Against Patrick Devlin, H. L. A. Hart rejects the enforcement of morals as such. Hart defends an expanded version of John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, but this expanded version is no more defensible than Mill’s original claim. Hart’s discussion fails to clarify what is really at stake in controversies regarding the moral acceptability of criminal prohibition of such activities as suicide and assisted suicide, recreational drug use, prostitution, and so on. Regarding the enforcement of (...) class='Hi'>morals as such, we should acknowledge that the jury is still out. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the question of when, if ever, the state may use coercion to enforce majority views about what types of conduct are right or wrong, noble or base, decent or indecent. Such interest has been generated by both political and philosophibal pressures. In recent political history, controversies over such issues as abortion, homosexuality, pornography, textbooks in schools, new reproductive technologies such as surrogate parenting and in vitro fertilization, and faith (...) healing have focused attention on the role of the state in supporting or opposing various moral views. In political philosophy, often a theoretical reflection of the political debates of the time, we have seen renewed attempts to provide a satisfactory foundation for traditional liberal views of the legitimate scope of state power. In particular, there has been an emphasis on the neutrality of the liberal state and the right of individuals to be treated as equals by the state. (shrink)

How do we punish others socially, and should we do so? In her 2018 Descartes Lectures for Tilburg University, Linda Radzik explores the informal methods ordinary people use to enforce moral norms, such as telling people off, boycotting businesses, and publicly shaming wrongdoers on social media. Over three lectures, Radzik develops an account of what social punishment is, why it is sometimes permissible, and when it must be withheld. She argues that the proper aim of social punishment is to (...) put moral pressure on wrongdoers to make amends. Yet the permissibility of applying such pressure turns on the tension between individual desert and social good, as well as the possession of an authority to punish. Responses from Christopher Bennett, George Sher and Glen Pettigrove challenge Radzik's account of social punishment while also offering alternative perspectives on the possible meanings of our responses to wrongdoing. Radzik replies in the closing essay. (shrink)

This study analyzes the ideals of responsibility and accountability, asking such questions as when it is legitimate to blame top officials of an organization for mistakes made by personnel below them in the bureaucratic hierarchy; when things go wrong in a large and complex organization like the Canadian Forces, who is responsible and accountable; and whether a plea of ignorance is a good excuse. The study also analyzes the doctrine of ministerial responsibility in both the British and Canadian parliamentary (...) traditions, asking whether it is realistic to expect that a government minister should be held responsible for everything that goes wrong in his/her department. Finally, traditional military values are examined, considering the kinds of attitudes and values expected from Canada's armed forces and the differences between the military and civilian sectors. (shrink)

Within a social justice ethical framework, the use of ‘enforcement’ measures to prevent people from engaging in ‘street activities’, such as begging and street drinking, can only be morally justified if such initiatives can be shown to benefit the welfare of the vulnerable ‘street users’ affected. It may be hypothesized that this is unlikely, and such measures are bound to be regressive in their effects, but in fact evidence from an evaluation conducted in five locations across (...) England suggests otherwise. Drawing on a normative framework which engages with both moral and political philosophy, this paper argues that the motivations and impacts associated with enforcement are more ethically complex, and less punitive, than they may at first appear. It demonstrates that the use of enforcement measures, when accompanied by appropriate support, can in fact lead to beneficial outcomes for some individuals involved in begging or street drinking in some situations. The outcomes for other members of the street population can, however, be very negative, and are highly unpredictable, such that the use of enforcement is always a high-risk strategy, even if ethically justifiable in certain circumstances. (shrink)

Do we have control over the content of our imaginings? More precisely: do we have control over what our imaginings are about? Intentionalists say yes. Until recently, intentionalism could be taken as the received view. Recently, authors like Munro & Strohminger (2021) have developed some arguments against it. Here, I tentatively join their ranks and develop a new way to think about the way in which imaginings develop their contents that also goes against intentionalism. My proposal makes use of what (...) we may call a ballistic framework for mental dynamics, which I sketch to some length. In this model, imaginings are articulated by ballistic events sensitive to constraints that modify the trajectories that imaginings trace in a special working space. This framework leaves room for alternatives to pre-assigned-content models, such as Kung’s (2016). In the ballistic-based models sketched here, and against intentionalism, imaginings can fail to be about what we intend them to be about. The framework also has applications beyond the intentionalism debate, some of which I will sketch. (shrink)

I put equality at the center of John Stuart Mill's practical philosophy. His principle of "perfect equality" embodies a substantive relational ideal, which I call "equality as reciprocity." This ideal requires removing injustices due to domination and subjection in human associations, including the family. Justice grounded on perfect equality must be the basis of personal, social, and political life, because the moral sentiments, chief among human beings' "higher" faculties, find adequate channels only under equality. Genuine happiness, which involves the exercise (...) and development of these faculties, is open only to those who relate as equals. Thus, on my account, equality as reciprocity adds substance to Mill's liberalism. ;In The Subjection of Women, Mill appealed to his view of human progress to argue for perfect equality. He maintained that this ideal is not appropriate for all times, but required for human improvement and a part of everyone's good under conditions of "modernity." Modern democratic cultures embrace such "progressive" human interests as equal justice, sympathy, and cooperation. Replacing the archaic command and obedience ethic with the nonhierarchical pattern of reciprocity would bring out human beings' "true virtue": living as equals. Inequality, and the exercise of unjust power generally, corrupts everyone's moral character and thwarts human flourishing. All other things equal, egalitarian relations are a critical part of anyone's autonomously chosen plan of life. Given human sociability, any other choice would impoverish a person's life. ;It is clear from Mill's argument for perfect equality that Mill was not a classical utilitarian. He conceived of utility broadly, as concerning progressive human interests, and argued for educating the "moral part" of human nature through just institutions and social practices. He believed that strengthening equal justice, the chief moral sentiment, is a central requirement of utility, because of the importance of other-regarding sentiments to a good human life. Thus, on my account, Mill's "enlarged" account of utility supports his substantive egalitarianism. His defense of perfect equality is utilitarian only in his idiosyncratic sense. (shrink)

