On several key issues we agree with the commentators. Perhaps most importantly, everyone seems to agree that psychology has an important role to play in building better models of human vision, and (most) everyone agrees (including us) that deep neural networks (DNNs) will play an important role in modelling human vision going forward. But there are also disagreements about what models are for, how DNN–human correspondences should be evaluated, the value of alternative modelling approaches, and impact of marketing hype in (...) the literature. In our view, these latter issues are contributing to many unjustified claims regarding DNN–human correspondences in vision and other domains of cognition. We explore all these issues in this response. (shrink)

Live donor kidney transplantation is the best treatment option for most patients with late-stage chronic kidney disease; however, the rate of living kidney donation has declined in the United States. A consensus conference was held June 5-6, 2014 to identify best practices and knowledge gaps pertaining to live donor kidney transplantation and living kidney donation. Transplant professionals, patients, and other key stakeholders discussed processes for educating transplant candidates and potential living donors about living kidney donation; efficiencies in the living donor (...) evaluation process; disparities in living donation; and financial and systemic barriers to living donation. We summarize the consensus recommendations for best practices in these educational and clinical domains, future research priorities, and possible public policy initiatives to remove barriers to living kidney donation. (shrink)

Experiential evidence shows that pain is associated with common meanings. These include a meaning of threat or danger, which is experienced as immediately distressing or unpleasant; cognitive meanings, which are focused on the long-term consequences of having chronic pain; and existential meanings such as hopelessness, which are more about the person with chronic pain than the pain itself. This interdisciplinary book - the second in the three-volume Meanings of Pain series edited by Dr Simon van Rysewyk - aims to better (...) understand pain by describing experiences of pain and the meanings these experiences hold for the people living through them. The lived experiences of pain described here involve various types of chronic pain, including spinal pain, labour pain, rheumatic pain, diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome, endometriosis-associated pain, and cancer-related pain. Two chapters provide narrative descriptions of pain, recounted and interpreted by people with pain. Language is important to understanding the meaning of pain since it is the primary tool human beings use to manipulate meaning. As discussed in the book, linguistic meaning may hold clues to understanding some pain-related experiences, including the stigmatisation of people with pain, the dynamics of patient-clinician communication, and other issues, such as relationships between pain, public policy and the law, and attempts to develop a taxonomy of pain that is meaningful for patients. Clinical implications are described in each chapter. This book is intended for people with pain, their family members or caregivers, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and policy makers. (shrink)

In 1992, I sent Milton Friedman a draft of my 1993 paper “Friedman's Theory of Corporate Social Responsibility.” He and I corresponded at length. My 1993 paper argues that Friedman's published formulations of his theory are not equivalent and that they prescribe different courses of action in many possible cases. In our correspondence, Friedman conceded that his two formulations of his theory are inconsistent and, at my suggestion, he endorsed a modified version of the view he presented in Capitalism (...) and Freedom as the preferred version of his theory. This modified theory is an important formulation of his position. In one of his letters to me, Friedman writes: “I agree that corporate executives might have duties to the general public which sometimes outweigh their duties to the shareholders.” I argue that this creates major problems for his theory. I also answer Friedman's published response to one of my criticisms. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s political philosophy has enjoyed renewed attention as an egalitarian alternative to contemporary inequality since it seems to uncompromisingly reassert the primacy of the state over the economy, enabling it to defend the modern welfare state against encroaching neoliberal markets. However, I argue that, when understood as a free-standing approach to politics, Kant’s doctrine of right shares essential features with the prevailing theories that legitimate really existing economic inequality. Like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, Kant understands the state’s (...) function as essentially coercive and, in justifying state coercion, he adopts a narrow conception of political freedom that formally preserves the right to choose while denying that the range of choices one actually has can be a matter of justice. As a result, Kant cannot identify various forms of social pressure as potential injustices even as he recognizes their power to create and sustain troubling inequalities. For both Kant and the neoliberals, the result is that economic relations almost never count as unjust forms of coercion, no matter how unequal they are. Views that identify coercion as the trigger for duties of justice are thus particularly ill-suited to orient us to contemporary inequality. (shrink)

In arecent paper, Kenneth Goodpaster formulates three versions of the stakeholder theory of corporate social responsibility. He rejects the first two versions and endorses the third. I argue that the theory that Goodpaster defends under the name “stakeholder theory” is aversion (albeit a somewhat different version) of Milton Friedman’s theory of corporate social responsibility. I also argue that the first two formulations of the stakeholder theory which Goodpaster discusses are at most only slight modifications of other theories. I conclude (...) by formulating a fourth version of the stakeholder theory which I believe does constitute a substantial departure from earlier theories of social responsibility. (shrink)

There are doubtless many with personal experience of suffering, or of comforting others in distress, who would agree with Milton thus far that philosophic argument is powerless to satisfy those who in their anguish ask the question ‘Why did it happen to me?’ Yet to think so is to underestimate both the necessity and the power of reason: clarity of mind and the disposition to argue are commonly enhanced rather than diminished by suffering; and if reason is an essential (...) part of man's nature, it should serve him, if anywhere, in the trials of life. We have every justification, therefore, despite common opinion, for seeking a rational answer to the question proposed. It must, however, be admitted at the outset that there is no direct answer to the question which can both withstand critical scrutiny and bring genuine comfort to the afflicted, an answer, that is, which accepts the question as it stands with its attendant presuppositions; but there is an indirect answer, which, precisely by rejecting one or more of these presuppositions and restating the question, can indeed satisfy these two requirements. Before such an answer can be outlined, however, the question in its traditional form must be examined and the traditional answers to it critically reviewed. (shrink)

