This article sketches an intellectual history of the distinction between Christian theology and Christian ethics. The twists and turns of that history have been obscured by a recent tendency to deny the distinction's usefulness, as part of a wider strategy for reasserting theology's relevance to modern social problems. By contrast, earlier theologians assumed the value of the theology/ethics divide, interpreting it through Aristotelian, neo-Kantian, and finally Marxist categories. The distinction fell into disrepute because theologians struggled to maintain the distinction consistently (...) and disagreed on the concerns implicated by it, variously using it to affirm the moral subject's agency, the divine/human difference, or the complexity of real people's circumstances. Nonetheless, the distinction has persisted as a useful shorthand for recognizing the limitations of Christian theology, qua a conceptual discourse, in fully apprehending its subject matter of the Christian life. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Organizations constitute morally-complex environments, requiring organization members to possess levels of moral courage sufficient to promote their ethical action, while refraining from unethical actions when faced with temptations or pressures. Using a sample drawn from a military context, we explored the antecedents and consequences of moral courage. Results from this four-month field study demonstrated that authentic leadership was positively related to followers’ displays of moral courage. Further, followers’ moral courage fully mediated the effects of authentic leadership on followers’ ethical and (...) pro-social behaviors. Theoretical and practical implications for further integrating the work on moral courage, authentic leadership and ethics are discussed. (shrink)

The concept of alienation: Hegelian themes in modern social thought -- Creative activity and alienation in Hegel and Marx -- The concept of labour -- The individual and society -- Freedom and the "realm of necessity" -- Alienation as a critical concept -- Private property and communism -- The division of labour and its overcoming -- Marx's concept of communism.

A provocative close reading revealing a radical, proto-phenomenological Socrates.

Emotional hardcore and other music genres featuring screamed vocals are puzzling for the appreciator. The typical fan attaches appreciative value to musical screams of emotional pain all the while acknowledging it would be inappropriate to hold similar attitudes towards their sonically similar everyday counterpart: actual human screaming. Call this the screamed vocals problem. To solve the problem, I argue we must attend to the anti-sublimating aims that get expressed in the emotional hardcore vocalist’s choice to scream the lyrics. Screamed vocals (...) help us see the value in rejecting (a) restrictive social norms of emotional expressiveness and (b) restrictive artistic norms about how one ought to express or represent pain in art, namely that if one is going to do so they must ensure the pain has been ‘beautified’. In developing this second point I argue that emotional hardcore is well-suited (though not individually so) for putting pressure on longstanding views in the history of aesthetics about the formal relationship between art and human pain. (shrink)

This chapter corrects for Susan Sontag's undeserved neglect by contemporary ethical philosophers by bringing awareness to some of the unique metaethical insights born of her reflections on photographic representations of evil. I argue that Sontag's thought provides fertile ground for thinking about: (1) moral perception and its relation to moral knowledge; and (2) the epistemic and moral value of our emotional responses to the misery and suffering of others. I show that, contrary to standard moral perception theory (e.g. Blum 1994), (...) Sontag holds that we can have general moral perceptual knowledge. I then explore Sontag's idea that certain emotional responses, like sympathy and compassion, can sometimes be impertinent, in virtue of their having false or illusory content. I explain why this is so, and show the epistemic and motivational problems it poses for moral sentimentalism. (shrink)

Reichenbach's 'principle of the common cause' is a foundational assumption of some important recent contributions to quantitative social science methodology but no similar principle appears in econometrics. Reiss (2005) has argued that the principle is necessary for instrumental variables methods in econometrics, and Pearl (2009) builds a framework using it that he proposes as a means of resolving an important methodological dispute among econometricians. We aim to show, through analysis of the main problem instrumental variables methods are used to resolve, (...) that the relationship of the principle to econometric methods is more nuanced than implied by previous work, but nevertheless may make a valuable contribution to the coherence and validity of existing methods. (shrink)

