Among global environments, the undersea is unique in the challenges it poses - and the opportunities it affords - for sensation, perception, inquiry, and imagination. The Aesthetics of the Undersea charts a history of the subaqueous in Western culture, from the early modern period to the present.

There is a significant convergence between some contemporary panpsychist theories and idealism. Traditional phenomenal, macro idealism has been widely criticised for its implausible account of physical facts. This paper examines three idealism friendly contemporary panpsychist philosophies and suggests that with some revisions a plausible realist and physical idealism can be articulated. Taking from information-theoretic models of consciousness and metaphysical arguments for the ontological primacy of mind, it is suggested via a Schelling inspired perspective that aspects of consciousness??? intrinsic nature provide (...) a promising approach to the decomposition problem which is currently a significant challenge to pan/cosmopsychist theories. (shrink)

I will argue that, due to the level of attention given to comparing and contrasting Socratic Intellectualism with the Republic, the question of the possibility of akrasia in Plato’s thought has not yet been adequately formulated. I will instead be focusing on Plato’s Symposium, situating Alcibiades at its epicentre and suggesting that his case should be read as highlighting some of Plato’s concerns with Socratic Intellectualism. These concerns arise from the following position of Socratic Intellectualism: knowing the greater good will (...) necessarily entail doing good, and will thereby remove the motivational content of prior knowledge of what is good. Through Alcibiades, Plato explores the possibility of a negative reaction to knowledge of the greater good. Importantly, rather than simply arising as a result of being overcome by the passions, Alcibiades’ negative reaction assumes that rational freedom is required to reject the greater good in favour of the lesser. (shrink)

In the United Kingdom, the debate about how best to meet the shortfall of organs for transplantation has persisted on and off for many years. It is often presumed that the answer is simply to alter the law to a system of presumed consent. Acting perhaps on that presumption in his annual report launched in July, the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, advocated a system of organ donation based on presumed consent, the so-called “opt-out” system.1 He is calling for (...) a change in the law in England and Wales whereby consent to organ donation is presumed, making a person’s organs automatically available for transplantation after death, unless they registered objections to this while alive. Subsequently, the British Medical Association lent its support to the introduction of such a system.2 The BMA contends that “the practice of presumed consent legislation has had a significant effect on the number of cadaveric donors per million population.”2It is often taken for granted that there must be a correlation between the enactment of legislation on presumed consent and an increase in organ donation and procurement. However, the correlation is not as straightforward as it might seem. It may be that other practical measures to encourage organ donation could be implemented without changing the Human Tissue Act 2004, an Act which has been in force for barely a year.An analysis by Abadie and Gay demonstrated that “presumed consent legislation has a positive and sizeable effect on organ donation rates”,3 but they themselves admitted that the correlation between rates of donation and presumed consent legislation is “not completely unequivocal”.3 It is true that among the most successful cases in procurement rates are countries with presumed consent legislation . However, since some of the …. (shrink)

Following the publication of the Weatherall report on the use of non-human primates in research, this paper reflects on how to provide appropriate and ethical models for research beneficial to humankind. Two of the main justifications for the use of non-human primates in biomedical research are analysed. These are the “least-harm/greatest-good” argument and the “capacity” argument. This paper argues that these are equally applicable when considering whether humans are appropriate subjects of biomedical research.

This paper argues that the new commercial and quasi-commercial activities of medicine, scientists, pharmaceutical companies and industry with regard to human tissue has given rise to a whole new way of valuing our bodies. It is argued that a property framework may be an effective and constructive method of exploring issues arising from this. The paper refers to A M Honoré’s theory of ownership and aims to show that we have full liberal ownership of our own bodies and as such (...) can be considered to be self-owners. (shrink)

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

Yet another medical ethics book has been published, but the difference this time is that I actually like it Sokol and Bergson’s handbook Medical ethics and law—surviving on the wards and passing exams is for medical students and junior doctors preparing for life in medicine and for the inevitable exams. The format of the book closely follows that of the core curriculum for medical ethics and law set out by the BMA in 2004 in Medical ethics today. The book ….