The globalizing or totalizing imposition of a particular understanding of justice, fairness, or equality, as seen, for example, in Canada's single health care system, which forbids the sale of private insurance and the purchase of better basic health care, cannot be justified in general secular terms because of the following limitations: the plurality of understandings of justice, fairness, and equality, and the inability to establish one understanding as canonical. The secular state lacks plausible moral authority for the coercive imposition of (...) one such account on peaceable, consenting adults. This state of affairs, with regard to the weakness of human moral epistemological powers, means that the secular state fails to have the moral authority to forbid coercively the sale and purchase of organs. It further lacks the secular, moral authority to impose equal access to organ transplantations. Assertions of such authority amount to reckless claims of fairness, and for this reason, health care policy must be set within the constraints of limited, constitutional regimes. (shrink)

Our pains can be more or less intense, our mental imagery can be more or less vivid, our perceptual experiences can be more or less striking. These degrees of intensity of conscious experiences are all manifestations of a phenomenal property I call mental strength. In this article, I argue that mental strength is a domain-general phenomenal magnitude; in other words, it is a phenomenal quantity shared by all conscious experiences that explains their degree of felt intensity. Mental strength has been (...) largely overlooked in favor of mental states’ type, representational contents, domain-specific phenomenology, or processes such as attention. Considering mental strength in our reflections about the mind illuminates debates about the relation of representational contents and phenomenal character, and it also helps address questions about the structure and functions of consciousness. Mental strength provides a unifying construct to model what is shared in the phenomenology of different types of conscious experiences. (shrink)

Humans have evolved various social behaviors such as interpersonal motor synchrony, play and sport or religious ritual that bolster group cohesion and facilitate cooperation. While important for small communities, the face-to-face nature of such technologies makes them infeasible in large-scale societies where risky cooperation between anonymous individuals must be enforced through moral judgment and, ultimately, altruistic punishment. However, the unbiased applicability of group norms is often jeopardized by moral hypocrisy, i.e., the application of moral norms in favor of (...) closer subgroup members such as key socioeconomic partners and kin. We investigated whether social behaviors that facilitate close ties between people also promote moral hypocrisy that may hamper large-scale group functioning. We recruited 129 student subjects that either interacted with a confederate in the high synchrony or low synchrony conditions or performed movements alone. Subsequently, participants judged a moral transgression committed by the confederate toward another anonymous student. The results showed that highly synchronized participants judged the confederate’s transgression less harshly than the participants in the other two conditions and that this effect was mediated by the perception of group unity with the confederate. We argue that for synchrony to amplify group identity in large-scale societies, it needs to be properly integrated with morally compelling group symbols that accentuate the group’s overarching identity. Without such contextualization, synchrony may create bonded subgroups that amplify local preferences rather than impartial and wide application of moral norms. (shrink)

Teaching mathematics and improving mathematics competence are pending subjects within our educational system. The PEIM (Programa Evolutivo Instruccional para Matemáticas), a constructivist intervention program for the improvement of mathematical performance, affects the different agents involved in math learning, guaranteeing a significant improvement in students’ performance. The program is based on the following pillars: (a) students become the main agents of their learning by constructing their own knowledge; (b) the teacher must be the guide to facilitate and guarantee such a (...) construction by being a great connoisseur of the fundamental aspects of the development of the child’s mathematical thinking; (c) the mathematical contents must be sequenced in terms of the complexity and significance for the student as well as contextualized at all times; and (d) the classroom must have a constructivist climate highlighting cooperative work among students. The implementation of PEIM along with the empirical evaluation conducted in several centers in Madrid and Zaragoza (Spain) confirm how students improve their mathematical competence. Both first- and second-grade students in elementary education were far more effective in solving problems, highlighting the use of more advanced strategies in their resolution and a lower incidence of conceptual errors. Moreover, it was possible to verify how the students proving greater difficulty, experienced an evolution in learning similarly to those who did not present it. The program provides customized education to allow the teacher to know at all times how he should be more influential on the students’ learning through mathematical profiles. Both teaching practice and teachers were observed, being that of the experimental group more prone to analyzing processes and allowing the construction of knowledge by students, due to their psycho-developmental training. As a result, we found several improvements through the implementation of the program that may serve, for upcoming years, as a basis for the necessary changes in the teaching of mathematics. (shrink)

This thesis develops a theory about the structure of modal judgment and knowledge. Arguing in favour of pluralism about the source of modal knowledge, it focuses on the questions of the varieties of modal judgment and their relations, the function of modal judgment and the scope of modal knowledge. It offers a hypothesis about the development of the framework of modal knowledge, grounding it on the capacity to evaluate temporal judgments, from which the capacity to evaluate alternatives comes from, and (...) it suggests that the most basic framework of modal judgments consists in that of agentive modality, and in particular, about what one can do, and how. Then, it is argued that the rest of the framework of modal judgment can be developed on this basis, although this imposes certain restrictions about the scope of modal knowledge. Additionally, the thesis provides analyses of various agentive modal notions, such as imaginability, what is a way to do something, and discusses how to understand counterfactuals with impossible antecedents. (shrink)

