This study investigates the relative attractiveness of production level jobs provided by multinational firms in Mexico's maquiladora industry. We take the position that workers themselves are an important and often overlooked source of information relevant to the controversy focusing on the responsibilities of multinational companies to their employees in the developing world. We conducted interviews with 59 maquila production level workers in the Mexican cities of Cd. Juárez and Chihuahua. Using a relative attractiveness framework that compared maquila jobs to other (...) employment available in the local economy, maquila line and technical workers responded to questions addressing why they were working at a maquila, their work history, the attractiveness of maquila jobs compared to both their prior jobs and the jobs held by friends and family, and whether they planned to continue working in the maquilas. While the responses from maquila workers are diverse, they suggest that maquila jobs provide attractive employment for the economically disadvantaged in Northern Mexico. (shrink)

Parts I through III of this paper will examine several, increasingly comprehensive forms of aggregation, ranging from insurance reimbursement “lock-in” programs to PDMPs to completely unified electronic medical records. Each part will advocate for the adoption of these aggregation systems and provide suggestions for effective implementation in the fight against opioid misuse. All PDMPs are not made equal, however, and Part II will, therefore, focus on several elements — mandating prescriber usage, streamlining the user interface, ensuring timely data uploads, creating (...) a national data repository, mitigating privacy concerns, and training doctors on how to respond to perceived doctor-shopping — that can make these systems more effective. In each part, we will also discuss the privacy concerns of aggregating data, ranging from minimal to significant, and highlight the unique role of stigma in motivating these concerns. In Part IV, we will conclude by suggesting remedial steps to offset this loss of privacy and to combat the stigma around SUDs and mental health disorders in general. (shrink)

The problem of evil is the most prominent argument against the existence of God. Skeptical theists contend that it is not a good argument. Their reasons for this contention vary widely, involving such notions as CORNEA, epistemic appearances, 'gratuitous' evils, 'levering' evidence, and the representativeness of goods. We aim to dispel some confusions about these notions, in particular by clarifying their roles within a probabilistic epistemology. In addition, we develop new responses to the problem of evil from both the phenomenal (...) conception of evidence and the knowledge-first view of evidence. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen a fertile period of theorizing within mainstream epistemology which has had a dramatic impact on how epistemology is done. Investigations into contextualist and pragmatic dimensions of knowledge suggest radically new ways of meeting skeptical challenges and of understanding the relation between the epistemological and practical environment. New insights from social epistemology and formal epistemology about defeat, testimony, a priority, probability, and the nature of evidence all have a potentially revolutionary effect on how we understand our epistemological (...) place in the world. Religion is the place where such rethinking can potentially have its deepest impact and importance. Yet there has been surprisingly little infiltration of these new ideas into philosophy of religion and the epistemology of religious belief. -/- Knowledge, Belief, and God incorporates these myriad new developments in mainstream epistemology, and extends these developments to questions and arguments in religious epistemology. The investigations proposed in this volume offer substantial new life, breadth, and sophistication to issues in the philosophy of religion and analytic theology. They pose original questions and shed new light on long-standing issues in religious epistemology; and these developments will in turn generate contributions to epistemology itself, since religious belief provides a vital testing ground for recent epistemological ideas. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

In a fair, infinite lottery, it is possible to conclude that drawing a number divisible by four is strictly less likely than drawing an even number; and, with apparently equal cogency, that drawing a number divisible by four is equally as likely as drawing an even number.

Judith Jarvis Thomson famously argued that abortion is permissible even if we accept that a fetus qualifies as a person and possesses a right to life. The current paper presents two arguments that undermine Thomson’s position. First, the paper sketches a contractarian argument that explores Thomson’s violinist thought experiment from behind a veil of ignorance, which suggests that if we had an equal likelihood of being an unwanted fetus and a pregnant woman, it would be rational for us to oppose (...) abortion. Second, the paper discusses the hypothetical self-aborting fetus, a thought experiment that reverses the dependence relationship between a woman and a fetus. It is argued that in this scenario, where fetuses have agency of their own, Thomson’s position would counterintuitively prohibit a woman from temporarily curtailing the freedom of her fetus even to save her own life. (shrink)

In this book, leading Christian political thinkers and practitioners critique the Rawlsian concepts of “justice as fairness” and “public reason” from the perspective of Christian political theory and practice. It provides a new level of analysis from Christian perspectives, including implications for such hot topics as the culture war.