The “headscarf affair,” Muslim girls wearing veils to school, has generated a storm of controversy in France. This study uses the headscarf affair to explore Muslim immigrant women's views of their place in French society and reveals that even those who disagree with French public opinion often invoke arguments that are more French than North African. Interviews with 41 North African women show that younger, well-educated women defend the headscarf as a matter of personal liberty and cultural expression. Older, poorly (...) educated women either defend or reject the veil but never discuss the issue of secularism. In dismissing the veil, they rely on a different understanding of Muslim womanhood. A third group opposes the veil, arguing that the goal of school is integration. Respondents' answers are interpreted according to structural factors and cultural repertoires, both North African and French. (shrink)

IntroductionResilience is a factor in how youth respond to adversity. The 88-item Adolescent Resilience Questionnaire is a comprehensive, multi-dimensional self-report measure of resilience developed with Australian youth.MethodsUsing a cross-sectional adolescent population, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to replicate the original factor structure. Over half of the adolescents were non-white and 9th graders with a mean age of 15.5.ResultsOur exploratory factor analysis shortened the measure for which we conducted the psychometric analyses. The original factor structure was not replicated. The exploratory factor (...) analysis provided a 49-item measure. Internal consistency reliability for all 12 factors ranged from acceptable. The revised factor total scores were highly and significantly correlated with item–total correlation coefficients.ConclusionThis revised shorter 49-item version of the Adolescent Resilience Questionnaire could be deployed and has acceptable psychometric properties. (shrink)

Setting goals in the workplace can motivate improved performance but it might also compromise ethical behavior. In this paper, we propose that individual differences in the dispositional tendency to morally justify behavior moderate the effects of specific performance goals on unethical behavior. We conducted an experimental study in which working participants, who were randomly assigned to a specific goal condition or to a condition with a vague goal that lacked a specific target, completed two tasks in which they had the (...) opportunity to act unethically. In an ethical dilemma task, participants in the specific goal condition were more likely to advocate using unethical methods. However, in an anagram task, only those with high moral justification overstated their performance to a greater degree in the specific goal condition. As such, individuals may not be equally susceptible to the ‘dark side’ of goal-setting. (shrink)

There have been calls for some time for a new approach to public health in the United Kingdom and beyond. This is consequent on the recognition and acceptance that health problems often have a complex and multi-faceted aetiology. At the same time, policies which utilise insights from research in behavioural economics and psychology have gained prominence on the political agenda. The relationship between the social determinants of health and behavioural science in health policy has not hitherto been explored. Given the (...) on-going presence of strategies based on findings from behavioural science in policy-making on the political agenda, an examination of this is warranted. This paper begins by looking at the place of the SDoH within public health, before outlining, in brief, the recent drive towards utilising behavioural science to formulate law and public policy. We then examine the relationship between this and the SDoH. We argue that behavioural public health policy is, to a certain extent, blind to the social and other determinants of health. In section three, we examine ways in which such policies may perpetuate and/or exacerbate health inequities and social injustices. We argue that problems in this respect may be compounded by assumptions and practices which are built into some behavioural science methodologies. We also argue that incremental individual gains may not be enough. As such, population-level measures are sometimes necessary. In section four we defend this contention, arguing that an equitable and justifiable public health requires such measures. (shrink)

Organizational leaders are increasingly emphasizing a stakeholder perspective in order to address concerns about business ethics. This study examined the choices of 94 groups in the context of a business decision-making simulation to determine how specific actions and communications can facilitate the consideration of different stakeholder perspectives. In particular, we examined whether generally framing the business situation as one involving diverse stakeholders versus a primarily profit-driven operation (referred to as framing), and whether specific suggestions that participants consider the concerns of (...) stakeholders versus stockholders in maximizing the value of the firm (referred to as vision priming), would influence group choices and decision outcomes. We tested four experimental conditions against a control in a 2 × 2 experimental design to determine the effects that group choices had on decision outcomes when groups were exposed to stakeholder versus stockholder decision framing and stakeholder versus stockholder vision priming. The results revealed that the consistent conditions outperformed the control condition and that vision priming has a greater impact on decision outcomes than decision framing. (shrink)