This essay aims to analyse the theoretical and epistemological foundations of the symbol and their representations. First of all, we have explored its ontological scope. Secondly, we have highlighted its presence in everyday life. Thirdly, we have underlined the importance of the interpretation when addressing their multiple senses. And fourthly, we have expressed its social and cultural importance. The thesis here is that the symbolic is a structural condition of humankind, such as a being of mediation. Therefore we claim (...) an epistemological perspective that takes into consideration this notion, key to understanding human being and psychosocial reality. El presente ensayo tiene como objetivo principal analizar los fundamentos teórico- epistemológicos del concepto de símbolo y sus formas de representación. En primer lugar se delimitó el alcance ontológico de esta noción. En segundo se destacó su presencia en la realidad cotidiana. En tercero se subrayó la importancia de la interpretación a la hora de abordar sus múltiples sentidos y, en cuarto, se manifestó su relevancia social y cultural. La tesis que aquí se sostiene es que lo simbólico es una condición estructural del ser humano, como ser de mediaciones. Por ello reivindicamos una perspectiva epistemológica que tenga presente esta noción, clave para comprender al ser humano y la realidad psico-social en la que se inserta. (shrink)

Since the 18th century, one of the key features of diagnosed psychopaths has been “moral colorblindness” or an inability to form moral judgments. However, attempts at experimentally verifying this moral incapacity have been largely unsuccessful. After reviewing the centrality of “moral colorblindness” to the study and diagnosis of psychopathy, I argue that the reason that researchers have been unable to verify that diagnosed psychopaths have an inability to make moral judgments is because their research is premised on the assumption that (...) there is a specific moral faculty of the brain, or specific “moral” emotions, and that this faculty or set of emotions can become “impaired”. I review recent research and argue that we have good reason to think that there is no such distinct capacity for moral judgment, and that, as a result, it is impossible for someone’s “moral judgment faculty” to become selectively disabled. I then discuss the implications of such a position on psychopathy research, the coherence of the disorder, and the moral responsibility of psychopaths. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most influential thinkers of the past 150 years and On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) is his most important work on ethics and politics. A polemical contribution to moral and political theory, it offers a critique of moral values and traces the historical evolution of concepts such as guilt, conscience, responsibility, law and justice. This is a revised and updated edition of one of the most successful volumes to appear in Cambridge Texts in (...) the History of Political Thought. Keith Ansell-Pearson has modified his introduction to Nietzsche's classic text, and Carol Diethe has incorporated a number of changes to the translation itself, reflecting the considerable advances in our understanding of Nietzsche in the twelve years since this edition first appeared. In this new guise the Cambridge Texts edition of Nietzsche's Genealogy should continue to enjoy widespread adoption, at both undergraduate and graduate level. (shrink)

After the United States invaded Puerto Rico in 1898, the new unincorporated territory sought to define its future. Seeking to shape the next generation and generate popular support for colonial rule, U.S. officials looked to education as a key venue for promoting the benefits of Americanization. At the same time, public schools became a site where Puerto Rican teachers, parents, and students could formulate and advance their own projects for building citizenship. In _Negotiating Empire_, Solsiree del Moral demonstrates how these (...) colonial intermediaries aimed for regeneration and progress through education. Rather than seeing U.S. empire in Puerto Rico during this period as a contest between two sharply polarized groups, del Moral views their interaction as a process of negotiation. Although educators and families rejected some tenets of Americanization, such as English-language instruction, they also redefined and appropriated others to their benefit to increase literacy and skills required for better occupations and social mobility. Pushing their citizenship-building vision through the schools, Puerto Ricans negotiated a different school project—one that was reformist yet radical, modern yet traditional, colonial yet nationalist. (shrink)

Positive Psychology has turned its attention to the study of emotions in a scientific and rigorous way. Particularly, to how emotions influence people’s health, performance, or their overall life satisfaction. Within this trend, Flow theory has established a theoretical framework that helps to promote the Flow experience. Flow state, or optimal experience, is a mental state of high concentration and enjoyment that, due to its characteristics, has been considered desirable for the development of the performing activity of performing musicians. Musicians (...) are a population prone to health problems, both psychological and physical, owing to different stressors of their training and professional activity. One of the most common problems is Musical Performance Anxiety. In this investigation, an electronic intervention program was carried out for the development of psychological self-regulation skills whose main objective was to trigger the Flow response in performing musicians and the coping mechanism for Musical Performance Anxiety. A quasi-experimental design was used with a control group in which pre- and post-measures of Flow State, Musical Performance Anxiety and, also, Social Skills were taken. Sixty-two performing musicians from different music colleges in Spain participated in the program. Results indicated that the intervention significantly improved Flow State, and Sense of Control, and decreased Music Performance Anxiety, and self-consciousness of the participants in the EG but not CG. The changes in the EG after the program showed the inverse relationship between Flow and Anxiety. Two important theoretical factors of both variables, such as worry and the feeling of lack of control, could be involved. The results are under discussion and future lines of research are proposed. (shrink)

On the Genealogy of Morality has become the most common point of entry into Nietzsche's thought. It offers relatively straightforward, sustained explanatory narratives addressing many of the main ideas of Nietzsche's mature thought, such as 'will to power', 'nihilism', 'perspectivism' and the 'value of truth'. It also directs its attention to what is widely taken to be Nietzsche's important philosophical contribution, the critique of morality. Yet it is challenging to understand because Nietzsche intended it as an expansion and elaboration (...) of his ideas developed elsewhere. Presupposing no prior knowledge of Nietzsche or the text, Robert Guay provides the interpretive and philosophical context to make Nietzsche's thought more accessible and shows how Nietzsche's narratives engage with philosophical issues about agency, self-knowledge, historical explanation and the critique of morality"-- Back cover. (shrink)