What individuates the speech act of prediction? The standard view is that prediction is individuated by the fact that it is the unique speech act that requires future-directed content. We argue against this view and two successor views. We then lay out several other potential strategies for individuating prediction, including the sort of view we favor. We suggest that prediction is individuated normatively and has a special connection to the epistemic standards of expectation. In the process, we advocate some constraints (...) that we think a good theory of prediction should respect. (shrink)

This paper explores a fundamental similarity between cognitive models for crying and conceptions of insight, enlightenment or, in the context of art, “aesthetic experience.” All of which center on a process of initial discrepancy, followed by schema change, and conclude in a personal adjustment or a “transformation” of one’s image of the self. Because tears are argued to mark one of the only physical indicators of this cognitive outcome, and because the process is particularly salient in examples with art, I (...) argue that crying may provide an intriguing marker for empirical study of perceiving art. To explore this parallel, I offer a review of crying theory as well as of tearful cases with art, pointing out the key cognitive elements. I then introduce an expanded crying model, based upon our recent model of art experience which does consider insight and adjustment or application of the self. I also consider multiple emotional and evaluative factors, which may co-vary with crying response. This theoretical discussion is then applied in three exploratory, survey-based studies, conducted within U.K., Japan and U.S. museums, and including what is claimed to be the 20th century’s most tear-inducing abstract paintings. Results showed—with cross-cultural consistency—significant correlation between “feeling like crying” and a collection of responses posited to indicate a full progression to aesthetic experience. This also found correlation to positive assessment of artwork goodness, beauty, understanding of meaning, and to final reported self reflection and epiphany. I argue that, beyond the question of why we may cry, by considering implications of what tears may indicate for information processing, feeling like crying may be a compelling basis for identifying outcomes of perceptual (art) experience. (shrink)

Embedding ethics modules within computer science courses has become a popular response to the growing recognition that CS programs need to better equip their students to navigate the ethical dimensions of computing technologies like AI, machine learning, and big data analytics. However, the popularity of this approach has outpaced the evidence of its positive outcomes. To help close that gap, this empirical study reports positive results from Northeastern’s program that embeds values analysis modules into CS courses. The resulting data suggest (...) that such modules have a positive effect on students’ moral attitudes and that students leave the modules believing they are more prepared to navigate the ethical dimensions they’ll likely face in their eventual careers. Importantly, these gains were accomplished at an institution without a philosophy doctoral program, suggesting this strategy can be effectively employed by a wider range of institutions than many have thought. (shrink)

Ordinary judgments about personal identity are complicated by the fact that phrases like “same person” and “different person” have multiple uses in ordinary English. This complication calls into question the significance of recent experimental work on this topic. For example, Tobia (2015) found that judgments of personal identity were significantly affected by whether the moral change described in a vignette was for the better or for the worse, while Strohminger and Nichols (2014) found that loss of moral conscience had more (...) of an effect on identity judgments than loss of biographical memory. In each case, however, there are grounds for questioning whether the judgments elicited in these experiments engaged a concept of numerical personal identity at all (cf. Berniūnas and Dranseika 2016; Dranseika 2017; Starmans and Bloom 2018). In two pre-registered studies we validate this criticism while also showing a way to address it: instead of attempting to engage the concept of numerical identity through specialized language or the terms of an imaginary philosophical debate, we should consider instead how the identity of a person is described through the connected use of proper names, definite descriptions, and the personal pronouns “I”, “you”, “he”, and “she”. When the experiments above are revisited in this way, there is no evidence that the differences in question had an effect on ordinary identity judgments. (shrink)