The need to understand the systems that support ethical health research has long been recognized, but there are limited descriptions of actual health research ethics (HRE) systems. Using participatory network mapping methods, we empirically defined Malaysia's HRE system. 13 Malaysian stakeholders identified 4 overarching and 25 specific HRE system functions and 35 actors internal and 3 external to the Malaysian HRE system responsible for those functions. Functions requiring the most attention were: advising on legislation related to HRE; optimizing research value (...) to society; and defining standards for HRE oversight. Internal actors with the greatest potential for more influence were: the national network of research ethics committees; non-institution-based research ethics committees; and research participants. The World Health Organization, an external actor, had the largest untapped potential for influence overall. In summary, this stakeholder-driven process identified HRE system functions and actors that could be targeted to increase HRE system capacity. (shrink)

In recent years, policy debates in the United States have focused heavily on rising healthcare costs and what measures can be taken to ensure greater provision of healthcare to individuals of limited means. Much of the rhetoric on this subject has taken on an explicitly moral character, and one common sentiment is that healthcare is or should be viewed as a basic human right. However, the notion of a right to healthcare has not been well articulated, and critics have failed (...) to distinguish between legal and moral rights. Additionally, there are numerous problems inherent to viewing healthcare as a basic human right-many of which are in direct conflict with distinctly American conceptualizations of rights. The present paper reviews the debate over “rights”-both legal and natural-to healthcare, and argues that problems associated with natural rights arguments render them severely compromised. Instead, market systems commonly accepted in American society may be better suited to reducing healthcare costs and increasing access to services in the United States. (shrink)

This chapter offers a general outline of Schopenhauer’s peculiarly named concept of the 'acquired character’ and explains its basic function in his ethical thought. For Schopenhauer, a person of acquired character is someone who knows the ways of acting (Handlungsweise) that are most expressive of their individuality and who allows that self-knowledge to structure their practical and emotional life. In keeping with certain elements of his psychological determinism, acquired character is not the acquisition of a ‘new’ character; rather, it is (...) the acquisition of self-knowledge of one’s essentially fixed empirical character. It is part of the argument of this chapter that by introducing the acquired character into his reflections on human action and agency Schopenhauer weaves a certain view of individual flourishing (eudaimonia) into his ethics. There are two central ingredients of Schopenhauer’s conception of eudaimonia, and both are linked to the acquired character. The first is self-knowledge; the second is a sense of personal autonomy that follows in the wake of the first. The chapter ends with a brief attempt to connect Schopenhauer’s concept of acquired character to contemporary debates in ethics concerning autonomy, practical identity, and what some call the ‘normative significance of self’. (shrink)

Aristotle maintains that defining nous requires first defining its activity, which requires first having considered its objects, intelligible beings. This chapter is about the nature of these objects: what about them makes them intelligible? My principal proposals will be that what makes them intelligible is that they are separate or unmixed, and that because, insofar as they are intelligible, they are, in their essence, activity. I am not unaware that this makes it sound as though Aristotle takes intelligibility to consist (...) in some kind of nous. But he himself virtually says as much, when he claims that nous is the form of its objects (lit. εἶδος εἰδῶν); besides it is a result he is committed to by the doctrines that nous is intelligible and that there is something that intelligible objects all are in common; for the alternative, as he himself says, is to suppose that nous “will have something mixed-in, which makes it intelligible just like the rest.” The challenge, then, is not to steer clear of this result, but to make sense of it. My proposal will be that the key lies in realizing that and why Aristotle thinks intelligibility is a creature of nous. (shrink)

Much has been written on Cicero’s deployment of the Socratic method of in utramque partem argument, his use of Plato’s Socratic dialogues as literary models, and so forth. There has been less attention given to the nature of Cicero’s reception of ‘Socrates the man’. In this chapter I consider Cicero’s reception of ‘Socrates the man’ and argue that essentially he saw Socrates as an important model for ‘philosophy in practical life’.