Despite wide acceptance that the attributes of living creatures have appeared through a cumulative evolutionary process guided chiefly by natural selection, many human activities have seemed analytically inaccessible through such an approach. Prominent evolutionary biologists, for example, have described morality as contrary to the direction of biological evolution, and moral philosophers rarely regard evolution as relevant to their discussions. -/- The Biology of Moral Systems adopts the position that moral questions arise out of conflicts of interest, and that moral (...) systems are ways of using confluences of interest at lower levels of social organiation to deal with conflicts of interest at higher levels. Moral systems are described as systems of indirect reciprocity: humans gain and lose socially and reproductively not only by direct transactions, but also by the reputations they gain from the everyday flow of social interactions. -/- The author develops a general theory of human interests, using senescence and effort theory from biology, to help analye the patterning of human lifetimes. He argues that the ultimate interests of humans are reproductive, and that the concept of morality has arisen within groups because of its contribution to unity in the context, ultimately, of success in intergroup competition. He contends that morality is not easily relatable to universals, and he carries this argument into a discussion of what he calls the greatest of all moral problems, the nuclear arms race. (shrink)

Belgium's policy of not permitting Catholic hospitals to refuse euthanasia services rests on ethical presuppositions concerning the secular justification of political power which reveal the paradoxical character of European liberalism: In endorsing freedom as a value (rather than as a side constraint), liberalism prioritizes first-order intentions, thus discouraging lasting moral commitments and the authority of moral communities in supporting such commitments. The state itself is thus transformed into a moral community of its own. Alternative policies (such as an (...) explicit moral diversification of public healthcare or the greater tolerance for Christian institutions in the Netherlands) are shown to be incompatible with Europe's liberal concern with securing social and material freedom resources, as well as the concern with equality of opportunity, as embodied in the European Union's anti-discrimination labor law. The essay's argument for the preferability of a libertarian solution closes with the challenge that only if the provision of public healthcare can be shown to be rationally indispensable for a morally justified polity, could the exposed incoherence of modern European liberalism be generously discounted. (shrink)

Consciousness and confidence seem intimately related. Accordingly, some researchers use confidence ratings as a measure of, or proxy for, consciousness. Rosenthal discusses the potential connections between the two, and rejects confidence as a valid measure of consciousness. He argues that there are better alternatives to get at conscious experiences such as direct subjective reports of awareness (i.e. subjects’ reports of perceiving something or of the degree of visibility of a stimulus). In this chapter, we offer a different perspective. Confidence (...) ratings in general, and metacognitive measures in particular, may offer important advantages over subjective ratings. The arguments we offer here are supported by empirical, practical and socio-strategic considerations. However, we do not suggest consciousness and confidence are interchangeable. We recognize the limitations of confidence ratings in some experimental designs and for some research questions. Nevertheless, we also address a potential conceptual link between consciousness and confidence that stems from Rosenthal’s very own work on mental quality space theory. (shrink)

When visual attention is directed away from a stimulus, neural processing is weak and strength and precision of sensory data decreases. From a computational perspective, in such situations observers should give more weight to prior expectations in order to behave optimally during a discrimination task. Here we test a signal detection theoretic model that counter-intuitively predicts subjects will do just the opposite in a discrimination task with two stimuli, one attended and one unattended: when subjects are probed to discriminate (...) the unattended stimulus, they rely less on prior information about the probed stimulus’ identity. The model is in part inspired by recent findings that attention reduces trial-by-trial variability of the neuronal population response and that they use a common criterion for attended and unattended trials. In five different visual discrimination experiments, when attention was directed away from the target stimulus, subjects did not adjust their response bias in reaction to a change in stimulus presentation frequency despite being fully informed and despite the presence of performance feedback and monetary and social incentives. This indicates that subjects did not rely more on the priors under conditions of inattention as would be predicted by a Bayes-optimal observer model. These results inform and constrain future models of Bayesian inference in the human brain. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue for a view that inclusive positivists share with Ronald Dworkin. According to the Moral Incorporation Thesis (MIT), it is logically possible for a legal system to incorporate moral criteria of legality (or “grounds of law,” as Dworkin puts it). Up to this point, the debate has taken the shape of attacks on the coherence of MIT with the defender of MIT merely attempting to refute the attacking argument. I give a positive argument for MIT. I (...) begin with an explanation of the logic of establishing possibility claims, such as MIT. At the outset, it is worth noting that the logic of establishing possibility claims is very different from the logic of establishing contingent descriptive claims or necessary claims. For this reason, some explication of the relevant features of the semantics of modal logic will be necessary here. Once the structural framework is adequately developed, the argument for MIT will be grounded on the strength of a thought experiment of a surprisingly simple kind. Indeed, the argument is inspired by a Razian argument for the possibility of a legal system without coercive enforcement machinery; on his view, a society of angels could still have a system of law without any coercive machinery. My argument will possess two theoretically important qualities that are also possessed by Raz’s powerfully simple, but ultimately unsuccessful, argument. (shrink)

University students will be our future business leaders, and will have to address social problems caused by business by implementing solutions such as social entrepreneurship ventures. In order to facilitate the learning process that will foster social entrepreneurship, however, a more holistic pedagogy is needed. Based on learning theory, we propose that students’ social entrepreneurship actions will depend on their learning about CSR and their absorptive capacity. We propose that instructors and higher education institutions can enhance this absorptive capacity (...) by exploiting Web 2.0 technologies. We tested our proposition with a sample of 425 university students using structural equation modeling and found support for the proposed relationships. (shrink)

