec tej relacji. Celem prawa i sprawiedliwości jest dobro konkretnego, obdarzonego godnością człowieka, a nie np. przywracanie abstrakcyjnie pojętego porządku moralnego. Od strony konstrukcji teoretycznej, filozofia prawa Jana Pawła II jest osadzona przede wszystkim na koncepcji Tomasza z Akwinu łączonej z konstrukcjami typowymi dla współczesnej ochrony praw człowieka. To w godności i wynikających z niej prawach człowieka poszukiwać trzeba zasadniczych treściowych kryteriów sprawiedliwości prawa. Prawa człowieka jako prawa podmiotowe są podstawowym wyrazem prawa naturalnego, stanowiącego ontyczną podstawę sprawiedliwości i które pojmowane jest jako zespół dóbr dla osoby, zatem i celów kształtujących działanie. Perspektywa pojmowania prawa naturalnego jest antropocentryczna. Prawo stanowione, które nie jest sprawiedliwe, nie ma „mocy prawa”, przede wszystkim w takim sensie, że nie stanowi samo w sobie racji działania. Niekiedy, ze względów moralnych, niesprawiedliwe prawo wymaga posłuszeństwa. Jeśli jednak prawo stanowione daje uprawnienia do czynów wewnętrznie złych i nakazuje takie czyny, to nie tylko nie obowiązuje w sumieniu i nie jest racją działania, ale obowiązkiem jest postępowanie wbrew takiemu prawu. (shrink)