Several scholars have asserted strategic fit to nonmarket factors is positively related to economic performance. Political strategic fit has traditionally been conceptualized as an incremental decision: firms engage in political activities to the extent nonmarket factors suggest firm political actions will improve economic performance. However, the decision to engage in political activity is more of a dichotomous decision. Both incremental and dichotomous political strategic fit are empirically evaluated in the U.S. coal industry from 1986 to 2000. Empirical evidence suggests that (...) political strategic fit should be modeled as a dichotomous decision and that engaging in political activity is positively related to economic performance. Under investing in political activity or pursuing a free riding strategy was negatively related to economic performance. (shrink)

According to the Public Justification Principle, legitimate laws must be justifiable to all reasonable citizens. Proponents of this principle assume that its satisfaction requires speakers to offer justifications that are representable as arguments that feature premises which reasonable listeners would accept. I develop the concept of dark knowledge to show that this assumption is false. Laws are often justified on the basis of premises that many reasonable listeners know, even though they would reject these premises on the basis of the (...) further considerations that speakers implicitly rely on for their support. Accommodating the fact of dark knowledge requires us to consider the civic virtue of speakers to be more important for public justification than the acceptability of their arguments to reasonable citizens. I sketch an alternative conception of public justification that incorporates these results and argue that it provides a rationale for ignoring the otherwise sound contributions of some participants in political deliberation. (shrink)

“Trait” is a ubiquitous term in biology, but its precise meaning and theoretical foundations remain opaque. After distinguishing between “trait” and “character,” I argue for the value of adopting Theodosius Dobzhansky’s 1956 definition and framework for understanding “trait,” which holds that traits are just “semantic devices” that artificially impose order on continuous biological phenomena. I elaborate on this definition to distinguish between trait validity (compliance with Dobzhansky’s trait definition) and trait utility (usefulness of a trait). As a consequence of this (...) elaboration of the meaning of “trait,” it becomes clear that considerations of adaptation, function, homogeneity and natural kinds have clouded discussions of the meaning of “trait” per se. Combining this account with work by David Hull and examples from contemporary biology, I demonstrate that even broad or heterogeneous traits (including multiple sub-traits) can qualify as valid and useful. As a test case for this understanding of trait, I show how it can help resolve critiques of schizophrenia’s status as a single trait, highlighting the recent advances made within schizophrenia research. (shrink)

Some modern cosmological models predict the appearance of Boltzmann Brains: observers who randomly fluctuate out of a thermal bath rather than naturally evolving from a low-entropy Big Bang. A theory in which most observers are of the Boltzmann Brain type is generally thought to be unacceptable, although opinions differ. I argue that such theories are indeed unacceptable: the real problem is with fluctuations into observers who are locally identical to ordinary observers, and their existence cannot be swept under the rug (...) by a choice of probability distributions over observers. The issue is not that the existence of such observers is ruled out by data, but that the theories that predict them are cognitively unstable: they cannot simultaneously be true and justifiably believed. (shrink)

A non-technical introduction to quantum mechanics, the Everett interpretation, and the emergence of spacetime.

Aging is accompanied by changes in general cognitive functioning which may impact the learning rate of older adults; however, this is often not controlled for in cognitive aging studies. We investigated the contribution of differences in learning rates to age-related differences in landmark knowledge acquired from route learning. In Experiment 1 we used a standard learning procedure in which participants received a fixed amount of exposure to a route. Consistent with previous research, we found age-related deficits in associative cue and (...) landmark sequence knowledge. Experiment 2 controlled for differences in learning rates by using a flexible exposure learning procedure. Specifically, participants were trained to a performance criterion during route learning before being tested on the content of their route knowledge. While older adults took longer to learn the route than younger adults, the age-related differences in associative cue knowledge were abolished. The deficit in landmark sequence knowledge, however, remained. Experiment 3 replicated these results and introduced a test situation in which a deficit in landmark sequence knowledge yielded an increased likelihood of disorientation in older adults. The findings of this study suggest that age-related deficits in landmark associative cue knowledge are attenuated by controlling for learning rates. In contrast, landmark sequence knowledge deficits persist and are best explained by changes in the learning strategy of older adults to acquire task essential associative cue knowledge at the expense of supplementary sequence knowledge. (shrink)