Classical Trinitarians claim that Jesus—the Son of God—is truly God and that there is only one God and the Father is God, the Spirit is God, and the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct. However, if the identity statement that ‘the Son is God’ is understood in the sense of numerical identity, logical incoherence seems immanent. Yet, if the identity statement is understood according to an ‘is’ of predication then it lacks accuracy and permits polytheism. Therefore, we argue that there (...) is another sense of ‘is’ needed in trinitarian discourse that will allow the Christian to avoid logical incoherence while still fully affirming all that is meant to be affirmed in the confession ‘Jesus is God.’ We suggest a sense of ‘is’ that meets this need. (shrink)

What are the effects of word-by-word predictability on sentence processing times during the natural reading of a text? Although information complexity metrics such as surprisal and entropy reduction have been useful in addressing this question, these metrics tend to be estimated using computational language models, which require some degree of commitment to a particular theory of language processing. Taking a different approach, this study implemented a large-scale cumulative cloze task to collect word-by-word predictability data for 40 passages and compute surprisal (...) and entropy reduction values in a theory-neutral manner. A separate group of participants read the same texts while their eye movements were recorded. Results showed that increases in surprisal and entropy reduction were both associated with increases in reading times. Furthermore, these effects did not depend on the global difficulty of the text. The findings suggest that surprisal and entropy reduction independently contribute to variation in reading times, as these metrics seem to capture different aspects of lexical predictability. (shrink)

Technological advancements in information systems over the past few decades have enabled firms to work with the major suppliers and customers in their supply chain in order to improve the performance of the entire channel. Tremendous benefits for all parties can be realized by sharing information and coordinating operations to reduce inventory requirements, improve quality, and increase customer satisfaction; but the companies must collaborate effectively to bring these gains to fruition. We consider two alternative methods of managing these interfirm supply (...) chain relationships in this article. The first, which we have named “dictatorial collaboration,” occurs when a dominant supply chain entity assumes control of the channel and forces the other firms to follow its edicts. We compare and contrast this method with “sustainable collaboration,” in which the parties share resources and engage in joint problem solving to improve the performance of the system as a whole. We use a virtue ethics lens to describe these methods of relationship management to suggest that sustainable collaboration is preferable to dictatorial collaboration both operationally and ethically in the long run. (shrink)

The past 25 years have seen a rapid growth of knowledge about brain mechanisms involved in visual mental imagery. These advances have largely been made independently of the long history of philosophical – and even psychological – reckoning with imagery and its parent concept ‘imagination’. We suggest that the view from these empirical findings can be widened by an appreciation of imagination’s intellectual history, and we seek to show how that history both created the conditions for – and presents challenges (...) to – the scientific endeavor. We focus on the neuroscientific literature’s most commonly used task – imagining a concrete object – and, after sketching what is known of the neurobiological mechanisms involved, we examine the same basic act of imagining from the perspective of several key positions in the history of philosophy and psychology. We present positions that, firstly, contextualize and inform the neuroscientific account, and secondly, pose conceptual and methodological challenges to the scientific analysis of imagery. We conclude by reflecting on the intellectual history of visualization in the light of contemporary science, and the extent to which such science may resolve long-standing theoretical debates. (shrink)

Western consumers are increasingly demanding to know the provenance of their food. In New Zealand, Māori tribal enterprises are engaged in the food producing sectors of farming and fisheries and, like other businesses seeking to remain competitive in global markets, are responding to the demand for provenance through developing systems for communicating the origin of foods to consumers. However, Māori are doing this in their own way, in a manner that authentically reflects their own understanding of place and expresses an (...) indigenous animist perspective. It is argued that an animist approach to provenancing provides an authentic means of connecting Western consumers to nature in circumstances where they have become psychologically and physically abstracted. Animism provides a relational way of understanding the world, through which food products emerge as animated representations of reciprocal place-based relationships. It is considered that this indigenous approach can provide ‘an antidote’ to the alienating effects of modernity, where food products are experienced as inert compositions of elements that can be replicated and produced anywhere via industrial processes. Furthermore, it can provide a touchstone for differentiating between authentic provenance and the cynical use of provenance marketing that exploits the needs of alienated individuals for connection to place. A case study of indigenous provenance, Ahikā Kai, is offered to explain and illustrate the theoretical perspectives provided. (shrink)