I argue for the merits of studying historical moral revolutions to inform moral and political philosophy. Such a research program is not merely of empirical, historical interest but has normative implications. To explain why, I situate the proposal in the tradition of naturalized epistemology. As Alison M. Jaggar and other scholars have argued, a naturalistic approach is characteristic of much feminist philosophy. Accordingly, I argue that the study of moral revolutions would be especially fruitful for feminist moral and political (...) philosophers. (shrink)

Last year marked the 20th anniversary of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977. The FCPA is the first and only statute prohibiting bribery and other corrupt business practices by U.S. citizens and companies conducting business overseas. This paper provides an overview of the FCPA during the two decades of its existence. More specifically, the objectives of this paper are four-fold. First, the paper provides background information about the FCPA of 1977 and subsequent amendments in 1988. Second, the paper (...) discusses the enforcement of the FCPA since its passage by examining the number of cases prosecuted under the FCPA and the respective penalties imposed. Third, the paper discusses the economic impact of the FCPA by addressing whether the FCPA places U.S. firms at a competitive disadvantage. Fourth, the paper provides public policy recommendations to expand the reach and scope of the FCPA. It covers efforts to criminalize bribery through multilateral organizations, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the Organization of American States (OAS). It also covers bilateral arrangements and efforts by non-governmental organizations such as Transparency International. (shrink)

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

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

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

While Autonomous Weapons Systems have obvious military advantages, there are prima facie moral objections to using them. By way of general reply to these objections, I point out similarities between the structure of law and morality on the one hand and of automata on the other. I argue that these, plus the fact that automata can be designed to lack the biases and other failings of humans, require us to automate the formulation, administration, and enforcement of law as much (...) as possible, including the elements of law and morality that are operated by combatants in war. I suggest that, ethically speaking, deploying a legally competent robot in some legally regulated realm is not much different from deploying a more or less well-armed, vulnerable, obedient, or morally discerning soldier or general into battle, a police officer onto patrol, or a lawyer or judge into a trial. All feature automaticity in the sense of deputation to an agent we do not then directly control. Such relations are well understood and well-regulated in morality and law; so there is not much challenging philosophically in having robots be some of these agents — excepting the implications of the limits of robot technology at a given time for responsible deputation. I then consider this proposal in light of the differences between two conceptions of law. These are distinguished by whether each conception sees law as unambiguous rules inherently uncontroversial in each application; and I consider the prospects for robotizing law on each. Likewise for the prospects of robotizing moral theorizing and moral decision-making. Finally I identify certain elements of law and morality, noted by the philosopher Immanuel Kant, which robots can participate in only upon being able to set ends and emotionally invest in their attainment. One conclusion is that while affectless autonomous devices might be fit to rule us, they would not be fit to vote with us. For voting is a process for summing felt preferences, and affectless devices would have none to weigh into the sum. Since they don't care which outcomes obtain, they don't get to vote on which ones to bring about. (shrink)

The present book tries to show that the transcentendal-pragmatic approach to discourse ethics can reconstruct the genesis of this situation and provide a ...

This paper copes with a real-world classification problem related to the management of claims received in an insurance company. The way to obtain the classifier is not easy due to the high amount of missing values as well as the inherent imbalanced scenario within class labels. Once the data partition has been done, the training set is submitted to an intensive double grid search in order to obtain the most promising type of missing value imputation approach and then a step (...) ahead is done using the best method and it starts the next round of data mining strategies which now falls into data rebalancing umbrella. Again, a grid search from an undersampling and oversampling family with different settings is done taking into account only seen data. The training data obtained after the first grid search are now submitted to the second step according the second grid search in order to get the ready training set for the further classifier training. The main objective of the work is to find the best combination of data mining techniques that suits the data set with a pipeline containing two types of data preparation methods coming from different families. As an outcome, first the problem of the presence of missing values has been addressed and then the data rebalancing techniques has been applied. The study focuses on obtaining classifiers based on Bayesian and lazy approaches as well as decision trees, evaluated on metrics such as the area under the ROC curve (AUC), Cohen’s kappa, Accuracy and the F-measure, among others. The imputation by the mean the mode is preferable to the Expectation Maximization Imputation in the scenario faced in this paper taking into account that the amount of missing values is higher than a forty percent for many features. (shrink)

The importance of the collective management of immaterial resources is a key variable in the valorisation of products in a post-industrial economy. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how, in post-industrial economies, it is possible to devise alternative forms of mediation between producers and consumers, such as organic farmers' markets, to curb the appropriation of rent by transnational and/or local business elites from the value created by immaterial resources. More specifically, we analyse those aspects of the collective (...) management of ethical values that, in the case of organic farmers' markets, can be a strategic source of competitive advantage for local producers. In this paper, the Ecomercado de Granada is studied as an example of mediation between production and consumption in a post-industrial economy. (shrink)