The inspiration for this collective writing project began with a digital conference entitled ‘Knowledge Socialism, COVID-19 and the New Reality of Education’ held at Beijing Normal University. In this conference and through this article, multiple researchers spread across six continents have engaged in the collaborative task of outlining emerging innovations and alternative contingencies towards education, international collaboration, and digital reform in this time of global crisis. Trends associated with digital education, knowledge openness, peer production, and collective intelligence as articulated by (...) Michael A. Peters’ conception of Knowledge Socialism are given careful analysis and exploration. Some of the members of this collective endeavor to identify problems, others, begin to draw boxes around potential solutions. Overall, this article engages with real world challenges and innovations that look beyond dominant neoliberal trends in the knowledge economy to build bridges toward novel possibilities in this era of rapid digital change. (shrink)

We have a much better understanding of physics than we do of consciousness. I consider ways in which intrinsically mental aspects of fundamental ontology might induce modifications of the known laws of physics, or whether they could be relevant to accounting for consciousness if no such modifications exist. I suggest that our current knowledge of physics should make us skeptical of hypothetical modifications of the known rules, and that without such modifications it’s hard to imagine how intrinsically mental aspects could (...) play a useful explanatory role. Draft version of a paper submitted to Journal of Consciousness Studies, special issue responding to Philip Goff’s Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness. (shrink)

This book provides an account of the nature of time, especially time's arrow and the role of entropy, at a semi-popular level. Special attention is given to statistical mechanics, the past hypothesis, and possible cosmological explanations thereof.

I discuss "Poetic Naturalism" -- there is only one world, the natural world, but there are many ways of talking about it -- both as a general concept, and how it accounts for our actual world. I talk about emergence, fundamental physics, entropy and complexity, the origins of life and consciousness, and moral constructivism.

The article seeks to reclaim a type of fear lost in silent omission in education, yet central to the development of an ethical subject. It distinguishes the fear described by Martin Heidegger through the concept of befindlichkeit and fear for the other as an essential moment for ethics articulated by Emmanuel Levinas. It argues that the latter conception of fear has inverted the traditional assumption of the ideal ethical subject as fearless. It then examines how Levinas’s interpretation of fear might (...) contribute to the discussion on fear and responsibility in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It concludes that fear for the other reveals our tremendous capacity to suffer for the other, which is an aspect of the emotional life that has not been identified in the general educational discourse. This inattention manifests itself as a categorical omission in which the existence of fear for the other is not recognized and impedes the ability of educators to address ethics as it is deeply lived. (shrink)

I defend the extremist position that the fundamental ontology of the world consists of a vector in Hilbert space evolving according to the Schrödinger equation. The laws of physics are determined solely by the energy eigenspectrum of the Hamiltonian. The structure of our observed world, including space and fields living within it, should arise as a higher-level emergent description. I sketch how this might come about, although much work remains to be done.

Achieving the global benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) will require international cooperation on many areas of governance and ethical standards, while allowing for diverse cultural perspectives and priorities. There are many barriers to achieving this at present, including mistrust between cultures, and more practical challenges of coordinating across different locations. This paper focuses particularly on barriers to cooperation between Europe and North America on the one hand and East Asia on the other, as regions which currently have an outsized impact (...) on the development of AI ethics and governance. We suggest that there is reason to be optimistic about achieving greater cross-cultural cooperation on AI ethics and governance. We argue that misunderstandings between cultures and regions play a more important role in undermining cross-cultural trust, relative to fundamental disagreements, than is often supposed. Even where fundamental differences exist, these may not necessarily prevent productive cross-cultural cooperation, for two reasons: (1) cooperation does not require achieving agreement on principles and standards for all areas of AI; and (2) it is sometimes possible to reach agreement on practical issues despite disagreement on more abstract values or principles. We believe that academia has a key role to play in promoting cross-cultural cooperation on AI ethics and governance, by building greater mutual understanding, and clarifying where different forms of agreement will be both necessary and possible. We make a number of recommendations for practical steps and initiatives, including translation and multilingual publication of key documents, researcher exchange programmes, and development of research agendas on cross-cultural topics. (shrink)