What does it mean to consider the world of AI through a Christian lens? Rapid developments in AI continue to reshape society, raising new ethical questions and challenging our understanding of the human person. Encountering Artificial Intelligence draws on Pope Francis’ discussion of a culture of encounter and broader themes in Catholic social thought in order to examine how current AI applications affect human relationships in various social spheres and offers concrete recommendations for better implementation. The document also explores questions (...) regarding personhood, consciousness, and the kinds of relationships humans might have with even the most advanced AI. Through these discussions, this book investigates the theoretical and practical challenges to interpersonal encounter raised by the age of AI. (AI Research Group for the Centre for Digital Culture of the Dicastery of Culture and Education of the Holy See). (shrink)

This well crafted volume provides unflinching assessments of the philosophical values that are beginning to unite - and that continue to divide - the cultures of America and Europe. Its contributors offer arguments that are once timely, provocative, and accessible. - Larry A. Hickman, The Center for Dewey Studies, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale IL American and European Values is a far richer book than a misreading of its title might suggest: it is truly a both (American)-and (European), not an (...) either-or. The perspectives of its contributors range over time and place, from the anarchic California of Gold Rush days to modern Poland, Russia, and Turkey. Eclectic in the best sense of that word, it combines philosophy, literature, history, and even religion without ever straying far from its central theme. And, somewhat incidentally, it also demonstrates just how multifaceted and complex is the idea of pragmatism. - William McBride, Ph.D. is Arthur G. Hansen Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University, Indiana. (shrink)

Are police officers morally justified in issuing unsolicited personal safety advice to women? Such advice often attracts accusations of ‘victim blaming’, although prevention advice remains a common tool used by police to address many crime and safety risks. While some examples of police advice are clearly outrageous, this article considers whether there is a place for ‘sound’ advice, i.e., advice that is proportionate, easy to follow, empirically justified, and objectively likely to reduce harm. To explore this, the article proposes a (...) thought experiment that compares safety advice dealing with threats to women from human sources with safety advice issued in response to natural phenomena, such as flooding. It argues that, despite apparent differences, safety advice addressing risks from humans and natural phenomena are relevantly similar. Consequently, if advice dealing with natural phenomena is morally justified then advice to women about human threats is also morally justifiable. Nevertheless, the article also considers whether the purported prevalence of sexism in policing may make safety advice for women morally problematic. While levels of sexism in policing may vary across time and location, it is argued that safety advice would be morally justified even if sexism was widespread among police officers. Finally, the article considers whether crime prevention advice may backfire by effectively curtailing women’s freedoms. Rather than curtailing freedom, however, it is argued that sound advice may actually enable women to flourish by helping them overcome fear of crime and achieve non-instrumental goals that they have set for themselves. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The problem of persistence and emergence endowed with the limits of “actuality” is examined in the context of Nietzsche's appropriation of both Heraclitus and Boscovich to forge a natural philosophy of becoming. The physics of Boscovich allowed a systematic refurbishment of Heraclitean notions of becoming over being while Heraclitus's tensive dynamic of generation surpassed and overcame the limits of Anaximander's indeterminate. Nietzsche's early investigations bear overt signs of a formative philosophical outlook that seeks to marry the infinite and the (...) sensible in a fashion consistent with his mature concept of becoming. (shrink)