There are multiple and diverse voices of jurists who have expressed their fear of the unrestricted power of law enforcement and have announced the crisis of the formalist sense of Law. The widespread reaction against the abstract and formalist character of the positivist theory of law manifested itself as the Krausist philosophy of law and was backed by the philosophy of Krause, Schelling, Hegel and the most recent Natural Law theories that seek to establish substantial criteria for moral action. (...) This distrust was caused by the heteronomy of modest and obedient civil servants of the judicial order that rely on political balance of power in which nothing depends on the human bottom of institutions. Let us consider briefly the impressive analyses performed by different thinkers on this issue, which they considered characteristic of their era, but that continues to constitute a difficulty that challenges contemporary society. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch's famous case of M and D illustrates the moral importance of learning to see others in a more favourable light through renewed attention. Yet if we do not read this case in the wider context of Murdoch's work, we are liable to overlook the attitudes and transformations involved in coming to change one's mind as M does. Stanley Cavell offers one such reading and denies that the case represents a change in M's sense of herself or the (...) possibilities for her world of the kind exemplified by Nora in Ibsen's A Doll's House. In this essay, I challenge Cavell's reading, suggesting that the case, while it may not be an exemplar of the perfectionist outlook as described by Cavell, can and should be interpreted in perfectionist terms. To see this, I reflect on Murdoch's views on the endless perfectibility of language, the importance of humility, and the role of love and attention in moral learning. I conclude that Murdoch's work uniquely sheds light on how we might cultivate a perfectionist outlook in ourselves and others, and describes the distinctive role that some novels can play in moral education. (shrink)

There are multiple and diverse voices of jurists who have expressed their fear of the unrestricted power of law enforcement and have announced the crisis of the formalist sense of Law. The widespread reaction against the abstract and formalist character of the positivist theory of law manifested itself as the Krausist philosophy of law and was backed by the philosophy of Krause, Schelling, Hegel and the most recent Natural Law theories that seek to establish substantial criteria for moral action. (...) This distrust was caused by the heteronomy of modest and obedient civil servants of the judicial order that rely on political balance of power in which nothing depends on the human bottom of institutions. Let us consider briefly the impressive analyses performed by different thinkers on this issue, which they considered characteristic of their era, but that continues to constitute a difficulty that challenges contemporary society. (shrink)

Given the evolution of the public health (PH) and the changes from the phenomenon of globalization, this area has encountered new ethical challenges. In order to find a coherent approach to address ethical issues in PH policy, this study aimed to identify the evolution of public health ethics (PHE) frameworks and the main moral values and norms in PH practice and policy. According to the research questions, a systematic search of the literature, in English, with no time limit was performed (...) using the main keywords in databases Web of Science (ISI) and PubMed. Finally, the full text of 56 papers was analyzed. Most of the frameworks have common underpinning assumptions and beliefs, and the need to balance PH moral obligation to prevent harm and health promotion with respect for individual autonomy has been specified. As such, a clear shift from liberal values in biomedical ethics is seen toward the community’s collective values in PHE. The main moral norms in PH practice and policy included protecting the population against harm and improving PH benefits, utility and evidenced-based effectiveness, distributive justice and fairness, respect for all, privacy and confidentiality, solidarity, social responsibility, community empowerment and participation, transparency, accountability and trust. Systematic review of PHE frameworks indicates utilization of the aforementioned moral norms through an practical framework as an ethical guide for action in the PH policy. The validity of this process requires a systematic approach including procedural conditions. (shrink)

Many physicians are involved in relationships that create tension between a physician's duty to work in her patients’ best interest at all times and her financial arrangement with a third party, most often a pharmaceutical manufacturer, whose primary goal is maximizing sales or profit. Despite the prevalence of this threat, in the United States and globally, the most common reaction to conflicts of interest in medicine is timid acceptance. There are few calls for conflicts of interest to be banned, and, (...) to our knowledge, no one calls for conflicted practitioners to be reprimanded. Contrast our attitudes in medicine with public attitudes toward financial conflicts among government employees. When enforcement of rules against conflict of interest slackens in the public sector, news organizations investigate and publish their criticism. Yet even when doctors are quoted in the media promoting specific drugs, their personal financial ties to the drug maker are rarely mentioned. Policies for governmental employees are strict, condemnation is strong, and criminal statutes exist. Yet the evidence that conflict is problematic is, if anything, stronger in medicine than in the public sector. Policies against conflicts of interest in medicine should be at least as strong as those already existing in the public sector. (shrink)

Resumen: Las cambiantes relaciones entre seres humanos y árboles en los relatos de los habitantes cordilleranos del sur de Chile invitan a revisar los límites de la comunidad moral para incluir en ella a los seres con que se convive y de los que se depende. La presencia de prácticas mapuches cordilleranas de largo aliento junto con las transformaciones experimentadas por las poblaciones madereras y los relatos de las personas que explotaron los árboles nativos se encarnan en conversaciones que invitan (...) a reformular el vínculo con la naturaleza, tomando como referencia la pluralidad de experiencias locales. Estas voces cordilleranas convergen con aquellas orientaciones filosóficas que reconocen al ser humano como parte y no como centro de un entramado vital de mayores y más complejas dimensiones, a la vez que, en un sentido práctico, con la urgencia de generar respuestas que resguarden la naturaleza y que garanticen la inclusión social y la convivencia intercultural.: The changing relations between human and trees open opportunities in the narratives of the south Andean residents to expand the moral duties towards those beings upon whom humans depend and with whom they live. The existence of long lasting Mapuche cultural practices in the mountainous areas along with the transformations of timber towns and the narratives of people who exploited the native trees in those territories prompt a reshaping of the link with nature by means of the creation of moral duties based upon the diversity of local experiences. Such an alternative coincides with those philosophical orientations that recognize humans as part and not as the center of a vital patchwork. At the same time, it relates to the need of alternatives to preserve nature while guaranteeing social inclusion and intercultural coexistence. (shrink)

This essay examines the relationship between Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss in order to show the central themes necessary to elucidate their philosophical positions. The essay reveals the centrality of the figure of Plato as a point of departure to understand the agreement and the disagreement concerning fundamental questions (such as the way of reading ancient texts, the importance of the historical perspective or the importance of the study of the past in order to orient the modern science) which (...) revolves around the issue of the relation between revelation and philosophy. The work concludes with an identification of the common core of both thinkers that allows us to understand their differences (homogeneity or heterogeneity of reality and the human) and, moreover, identifies both perspectives with a «foundational» (Voegelin) or «negative» (Strauss) interpretation of Plato’s thought. (shrink)