On one popular view, the general covariance of gravity implies that change is relational in a strong sense, such that all it is for a physical degree of freedom to change is for it to vary with regard to a second physical degree of freedom. At a quantum level, this view of change as relative variation leads to a fundamentally timeless formalism for quantum gravity. Here, we will show how one may avoid this acute ‘problem of time’. Under our view, (...) duration is still regarded as relative, but temporal succession is taken to be absolute. Following our approach, which is presented in more formal terms in, it is possible to conceive of a genuinely dynamical theory of quantum gravity within which time, in a substantive sense, remains. 1 Introduction1.1 The problem of time1.2 Our solution2 Understanding Symmetry2.1 Mechanics and representation2.2 Freedom by degrees2.3 Voluntary redundancy3 Understanding Time3.1 Change and order3.2 Quantization and succession4 Time and Gravitation4.1 The two faces of classical gravity4.2 Retaining succession in quantum gravity5 Discussion5.1 Related arguments5.2 Concluding remarks. (shrink)

This paper sets out a predicative response to the Russell-Myhill paradox of propositions within the framework of Church’s intensional logic. A predicative response places restrictions on the full comprehension schema, which asserts that every formula determines a higher-order entity. In addition to motivating the restriction on the comprehension schema from intuitions about the stability of reference, this paper contains a consistency proof for the predicative response to the Russell-Myhill paradox. The models used to establish this consistency also model other axioms (...) of Church’s intensional logic that have been criticized by Parsons and Klement: this, it turns out, is due to resources which also permit an interpretation of a fragment of Gallin’s intensional logic. Finally, the relation between the predicative response to the Russell-Myhill paradox of propositions and the Russell paradox of sets is discussed, and it is shown that the predicative conception of set induced by this predicative intensional logic allows one to respond to the Wehmeier problem of many non-extensions. (shrink)

It is commonplace in discussions of modern cosmology to assert that the early universe began in a special state. Conventionally, cosmologists characterize this fine-tuning in terms of the horizon and flatness problems. I argue that the fine-tuning is real, but these problems aren't the best way to think about it: causal disconnection of separated regions isn't the real problem, and flatness isn't a problem at all. Fine-tuning is better understood in terms of a measure on the space of trajectories: given (...) reasonable conditions in the late universe, the fraction of cosmological histories that were smooth at early times is incredibly tiny. This discussion helps clarify what is required by a complete theory of cosmological initial conditions. (shrink)

To the best of our current understanding, quantum mechanics is part of the most fundamental picture of the universe. It is natural to ask how pure and minimal this fundamental quantum description can be. The simplest quantum ontology is that of the Everett or Many-Worlds interpretation, based on a vector in Hilbert space and a Hamiltonian. Typically one also relies on some classical structure, such as space and local configuration variables within it, which then gets promoted to an algebra of (...) preferred observables. We argue that even such an algebra is unnecessary, and the most basic description of the world is given by the spectrum of the Hamiltonian and the components of some particular vector in Hilbert space. Everything else—including space and fields propagating on it—is emergent from these minimal elements. (shrink)

Explorations in Archaeology and Philosophy grew out of an interdisciplinary conference on the Upper Palaeolithic, “Digging Deeper: Archaeological and Philosophical Perspectives”, held on Miami Beach, Florida, in December 2017. The previous decade had seen increasing numbers of publications on topics of interest to both philosophers and archaeologists, so the time was ripe for a conference which served to generate constructive dialogue between researchers from both disciplines. Themes discussed included art, music, the mind, symbols, mortuary practices, and archaeological methodology. This volume (...) draws from several contributors to that conference as well as other leading researchers at the forefront of the intersection of archaeology and philosophy. Its scope is expanded from the Upper Palaeolithic to archaeological research in general—adopting a broad conception inviting many perspectives from philosophy and interdisciplinary evolutionary studies to the table—and is organized by topics into four sections: Theory and Inference; Interdisciplinary Connections; Cognition, Language and Normativity; Ethical Issues. (shrink)