G. Deledalle is the author of a Histoire de la philosophie américaine, and of some excellent studies on Dewey, such as La pédagogie de Dewey, philosophie de la continuité, and "Durkheim et Dewey". These are all works that deserve full attention by students of the Golden Age of American philosophy. For a European, Deledalle has an unusual capacity to detect the vitality and freshness, but also the depth, of the growth of higher education in the U.S. in the first half (...) of this century. At the heart of this growth were philosophical ideas, and in particular those of Dewey. Philosophy did not have then dictatorial or competitive designs regarding education, the social and political sciences, psychology, or the natural sciences. It freely mingled with them, not just imparting methodological or epistemological rigor but also contributing some insights and giving the hypotheses and conclusions in these fields the character of "experiences." Experience is the guiding theme of this rich and complicated work, covering a multitude of subjects and positions. The treatment is divided into six parts dealing respectively with Dewey's leanings toward unitary experience, organic experience, dynamic experience, functional experience, instrumental experience, and transactional experience. In the study of the intellectual of Dewey's life practically all of his production is critically examined by Deledalle: a monumental task in itself, made possible by the critical bibliography of Milton Hasley Thomas. There is enough early biographical detail to make this work an effective and affectionate intellectual portrait. The best pages of this work are devoted to a thorough explication and comparative study of Dewey's final synthesis of experience. There are very helpful comparative references to Marx, Freud, Bergson, and Heidegger, and also indispensable parallels and contrasts with Peirce, James, and Whitehead. This is not a modest contribution from a regional point of view: Deledalle is, perhaps more than anybody else, aware of an ongoing international dialogue on Dewey, a dialogue that is preserving experience as a problem-complex at the front line of contemporary reflection.--A. de L. M. (shrink)

This book is short on pages but long on valuable content. Oates intends to refute the rather widespread contention that Plato "denied the worth of all the so-called fine arts" by an objective and historical study of the Ion, Republic, Greater Hippias, Phaedrus and Symposium. Since the author himself clearly summarizes his own thought frequently, we here need only present his final conclusion. Every human activity is valuable in direct proportion to its closeness to the domain of the ideas and, (...) specifically, the Idea of Beauty and Goodness. But artistic creation is a human activity. Therefore, it too must be oriented towards the Idea of Beauty. Thus, "the creative artist must be ‘philosophical'" and, since he comes close to Beauty through intuition, also "quasi-mystical", as were Aeschylus, Sophocles, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, Michelangelo. So too was Plato himself, whose dialogues are philosophical dramas containing "a more explicit expression of a vision of reality and value than is to be found in epics or tragedies or lyrics". In Oates’ book the only flaws are minor: an occasional awkwardness of style, referral only to scholars prior to the mid-twentieth century, notes are placed at the end of chapters rather than at the bottom of the pages. Even so, the book is well worth having.—L.S. (shrink)

My philosophical case study concerns textbook presentations of the theory of demand. Does this theory contain anything more than just a collection of tautologies? In order to determine its empirical content, it must be viewed holistically. But then, the theory implies false factual claims. We can avoid this result by embracing the theory’s normative character. The resulting consequences will be illuminated with the new autodetermination thesis recently proposed in the philosophy of physics by Oliver Timmer. Applying his ideas to the (...) theory of demand reveals that the statements of this discipline simultaneously concern both values and facts. (shrink)

There is a widespread disagreement, Drucker observes, about "what an ideology is." He proposes to cast light on the subject, not by proffering his own definition, but by showing that the diversity of opinion about the meaning of ideology is itself the product of differing ideological points of view. Part I of the book describes "the various definitions of ideology which occur in writing directed primarily to intellectual audiences," notably the views of Destutt de Tracy, Marx, Comte, and several contemporary (...) sociologists. In Part II the author examines four individual examples of "manifestly ideological" writing: Milton’s Areopagitica, Paine’s Common Sense, Comte’s Appeal to Conservatives, and Koestler’s Darkness at Noon. The third and concluding section of the book argues "that the various notions of ideology current today fit easily into the scheme of one or other" of three ideologies: Liberalism, Conservatism, and Marxism. (shrink)

The idea of corporate social responsibility is neither new nor radical. The core belief is that business managers, even in their role as managers, have responsibilities to society beyond profit maximization. Managers, in pursuing their primary goal of increasing shareholder value, have social responsibilities in addition to meeting the minimal requirements of the law. Nevertheless, the call for increased social responsibility on the part of business managers remains controversial. At least two major perspectives on social responsibility can be isolated. The (...) classical view, most closely identified with Milton Friedman, suggests that social responsibility is incompatible with a free enterprise economy. By contrast, advocates of increased social responsibility point out the desirability for voluntary (and at times costly) corporate activities which promote society's well being. The purpose of this essay is to briefly describe both the classical and pro-social responsibility perspectives. We suggest that while important differences in assumptions characterize the two distinct views, there is enough overlap and agreement to move the debate beyond the current stalemate. Specifically, we argue that the concept oflifnim mishurat hadin, an innovative and ancient Jewish legal doctrine which is usually translated as beyond the letter of the law, might serve as a model for modern legal and social thought. We examine talmudic and post-talmudic sources which apply this concept to the area of business ethics, and explore its applicability to the modern situation. Although the business ethics literature rarely refers to Talmudic and rabbinic sources, these texts reflect a sophisticated understanding of business practices and ethical problems. (shrink)