The most distinctive feature of Murdoch's philosophical project is her attempt to reclaim the exploration of moral life as a legitimate topic of philosophical investigation. In contrast to the predominant focus on action and decision, she argues that “what we require is a renewed sense of the difficulty and complexity of the moral life and the opacity of persons. We need more concepts in terms of which to picture the substance of our being” (AD 293).1 I shall argue that to (...) fully appreciate the novelty of this proposal we need to recognize some elements of continuity with analytic methods of philosophical inquiry and themes that belong to continental traditions. On Murdoch's view, the most important question facing moral philosophy is that of whether and how we can become better. In order to describe moral progress and failure, struggle and ascent, we need ethical concepts capable of capturing mental events such as change in mind, self-examination, and redescription. These concepts are presently unavailable, and this lack seriously undermines our attempts to understand the phenomena of morality. Because of this conceptual loss, we succumb to the mistaken idea that moral life coincides with its scattered outer manifestations, i.e. public acts. Instead, Murdoch urges us “the moral life […] is something that goes on continually, not something that is switched off in between the occurrence of explicit moral choices” (SG 37).2 Murdoch's point is that we need to conceive the locus of agency more broadly if we want to understand the complicated machinery of action. But perhaps more importantly, she points out that we may be morally active while entertaining a contemplative attitude, which does not issue in action. The grain of moral life, she argues, is constituted by the.. (shrink)

Los cuidados paliativos deben manejar los diferentes problemas que los pacientes y las familias pueden tener al final de la vida. La sedación es una maniobra terapéutica utilizada con cierta frecuencia en cuidados paliativos y constituye una buena práctica médica cuando está bien indicada; sin embargo, presenta el riesgo de conculcar algunos principios éticos. Los principios de beneficencia y autonomía son posiblemente los principios éticos mayormente afectados cuando se considera la sedación. Se deben cumplir los siguientes requisitos: síntoma refractario, enfermedad (...) terminal y consentimiento, y en lo posible estar avalada por una segunda opinión médica. La sedación paliativa no es eutanasia y las diferencias están en el objetivo, el proceso y el resultado. En el presente trabajo se discuten algunos de los aspectos para prevenir la conculcación de los principios éticos, asimismo se proporcionan algunas sugerencias para ayudar en la toma de decisiones. Palliative care to the different problems encountered by patients and their families at the end of life. Sedation is a therapeutic manoeuvre frequently used in palliative medicine, that could eventually infringe some ethical principles. From our standpoint, beneficence and autonomy are probably the most affected principles when sedation is considered. The following conditions are required in order for it to be applied: refractory symptom, terminal illness and consent, and as long as possible, the decision must be supported by a second medical opinion Palliative sedation is different from euthanasia, and the differences lie in the objective, the pro- cess and the result. Some measures to prevent such violations to occur are discussed, and suggestions intended to guide in decision making are proposed. (shrink)

From the analysis of the Wave 5 National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey 2021 dataset, the study conducted in South Africa, we developed a model of analysis based on three dimensions, namely, subjective well-being, material living conditions, and importance attributed to education during the COVID-19 pandemic. A cross-sectional analysis of the data for Gauteng area indicates that the dimension of subjective well-being of families in South Africa—even in relation to the factors such as conditions of deprivation (...) —does not necessarily influence the importance the respondents attach to their children’s education, this as reflected in whether or not they send them to school when COVID-19 restrictions allowed for schools to come back to face-to-face teaching. Subjective well-being of parents and guardians is, however, a predictor of concern about their children’s education and future. Our working hypothesis is that, although there is little evidence that subjective well-being has a significant association with the respondents’ willingness for their children to continue their schooling, there is a significant indirect effect of subjective well-being—which is especially determined by the gender as well as of the living material conditions—and the greater or lesser importance that the respondents attribute to their children’s education. Likewise, and in more general terms, subjective well-being is clearly related to gender, with women having the lowest levels of subjective well-being. (shrink)

Leaders are faced with ethical and moral dilemmas daily, like those within the military who must span from large-scale combat operations to security cooperation and deterrence. For businesses, these dilemmas can include social and environmental impact such as those in mining; and for governments, the social and economic impact of their decision-making in their response to COVID-19. The move by Western defence forces to align their foundational principles, policies, and “soldier” dispositions with the changing values of the countries they (...) serve are starkly illustrative of challenges faced by all leaders. While admirable, such changes face the apparent contradiction of enhancing individual moral agency within a hierarchical organization that maintain enforceable codes of conduct. Ethical leadership theory provides aspirational goals, but lacks empirically based guidance on how to implement policies that facilitate values-based behavior. Using a discourse theory analysis of a moral dilemma vignette with Royal Australian Air Force personnel, this research identifies important aspects of agency and subject position that must be addressed if such policies are to succeed. These findings show that the potential contradiction can be addressed by acknowledging the contrasting tendency to bureaucratic process by leaders at upper levels, while lower-level leaders address moral issues by incorporating their subjectivity and making a conscious deontological choice between humanity and comrade loyalty. (shrink)