In this paper I develop an account of member obligation: the obligations that fall on the members of an obligated collective in virtue of that collective obligation. I use this account to argue that unorganized collections of individuals can constitute obligated agents. I argue first that, to know when a collective obligation entails obligations on that collective’s members, we have to know not just what it would take for each member to do their part in satisfying the collective obligation, but (...) also what they should do if they cannot do their part because others will not do theirs. I go on to argue (contra recent proposals) that it is not good enough for members in this situation to reasonably believe that others will not do their part. Rather, for a member of an obligated collective to permissibly escape doing her part in a collective obligation, she must both reasonably doubt that others will do their part and stand ready to act in case others do as well. -/- This necessary condition for collective obligation points the way to plausible sufficient conditions – conditions that, I argue, allow unstructured collectives to bear obligations. For (a) if a collective’s members are individually obligated to be ready to do their part, in a given collective action, and (b) if that individual readiness makes it sufficiently likely that the collective will in fact act, then it is hard to see what could block an attribution of collective obligation. In particular, in that case there ought to be no additional objection that there is no existing, organized “agent” on which the obligation might fall. For agents are, simply, things that can act. To be able to act is just to be able to succeed by trying. Unstructured collectives try to do something, I argue, when each member acts on their willingness to do their part in that thing if others do theirs; sometimes they succeed, producing a collective action. Some unstructured collectives, therefore, can succeed by trying; therefore, they can act; therefore they are agents. (shrink)

Public reason liberals claim that legitimate rules must be justifiable to diverse perspectives. This Public Justification Principle threatens that failing to justify rules to reprehensible agents makes them illegitimate. Although public reason liberals have replies to this objection, they cannot avoid the challenge of powerful deceivers. Powerful deceivers trick people who are purportedly owed public justification into considering otherwise good rules unjustified. Avoiding this challenge requires discounting some failures of justification according to what caused people’s beliefs. I offer a conception (...) of public justification that accommodates these externalist considerations while positioning Public Reason Liberalism to provide insight into real cases of deception. (shrink)

If you slide far enough down the slippery slope envisioned by opponents of medical assistance-in-dying (MAiD), you eventually land in a ghastly society with industrialized euthanasia, rampant suicide, and devalued life. But what if the slippery slope leads us somewhere better? This paper explores the benefits of eliminating nearly all MAiD prohibitions and regulations. We anticipate three positive effects for public health: 1. Expanded access to those currently not qualified from MAiD by removing ineffective access criteria; 2. Harm reduction by (...) making MAiD safer and by rerouting suicidal patients into alternate care; and 3. Improvements to the health system through lowered healthcare costs and increased patient activation in end-of-life care. Safeguards and prohibitions deny those who wish to die the ability to do so to prevent the _potential_ danger of a few being subjected to an undesired early death. (shrink)

Cosmological models that invoke a multiverse - a collection of unobservable regions of space where conditions are very different from the region around us - are controversial, on the grounds that unobservable phenomena shouldn't play a crucial role in legitimate scientific theories. I argue that the way we evaluate multiverse models is precisely the same as the way we evaluate any other models, on the basis of abduction, Bayesian inference, and empirical success. There is no scientifically respectable way to do (...) cosmology without taking into account different possibilities for what the universe might be like outside our horizon. Multiverse theories are utterly conventionally scientific, even if evaluating them can be difficult in practice. (shrink)