In this article, two dance educators offer a definition of rhythm from both educational and performance perspectives and discuss pedagogical practices that waken students’ awareness to rhythm as a lived-experience over which they have creative control. For the dancer, in the midst of the dance, rhythms are, in the words of Margaret H’Doubler, recurring patterns of measured energy. These patterns are nested in scales from the moment-to-moment shifts in muscular contraction and release to the rise and fall of dramatic tension (...) in a performed dance. This approach to rhythm runs counter to many dance students’ studio-based training in which rhythm is equated to synchronizing accents to a specific meter. The authors describe pedagogical practices in the studio that foster engagement with rhythm as lived-experience. Drawing attention to their kinesthetic experience while moving, students are encouraged to modulate levels of exertion embedded in the qualities of movement they are experiencing. As varying levels of exertion are attended to across temporal durations, students notice patterns as they emerge and recur. This attention to recurring patterns of measured exertion is, the authors claim, the lived-experience of rhythm in dance. (shrink)

Based on field research in Africa, this essay explores three claims: first, that sport hunting places economic value on wildlife and habitats; second, that this motivates conservation practices in the interest of sustaining revenue sources; and, third, that this benefits human populations. If true, then sport hunting may sometimes be justifiable on utilitarian grounds. While not dismissing objections from the likes of Singer and Regan, we suggest their views – if converted into policy in desperately impoverished places – would destroy (...) animals and the habitats on which they depend. There are empirical verifications of this, which we discuss. (shrink)

Social media platforms have been rapidly increasing the number of informational labels they are appending to user-generated content in order to indicate the disputed nature of messages or to provide context. The rise of this practice constitutes an important new chapter in social media governance, as companies are often choosing this new “middle way” between a laissez-faire approach and more drastic remedies such as removing or downranking content. Yet information labeling as a practice has, thus far, been mostly tactical, reactive, (...) and without strategic underpinnings. In this paper, we argue against defining success as merely the curbing of misinformation spread. The key to thinking about labeling strategically is to consider it from an epistemic perspective and to take as a starting point the “social” dimension of online social networks. The strategy we articulate emphasizes how the moderation system needs to improve the epistemic position and relationships of platform users — i.e., their ability to make good judgements about the sources and quality of the information with which they interact on the platform — while also appropriately respecting sources, seekers, and subjects of information. A systematic and normatively grounded approach can improve content moderation efforts by providing clearer accounts of what the goals are, how success should be defined and measured, and where ethical considerations should be taken into consideration. We consider implications for the policies of social media companies, propose new potential metrics for success, and review research and innovation agendas in this regard. (shrink)

The focus of this article will be sport predicated on contests between nation-states, or what we will call inter-national sport, at the elite level. While much literature on the politics of sport has focused on the proper role of the nation-state in regards to specific sport issues, few have questioned whether elite sport ought to involve nationalism as part of its competition. Most who have defended such sport argue that the benefits of nationalism and the national identity outweigh any potential (...) unintended harm. In this article, we question these conclusions by arguing that both lusory and ethical considerations undermine elite sport’s emphasis on inter-national contests. We will be trying to argue that these artifacts no longer should play a primary role in determining eligibility or serving as the basis for determining competitive sides. We will make this argument by focusing on the ethical dilemmas posed specifically by inter-national competition including international discord and reduced quality of competition. We also argue that promoting national differences does not serve a useful lusory role in elite sport. However, we will concede that Morgan’s respect for the narratives associated with sport indicate that national identity may continue playing a limited role in elite sporting contests. So while we make an exception for a soft national cultural narrative, we conclude that such arguments taken together indicate that national identities ought to have a much diminished role, if any at all, in elite sport. (shrink)

This article results from the experimental convergence of five elements. Three of these are seemingly unrelated names: the Anglican philosopher John Milbank, the German critical theorist Walter Benjamin, and the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. The remaining two are themes that seem to have little relation to each other: the explosion of online pornography, which is making addicts of younger and younger users, and Christology or the study of the nature and work of the Second Person of the Trinity.