John Rist surveys the history of ethics from Plato to the present and offers a vigorous defence of an ethical theory based on a revised version of Platonic realism. In a wide-ranging discussion he examines well-known alternatives to Platonism, in particular Epicurus, Hobbes, Hume and Kant as well as contemporary 'practical reasoners', and argues that most post-Enlightenment theories of morality (as well as Nietzschean subversions of such theories) depend on an abandoned Christian metaphysic and are unintelligible without such (...) grounding. He also argues that contemporary choice-based theories, whether they take a strictly ethical or more obviously political form, are ultimately arbitrary in nature. His lively and accessible 2001 study is informed by a powerful sense of philosophical history, and will be of interest to both students and scholars of ethics. (shrink)

El presente trabajo investiga las tesis sobre el poder civil de Alonso de la Veracruz que buscan incorporar en la comunidad política española a los habitantes autóctonos del Nuevo Mundo, tesis que suelen relacionarse con F. de Vitoria y el tomismo español, y que últimamente son consideradas parte del republicanismo novohispano elaborado desde la periferia americana. Se busca demostrar que su propósito era aplicar una teoría de derechos naturales, sin que ello implique participación política de los indios americanos. Se analiza (...) la postura del fraile frente a la diversidad cultural y la guerra contra los indios. The paper explores Alonso de la Veracruz's theses on civil power, which sought to integrate the native inhabitants of the New World into the Spanish political community. These theses, which have usually been associated with F. de Vitoria and Spanish Thomism, have recently come to be considered part of a Novohispanic republicanism developed in the American periphery. The article seeks to show that the purpose of such theses was to apply a theory of natural rights that did not entail the political participation of the indigenous population, as well as to analyze Veracruz's position regarding cultural diversity and the war against the indigenous peoples. (shrink)

RESUMEN La filosofía hegeliana en general, y en particular la “Ciencia de la lógica” y el tratamiento que en esta se hace sobre nociones como las de identidad y diferencia, generaron desde el momento mismo en que vio la luz, un sinnúmero de posiciones críticas tales como las de Schelling, los hegelianos de izquierda y, en general, de todos aquellos filósofos que, en virtud de las posibles implicaciones prácticas de una filosofía de la identidad buscaron “expurgar la semilla del dragón (...) del panteísmo hegeliano”, entre las cuales es necesario mencionar la legitimación de estados totalitarios y los genocidios asociados a ellos. Esta búsqueda, fue realizada sobre la afirmación de que el pensamiento hegeliano, al estar soportado sobre la identidad, implica una negación y, por tanto, aniquilación y reducción de la diferencia. En este sentido, el presente artículo busca examinar la noción hegeliana de la identidad, la correspondencia o no de las críticas que sobre el particular se han hecho sobre Hegel y, finalmente, analizar una de las salidas que, desde las interpretaciones hegelianas más recientes, se han hecho para responder a las críticas: la filosofía hegeliana in stricto sensu, una filosofía de la diferencia. ABSTRACT The Hegelian philosophy in general, and in particular the “Science of Logic” and the treatment that in this is made about notions as identity and difference, generated since its conception a countless critical positions such as those of Schelling, the left Hegelian and, in general, of all those philosophers who, accordingly with the posible practical implications of a philosophy of identity sought to “purge the dragon’s seed from Hegelian pantheism” among which it is worth to mention the legitimization of totalitarian states and genocide associated with them. This search was made on the assertion that Hegelian thought, being supported on the identity, implies a negation and, therefore, annihilation and reduction of the difference. In this sense, the present article seeks to examine the Hegelian notion of identity, the correspondence or not of the criticisms that have been made about Hegel and, finally, to analyze one of the outlets that, from the most recent Hegelian interpretations, have been made to respond to the criticisms: the Hegelian philosophy in stricto sensu, a philosophy of the difference. (shrink)

Politics is about managing conflict, about how we should live together. Many traditions of thought and political thinkers have nonetheless taken this shared space of conflict, this we the people, as a given. The people is considered as a necessary precondition for politics. What happens when a part of this we disagrees with that? When, for some, this shared community is not taken as a given and claim their right to secede and build their own independent political community. Such (...) claims bear on the fundamental questions: who is the “ demos ”? who are the people entitled to self-government?’. (shrink)

Philosophy and psychoanalytical psychology converge in this examination of some of the central themes in this work on María Zambrano, such as exile, mercy, and the development of the individual. With a special focus on the psychology of the unconscious and the universe of symbolism, the book also provides thought-provoking interpretations of two emblematic tragic figures, those of Oedipus and Antigone, and an interesting approach to the figure of Cervantes' Dulcinea.

This theoretical paper proposes a new perspective to understand the moral distress of nurses more fully, using virtue ethics. Moral distress is a widely studied subject, especially with respect to the determination of its causes and manifestations. Increasing the theoretical depth of previous work using ethical theory, however, can create new possibilities for moral distress to be explored and analyzed. Drawing on more recent work in this field, we explicate the conceptual framework of the process of moral distress in nurses, (...) proposed by Ramos et al., using MacIntyrean virtue ethics. Our analysis considers the experience of moral distress in the context of a practice, enabling the adaptation of this framework using virtue ethics. The adoption of virtue ethics as an ethical perspective broadens the understanding of the complexity of nurses’ experiences of moral distress, since it is impossible to create a ready model that can cover all possibilities. Specifically, we describe how identity, social context, beliefs, and tradition shape moral discomfort, uncertainty, and sensitivity and how virtues inform moral judgments. Individuals, such as nurses, who are involved in a practice have a narrative history and a purpose ( telos) that guide them in every step of the process, especially in moral judgment. It is worth emphasizing that the process described is supported by the formation of moral competence that, if blocked, can lead to moral distress and deprofessionalization. It is expected that nurses seek to achieve the internal good of their practice, which legitimizes their professional practice and supports them in moral decision-making, preventing moral distress. (shrink)