Several scholars have recently entertained proposals for "epistocracy," a political regime in which decision-making power is concentrated in the hands of a society's most informed and competent citizens. These proposals rest on the claim that we can expect better political outcomes if we exclude incompetent citizens from participating in political decisions because competent voters are more likely to vote "correctly" than incompetent voters. We develop what we call the objection from selection bias to epistocracy: a procedure that selects voters on (...) the basis of their observed competence---as epistocracy does---will often be "biased" in the sense that competent voters will be, on average, more likely than incompetent voters to possess certain attributes that reduce the probability of voting correctly. Our objection generalizes the "demographic objection" discussed in previous literature, showing that the range of realistic scenarios in which epistocracy is vulnerable to selection bias is substantially broader than previous discussions appreciate. Our discussion also shows that previous discussions have obscured the force of the threat of selection bias. Since we lack reasons to believe that epistocratic proposals can avoid selection bias, we have no reason to seriously entertain epistocracy as a practical proposal. (shrink)

An incisive analysis of Deleuze's philosophy of eventsSean Bowden shows how the Deleuzian event should be understood in terms of the broader metaphysical thesis that substances are ontologically secondary with respect to events. He achieves this through a reconstruction of Deleuze's relation to the history of thought from the Stoics through to Simondon, taking account of Leibniz, Lautman, structuralism and psychoanalysis along the way.This exciting new reading of Deleuze focuses firmly on his approach to events. Bowden also examines and clarifies (...) a number of Deleuze's most difficult philosophical concepts, including sense, problematic Ideas and intensive individuation, and engages with material by Lautman and Simondon that has not yet been translated into English. (shrink)

The Public Justification Principle requires that coercive institutions be justified to all who live under them. I argue that this principle often cannot be satisfied without persons depending on the pure informative testimony of others, even under realistically idealized situations. Two main results follow. First, the sense of justification relevant to this principle has a strongly externalist component. Second, normative expectations of trust are essential to public justification. On the view I propose, whether the Public Justification Principle is satisfied depends (...) on the features of the network of testifiers in which persons are embedded. I consider several such networks to show which features are plausibly relevant. The importance of testimony for public justification ultimately suggests that we should moderate our expectations about the kind of conciliation we can achieve with the social order in which we live. (shrink)

What makes something a part of my body, for moral purposes? Is the body defined naturalistically: by biological relations, or psychological relations, or some combination of the two? This paper approaches this question by considering a borderline case: the status of prostheses. I argue that extant accounts of the body fail to capture prostheses as genuine body parts. Nor, however, do they provide plausible grounds for excluding prostheses, without excluding some paradigm organic parts in the process. I conclude by suggesting (...) that embodiment is moralized all the way down: to be a body part is to be the sort of thing that ought to be protected, in a certain way, by social practices. (shrink)

Population health has recently grown from a series of loosely connected critiques of twentieth-century public health and medicine into a theoretical framework with a corresponding field of research—population health science. Its approach is to promote the public’s health through improving everyday human life: affordable nutritious food, clean air, safe places where children can play, living wages, etc. It recognizes that addressing contemporary health challenges such as the prevalence of type 2 diabetes will take much more than good hospitals and public (...) health departments. -/- Blending philosophy of science/medicine, public health ethics and history, this book offers a framework that explains, analyses and largely endorses the features that define this relatively new field. Presenting a philosophical perspective, Valles helps to clarify what these features are and why they matter, including: searching for health’s “upstream” causes in social life, embracing a professional commitment to studying and ameliorating the staggering health inequities in and between populations; and reforming scientific practices to foster humility and respect among the many scientists and non- scientists who must work collaboratively to promote health. -/- Featuring illustrative case studies from around the globe at the end of all main chapters, this radical monograph is written to be accessible to all scholars and advanced students who have an interest in health—from public health students to professional philosophers. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy is organized around an exclusive disjunction of dignity or price, equality or equivalence. In his 1797 Doctrine of Right, however, Kant places enslaved black people on the wrong side of this disjunction when he speculates that their status as currency may offer insight into the origins of money. Recent work in black studies has begun to speculate on the link between blackness and money in modernity, and this paper draws attention to Kant’s role as an unlikely (...) and unwitting precursor for monetary theories of blackness. Precisely in his attempt to secure the priceless and unconditional character of freedom and dignity, it argues, Kant ends up demonstrating the positional value of both. (shrink)

Graduate-level textbook in general relativity.