Recent ethical and legal challenges have arisen concerning the rights of individuals over their IVF embryos, leading to questions about how, when the wishes of parents regarding their embryos conflict, such situations ought to be resolved. A notion commonly invoked in relation to frozen embryo disputes is that of reproductive rights: a right to have (or not to have) children. This has sometimes been interpreted to mean a right to have, or not to have, one's own genetic children. But can (...) such rights legitimately be asserted to give rise to claims over embryos? We examine the question of property in genetic material as applied to gametes and embryos, and whether rights over genetic information extend to grant control over IVF embryos. In particular we consider the purported right not to have one's own genetically related children from a property-based perspective. We argue that even if we concede that such (property) rights do exist, those rights become limited in scope and application upon engaging in reproduction. We want to show that once an IVF embryo is created for the purpose of reproduction, any right not to have genetically-related children that may be based in property rights over genetic information is ceded. There is thus no right to prevent one's IVF embryos from being brought to birth on the basis of a right to avoid having one's own genetic children. Although there may be reproductive rights over gametes and embryos, these are not grounded in genetic information. (shrink)

Previous research has found that depression is characterised by biased processing of emotional information. Although most studies have examined cognitive biases in isolation, simultaneous examination of multiple biases is required to understand how they may interact and influence one another to produce depression vulnerability. In this study, the attention and memory biases of currently depressed, previously depressed, and never depressed women were examined using the same stimuli and a unified methodology. Participants viewed negative, positive, and neutral words while their eye (...) gaze was tracked and recorded. After a distraction task, participants completed an incidental recognition test that included words from the eye-tracking task and new words. The results supported the hypothesised mediation model for positive words: currently depressed women had a reduced attention bias for positive words and, in turn, had poorer memory for positive words relative to never depressed women. Previously depressed women, however, showed a lack of coherence between attention and memory biases for positive words. The groups did not differ in their attention or memory biases for negative words. The findings provide novel evidence in support of a causal link between the absence of protective attention and memory biases for positive information in clinical depression. (shrink)

Joseph Raz’s service conception of law remains one of the best known theories of political authority. Setting aside ongoing debates about the nature of authority, I locate a problem in the basic justificatory structure of the service conception. I show that the service justification of the state does not yield the conclusion that the law generates exclusionary reasons, which are meant to be the key hallmark of authority. An automatic but defeasible _habit _of obeying the state is likely to lead (...) to better outcomes than exclusionary deference to the state. Given the instrumental justification of the service conception, this means that exclusionary reasons to defer do not obtain. Habituation and automaticity have been developed in other contexts and are here extended to the context of political authority. The possibility of habitual obedience undercuts Raz's theory while suggesting a new approach to the question of political authority. (shrink)

An increasing portion of contemporary politics revolves around a set of claims made by those (typically derisively) referred to as NIMBYs. Despite its practical significance, NIMBYism has not received significant attention in academic philosophy. I attempt a charitable but limited reconstruction of NIMBYism in terms of legitimate expectations. I argue that, despite NIMBY expectations being somewhat vague and at least moderately unjust, they may be legitimate. This does not imply that they are decisive, or entail a conclusion about their overall (...) normative force. I close by developing some tentative details in institutional design, focusing on the possibility of monetary compensation as a way of recognizing, but limiting the force of, NIMBY expectations. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHow should we conceive of a right to reproduce? And, morally speaking, what might be said to justify such a right? These are just two questions of interest that are raised by the technologies of assisted reproduction. This paper analyses the possible legitimate grounds for a right to reproduce within the two main theories of rights; interest theory and choice theory.